"Spam is a problem where false positives generally cost less than false negatives"
This may be true if you are a basement dwelling slashdotter but out in the real world a single false positive is one too many. Try explaining your position to a client or executive who missed a million dollar inquiry due to your overly aggressive spam filters.
I would happily recommend non-technical users purchase directly through Apple even with their premium pricing model based solely on their excellent post-sales support but for the fact that they only sell Apple products.
I call bullshit.
Judging by your previous posts, the politics you appear to embrace are much too aligned with the United States tea party types to truly represent any western European citizen I have ever known. First of all, Ive never seen any European refer to California as "Kalifornia" and there aren't many European global warming deniers either. If you do live in western Europe as you say, you are likely an American abroad, not invested in the social contract of your host nation, and simply projecting your provincial misunderstandings upon your current home. In this case, my guess is that there are very few around you who would share your opinions.
The obvious failings of Politifact have actually caused me to consider what it would take to create a forum for debate where fact and substantive debate would drive the content. What I envision is a website where you could check the accuracy of not only public officials but also media broadcasts and other reporting.
As far as election debate, I could imagine each candidate for example having their own section. Within this section, it could be divided into broad policy areas such as Security, Economic, Social, and Environmental. Each of these could be subdivided as necessary and within these divisions every statement made by the candidate or campaign could be independently analyzed against on a set of predetermined measures of accuracy and level of content, Anybody would be allowed to provide feedback and analysis but this would be moderated and scored against some type of "reputation index" where authoritative sources are primary followed by respected scientists or leaders in the field all the way down to anonymous sources (whose voice will be heard but whose analyses would not impact scoring). The candidates would be allowed to expand and clarify their positions and even respond to the analysis and these responses would themselves be scored. The scores could then be aggregated and averaged to provide a wider perspective view.
Of course this is all total speculation. I neither have the time or resources necessary to realize a project of this magnitude but would be thrilled to provide feedback to anybody considering implementing something of this nature.
The problem with Politifact, and in fact much of political reporting, is the cult of false equivalency.
You just nailed the greatest problem with political discourse in this country. Most of the major news organizations have decided that impartiality requires they provide an equal platform to both sides of any issue regardless of where the facts lie. Rather than informing their audience, this type of "balanced" reporting only clouds the debate by giving the appearance of credibility to science deniers and conspiracy theorists.
Remember when Facebook changed all of our default email accounts to their own, unused system, without informing any of us? That was fun! But it looks like the problem could be much wider and more damaging than it first seemed.
Apparently since nobody wants or needs a Facebook email address, Zuckerberg and co have decided the only way to get people to use their substandard service is to delete the other email address already stored on your phone.
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
