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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

#21

Post by mikestew »

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.

You think the New York Times doesn't decide whether something is libel or slander before they print it in order to avoid having the "courts...decide whether something is libel or slander"? It's not a direct comparison, but close enough for me to dismantle the idea that only courts get a say on this.

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

#23

Post by stevendhansen »

Except it isn't just the spread of misinformation. Even more important (IMHO) is the insulating effect of showing people only like-minded opinions, effectively trapping everyone in a bubble. I can't think of any way Facebook can solve this problem without drastically decreasing their reliance on ad revenue. What are they going to do, force people to view opinions they disagree with?

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

#24

Post by Zikes »

Good luck with that. Reddit's failed at it. Twitter's failed at it. It's almost always bundled with some sort of hate speech or political rhetoric that triggers swaths of people when they feel like they're being silenced.

There probably is no right way to do it.

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

#25

Post by SeanDav »

It is a temporary aberration. In due course, people will come to realize that they can't believe everything they read on the internet (duh), especially where provenance is not clear, and Facebook will improve their algorithms.

Some kind of reasonable balance will be found.

People blaming Facebook for Trump is far more a reflection of themselves than of FB news algorithms.

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

#27

Post by jerf »

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…

Yes, trying to solve this problem by creating a definition of "misinformation" sufficiently precise to act on it for all possible articles, then trying to remove it somehow is probably an AI-complete problem. If it's not AI-complete it's probably just plain an ill-formed question. That's before we ask questions about the biases that get embedded into the misinformation detector.

This can't be fixed at Facebook scales by building a platform that so highly incentivizes low-quality content of all kinds, then trying to stop the content so late in the cycle. The entire incentive structure has to be rethought. Unfortunately, that's probably a problem that Facebook is literally incapable of solving without going out of business, because Facebook the corporate entity is that incentive structure. To fix Facebook requires Facebook to become not-Facebook.

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

#28

Post by vetinari »

rhizome wrote: post #4
6d6b73 wrote: post #2

So they admit they want to censorship FB.

One person trying to censorship is another person's editorial policy.

Why the communist regimes newer used such a great excuse for their media... /s

Seriously, that's slippery slope.

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

#29

Post by btilly »

rhizome wrote: post #18
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?

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

"If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem."

See https://despair.com/products/consulting for the poster that I stole that from.

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

#30

Post by gdulli »

stevendhansen wrote: post #23

Except it isn't just the spread of misinformation. Even more important (IMHO) is the insulating effect of showing people only like-minded opinions, effectively trapping everyone in a bubble. I can't think of any way Facebook can solve this problem without drastically decreasing their reliance on ad revenue. What are they going to do, force people to view opinions they disagree with?

Everyone should be responsible for the curation of their own timeline. I barely use Facebook but hate the idea that I didn't get a straight chronological feed.

I was a huge fan of Twitter but was driven away when they followed suit. My reasons had more to do with my own preference of how I enjoy using the service, but having algorithms manipulate the information I see so as to maximize engagement metrics is even more troubling.

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