Visibility is a good metric to use when targeting false information. If an account with 0 followers is sputtering garbage, not much harm is done. But if an account with millions of followers is sputtering garbage, maybe it's more worth the effort.

Beyond that, YouTube has been heavily moderating content on covid. They display labels very similar to the ones Twitter is under fire for now. The only fundemental distinction is everybody agrees the virus is a plague.

They also added a fact check to a tweet insinuating that the virus originated in the US: https://www.axios.com/twitter-fact-checks-chinese-official-2...

Here's the tweet: https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238111898828066823?s=20

Twitter isn't a public right. He chooses to use their platform so they choose to annotate his lies. I don't see how this executive order would even change exactly what started the whole thing.

Classic Trump. He does nothing, claims he’s victorious and his fans eat it up.

IIRC, they are not liable if they just host the comments, not if they endorse them. I guess every comment without a "fake /dubious" label is true?

(Cause I'm about to drink a gallon of bleach and eat 2 lbs of raw garlic to ward off Covid as per a tweet's instruction ;) (joking) )

Even if they were the publisher in this scenario and were liable for his comment AND their annotation, there is nothing illegal about it.

I don't think the executive action targets the fact check label on Trump's tweet specifically. I think Twitter did something that really pissed Trump off and Trump is using Section 230 as leverage and a way to extend the narrative of "Twitter is plotting against me so don't believe everything you read."

This is neither here nor there but I have considered my self a republican for the last 28 years of my life. This president's actions make me feel physically ill.

Twitter could put "Everything trump says is false!" underneath every Trump tweet and it would still be perfectly legal.

People have a right to communicate, if a few platforms have the power to block all communication maybe they should be.

How does adding a link prevent anyone, let alone the most powerful person in history, from communicating?

> People have a right to communicate, if a few platforms have the power to block all communication maybe they should be.

Hm.... I don't see how Twitter is preventing anyone from the right to communicate, nor do I sense that Twitter has the power, even if it worked with the next 3 largest social media platforms, to "block all communications." Last I checked, the internet would still exist if Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin shut down.

So, some kind of socialized national communication place?

Either they're a public utility or they have control (and thus should have some degree of liability) for what is transmitted/published on their platform. They can't eat their cake and have it too!

Platforms have removed harmful content, for example terrorist propaganda or child pornography with 230 protections intact and governments appeared to welcome it so I think you can actually have your cake and eat it too, or at least you could until you fact checked Republicans I suppose

Platforms both enjoy first amendment protection to moderate their platforms as they see fit as well as protection from liability under 230. They are not mutually exclusive, and platforms have been moderating their content for decades. In fact most online communities could not even function if they had no right to moderate.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/04/no-section-230-does-no...

They _are_ liable for many things published on their platform. And they are also allowed to moderate content in whatever way they want. I don't see a problem as you are free to go start your own platform and presumably it would be popular if this many people have a problem with the existing censorship.

This honestly seems to be the model that Republicans have been pining for all along, they just don't like that they or their supporters are falling victim to its design.

I think the obvious answer is limited manpower. It makes logical sense to prioritize fact checking efforts on a tweet viewed by a million people above a tweet viewed by 10 people.

One could argue the one lie by a public figure, given a large enough following, can translate into a lie repeated a billion times by main street users. It's certainly less probable when the lie is sourced in the other direction.

> Lets fact check "God exists".

Easy, it's the same answer as the opposite assertion:

Undetermined. This statement is not agreed upon and is an ongoing subject of debate among both experts and in popular culture.

Public figures speak with authority - and like it or not, most of the world’s population has an underdeveloped ability to think critically (it isn’t taught in schools because it “undermines parental authority”, apparently: https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/vo26x/texas_gop_w... ).

> why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone?

They fact check everyone who represents more than 10% of their total traffic.

It just so happens that only one of those people tweets information that needs fact checking.

Brazilian president has been "fact checked" multiple times.

Same for Venezuelan dito.

I'm not sure it's a good thing to be in the "Bolsonaro, Maduro, Trump" list together but they seem to have a lot in common.

If I remember correctly, there was never any conclusive proof that voting fraud happened with the insecure Diebold voting machines in 2004.[1]

Those machines stored voting tallies on unencrypted compact flash cards, and there were massive other flaws in their security. But those machines were so insecure, that it would be difficult to prove fraud even happened if it had occurred.

Twitter chose a the wrong tweet to fact check. They are now asserting that a black-box mail voting system that has never been tried on this scale is secure, and we should just stop asking questions.

If I said that I was skeptical of the outcome of the elections that were conducted with voting machines made by Dick Cheney's company, in swing states, running Windows 98, am I going to be fact checked?

I'm really amazed at amount of trust people on HN are putting in mail in ballots.

Voting by mail can be done securely, but there are major problems with the current proposals. Just because Trump said it doesn't mean it is not true. My understanding is that the current proposals do not meet international requirements of transparency to qualify as truly fair.

[1]: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/diebolds-politi...

In a similar vein here's Jerry Nadler discussing paper ballots susceptibility in NY circa 2004: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3zxnnJHKu8

That's election fraud, not voter fraud.

Has it just been decided by Twitter now that the truth is that mail in ballots are 100% secure and anyone questioning our election integrity is just spreading dangerous misinformation? Seriously?

It seems like a really open-ended thing to fact check.

I wish we had asked more questions about election integrity before 2016. I think it is better that we have a robust discussion about this NOW, before the election.

The most important thing about elections is that they be trustworthy by the majority of the population. Without sufficient transparency and oversight, actual security is meaningless. The Computerphile did a two great videos about the dangers of electronic voting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

It seems like mail in ballots re-create the same problems with electronic voting, except that we are just adding an extra layer to it.

But, I know that countries like Germany and Switzerland have instituted some fairly robust means of securing mail in voting -- none of which we are considering. Simple things, like having the affidavit be on the same piece of paper as the ballot, and having ensuring chain of custody of the ballots by only having postal workers pick them up directly from voters.

Are we allowed to express our concerns about this? I for one do not want to make things worse this time around. Is the discussion about this really ending because Twitter decreed it so?

Because fact checking all of their users would be impossible.

I'd say fact-checking your top-50 users is a good idea, for statements which are completely and unarguably false beyond all doubt.

Because for lesser mortals, Twitter just bans people who violate their terms of service. The President is "too big to ban," but violates the TOS. This was a "compromise" solution, which obviously is not going to work.

Or at least people with a critical mass of followers.

> devil's advocate: why doesn't Twitter fact check everyone?

They're fact checking more than just Trump:

https://twitter.com/icecube/status/1265623592764534784

https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1238269193427906560

Because there's a difference between me lying to you, and your government lying to you.

Well the fact check they added is their own content, so of course they would be liable for it. But it's still constitutionally protected speech.

For normal (high profile) people engaging in this sort of thing, they'd just delete their accounts. A while back, presumably due to questions over Trump, they said they weren't going to delete world leader accounts, but they might fact-check harmful lies.

Well, Trump is the President. On the list of people worth fact checking, he's probably at the top.

Also, they are fact checking other people - for example, they've fact checked Chinese politicians tweeting propaganda about COVID starting in the US.