This was another week where you couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a potential Lexicon entry. Although I’m not sure why you would want to swing a dead cat around, but I’m not here to kink shame. Let your freak flag fly, baby!
Out of all the potential subjects, one really stood out for me. In a move that shocked, well, not that many people, Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta and all the social media sites under it would be moving away from its “fact checking” model (which literally fact-checked obvious jokes, thus making the model itself a joke) and moving more towards a Community Notes standard like what is being used on the Social Media Site Formerly Known As Twitter. This got Leftists all atwitter (or would that be aX) at the notion. Journalists (0r whatever the fuck Brian Stelter is) and Leftist hacks were up in arms at Zuck’s decision.
Which obviously means it was the right decision.
And it makes it perfect for a Leftist Lexicon entry.
fact checking
What the Left thinks it means – a vital service that should only be done by professionals
What it really means – finding out the truth and calling out the lies
One of the hardest things about being informed today is knowing who you can trust. Modern journalism is a hodgepodge of shitty sources sucking up to even shittier people so they can get invited to dinner parties with yet even shittier people. The Fourth Estate has become Leftist stenographers more than the bulldogs that will relentlessly seek the truth. Anymore, any journalists are lucky to stumble into the truth, and even then there’s a better than average chance they’ll completely miss it.
On its face, the idea of fact checking is a good thing, especially given the modern journalism as described above. We want to be informed, or at the very least seem informed to impress others. To that end, we look for sources that break things down for us and teach us things we didn’t know. With the sheer deluge of information sources, it’s hard to find a way to control the output of the fire hose.
Enter the fact checkers, doing the research for you so you don’t have to! It’s so easy and cheap to do, it’s a wonder why people don’t do this more often!
And that’s the problem.
When you pawn off anything you should do yourself, you are subject to the outcomes the other party produce. It’s like when you hire a contractor who farms out the work to a subcontractor. The job may get done, but it may not up to the standards the contractor has. Then it becomes a matter of people pointing fingers at one another trying to figure out who’s responsible for the kitchen sink being put in the attic.
When it comes to information, it’s a lot harder to fix the fuckups, mainly because no one wants to take responsibility for your being misinformed. You don’t want to admit you were a dumbass for believing a fact checker. The fact checker doesn’t want to admit fault because a) it looks reaaaallllly bad when a fact checker can’t figure out the truth, and b) it hurts their widdle fee-fees. The entity that hired the fact checkers doesn’t want to take the hit for the reasons mentioned above and because it erodes the trust the entity has, which ultimately costs them money.
In other words, when you rely on fact checkers to do your research for you, more often than not, you’re their bitch.
Then, there’s the lovely little problem of bias. In the early days of Facebook fact checking, the people doing it leaned so far left they were parallel to the ground while standing up. Once that got called out, Zuck tried to balance out the fact checkers and the checking itself, but only made it worse because some of the fact checkers had bias issues. Not a good look, kids!
Regardless of which side of the political/ideological aisle you’re on, bias fucks up your ability to be truly informed because it limits your scope of information sources. Social media has turned us back into a tribalistic society where anyone who deviates from what you consider to be normal, just, and right is an infidel and, thus, not even worthy of even basic human decency. When you face information from one of those “unclean” sources that contradicts your mindset, you have two choices: adapt, or reject.
I bring this up to underscore the problem with biased fact checking. If you have the opinion information from one side or the other is untrue (regardless of whether it’s factual), you are going to more inclined to reject it. And if you have the power to shape what other people see on a social media website like…oh I don’t know…Facebook, you are going to be tempted to hide the “bad” information and go after those who want it to be known.
There’s an old saying that applies here…something about absolute power and corruption…I’m sure it will come to me.
Anyway, the Facebook fact checkers fell into this trap, which caused a lot of accounts to get warnings, suspensions, and even terminations. And in some cases, actual news stories shared online got slapped with misinformation tags (I’m looking at you, Hunter Biden) and were subsequently suppressed. Oh, and I forgot to mention Zuck said he got pressure from the Brick Tamland Administration to suppress the laptop story.
And who got punished for suppressing this legitimate news story? The entities who shared it. I mean, why would people who actively worked towards misinformation by absence see any punishment for making people misinformed? That’s just crazy talk, man!
But it also exposes the danger of trusting fact checkers without verifying whether what they’re saying is factual. Just because you tell me you’re honest doesn’t mean I’m not gonna test you. And you shouldn’t just trust and believe either. News stories that sound too good to be true should be the first ones that should make your Bullshit Meter light up like the…biological discharges…in an hourly rate hotel room when you scan it with a blacklight flashlight.
Not that I know anything about that, mind you…
This is going to be a bit of an ask, but it’s going to make more sense if you do it. Question all of your sources while reaching out for alternative sources from a wider array of ideologies. Then, let common sense be your guide. If something sounds factual and makes sense, be open to accepting it. If something sounds like more full of bullshit than the world’s largest cattle ranch, then don’t trust it. Consider it mental calisthenics that will make you stronger, faster, better. And without the need for bionics!
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out how the typical Leftist sources are so upset Mark Zuckerberg is going in a new direction with fact checking. The way it was set up initially, the Left had the power over what got considered factual. Now, thanks to the advent and popularity of Community Notes, they no longer control the flow of information and can be called out for pushing misinformation while pretending to guard against it. And if you’re a Leftist media shill, the worst thing you can do is strip them of the power and the prestige of being information brokers and letting the hoi polloi point and laugh when you fuck up.
If I may offer a suggestion, media folks, maybe stop parroting Leftist squawking points and start doing your fucking jobs. There’s a reason used car salesmen are considered more trustworthy than the media and their fact checkers these days, and I can draw a pretty clear conclusion as to why. But I’m sure if you really put your hivemind to it, you’ll figure it out by the end of January.
Of the year 3843.
Tag: facebook
How Good is “The Public Good”?
There’s a general concept within Leftist circles designed to get people to think in communal terms instead of individual terms. I call it “the public good” argument. Basically, whatever a Leftist wants gets argued in terms of the bigger picture for the greater good (or at least their version of it). I ran into this recently and decided it would be a good concept to explore. Oh, and make fun of.
As with so many things these days, it started with a meme…
A Leftist Facebook friend posted a meme with the “public funds should go to public school” idea Leftists have advanced in the past few years in response to parents taking their children out of public schools and either sending them to private schools using vouchers or homeschooling. Because who doesn’t want to send their kids to a school system that even Leftists think suck ass? (I mean, aside from Leftist politicians with kids. They get to go to private school without so much as a mumble of protest from these public school fans.)
Anyway, the original post mentioned “the public good” to praise public schools and to denigrate school vouchers. Being the smartass I am, I started off with a simple premise: both public and private schools serve the same public good, that being a well-educated population. From there, I asked why there is such an uproar over public funds going to private schools via vouchers when they serve the public good I referenced earlier.
To date, I have yet to receive anything resembling a real attempt to answer the question. Oh, I was called “misinformed” by someone promising (and failing) to deliver facts to counter my viewpoint, told I needed to volunteer at a public school to really understand what’s going on (after citing friends and family who are currently teaching, as well as linking to an article showing other public school teachers saying what I was saying), and told “you just want to argue.” But still no answer.
This is the real problem behind the Left’s “public good” argument, whether it be for public education, gun control, or any other Leftist idea they want to promote. Their solutions only go one way, and it’s always the way that favors the Left’s ideological ends. In the situation I experienced, the only way to fix public schools was whatever the Leftists said was the right answer. Which, as it turns out, is exactly the same thing we’ve been doing for decades to a steadily declining standard of education.
Which explains why the Leftists I encountered couldn’t answer the question I posed. If the true goal of public and private schools is to produce well-educated students, there is no logical conclusion where only public schools should get public money. But the Left can’t admit that because it would mean their entire premise of “public funds should stay in public schools” is based on discrimination.
Or should I say bigotry?
One of the big problems the Left has with private schools is how many of those schools have religious ties. They love to cite the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as justification to deny public funds to private schools, but it’s a real stretch to equate public school funding with a law. I mean, unless there’s a public school that has a seat in Congress, it’s pretty much a non-issue. The real issue the Left has with these schools (and only a few openly admit) is the possibility students would be indoctrinated. And Leftists think that’s their job!
More to the point, the Left hates any entity that offers an alternative to government as the sole provider of everything. Which, if you really think about it (and I have because I get bored easily), is a religion of sorts, but…okay, let’s not go too far down this rabbit hole of utter hypocrisy. Let’s just say the Left’s religion includes the holy doctrine of…wait for it…the public good. And their solution? More of the shit that’s failed before, just with a bigger price tag.
That’s where I diverge from the public school fans in the Facebook thread I was on. They say they want public schools to be funded for the public good, but they don’t want to address the problems even public school teachers are seeing today. To them, the funding of public schools is a greater public good than producing a well-educated population.
Which means nothing will get done, but we’ll still be paying for subpar service. If this were a company or a restaurant, we could go elsewhere.
Oh, wait. We can! As public schools continue to see a decline in enrollment, private schools are seeing an increase. No longer are parents subject to the slavery of the public school monopoly, which threatens the pipeline of future Leftists. And because private schools depend on financial donations from donors, they have a vested interest in maintaining and improving educational standards. And that, boys and girls, tends to lead to better results. With better results, these evil private schools are closer to fulfilling the public good public school advocates say they want.
That’s why Leftists are so intent to “prove” public schools are superior to private schools. If parents actually see public schools are shitholes that make Detroit look like Paris in springtime, they are going to demand answers and start looking for alternatives. And thanks to people like LibsofTikTok, we’re getting to see the absolute freaks getting into education and what they’re teaching. Spoiler Alert: the three Rs ain’t too high on the list, but you damn well better learn the teacher’s pronouns!
And somehow public school advocates don’t seem to see this as a problem, but as supporting the public good. The pubic good, maybe, but not the public good.
So, we’re left with the question in the title: how good is the public good? When Leftists define it, not very. When people who actually care about results over politics define it, well it may not be the best, but it’s a damn sight better than the bullshit the Left tells us is the public good.
Censored On Social Media
We hear about it all the time. Someone’s social media account got suspended, or they are in “Facebook Jail”, or even had their account cancelled and deleted from the service.
The social media giants are indeed censoring content and posts that they state violates their community standards. And it appears to be very politically biased. If a post favors Christianity, the Founding Fathers of the United States, the current conservative political movement. Chances are it could be censored. If a post speaks out against sin, the Leftist agenda, cultural progressive acceptances. It may be censored.
Yet not of these viewpoints are ever censored. Deviant sexual immorality, wrongs, lies, and evils of socialism, even advocating of violence against conservative members of society is allowed without exception.
Morally this is wicked. Ethically this is wrong.
But the social media giants are not true public forums. We want to believe and pretend that they are public forums with all the rights associated with a public forum. But we are deceiving ourselves when we think this way.
No the current social media giants are members only communities. And as a member we must abide by the community standards or we face the repercussions of ignoring them.
If someone was at a Republican function and started shouting Leftist propaganda. That person would be removed. Even in the case of a function that allows the public to attend. No one is going to stand up and say that the person has the right of free speech.
This is true for any of the current social media giants or any online virtual community, such as a forum, chatroom, or even a blog site. Even your homeowners association. There are rules of conduct and community standards of what is acceptable and what is not.
Yes we have free speech. But there are social limitations. You cannot come into your local church and preach the tenants of Satanism from the pews or pulpit without violating a community standard.
This is the reason why alternatives to Facebook and other social media giants exist. Some are niche sites the only are for Republicans where you can preach to the choir. Others have very loose codes of conduct which allow for a wider discussion. But there are still limits of acceptable topics and content. And if a Leftist managed to join one of these conservative sites. And started to post Leftist content, they too would find themselves censored.
Decades ago there was an uncensored and unmoderated internet discussion forum called USENET. Here there were different discussion boards for almost every conceivable topic. And anyone could post anything to any of them. No questions asked and nothing was ever censored.
The only community standard was a “gentleman’s agreement” not to post on an unrelated subject matter. But it was not enforced by anyone other than the users. And for several decades USENET flourished. A number of great ideas were born out of USENET.
But then the internet grew. And without moderation on the USENET, so did spam, cross postings of unrelated topics, and the arrival of files that could be exchanged. Most of it porn, warez, unauthorized copyrighted material and more.
Today that is all that is there on USENET. Access to USENET used to be through your ISP. Now you need a separate USENET provider and additional fees to access it.
If you don’t like the rules of the social media giants. You can either ignore them and run the risk of being censored. Or post someplace else.