Re:Trump to sign executive order on social media Thursday
by supportlocal4h on Thursday May 28, 2020 @12:01AM
(#23333254)
I don't Twitter and I don't follow Trump, so I don't know the answer. Does Twitter fact check every Trump tweet? Does it ever find any to be factual? If Trump tweeted that he loves the Jets, would that get fact checked? If he tweeted that FEMA has done a superb job in guiding the WHO through this whole pandemic, would that get fact checked? Or do only some tweets get the treatment?
Are you okay with Facebook banning links in private messages? Why can’t I link to JoeBiden.info, a clearly marked parody website full of factual information, in a private message to a friend? What possible reason could there be for this, other than bias?
Are you okay with Twitter editorializing the president’s tweets, but not doing the same for those of Adam Schiff or Joe Biden? Both of them have promoted baseless conspiracy theories on Twitter, like suggesting Trump is a Russian agent. Yet they’ve never been “fact checked.” Are you okay with the idea that the person in charge of the fact checking initiative at Twitter has a history of publicly calling Trump a “Nazi” and a “racist tangerine?” Does this seem like an arrangement that will result in anything but biased “fact checks?”
I’m having a hard time seeing how this is good for critical thought, as you seem to be suggesting. Telling people what to think is not the basis upon which critical thought develops. If anything, such editorializing will only further polarize people and increase their emotional attachment to pre-existing beliefs.