Current Events > Oh man, Facebook's fact check feature is so great.

(+) Yeah! (+)

The girl that posted this even copy and pasted the same Mark Twain quote about being fooled, to really drive the point home lol.



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Is this a real feature or are you being sarcastic lol

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Whoops forgot the pic lol.

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SquirtleSkwad posted...

Is this a real feature or are you being sarcastic lol

Nah it's a real thing. News articles and infographics that get disproven will actually get little warnings/disclaimers attached to them at the bottom now with a link to the site that disproved it.

It's legit great, even if the main culprits will keep posting bullshit lol.

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Can you link to the fact check for this particular post? I looked it up out of curiosity and those death numbers are actually accurate. I'm assuming it's listed as partially false because it's propaganda around covid, but I don't think there's anything on that image itself that is factually incorrect. I'm just curious what their explanation is for flagging it.

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I looked into it myself, and yeah, the number look accurate for the first 4 years, but the CDC doesn't have anything on its website about 2019 or 2020 as far as I could tell. I certainly couldn't find anything about that number coming from November 16th 2020.

This was the source for flagging it as inaccurate. (Sorry for the tinyurl, it was too long for gamefaqs.)

https://tinyurl.com/yym2hk9y

In summary, comparing death count records in the U.S. for 2020 and the past five years unambiguously show that mortality in 2020 from weeks one to 34 is higher than the annual mortality in each of the previous five years. From week seven onward, the weekly mortality in 2020 was constantly higher than the weekly mortality in previous years over the same time period. The analysis of excess death, as done here, is an important tool to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, considering there is no evidence indicating that other causes of death have suddenly become more frequent this year compared to previous years, it is highly likely that a large part of those excess deaths are due to COVID-19.

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LostForest posted...

I looked into it myself, and yeah, the number look accurate for the first 4 years, but the CDC doesn't have anything on its website about 2019 or 2020 as far as I could tell. I certainly couldn't find anything about that number coming from November 16th 2020.

This was the source for flagging it as inaccurate. (Sorry for the tinyurl, it was too long for gamefaqs.)

https://tinyurl.com/yym2hk9y

According to this the CDC reports weekly totals as part of their flu report:
https://www.cbs19.tv/article/news/health/coronavirus/verify-comparing-the-number-of-total-
deaths-in-the-united-states-across-years/501-2aacbd08-466a-4d17-8452-e059df9aa6f3

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s0nicfan posted...

According to this the CDC reports weekly totals as part of their flu report:
https://www.cbs19.tv/article/news/health/coronavirus/verify-comparing-the-number-of-total-
deaths-in-the-united-states-across-years/501-2aacbd08-466a-4d17-8452-e059df9aa6f3

Interesting, didn't know you could find totals on the flu section. I might have to take a closer look at their website later on and see if I can get to the bottom of it myself haha.

Speaking of though, that article is from October, and interestingly points out that at the time of its writing, the death toll in 2020 was still higher than the death tolls for 2019 and 2018 on the same day. It then goes on to say that based on projections, 2020 will end up with over 3 million total deaths, which would still render that table incorrect.

Either way, thanks for the info! I'm gonna keep looking into it.

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LostForest posted...

Interesting, didn't know you could find totals on the flu section.

Either way, that article is from October, and interestingly points out that at the time of its writing, the death toll in 2020 was still higher than the death tolls for 2019 and 2018 on the same day. It then goes on to say that based on projections, 2020 will end up with over 3 million total deaths, which would still render that table incorrect.

Yeah, ultimately what the fact check was saying was more or less the same thing, which is that with the way things are trending the totals will clearly be higher than the past five years.

I don't disagree with this fact check or the fact that Facebook does it, but it doesn't give me the warm fuzzies when stuff that is technically factually accurate gets marked as partially false, maybe in part because I know that it would be impossible to enforce this sort of interpretation universally.

Edit: and while there is certainly some truth to the fact that IIRC certain types of deaths have decreased such as car accidents because of nationwide shutdowns, even if the year end total was lower that's still not an accurate picture because if everything stayed open you would have these new covid deaths plus all the regular deaths

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Also, sorry for the edits. My connection is really choppy right now, lol.

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Who believes in Facebook?