‘Grotesque’: Google, YouTube Invest $12 Million in Global Fact-Checking Media Network

Truth suppression world wide

The basic problem with fact checkers - it's almost impossible in a partisan environment. The core issue is when "opinion" is presented as "fact". Unfortunately, that is happening all too often these days. Look at media outlets that put opinion shows under their news divisions; New reports from "unnamed sources" that are discovered to be nothing more than the authors opinion piece; etc.

“I reject your facts” - Senior US political leader

The above sums it up - if you don't agree with the outcome, you reject the basis of the argument, because OBVIOUSLY, the outcome didn't support "THE TRUTH" which you know and the other side is wrong/deluded/evil because they haven't come to the land of enlightenment.

To quote Martin Gurri in his article about Who Fact-checks the Fact-Checkers, "Unfortunately, that only works if all of us agree on the framework of truth that integrates the facts—and it is precisely the disintegration of these frameworks in the digital age that triggered the epistemic crisis. In every domain, the ruling paradigms have lost their hold—but there has been no paradigm shift, only noise and struggle.

However, it now DOES go deeper and people distrust the basis of the argument for good reason - partisan fact-checkers cherry-pick facts to suit their argument. It's like someone that cherry-picks passages out of the bible to prove their point of view.

I recently commented on a meme somewhere else on RP. One chart in the meme showed a partisan view of something. On the surface, it was true. However, when you dig deeper, the reason it was true was because of data that showed the other side in a better light.

This sums up the echo chamber. People quote only those things that reinforce their argument and discount everything that doesn't.
----------"All Republicans are election deniers!" - what about all those Democrats that have denied elections?
----------"All Democrats are soft on crime!" - what about those Democratic cites that have low crime rates because they have tough on crime policies implemented by the Democratic leadership?

However, back to the fact-checkers. In a lot of the cases, the fact-checkers have become partisan. It may be partisan to a political party or partisan to a philosophical idea. Either way, if you look for 'facts' from those, then you'll only get the cherry-picked truths that support their outcome.

Opinions are a completely different situation. Everyone has an opinion and everyone will only use the supporting argument for their opinion. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Just don't try to cram your opinion down my throat by claiming it's factual.

I may be totally wrong here, but I remember when Ma Bell was broken up, maybe it's time to do the same with big tech.