Bill Clinton: Create Internet "fact checking" agency - Polidicks

[quote]Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet. And he thinks the United Nations or the U.S. government should create an agency to do something about it. “It would be a legitimate thing to do,” Clinton said in an interview airing Friday on CNBC. The agency, Clinton said, would “have to be totally transparent about where the money came from” and would have to be “independent” because “if it’s a government agency in a traditional sense, it would have no credibility whatever, particularly with a lot of the people who are most active on the internet.” “Let’s say the U.S. did it, it would have to be an independent federal agency that no president could countermand or anything else because people wouldn’t think you were just censoring the news and giving a different falsehood out,” Clinton said. “That is, it would be like, I don’t know, National Public Radio or BBC or something like that, except it would have to be really independent and they would not express opinions, and their mandate would be narrowly confined to identifying relevant factual errors” he said. “And also, they would also have to have citations so that they could be checked in case they made a mistake. Somebody needs to be doing it, and maybe it’s a worthy expenditure of taxpayer money.” Interviewed alongside the CEO of a cybersecurity company, Clinton also said he did not expect lasting impact from the documents disclosed by WikiLeaks showing employees of the State Department — run by his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — assessing world leaders. “I don’t believe there’s any long-lasting impact on our relationships. People know that we didn’t leak this on purpose. People know that the secretary of state and her top team, they had nothing to do with this,” Clinton said. The diplomats whose cables were made public “were just giving their impressions” of what they saw on the ground in countries around the world. At the same time, though, political figures in other countries “will be careful what they say to America’s representatives around the world for a while because they’ll have bad memories of the, you know, the leaked memo,” he said. Stressing the dangers of putting some information online, Clinton said that he and his wife keep hard copies of their living wills that can’t be tampered with. “It’s not like it’s that big or important, but it’s important to me, whatever I have to give to my family and whatever else I want to support,” he said. “I’d be appalled to think somebody could fool with it.” He added: “I do have a physical copy in one place, and I think that’s important. So I think, you know, one of the things we may have to think about is whether our backstops and a lot of things are old-fashioned. Maybe snail mail, maybe more couriers.”[/quote] [url]http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54951.html[/url] [url]http://tech.slashdot.org/story/11/05/16/182220/Bill-Clinton-Suggests-Internet-Fact-Agency[/url] Transcript: [url]http://www.cnbc.com/id/43008962[/url] [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heKaFmu-b-8[/media]

What's next, fact-checking bathroom stall scribblings?

Step one: "check" facts Step two: remove "lies" Sorry, but I think every government in the world should have a hands-off approach to the internet. Obviously Clinton is only talking about checking whether people spouting nonsense have facts to back them up, but how the flying fuck are they going to enforce it? It's going to be taxpayers' money down the drain for many reasons.

Or spend the funding that this would otherwise get on internet ads telling people to research things themselves and not trust everything they read or watch, would probably work better.

This would be a pretty fun job.

i dont know what you guys are talking about, chinas internet fact checking agency is doing just fine!

i think this is a wonderful way to create more jobs

[img]http://imageshack.us/m/90/6912/derpf.png[/img]

too bad he doesn't actually want to do anything like "censoring in the internet" because i'm totally in favor of banning youtube comments and vlogs

[QUOTE=deltasquid;29908509]Step one: "check" facts Step two: remove "lies" Sorry, but I think every government in the world should have a hands-off approach to the internet. Obviously Clinton is only talking about checking whether people spouting nonsense have facts to back them up, but how the flying fuck are they going to enforce it? It's going to be taxpayers' money down the drain for many reasons.[/QUOTE] They're not talking about "enforcing" anything, there's nothing to enforce. All he wants to do is create a reliable source that people can use to prove idiots wrong. [editline]18th May 2011[/editline] It'd be like [img]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png[/img] Except federally-funded

I'm not sure it's really necessary? In what situations would it be necessary, and one couldn't simply attempt to find out themselves? Also, fed budget is in a bad enough state as is.

Considering how many lies come out of federal agencies, nobody is every going to trust a federal "fact checking" agency. Hell, Wikileaks owes it's entire existence to exposing federal-level lies.

Snopes?

[QUOTE=DainBramageStudios;29909625]They're not talking about "enforcing" anything, there's nothing to enforce. All he wants to do is create a reliable source that people can use to prove idiots wrong. [editline]18th May 2011[/editline] It'd be like [img_thumb]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/duty_calls.png[/img_thumb] Except federally-funded[/QUOTE] So instead it'd read like: "Are you coming to bed?" "Yes."

Anyone notice he's saying it shouldn't be funded by governments or have any ties to them? Because OF the things you're now saying? Read the god damn article.

Well uh that's called Wikipedia, don't need to spend any more taxpayer money thx

[QUOTE=POLOPOZOZO;29918235]Well uh that's called Wikipedia, don't need to spend any more taxpayer money thx[/QUOTE] This. :colbert:

Fuck just imagine... User:i haz three penises Un's fix: I have no penis.