The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Nate Silver on "The Rise and Fall of 'Fact-Checking'"
"'Fact-checkers' as the high priests of journalism had a political beginning at Facebook — and have met a political end."
From Silver's Substack newsletter yesterday:
So, the news is that Facebook is eliminating a partnership that began in December 2016 with independent fact-checking organizations and replacing them with a Twitter/X style Community Notes program.
To which I say: that sounds fine, actually….
My impression is that journalists who label themselves as misinformation experts or fact-checkers have a relatively poor capacity for self-reflection, perhaps because these are such self-aggrandizing labels to begin with. But that's a hard claim to prove. It might be wrong, and even if it's mostly right, I'm sure you could point to counterexamples. Conversely, I have a relatively favorable impression of Community Notes on X. But it's a relatively young program, and community-driven moderation can be hard to scale and can eventually develop its own toxic hierarchies — and Facebook is a much bigger platform than X.
I just don't think it has done journalism much good to have a group of people specifically designated as misinformation experts or fact-checkers — that should be everyone's job. And although I don't really trust Zuckerberg's motivations, it was fact-checkers who pressured Facebook for the partnership in the first place, not the other way around. It's another chapter in the long history of journalists trying to [sow] ground with Meta and not liking what they reaped.
