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Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#131

Post by hueving »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #67
paulddraper wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's being supported by the evangelicals who will not remove their vote from Trump on the grounds that they really want that supreme court seat. You make it sound illogical. As a religious conservative, I do really want that supreme court seat. The President has to really ask for permission for everything else (laws, budgets, wars, etc.), but justice nomination is very largely his choice. Don't be surprised if that…

> You make it sound illogical. > As a religious conservative, I do really want that supreme court seat. That factors heavily in the decision. Sorry, that's my bias seeping in. I respect your choice. > The President has to really ask for permission for everything else (laws, budgets, wars, etc.), but justice nomination is very largely his choice. Don't be surprised if that factors heavily in my decision. Not nuclear.…

>Personally I think the risks posed by Trump with his thumb on the nuclear button are greater than the lives saved by repealing abortion rights.

I'm not sure if this was a subtle way to imply that, although the risk of Trump using the bomb is negligible, it's still greater than zero, which is the number of lives you consider lost to abortion. Impressive accidental troll. :)

Realistically, what evidence do you have that Trump has any more likelihood of using a nuclear bomb against the wishes of congress than Hillary? Has he shown an inclination towards mass murder in other scenarios? Did he vote for the Iraq war?

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#132

Post by hueving »

jmspring wrote: post #69
paulddraper wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's being supported by the evangelicals who will not remove their vote from Trump on the grounds that they really want that supreme court seat. You make it sound illogical. As a religious conservative, I do really want that supreme court seat. The President has to really ask for permission for everything else (laws, budgets, wars, etc.), but justice nomination is very largely his choice. Don't be surprised if that…

"Very largely his choice" ... then why hasn't the current nominee see a vote in congress?

Still his choice. Show me which supreme court justice wasn't selected by a president.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#133

Post by jsmith0295 »

jwatte wrote: post #21
popmystack wrote: post #2

Yeah, all because people wanted to scream "bias." Sadly the community here seemed apt to agree with it, but I definitely have my opinions on that. Quoted from a previous thread: >Did the standard for their sources remain relatively constant regardless of the material being discussed? There isn't a clear answer here, but that doesn't make it defacto censorship of one set of particular political opinions. The sources t…

You know what they say: Facts have a well known liberal bias!

I think that may be true, but only because what is widely considered and presented as fact by the most mainstream sources of information actually have a significant center left bias. I think it's generally missed because people confuse bias as having to do with having a more extreme political position, when you can actually be biased in favor of any part of the political spectrum including the center.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#134

Post by hueving »

gadders wrote: post #100
vinhboy wrote: post #34

Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda sites. And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a completely fictional headline c…

You can't put Breitbart in the same category as the NYT, true, but you could put it in the same category as the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Mother Jones etc.

The NYT editorial board put this on the front page of the paper: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidem...

They are very upfront about their biases, but they have biases nonetheless.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#135

Post by lambertsimnel »

gadders wrote: post #102
outlace wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people say it's impossible to have unbiased news. Of course this is true in a trivial sense, in that anything written by a human with intent to be interesting to read is likely to have some bias. And of course one can bias the news simply by choosing what to report and not report (eg if all you report are all the things fmr Pres. Bush did wrong, then the audience will get a bad impression). However, there is abs…

>> When you read 3 different versions of the same news story by BBC, NPR, and NYT (for example), then hopefully the biases sort of cancel out and you get something closer to the truth. You list three left-leaning news organisations, and expect their biases to cancel out? Wouldn't they reinforce each other?

Whether or not those three have a similar political viewpoint, they probably have different regional viewpoints, so there's still some value in combining them.

Almost any combination will omit some political stance. I don't believe that political viewpoints are binary, or even that they vary only along a single dimension.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#136

Post by argonaut »

EJTH wrote: post #110
untog wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Not well versed in Huff Po but the left-leaning likes of NYT publish stories based in fact and backed up with reporting. Breitbart report whatever they wish without ever confirming if anything in a story is true.

NYT published a news article about car fires in Denmark, where they blamed the "right wing lower class" for the fires. No evidence given for this at all. Infact all evidence points in a different direction: Arab Ghetto kids (I live in one of the places, where there was car fires, I can tell you that the right-wing thing is complete BS)

If this is the article you are talking about: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/world/europe/copenhagen-de..., you are misreading it.

"One theory is that cars in Denmark are being burned by individuals from an angry underclass in a country where far-right groups have organized bitter protests against immigration, calling it a threat to the nation’s identity."

The article makes it clear the "angry underclass" is separate from the "far-right groups."

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#137

Post by mtberatwork »

jsmith0295 wrote: post #124
untog wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Not well versed in Huff Po but the left-leaning likes of NYT publish stories based in fact and backed up with reporting. Breitbart report whatever they wish without ever confirming if anything in a story is true.

NYT might publish actual stories, but they also publish what is effectively propaganda. A lot of more "legitimate" news sources also have a tendency to selective report on things which fit a pre-established narrative on a topic that can effectively bury the truth. Here's an example where CNN did this: http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/16/cnn-edits-out-... And sadly the Washington Times is the least biased so…

I'm not seeing how your example is actual propaganda when it is more easily attributed to human error. If CNN were pushing this as a propaganda piece, they never would have issued a follow up statement correcting themselves.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#138

Post by te_chris »

hueving wrote: post #134
gadders wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't put Breitbart in the same category as the NYT, true, but you could put it in the same category as the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Mother Jones etc.

The NYT editorial board put this on the front page of the paper: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidem... They are very upfront about their biases, but they have biases nonetheless.

But everything has biases. Objectivity is a fib used by bullshit factories like RT to cast doubt over everything. It's not about bias at all, it's about credibility. NYT has credibility, BBC, NPR, The Times of London, Guardian, etc all do. RT, HuffPo, Brietbart do not.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#139

Post by tdkl »

mtgx wrote: post #94

So this is a lot like what Google experienced for a long time. Its algorithms would get manipulated. However, would you prefer Google to handpick (let's forget about the volume of manual labor for now) which sites get to be at the top? Or would you rather just keep improving those algorithms? I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence…

> I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections.

And they will if their future power relies on the specific candidate, which is ironically also lobbied (paid) by them.

I don't want to sound like a hippy in the 1960's, but if there ever was a need for the "fuck the corporations" slogans, it's now.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#140

Post by mtberatwork »

hueving wrote: post #134
gadders wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't put Breitbart in the same category as the NYT, true, but you could put it in the same category as the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Mother Jones etc.

The NYT editorial board put this on the front page of the paper: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/05/opinion/end-the-gun-epidem... They are very upfront about their biases, but they have biases nonetheless.

The NY Times is a large scale journalistic outfit with dozens of news desks, hundreds of editors and journalists that all report on the days events, do investigative reporting, provide local beats, report on sports, the economy, politics, etc as well as publish op-eds and editorials. Breitbart, HuffPo, et al are blog teams that aggregate and editorialize news stories and may dabble in the occasional long form piece. It's a false equivalence to claim all are the same.
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