I'm not commenting on US fact checkers but the concept made its way to my country of origin some time ago. As I suspected, it turned out to be completely biased, often ignoring or softening the controversial topics that affect their side. It's the same old journalism trick where they claim to be neutral and dedicated to the truth but in reality they all have their own agendas, which seems unavoidable (nowadays or since forever?). The main issue is people believing that their favorite fact checker is the most neutral and thus using their content as absolute truths.

Glad to see that the concept is now completely unpopular in my country and we're back to the usual terrible journalism where there's no controversy in stating that.

Similar observations here in Germany. Those fact checkers pick the facts that supports their agenda and leave out others. Framing is in place just the same. And it does not matter if you look at left or right journalists or left or right fact checkers, it is all the same.

This is not new. I can call myself Bearer of the Unassailable Truth Who Is Beyond All Doubt or Criticism but that doesn't make me any more accurate than the next guy.

The "Fact Checker" title is is meant to describe the task the person seeks to undertake. The evidence and argument they provide gives their opinion weight.

The real problem here is that people read a title, or look at how confident someone is, or how well dressed, neat, polite, white, young, old, nerdy, worldly, good looking, well spoken or enthusiastic and think that is means anything at all as to the validity of what they say.

Mike Benz does a nice job of covering the US State department using this for political purposes in other countries.

Instead of directly addressing dissenting opinion, you accuse people of “disinformation” and “misinformation” (my favorite - true but interpreted in a bad light). This includes passing laws in countries either punishing it (through online censorship) all the way to making such speech illegal.

And before anyone claims it’s false, Mike Benz does a nice job of sourcing evidence from US State department documents on this technique.

The most ironic thing to me is the amount of coddling these self-purported “strong men” need. The idea that someone wouldn’t blindly accept what they say is enough to throw their egos into self-protection mode.

Sad

The most ironic thing to me is just how fast the political pendulum swings.

One day you have kente cloths and taking the knee everywhere, and before you know it, right-winger bloggers are running the law enforcement.

This is no way to live, 80%+ of the population is neither committed progressives nor committed conservatives/reactionaries, but they rule (or ruled) the social networks and thus dominate(d) in elections.

By the grace of the algorithm, you majesty the king.

This did not happen fast though, but over decades.

On one side, the right preparing by slowly taking over positions, on the other side people ignoring the problems of many.

Here in Germany I fear the AfD too may get into power, because instead of fixing the problems that people complained about for decades (costs, bureaucracy, rents, no vision apart from "consume and work") people are fixated on that right wing party itself.

When I did some skydiving in my youth I was fascinated by watching sooo many skydivers barely avoiding the lone single tree near the landing zone. Turns out, if you concentrate on something ("I must avoid that tree I must avoid that tree...") you end up steering towards it. The winning move is to instead concentrate on where you do want to go. There are precious little positive ideas in our politics, it's mostly about what we don't want, or distractions on things that while it sounds nice and it's definitely okay when it gets done should never be the main focus.

Well, roots of everything are long. We are a long-lived species and our political attention spans decades or longer. People still think of the Roman Empire and write in Latin alphabet, after all.

But the actual short-term jumps in policy are absolutely wild now. That wasn't the case in the 1990s.

Don’t mistake what you see online or in the news as evidence of broad agreement.

Plenty of people might disagree but choose to keep their mouth shut.

Mildly amusing if true, but I can't help but notice that some things the article mentions, like "fact-checking", are never in fact a direct quote from the supposed memo.

Is it so hard to reproduce the entire damn thing so readers can form their own opinion of what it says?

How are we supposed to fact-check this!

Forming your own opinion is so last-year. Now we have social media and AI to automate this.

I for one trust that the mass media would never lie to me or twist the facts to support a specific narrative!

There's nothing more dangerous to dictatorships than the truth, so it's only logical.

And there is nothing more dangerous to the truth than someone who claims authority over it.

Do fact checkers ever "claim authority" over anything (especially in news organizations)?

Perhaps time to get that wild claim fact checked by yourself.

So called fact checking often is not about truth, but subjectivity.

So what is your proposed mechanism for attempting to maintain a commonly-observable reality? People have shown throughout history that they have an incentive to bend truths to suit their narratives, often to the detriment of society. How would you address this?

Only the words that drip from Dear Leader's mouth are the golden truth.

Every day I check Truth Social to find out what I think.

That's insane.

I started Ask Me Anything on reddit, does being a moderator in that capacity mean I limited free speech of Americans?

Did you remove questions that were not about Rampart?

You'll find out once the government's masked goons drag you off.

As nutty as it may seem - All moderation is part of the “censorship industrial complex”.

Frankly this was inevitable. There is a reckoning that has been put off, within the groups that champion free speech. Mods happen to be the people who see how the sausage is made, but have no real ability to be heard.

The Zeitgeist is still happy to say “censorship bad”, thus moderation bad. The work of ensuring “healthy” communities or debate is left to the magic of the “market place of ideas”.

Except the market place is well and truly broken, captured and unfair for regular users. We have a dark forest for content consumers.

This conversation needs to be had.

Edit: tried to make the tone less frustrated.

Plenty of people are happy to publish calls for war crimes in the newspapers under their own name, or on the Secretary for Defence letterhead.

The dystopian surveillance state is already here: https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ

> It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication

Communication with people half the way across the globe at the speed of light is objectively unnatural too, should we ban that? There's no "we" calling for the end of online anonymity excepts for spooks and people who believe people should be identified and punished for expressing opinions they disagree with.

There is absolutely a growing concern over how easy it is to create entirely fake conversations, debates, outrage, recommendations and concerns online. We didn’t have these platforms 30 years ago. We need to all ask what we gained and what we lost with them, because they are causing real harm, and most of it is because anyone or anything can pretend to be something they are not. They have benefits as well.

I would think the modern day spook very much prefers how things currently are. Would the modern day authoritarian love an online ID system, yes, so we need to tread carefully.

Any form of communication other than grunting and howling from trees is "objectively an unnatural form of communication."

Attaching your real world identity to every interaction you have on the internet is no more objectively natural than doing otherwise, and more of a burden than we place on interactions in the real world. I don't exchange my drivers license and SSL with everyone I talk to.

We don't need to have the serious conversation, we've had it, and the false dichotomy you're presenting here is invalid. We don't have to choose one or the other. Anonymity has been well established in every free society as legally and morally defensible and a necessity for free speech and a free state for decades, to the point of including some degree of anonymity from one's own government.

Moderation beyond strictly legal content is acceptable. Anonymity is also acceptable. 4chan can be 4chan, and other places can not be 4chan. Free speech does not guarantee you a platform, much less all platforms. It doesn't require me to put a target on my back, either.

While the point made on unnatural communication is undefined, this three positions are in conflict.

- The updated visa instructions - we have had this conversation - Moderation beyond strictly legal content is acceptable.

I will say this shows the conversation hasn’t been had.

Moderation is most often achieved by the use of censorial powers on private platforms.

That this was private censorship is no longer acceptable to the current regime, and people who were enforcing private rules are now in a category of applicants that I assume includes criminals and enemies of the state.

If it is an acceptable role, then it must be done well.

If it is an unacceptable criminal role, then it must be prohibited well.

Either way - people have to make that call and build a consensus on it.

>I will say this shows the conversation hasn’t been had.

It has been had. But you seem to require some objectively correct and universally agreed upon consensus that will never exist.

>Moderation is most often achieved by the use of censorial powers on private platforms.

"censorial powers on private platforms" are and have been acceptable since the dawn of mass communications. Even Ben Franklin when he ran a newspaper refused to run stories he considered too libelous (although he just as often ran such stories, exercising personal bias in his decisions.) The entire rationale behind the First Amendment is that it binds the government from interfering with free expression, because that right belongs to the people, implicit as it is in the concept of the marketplace of ideas, and freedom of association.

Again, the conversation has been had, and the matter has been settled at least for most people. That the current regime disagrees doesn't prove anything any more than disagreement with anything else. People disagree that the world is round, that doesn't mean the matter is still in dispute beyond a reasonable doubt.

>and people who were enforcing private rules are now in a category of applicants that I assume includes criminals and enemies of the state.

If they commit crimes, have them arrested for those crimes. If they violate TOS (even if they happen to be a sitting President), ban them. Otherwise even criminals and traitors have the same rights as everyone else. Again, this is well established and shouldn't be controversial.

> If it is an acceptable role, then it must be done well. > If it is an unacceptable criminal role, then it must be prohibited well.

what kind of force is "must" implying here, and how is "well" being defined?

We do have legal frameworks in place intended to do what you're proposing, but people are imperfect and may make mistakes or act in ways you might consider to be in error, without falling afoul of criminality. But that's acceptable. We don't abandon rights because they can't be defined or defended perfectly.

"Face checker" is such an Orwellian term, and right enough, in many cases, they are pushing subjective interpretations and their own biases for someone, rather than solid facts.

As far as I can tell from the Reuter’s article, the memo reads “anyone involved in censorship of free speech”.

To me that seems like a good thing?

But the very carefully placed quotes around censorship in the article makes it seem like it would be unfairly painting activities like fact checking as censorship?

Is it too much to ask for the exact wording of what the memo says?

They’re also forcing visa applicants to share their social media publicly, like the authoritarian America is supposed to be better than:

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/visas-news/a...

That and the TSA circus is actively dissuading me from tourism in the US. I don’t need their bullshit in my life certainly not when trying to have a nice holiday

The "TSA circus" is not any different in other countries' airports.

Guess I'm not getting in as someone having no social media. Not that I'd want to.

Make a fake profile with basic AI generated fake content?

To be a bit more precise:

Asking people for their social media accounts is not new, it's a part of the visa application process since Trump's first term.

What's new is that now on top of that, they're asking people for those social media accounts to be public.

It has been asked in the ESTA for a long long time, afaik even before Trump.

But can we please remember that there is a huge huge difference between being asked to provide it optionally, to being required to provide it.

Okay, let me be even more clear then: it is required to fill out every social media handle and every phone number you've used for the past 5 years as a part of the DS-160 form (AKA online non-migratory visa application for countries not covered by ESTA).

That's been the case since 2019. Before that, asking to hand that info out even voluntarily was widely seen as an overreach. Now, it's required for countries not covered by ESTA and still voluntary for ESTA countries.

I don't have any "social media" accounts. I guess they won't believe me, and would deny me a visa based on the assumption that I am lying.

The US probably has the ability to call your bluff on that. NSA says hi

You say that like it's a bad thing.

(I have family and lots of close friends in the US. I miss them all. But I don't intend to visit given the way things are over there these days. _Maybe_ after the next administration change? Depending on how things change? But I've come to accept I may never visit again.)

I already missed a funeral on account of all this bs. But it just doesn't seem worth the hassle any more to go there. It is frustrating because I have more friends on that side of the Atlantic than I do in the EU. But the last interaction with US border patrol was enough to sour me for the rest of my life.

I only have bluesky with only work posts, nothing else. I've gotten a visa in last few months. Even though I never went because of the situation. Needed to get a visa for potential work related stuff which eventually could be worked around.

> I don't have any "social media" accounts.

You do have an HN account. And it's public! Just don't get caught giving a shit about facts.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46151466)

Would be nice to see the actual wording in the cable, but I suppose Reuters are not allowed to publish that; we get a cable paraphrasing a cable.

The land of the free and the home of the brave. Of course free, as long as you want to shoot school children, not if you want to openly express yourself. Brave as long as it's a defenceless third world country, terrified, if it is someone who is transgender or intersex or free thinking or compassionate or not Trump supporting or not Israel supporting..... And so on.

Is fact checker an actual job?

In serious news organizations, absolutely. Journalists write the stories, fact checkers make sure every claim is backed up by evidence before it gets published.

To describe their job poorly, they're there as a way of reducing odds of a lawsuit. At one of my previous jobs, there was a whole fact-checking team that wrote no stories themselves, but every story had to be run through them as a part of the publishing pipeline.

The people doing that job are not the ones being targeted here.

> It directs consular officers to "thoroughly explore" the work histories of applicants, both new and returning, by reviewing their resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and appearances in media articles for activities including combatting misinformation, disinformation or false narratives, fact-checking, content moderation, compliance, and trust and safety.

Not only are they targeted, but so are many more.

Mainstream != serious. In fact it's quite the opposite, as serious news organizations cannot match the output of mainstream news. Even one story per month is a success for many.

In serious news organizations, there's quite a few steps between a journalist writing a draft and that draft being published. Fact-checking is one of them, having a competent "boss" (called an editor) is another.

Most news orgs have both a "serious" department and a "publish as much as possible" department, with far different requirements. In general, if you're publishing something along the lines of "X said Y", you don't need a rigorous process. If you're doing an investigation in which you're accusing someone of doing something illegal, then you need a far more rigorous process, otherwise you'd be sued out of existence pretty quickly.

Of course, having a rigorous process doesn't mean you won't get sued at all, but there's a term for that: SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation). In those lawsuits, the goal is not to prove the story wrong, but to just waste news org's resources on defending their reporting in front of a judge instead of doing their job.

Yes, there are many situations where it would be illegal or detrimental to publish falsehoods, so people are implied to check facts.

Now it's turning into a situation where it's illegal or detrimental to publish the truth.

Big press outlets have been publishing fibs of one kind and a other since as long as I can remember. A certain Australian's newspapers have had problematic statements in them for decades.

> problematic

This is so vague as to be meaningless.

Like, of course it's "problematic", that's why you're talking about it. Be more specific or it sounds like an applause light.

To show the outside view: I'm thinking of a recent (pointless) discussion I had, it's akin to when people who hate asylum seekers say most of those asylum seekers are "fighting age": of course most of them are, very few others are fit enough to make the trip.

(If I judge you right from a very short comment, you'd describe the phrase "fighting age" as itself "problematic"?)

That isn't "vague", it's a way that I can express disdain without opening myself up to legal repercussions. A lot of dubious content appears in mainstream media, usually to push people in whichever direction that media desires. I catch YouTube doing it all the time, it's always trying to pull me in one direction or another (often ones I disagree with or am not interested in).

American mainstream media focusses far too much on personality politics rather than substance. It rarely questions the political binary either, and offers only tokenistic representation to any positions outside it. There are many issues and debates which are simply not mentioned on it.

On the migration issue, I have found that coverage tends to one extreme or the other — i.e. the open door or the closed door — when the probable solution is somewhere in between IMHO.

Only the wrong sort of truth.

It"s a stepping stone on the way to make it illegal to refuse to publish the "right" sort of lies.

Extremely on brand activity for a group of fraudsters who managed to lie their way into power via a firehose of misinformation.

With the given topic, might be more accurate to describe the group of fraudsters as a group of fascists.

Never thought dystopian novels would be so on the nose. I always thought they were being extra for the sake of art...

I mean, that was free speech advocates and centrist (read pro-right but pretend not to) position position for years.

Typical free speech advocate was considering criticism, fact checking and mockery of right to be attack on free speech for years now. Even in HN, you frequently seen the definition of free speech as "dont mind nazi speech and is actively helping nazi when they are in trouble". It never applied to nazi opposition.

This entire thread is emblematic of the type of willful ignorance that seems to permeate certain HN discussions going back quite a few years. A full display of ignorant outrage for all to see.

First, this dates back to MAY of this year. Nothing new.

Second, it is obvious that nobody took the time to research, read the policy and understand it. Most comments are nonsense based on a complete lack of context.

Finally,

The restrictions apply to foreign nationals who are involved in:

- Issuing or threatening legal action, such as arrest warrants, against US citizens or residents for social media posts made while they are physically present on US soil.

So, any foreign official or person who threatens to, for example, arrest a US citizen based on what you post online WHILE YOU ARE IN THE US will be denied a visa.

What's your objection to this?

- Demanding that US tech platforms adopt content moderation policies or engage in censorship that extends beyond the foreign government's jurisdiction and affects protected speech in the US.

Someone not from the US who tries to censor you in the US and beyond the limits of their own national jurisdiction will be denied a visa. Or, government officials in Peru demanding that HN prevent you from posting your drivel while in the US (outside their government's jurisdiction) will be denied a visa.

What's your objection to this one?

- Directing or participating in content moderation initiatives or "fact-checking" that the US administration considers a form of censorship of Americans' speech.

Anyone that, from foreign soil, attempts to limit your right to free speech in the US while hiding under the "fact checking" or "content moderation" excuse will be denied a visa. Remember that your constitutional right of free speech in the US does not come with a fact-checking or content moderation limitation. As this thread easily demonstrates, you can post absolutely nonsense, lies and distortions and you would be protected. Fact-checking isn't a magical tool that allows someone to bypass constitutional rights to silence someone else.

What's your problem with this?

Of course, there are nuanced and not so nuanced elements to what constitutes free speech, where and under what circumstances. The key here is that outsiders don't get to mess with it or try to arrest you for this right you have in the US. If they do try, it's OK, they just can't get a visa to come here. Small price to pay.

So, yeah, nothing to see here. This is actually good. It means someone who, from, for example, Poland, acts to affect your free speech rights in the US or have you arrested while you visit Europe for something you posted online while in the US will not be allowed to come into the US.

Stop being lazy and ignorant. Take the time to research, read and understand before forming ideas and, worse, opening your mouth.

The hypocrisy https://www.heise.de/en/news/How-a-French-judge-was-digitall...

(A french judge was cut off by most US servies, because trump didn't like his ruling. One could say trump.... censored him)

ICC judge, the fact that he's French didn't have an impact. He's also far from being the only one.

In fact, the Executive Order that imposed these sanctions is very broad and gives "immunity" to pretty much everyone affiliated with the US. If the ICC tries to prosecute anyone from NATO or anyone from a "major non-NATO ally" (Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand), the current administration will put sanctions on those judges.

So there's 40 or so countries whose governments are effectively "immune" from being prosecuted from the ICC, but the president has authority to add literally any country to that list.

I'm looking forward to the reaction from the public when he adds Russia to that list.

It will, no doubt, be every bit as effective as the "thoughts and prayers" that follow the weekly school shootings that no other nation on earth have.

It would be quite unfortunate if the next government thinks your opinion is wrongthink.

I don't like the idea of "fact checking" as a job or position but denying Visas to people like this is a horrible idea that sets a bad precedent.

Fair comment.

> our values

What values are those exactly? Because the current administration doesn't seem to be representing the values expressed in the American founding documents, or the values held by a majority of Americans, very well at all. In many ways, they're diametrically opposed to those values.

Values are case-by-case basis depending if trump (GOP?) likes something (most like got paid cash) or not.

Case in point - full pardon for former Honduran president on drug trafficking, while at the same time they are trying to use drug trafficking as pretext on war with Venezuela.

Same thing with arabs/muslims/immigrants being bad (look at how they were during Mamdami campaign), though literal al-Qaeda members and murderers acting as arabian royalty are "great leaders" and "things (murders) happen".

Even on "simpler" issues like family values - they preach against queers, about "traditional family values", kids, etc. But most of them have 3+ divorces, multiple kids that they don't take care of, imported/immigrant trophy wives, numerous scandals of adultery, while destroying policies for children education/health/food, etc.

You say that, but over the past decade he's got around 50 percent of the vote. Like it or not, this is what America is.

That distancing is weird and worrisome. They voted for this bullshit, twice. Now they act surprised and distancing themselves from their politics while the whole country falls

And the previous election he lost by a whisker. America has been lapping this up for a decade now.

Our values are whatever Trump says they should be!

An interviewer asked Trump in 2016 how people will know that America is great again. He replied: “cause I’m gonna tell em”. :)

https://youtu.be/6TuqNMIxMeI?si=oCkU2Rypuf9SOU8H

Are you familiar with the First Amendment?

> "Trust and safety is a broad practice which includes critical and life-saving work to protect children and stop CSAM [child sexual abuse material], as well as preventing fraud, scams, and sextortion. T&S workers are focused on making the internet a safer and better place, not censoring just for the sake of it"

Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of fraud, scams, and CSAM.

"If you uncover evidence an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship of protected expression in the United States, you should pursue a finding that the applicant is ineligible"

If that sentence from the article is accurate, the parent poster's response makes complete and perfect sense. You don't have to like the current administration, to like a specific thing they are doing.

Now is this actually what is happening? I don't know. And of course, that's a different conversation, and not what the parent poster was talking about.

The problem is that this administration and their ilk have incompetently misinterpreted 'censorship' to mean 'not letting random strangers use your private property to publish things you don't want them to.'

The only way "an applicant was responsible for, or complicit in, censorship or attempted censorship in the United States" would be if they were an employee of the US government and they somehow violated US law to enact censorship.

To review: censorship is when the government doesn't allow you to say things with your printing press. Censorship is not when private parties don't let you use their printing press.

From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censor#dictionary...

> censor (verb): to examine in order to suppress (see suppress sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable.

> also: to suppress or delete as objectionable

Government censorship is a very notable class of censorship, but the word has a broader meaning.

In the context of the Constitution, government censorship is the only thing that the United States cares about.

If we valued banning all censorship we'd make laws banning that. We don't: we value private property and free speech instead. Taking the rights of private parties to control what they publish tramples both of those rights. It's not complicated: you have a right to own your 'press' and do whatever you want with it. You don't have a right to someone else's press.

Censorship is free speech?

No they are saying choosing what to publish or not is part of private property rights.

If I was on a telephone call which selectively declined to transmit certain words or topics to the receiving party, I would consider that a form of censorship, even if it wasn't the government doing it.

Just use a different system that didn't do that, it's your choice.

To that extent, government censorship isn't really censorship either then? You can just move to a different country that doesn't censor you.

Displaying Nazi symbols is allowed (protected) in the United States, but prohibited in Germany. Does that mean that any German person involved in enforcing pr even tangentially acting on that restriction would be ineligible for a U.S visa?

Obviously that is what the great leader wants for the greatest and most free country on all the earth

Except they're under pressure to not exercise such wide latitude. A few months ago, many who had already passed the exam and were just awaiting placement found out they would have to retake the exam, a different one more to the liking of the current administration:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46156979

98% of current foreign service officers who responded to a survey said morale is lower, plus the administration is laying off 1300 of them:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/us/politics/state-departm...

"Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of fraud, scams, and CSAM."

Such self-descriptions are not necessarily accurate and honest.

We have had quite a few debates around Chat Control here. It is sold as a tool to prevent propagation of CSAM as well.

Those things are not protected expression in the US.

Then why is the state department telling to deny visas to people who worked on Trust & Safety at social media cos?

(Answer: they don't care about protected expression or pesky laws, they are lawless and reward other lawless types like themselves)

> Definitely weird to be "happy" that the government is cracking down on people who help prevent the propagation of CSAM.

I mean... This is HN... You should see people's reaction when Apple decided to do something about it...

Apple wanted to scan pictures stored on our phones using a perceptual diff algorithm and compare them by similarity to known CSAM. So basically there’s a world out there where the baby bath pics your wife took will get flagged and she’ll have to prove she’s not a predator.

What the "something" is actually matters.

Always took it to be synonymous with "enlightenment values", created in Europe and by Christians. (Who I believe were at least somewhat secular). I am unsure if we are, at present, a bastion of said values.

Spot on.

Christianity does not necessary implies fascism. And "our values" or "western values" here in this context do.

Pope is not like Vance, despite Vance pointificating about by values and pope beong christan.