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Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

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

#241

Post by cmdrfred »

mtanski wrote: post #194
seertaak wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Glenn Greenwald, who can hardly be accused of being right-wing or a Trump supporter, on media bias: The U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president. I don’t have an actual problem with that because I share the premises on which it is based about why he poses such extreme dangers. But that doesn’t mean that as a journalist, or even jus…

It seams like in this election even traditionally right learning news papers like the WaPo or WSJ are pilling onto trump. Not to mention countless regional newspapers that have a right leaning edition staff. Bias disclosure: Left leaning, not by my own choice. More centrist, along the lines of the Economist editing staff view of the world. So not by choice, because there's not really centrism left.

I think it has to do the carried interest and the anti TPP comments he has made more than anything.

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

#242

Post by gambler »

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…

>And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post

Yes, this is you expressing your liberal bias. Huffington Post is Breitbart of the left. They just use a slightly different strategy for pushing their propaganda. The end result is the same: readers with skewed, dysfunctional views of reality.

You disagree? Okay. Which major left-wing website do you consider equally biased to Breitbart?

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

#243

Post by ohstopitu »

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…

if this is anyone's particular forte...how would you value articles? - as in, I do agree that a NYTimes's article on adderall has more value to add than say a buzzfeed article on the 10 things that you won't believe are true - but how would you go about working that into code?

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

#244

Post by Lawtonfogle »

majormajor wrote: post #19
mjfl wrote: post #4

You're going to have to break the Turing Test before you get good automated content curation. There will always be error. People are worried about bias. I'm skeptical that humans have the ability to be politically unbiased on an individual level. Many modern political issues do not have a middle ground - take abortion, you are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide. So let's stop pretending to be unbiase…

> take abortion, you are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide Well, no, even on abortion there is usually a position somewhere in the middle is where a lot of people end up (and you left out part of the spectrum, where even contraceptives are believed to be morally wrong), and usually the law has ended up somewhere in the middle, too. We confuse "loudest" views with "most common" a lot these days, so I…

When considering all abortions there are many positions which limit different subsets as being wrong, but for any given situation one must choose between abortion allowed or abortion banned (and technically the choice of abortion required but that almost never pops up).

So while one might be against partial birth abortion but for second trimester abortions, they still have to look at a given situation and say yay or nay.

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

#245

Post by duncanawoods »

CocaKoala wrote: post #215
nartsbtaa wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, some of the people who now are claiming Bill is a rapist once testified under oath that he did _not_ rape them. Yet other women have consistently claimed over decades that Clinton sexually assaulted them. And today women are coming forward accusing Trump of sexual assault. There seems to be very little difference; both men have probably assaulted women in the past and abused their power to get aw…

Well, one significant difference here is that Donald Trump is running for President, and Bill Clinton isn't.

Barely. The Clintons have long campaigned as a two for one deal. She announced that if elected, he will be "in charge of reinvigorating the economy".

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/17/us/politics/bill-hillary-c...

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

#246

Post by Cpoll »

quirkafleeg wrote: post #160
argonaut wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sepa…

If that paragraph is not suggesting the far-right may be responsible, why does it refer to their "bitter protests" immediately after the theory that an "angry underclass" are burning cars? Why even mention the far-right at all, if nobody is suggesting they have something to do with these crimes?

I interpret it as "individuals from an angry underclass" vs "far-right groups [that] have organized bitter protests against immigration"

So the far-right is implied to have something to do with these crimes, in the sense that they created an environment that triggers the crime.

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

#247

Post by Samis2001 »

happyslobro wrote: post #120
return0 wrote: post #117

I don't understand why facebook repeatedly tries (and fails) to become a news source. They can make more money by being the world's watering hole, there is no need (and not much money imo) for going after the role of newspapers/tv. Given that their offering is exclusively popularity-driven, the quality of their news offering will always be less-than, or equal-to a very bad tabloid. If they are looking for political p…

I think their long term plan is to literally take over the entire internet, by replacing every feature of every successful category of website. The free Facebook-net for India and Africa, this Facebook for enterprise thing, the embedded games, video... I fully expect to see Facebook for schools soon, followed by diplomas and then degrees granted by a Facebook online university. Maybe they will even try to roll out a…

I don't think such a system would be a technocracy - it would seem to be more along the lines of a Corporatocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy)

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

#248

Post by paulmd »

seertaak wrote: post #175
mtberatwork wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, ok. However it seems to me that those leaning right don't give CNN and the like the benefit of the doubt, and equally those leaning left don't give the likes of Breitbart the benefit of the doubt -- which brings us back to the parent posters position :)

Breitbart is a tabloid that pretends to respectability, much like the British tabloid The Daily Mail. They use that respectability to push their (explicit, strong) slant. If you're comparing CNN and Breitbart then their camouflage is sucessful.

Benefit of the doubt needs to be earned. I mean, hopefully you are not taking supermarket-checkout tabloids at face value, right?

CNN may be terrible journalism that's full of softballs and "clickbait" but at the end of the day the things they report are true and when they're not they retract them. Can't say the same about Breitbart in the least.

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

#249

Post by unityByFreedom »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #126
dlss wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Now I can't tell if your reply is serious :p As near as I can tell, the political process converts ideas from logical propositions into group signaling devices. Once a idea becomes a signal, any question of its truth or falsehood is commonly ignored for several human generations. Keeping ideas that have already become signals quarantined, and minimizing overlap between groups in a context where they are likely t…

> As near as I can tell, the political process converts ideas from logical propositions into group signaling devices. Once a idea becomes a signal, any question of its truth or falsehood is commonly ignored for several human generations. I love the way you put it; this goes straight into my quotes file. > Keeping ideas that have already become signals quarantined, and minimizing overlap between groups in a context wh…

> it's best to ignore that topic altogether until at least it falls off the news cycle

I think it's unfortunate when people stop talking about the issues. You're right, people may have made up their minds, but the debate process is not just practice for the candidates, it's also practice for the public to get to know the issues the country is facing.

Of course, it's always up to you what you want to ignore.

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

#250

Post by unityByFreedom »

josefresco wrote: post #193
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…

I haven't been to Yahoo.com in years, and was intrigued by (and doubting) your statements - low and behold, half way down the page is this: "Voting for Team Hillary is Anti-Christ: E-Mails Expose Plot to Overthrow Authority of Pope, Create Catholic Spring to Foment Revolution & Attack Evangelicals-Who Has Place in Hillary's America?" This goes quite beyond "opinionated" headlines.

That article [1] is intense.

"all true Christians must vote for Trump."

"Faith Trumps Politics for Faithful People"

"Put self aside and fight for Trump to help stop the forces of evil from prevailing"

"Trump’s past transgressions, of which he has expressed shame, remorse and apologies, pale in comparison to the revelations we now know about the plot against Christians and the strategy of creating a Catholic Spring, dividing Catholics and undermining the authority of the pope by Team Hillary and the global elite"

"Mother Teresa’s nuns are praying the rosary daily for voters to receive clarity of truth from The Holy Spirit and vote for the candidate who supports life and religious liberty (Trump) against the party engendering a culture of death and new atheism disguised as liberalism"

[1] http://archive.is/QI4Dq

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