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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

#231

Post by xs »

sandworm101 wrote: post #85

Facebook isn't the problem. It's a function of its users. It is as much responsible for misinformation as a city park is responsible for the crazy guy shouting about the lizard people. The problem is all the users who actually believe anything they read via facebook.

Suppose you were the person to relay the message though.

Imagine one friend tells you "Can you please tell Adam X", but you know X is a flat out lie and is actually horrible and offensive. So do you agree to spread the lie? Oh and you're doing this free, and it's not your friend it's 2 strangers.

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

#232

Post by brightball »

caseysoftware wrote: post #222
brightball wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like the best thing to do would be penalize a site if it shows verifiably false content until it both updates the original story and issues a retraction. Facebook could prioritize retractions in its algorithm and ensure that people who saw the original story would see the retraction as well. Content providers who abide by journalistic guidelines could be prioritized. Providers who actually have an editor cou…

Do you really want Facebook in this role? I guess it works as long as you agree with their choices, prioritization, and opinions but as we saw this cycle, there was a collusion between "journalists" and the Clinton campaign. Even if you see no problem with that, would you see a problem if the Trump campaign had done it?

Not particularly. Personally, I've always advocated for some type of "internet journalistic credentials" that could be embedded in meta tags to identify content producers, editors, originators and retractions according to a process of journalistic ethics that actually valued real journalism over content spam. Content originators over scraper and ad-farms.

I'd honestly envision something closer to the BBB to manage this type of thing and track membership, ratings, disputes and resolution that all browsers and search engines could tap into. The key would be that freelance journalists would need to be able to gain membership in the same way that journalists get officially credentialed to cover different types of events.

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

#234

Post by mucker »

kirykl wrote: post #38

Wouldn't Facebook have the perverse incentive to define 'misinformation' to be any information which offends the most people, regardless of truth, in order to keep users from leaving

Of course. Worse, they actually have two different strategic factors that play poorly together: 1.) Retain users 2.) Have a personal bias about what will offend users

These two items can magnify each other in a false direction as they attempt to retain users that they perceive they have.

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

#236

Post by nkassis »

gregpardo wrote: post #157
Spellman wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally asked an individual why they don't trust snopes. Their claim is that it's a Democrat rag towel and shill. I then ask, then what fact-checker would you trust? Their response: None of them. Congratulations. We've reached a point, for this individual, where "facts" as decided in the common forum are suspect and the only thing they trust is themselves (and whatever non-Mainstream Media they listen to).…

The problem these 'fact' checkers have become leftist doctrines... You just point to snopes or politifact and that is end of discussion? That's not how the world works. Wikileaks is a far more credible source than either of these. People need to do their own research if they want to form conclusions not just little to prepackaged conclusions.

I would argue that wikileaks on it's own can also be very misleading. Reading emails out of context and without knowing if they've been altered is probably not the best way to get a full picture. The value add of media looking at them is they can also go and get other sources to add context or to corroborate what they are reading in the wikileaks releases. Sources which aren't available to everyone. It's also easy to be fooled into seeing things as nefarious which are in the end benign when given context.

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

#237

Post by lbenes »

AlexC04 wrote: post #76

I think it would be relatively easy to have an "auto-snopes" feature which detects a URL being shared and immediately attaches a post that says "this has been debunked by X" For example - I've seen dozens of links to Michael Moore's trumpland speech which strategically ends with the phrase "America will elect Trump and it will feel great" Sample: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-25/michael-moore-trump... He conc…

On the days leading up to the election, my feed was full of fake news stories. Every single one that looked fishy to me, Snopes had debunked. I posted a few replies, but I felt like it was a Sisyphean task of shoveling shit against the tide of misinformation.

Is there any hope that Facebook will do the right thing and put information ahead of profits? As a libertarian at heart, it pains to to say this, but I think the only way to fix this is government regulations. Of course it will never happen under Trump, but how else can force them to be good curators with all the power they wield.

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

#238

Post by cynusx »

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 that's a genuine concern, the only way I can think of that breaks this paradigm is by users to elect moderators.

This would also give a platform to new and grassroot politicians to rise up over time. Right now, grassroot enthousiasm seems to flow towards senators (ron paul, bernie sanders,..) because they didn't vote for something most of the other senators voted for.

Meanwhile having access to capital and connections to even become a senator is very constraint and unlikely to come without strings attached.

Anyway, having users elect moderators solves the problem of "trusting the moderator" and since I assume they would be a salaried position facebook can apply and enforce fairness guidelines.

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

#239

Post by doomlaser »

linkregister wrote: post #146
doomlaser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The blind NYTimes bias has been readily apparent in this election cycle. WaPo as well. The entire media system missed this election. A staffer in the Obama White House remarked on the quality of reporting now, as of a few months ago: "All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus. Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world event…

That said, NYT performed some significant investigative reporting. Though Gawker broke the Clinton private email server story, the New York Times vastly expanded the investigation and brought the story into the mainstream. The statement that the entire media system missed the election is an exaggeration. One function of the NYT, the election prediction section, failed. It shouldn't reflect on the various investigativ…

I would recommend reading this commentary, from the political director of CBS News, today:

"The mood in the Washington press corps is bleak, and deservedly so.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.

This is all symptomatic of modern journalism’s great moral and intellectual failing: its unbearable smugness. Had Hillary Clinton won, there’s be a winking “we did it” feeling in the press, a sense that we were brave and called Trump a liar and saved the republic."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/commentary-the-unbearable-smugne...

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

#240

Post by hiou »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #75

In corporate speak "misinformation" is defined as "any information that doesn't support our narrative". Certainly it is the goal of Facebook, the government, and every other large media corporation to control the flow of information. You need look no farther then Obama's recent statement that news needs to be "curated" by government appointed gatekeepers, to filter out all that pesky information that doesn't jive wit…

> Obama's recent statement that news needs to be "curated" by government appointed gatekeepers

Facebook is leaking, I can already imagine what the clickbait headline looked like...

"Obama to assemble government censorship agency"

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