It's Not Just Free Speech We Need, But An Actual Shift in How We Make Sense

Analyzing a recent Facebook change and how it might pave the way for better social dialogue - sort of.

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I have to say I’ve been having a good time being back on Facebook for the past few months. It is a very different platform than it was during COVID, and while it’s not perfect, it has been a platform for some meaningful exchange without all the BS that used to be there.

Yesterday afternoon though, something happened. While it’s not catastrophic, it begs the question, do fact checkers still have some power there?

As you know, Facebook removed its “fact checkers” in January. This was met with anger from some and joy from others. I put myself in the joy category.

While Facebook certainly has a problem with fake news and misleading information, fact checkers were destroying meaningful dialogue and shaping public opinion in a way that was leaving people deeply misled about many important topics. Something needed to change.

Even though fact checkers were helping to weed out legitimately false and bad information, I take the position it was doing more harm than good as it was teaching people what to think not how to think.

Culturally, we need to learn to slow down and consider how we make sense of the complexity of our world, not just listen to commentators who tell you their version of the truth. We certainly don’t want fact checkers doing all our thinking for us either, unless authoritarian forms of information distribution are what we want.

Back to what happened, yesterday we got what seemed to be a “fact check” of sorts. It was a small little note on top of our image that claimed we were “missing context.” But, as usual, there was no context we were missing.

So The Story Goes

Here is the post:

The write up with the post was:

An incredible story outlining how little doctors are informed about major health issues. Written by Dr Madhava Setty.

Last week I was in the Operating Room when I received a text from a friend letting me know that RFK Jr. had just received enough votes to secure his position as the next Secretary of the DHHS.

“He’s in”, I said, “Kennedy is the head of HHS!”.

The two surgeons in the room groaned. I asked them why they thought this was bad news. One said that it was because he was unqualified and that he makes a lot of unsubstantiated claims. I asked for an example.

“He says that fluoride should be taken out of our supply of drinking water because it’s dangerous to kids.”

I asked them if they knew that the National Toxicology Program (a division of our own HHS) has asserted that there is an association between fluoride and a drop in kids’ IQ.

Neither were aware of this. But one continued, “he also says that vaccines cause autism and we know that they don’t.” I asked him how he knew this. Answer:

“There are a ton of studies that have proven this.”

I asked him if he had actually read any of them. He hadn’t. Like most medical professionals, they were well informed about matters pertaining to their speciality and take the time to read relevant literature, but when it comes to topics outside their field they rely on the media. However this line of questioning exposed the deficit not in their base of knowledge but in an understanding of epistemology—how we know what we know.

The postulate that no effect or relationship between two things exists is called the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis can never be proven. One may correctly claim that no study to date has proven a relationship between vaccination and neuro-developmental problems like autism, but one can never prove that there isn’t one. With larger and better data sets and better means of detection will come greater confidence in what is known. There could be an infinitesimal association with no clinical relevance that exists beyond our means of measurement, therefore we can never prove no relationship exists.

However, in the interest of protecting healthy children we should, at the very least, be interested in knowing how big or little the risk is, especially if we are exposing tens of millions of children to said products from the time they are born through adulthood. At this point in time, we have no idea what the risk is.

The surgeon countered, “What about tylenol? Are we going to waste resources and time to find out if every little thing has a tiny risk of something terrible happening?”

I looked at him and was about to say, “Yes! If you are giving a product to a hundred million people isn’t it incumbent on us as doctors to know what the risk is?”.

Just then, the surgical technician blurted out, “I never got my kids vaccinated with the Covid shots.”

Dead silence in the room.

I asked her why she didn’t. Did she read something somewhere? Did she know of other kids who were injured?

“No. It was just a feeling…”

As you can see we were sharing a real-life story our friend had. No claims were made, just dialogue between health professionals. Yet Science Feedback, an infamous fact checker with ties to powerful people and organizations, claimed we needed to add the context that “vaccines don’t cause autism,” as if that is a certain fact - which it’s not.

Why? Where in this post did we say they do? The post itself is a story about a conversation that had plenty of context around the story of vaccines and autism. It was clear and concise, only, it opened people’s eyes to why we should hold some uncertainty in our position. Uncertainty that is entirely valid given the science. It also showed people that not all health professionals are informed, nor agree on consensus ‘truths.’

The label of “missing context” casts doubt on the post and its validity. Even though Science Feedback came with their classic strawman argument approach, people won’t really know that as they don’t take the time to think about things deeply - hence we can easily be misled by “fact checks” or labels like this.

Ultimately, this is how you control narratives. This is how you mislead people. The truth is, the scientific orthodoxy cannot prove the negative that "vaccines don't cause autism", it's impossible to prove such a thing. Yet they want you to believe that it's certain they have proven this. They are overplaying the certainty of their position and downplaying the fact that in thousands of cases, parents have watched their kids develop autism minutes to hours after being injected. Why can't we acknowledge that has happened and talk about it? This is how our culture has become unscientific.

In the past, we dealt extensively with Science Feedback before Facebook took power away from these misleading and politically oriented fact checkers. Often times in conversation with these journalists and scientists, you can tell that your well-researched position shows a greater knowledge base than their position, yet they cannot see that nor argue well in favor of their position. Instead, they call upon armchair scientists who often don’t even understand the critiques that are being made about these subjects and instead revert to out of context talking points.

But regardless, these fact checkers used to hold all of the power over us by crushing our Facebook reach and our ability to monetize. This power would force us into submitting to them or we’d lose everything. I bet the average person doesn’t even realize that this type of authoritarian power over narrative is how fact checkers ‘defeat’ dissenting voices. It isn’t through facts and dialogue, it’s through torture and duress.

Now though, they don’t have that power. Even though this little note popped up, which is utter nonsense, our reach remains high and our ability to monetize remains high - no limitations at all. Over the last month on Facebook, our content has had 150 million views, and we’ve generated over 300,000 comments. There’s plenty of impact potential with Facebook these days. And the fact that they are paying it’s creators now - huge.

This is how it always should have been. Instead, we went through 5 years of losing everything… meh, you know the story.

Facebook is Doing The Right Thing

I’m not sure what to even call this little label on our post. I thought Facebook had removed these people altogether, but it seems they still have some power. Will that end? I hope so. But, all in all, Facebook is doing the right thing here. And I commend them for that.

We are not being penalized or demonetized for this post. Science Feedback has shared their opinion on the matter, but it doesn't affect us as it did in the past. Facebook has undone a huge mistake they made years ago. And while the cultural damage of this prior fact-checking fiasco on meaningful discourse will still take time to fix, they took a step in the right direction.

In the end though, free speech is truly only valuable if we are wise enough to yield it responsibly. Can we be physiologically settled enough to stay curious and open to dialogue with respect so we can hear and hold various viewpoints? Or do we move into defensiveness so fast that we lose our ability to integrate logic? If free speech is just leading us toward more division and polarization, what good truly is it?

This is the larger question - beyond what Big Tech is doing.

Big Tech could remove all censorship, algorithm BS, and community notes so speech is as free as can be, but are we wise enough to steward that open platform toward valuable conversation?

Currently, I’d say no. But that can change… and perhaps is changing?

People everywhere are getting tired of the polarization, the division, the childish dialogue and attacking of everyone who has a different opinion. It happens in the mainstream space as much as in the alternative. People are often trapped in their own viewpoint and struggle to make sense of the complexity of what’s going on.

But many are looking for a wiser approach as the old ways become more and more fatiguing. And while it’s hard to find dialogue of this quality, it’s “refreshing” when you come upon it.

In the end, the solution is not just free and open platforms - that’s relatively easy - it’s can we as humans do a better job of integrating uncertainty, logic, and curiosity into our position so we can move toward greater clarity TOGETHER? In other words, what is the spirit and intention behind how we use our free speech? What outcome are we truly trying to create, and how do we know if we’re truly embodying that?

Further, can enough examples of what this kind of dialogue and sensemaking look like emerge to the forefront so it can help shape culture?

All I know is, that if each of us commits to this level of humility and curiosity, we become part of the cultural shift we need.

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