Facebook is Not the Problem
The conversation with Facebook is not well informed of the science of lies. Fiat lies (read “ads”) in fact pose a terrible threat. However the science says there are a few fundmental misunderstandings. Here is a friends, free, link to a short description of the science that needs to get on the desk of various forces in this argument. Note the title, which is true, but the way to get lies back under control is not to ask that of Facebook.
The following “Invitation to the Internet Court of Lies” makes the case for a new Unicorn on the Internet that independently deals with lies and can provide an authorative source of marking suspected lies so that laws can be formed and passed that are informed about how the human brain actually works.
This link can also be forwarded as a friends link but now we wish it would be forward to individuals or companies who are insightful enough to fund this non-governmental solution to the problem. It explains this private court as a business or self-sustaining entity.
The fact that people do not understand is that any sentence (or story) can be a lie. This makes any technical or legal solution to the problem woefully inadequate.
The fact that any sentence can be a lie is not in natural language, it is in the way our neocortical brains work, and our natural language is just a window on that.
You cannot ask Facebook to judge lies. It will not work the way you think it can. Indeed, you cannot ask any entity that is vested in any mission other than bringing truth to lies in order to bring truth to lies. Conflict of mission always means having the entity seeing only the lies it wants to see.
Politifact, FactCheck and so forth look for what is not true, but that does not work either. They check only a small percentage of the fiat lies out there because, oddly, because they are only truth checkers where the truth can be shown.
You need the focus of an Open, Public, Court which enforces moderated dialogue that develop all aspects of a lie, not just its truth. That information becomes available to all, and sensible decisions on content can be made by the companies that provide content editing as they and the law sees fit.
You need more private enterprise, not less. More jobs. The court just tries lies, not people. That is the Unicorn that needs to exist on the global Internet to the benefit of mankind.
There is proof of this now. Any sentence (or story) can be a lie.
