I think what I wanted to say is that it seems to me that a) the resources Meta throws at this are not sufficient to check facts properly, and b) that proper fact checking is a really difficult business.
a) because if they had used staff with minimal domain knowledge they would probably have been aware what BMJ is, that it is a trusted scientific journal that has peer-review in place. I don't know whether the article in question was peer reviewed, but I assume so. Either way, this didn't seem to play a role. Whoever fact-checked the article labeled BMJ a newsblog, so they have near-zero domain knowledge.
b) BMJ and all scientific journals which are worth their money employ experts to do the fact checking in peer review. Funny enough, these experts mainly do that work for free. Turns out that the experts place high value in fact-checked and verified information. Clearly, peer review takes a long time and wouldn't be suitable for facebook's quick turnaround. Or perhaps it would... if Meta designed a peer review process that takes Facebook's specific requirements into account. But that's a whole new approach to things, perhaps better developed in a startup and then bought out by Meta ;)
Not that peer-review is perfect, or that all experts are always right. But Meta needs to acknowledge that fact checkers are sometimes wrong, too. When that happens, there must be a way to correct the error. The BMJ having to write an open letter to Zuckerberg clearly indicates that this error correction doesn't work.
I think what I wanted to say is that it seems to me that a) the resources Meta throws at this are not sufficient to check facts properly, and b) that proper fact checking is a really difficult business.
a) because if they had used staff with minimal domain knowledge they would probably have been aware what BMJ is, that it is a trusted scientific journal that has peer-review in place. I don't know whether the article in question was peer reviewed, but I assume so. Either way, this didn't seem to play a role. Whoever fact-checked the article labeled BMJ a newsblog, so they have near-zero domain knowledge.
b) BMJ and all scientific journals which are worth their money employ experts to do the fact checking in peer review. Funny enough, these experts mainly do that work for free. Turns out that the experts place high value in fact-checked and verified information. Clearly, peer review takes a long time and wouldn't be suitable for facebook's quick turnaround. Or perhaps it would... if Meta designed a peer review process that takes Facebook's specific requirements into account. But that's a whole new approach to things, perhaps better developed in a startup and then bought out by Meta ;)
Not that peer-review is perfect, or that all experts are always right. But Meta needs to acknowledge that fact checkers are sometimes wrong, too. When that happens, there must be a way to correct the error. The BMJ having to write an open letter to Zuckerberg clearly indicates that this error correction doesn't work.