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Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

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Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#11

Post by btilly »

This article criticizes Facebook for firing the human editors that had been keeping things sane. However they were pushed to that by accusations of bias in the right-wing media. Accusations that looked likely to lead to a Congressional investigation.

See, for example, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/279361-top-republican-d....

Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. And people immersed in echo chambers will accuse them of bias no matter what.

But the entire system is fundamentally broken. Pay per ad incentives lead to rewarding viral content. And content that induces outrage is far more likely to go viral than pretty much anything else. Plus it goes viral before people do pesky things like fact checks. And the more of this that you have been exposed to, the more reasonable you find outrageous claims. Even if you know that the ones that you have seen were all wrong.

For an in depth treatment of the underlying issues, I highly recommend Trust Me, I'm Lying.

Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#13

Post by rhizome »

istorical wrote: post #5
Afforess wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censorship of libel and intentional mischief is no vice.

It's up to courts to decide whether something is libel or slander, not an algorithm or an engineer at Facebook. Private communication / media organizations like Facebook deciding what's acceptable and what's not would only be censorship.

Are you saying that Facebook is a government? By the same token as libelslander, censorship is a government task. Everything else is just business rules.

Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#14

Post by Afforess »

istorical wrote: post #5
Afforess wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Censorship of libel and intentional mischief is no vice.

It's up to courts to decide whether something is libel or slander, not an algorithm or an engineer at Facebook. Private communication / media organizations like Facebook deciding what's acceptable and what's not would only be censorship.

No, it's not. Courts are a last resort, when private mediation has failed, not the first line of action. If I publish news articles claiming "the sky is the color red, and only evil people disagree", courts do not need to be involved for Facebook to bury my articles. Most mischief is obviously classifiable without outside mediation.

Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#16

Post by Kenji »

Let's be frank here: Free speech and facebook never go together. They want to present as a respectable forum where prominent people like politicians can have their platform (same with Twitter). That needs some kind of filtering. And, as we saw with pretty much the entire American press, as soon as you start filtering and selecting, you start to induce gross biases and distortions of the truth. The truth only comes out in a clutter of contradicting opinions, engaging discussions, pieces of evidence and leaked materials. Of course, that is an ugly mess not many people want to put up with.

Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#17

Post by malchow »

It seems abundantly clear that the problem isn't low-quality content in the feed. That's unavoidable. It's the very small trickle of high-quality content in the feed – content from actual people who want to contribute to Facebook. There isn't much of it. And Facebook wants to show a fresh feed every refresh.

Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#18

Post by rhizome »

btilly wrote: post #11

This article criticizes Facebook for firing the human editors that had been keeping things sane. However they were pushed to that by accusations of bias in the right-wing media. Accusations that looked likely to lead to a Congressional investigation. See, for example, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/279361-top-republican-d... . Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. A…

Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't

On the topic of "don't," an unspoken option is that Facebook simply not try to do news.

But the entire system is fundamentally broken...

Why would they persist in the face of this? Hamartia?

Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#19

Post by agildehaus »

btilly wrote: post #11

This article criticizes Facebook for firing the human editors that had been keeping things sane. However they were pushed to that by accusations of bias in the right-wing media. Accusations that looked likely to lead to a Congressional investigation. See, for example, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/279361-top-republican-d... . Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. A…

I think the solution to "damned if you do, damned if you don't" here is to just remove the stupid news sidebar.

Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

#20

Post by trynumber9 »

You think the users are too stupid to fact check. But what makes you think the users care about the truth anyway?

More often than not they double down with "well it's emblematic of the greater problem" or something to that effect. They then look for new evidence to support their views. Like it or not, some sites are designed to build echo chambers and are not for general discourse.

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