I asked, if Trump Tweeted that people should inject disinfectant, what percentage of Republicans do you think would do it?
And I gave as measured an answer to that question as I could.
It seems to me that every single person who called was fact checking.
Which not only proves the need for it--so, thanks for shooting yourself in the foot--but it also gives an indication as to how many others were out there who did NOT take that step. Such as the ones who actually poisoned themselves (some of which who died from doing so, evidently), or did you just conveniently ignore this part:
Meanwhile, the FDA had to issue warnings against people self-medicating with anti-malarial drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine Friday, after multiple deaths and poisonings were reported
That's the FDA doing exactly what we're talking about, only they had to do it
after "multiple deaths and poisonings were reported" (who knows how many others not reported), not in tandem with Trump's idiotic comments, which would have likely saved many, but sadly not all of those lives.
Oh, now we get to it. Right-wingers need a fact-checker installed.
Oh, now we get it. You hate white people!
No? That's not what you were arguing?
We'll try this again for the apologists, IF you voted for Trump you have already demonstrated a measurable intellectual paucity, but more so than the act of voting for Trump proving you to be objectively intellectually impaired is the undeniable fact that the average Trump voter was a white, middle class male with little to no college education. It is just a simple fact of demographics that the majority of Trump voters were not (and continue to not be) very well educated.
And surprise surprise, we see the effect of that lack of higher education over and over and over and over and over again, to the point of 75% actually stating that they trust
Donald Trump's medical advice more so than any other person (including actual Doctors, as if I needed to use the word "actual").
This is objectively idiotic and can only be explained by a clear cognitive impairment made all the more terrifying by the fact that SOME OF THEM HAVE ACTUALLY DIED because of it.
You want to liken that to religion? Fine. Call it a cult. That doesn't mean the cult members aren't lacking in intelligence and show a clear and present need for real-time fact checking as the point
you raised ironically proves.
So, no. It isn't the cart before the horse. Nor is it mutually exclusive. Fact-checking harms no one and clearly is needed by some. Exactly what percentage is, of course, impossible to properly quantify, which is why you're trying to shift the narrative toward that end, but in doing so you just underscored the clear
need for fact checking.
Why shouldn't that come
at the same time as the false claim being made?
And of course, Facebook, which is a social media company
And the
number one source of news for well over 65% of Americans. Though you'll note that Republicans are actually more skeptical now--gee I wonder why--than Democrats in regard to anything on social media.
But if you look at the stats in relation to the average Trump voter (white, middle class male with little to no college education) you'll see precisely why he targets Twitter (and why his minions target Youtube and Reddit, while Russia targets Facebook, Twitter and Instagram):
is perfectly placed to do it, even if its run by a fuck-face coward who opposes the idea.
You keep trying this idiotic tactic--which is endlessly ironic considering the topic--but of course Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't have anything at all to do with running such things. It's not like he's going to personally oversee every fact check before it gets posted. He'd do what he always does, hire others to do it for him and go back to his pampered do-nothing life.
And he's a "fuck-face coward" for not implementing fact checking, because he has no doubt been told by the army of business execs hiding behind him that actually make all of the policies that he just rubber stamps, that adding the fact checking could impact their advertising profits. As that PEW study I referenced above--and you didn't read, but now that I pointed that out, you will, but now that I pointed
that out, you won't, etc--points to Republicans having already been driven to distrust Facebook more so than other platforms due exclusively to what Trump and his evil cabal have done over the past four years (make legitimate news "fake" and fake news legitimate) so the bottom line--as always--is no doubt the prime motivator for Zuckerberg.
As to
his comments, like:
"I believe strongly that Facebook shouldn't be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. I think in general, private companies shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that."
Facebook
already is in that position, but it's also the same position as any other news provider. That's like saying the New York Times should not have a fact checking department or an editorial policy of any kind regarding what they print in their paper.
Whether he admits to it or not, Facebook is a
publisher with an editorial policy (aka, "algorithm" in their case), and detailed TOS, not a passive "platform" that doesn't get involved in managing user content. They are, in effect, a newspaper--or, at the very least a news magazine--just in a new form, with content that they carefully and deliberately curate
for you and in ways you cannot control, only they can and they do so exclusively to sell advertisements.
You clearly do, yes, but of course, not as you meant that and that's the problem. You know--and agree, as your comments throughout this exchange concede--that there are no harms to fact checking and that there is a clear need--a clear life-saving need, no less--for fact checking. You just don't want the medium that is
delivering the false claims to be the one that ALSO checks those claims with reputable sources before allowing the claims to be disseminated by their service, which is, once again, exactly like arguing that the New York Times should not fact-check anything they publish prior to publishing.