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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

#261

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to informatio…

AI curated feeds are, of course, not the free flow of information, rather they are blind algorithms looking at what one's "friends" like and what you've previously liked and then feeding you more of the same, creating filter bubbles and fracturing society, while allowing nefarious actors opportunities to game their inherent naïveté.

Closer to the free-flow of information was USENET, and even though it was eventually overrun by trolls and spammers, filtering was largely human driven and unsophisticated, via their news clients, and one had little choice but to look at contrary opinions, and even to debunk some of the totally false junk, which is now hidden from view or buried at the bottom of long threads, left for the "true-believers".

I've been reading parts of the "alt-right" (deliberately breaking my own filter bubble) for many years, and although I despise what they stand for, I do agree with them on one thing..human ability is not evenly distributed. Of course they use this point to advance a racist agenda, but the fact remains that many people of all backgrounds are just not smart enough to deal with the "free" flow of information. They lack the intelligence to deeply introspect on their own biases and to understand that what they are being fed is garbage aimed at manipulating them. The sooner geeks (and those with a "small l libertarian" streak) accept that reality, the safer[1] the world will be.

[1] in a literal sense, now.

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

#262

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…

In order to be acceptable to the general public you need to represent a wide array of contradicting opinions. If your propaganda is too bland it will be rejected in increasing numbers and turning up the volume then will only make people close their ears. I don't think it is easy to run such a system but I do think it works pretty well most of the time.

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

#264
I don't think this is only Facebook's fault. I watched several extremely biased Youtube videos on both sides.

I guess it's just how decentralized media works; it only tells people what they want to hear.

Not so long ago, the media used to be relatively trustworthy, now everything has become propaganda. It started online mostly but now even major TV channels and newspapers which used to pride themselves on journalistic integrity have become propaganda machines.

There is no truth in the media anymore; the only way to approximate the truth is by watching opposing media channels and then 'averaging them out' in your mind.

All the news I was reading online was so obviously biased in Hillary's favor that I was compelled to watch Fox news (which I used to think was complete garbage) just to try to get the other side of the argument.

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

#265
It would be nice if this were approached more as a user experience enhancement as opposed to a content editorial function. I would love to see the former as my feed is so overwhelmed with garbage. The latter, however, would almost inevitably turn sinister - the leftist, PC, Silicon Valley influence would have no ability to check itself - even if it's not on purpose, the isolated bubble think could not be overcome. I can't imagine that it would hard to automate away teenagers purposely creating fake content.

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

#266

If you do a root cause analysis of this election's result, much of it points back to Silicon Valley in one way or another. Workforce automation created millions of unemployed people in places far away from economic hubs, with no hope of employment in their hometowns or re-skilling for the new roles, leaving them desperate. Proliferation of mobile apps lead to an explosion in use of social media. The wild popularity o…

Yes, Federal jobs should have been moved from cities to fill those lost. Norway did something similar.

That sounds like an interesting story, how can I find more about it?

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

#267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Telling people who aren't aligned to with the liberal intelligentsia to fuck off is exactly what got us in the current mess. I am so sick of this argument that Trump's victory is somehow the fault of bubble-trapped city-dwelling liberals for not understanding how the rest of the country thinks. Trump supporters are the ones who have either been manipulated to vote against their own interests; implicitly elected a Re…

To put some perspective on this, I am from Minnesota, I was there in 1998 and I helped Jesse Ventura get elected. It had a remarkably similar vibe of unexpected victory up-ending the establishment. Of course Jesse Ventura is much more of a rational and thinking man than Trump, but the race was similar in that no one took him seriously and he won in a huge upset against the major party candidates. The thing with Trump…

>What the intelligent Trump supporter would say is that establishment politicians have duped everyone too, and that Hillary was not going to further your interests

And that is why your "intelligent" Trump supporter is still clueless in this case, because he just voted in a white house full of career politicians (Newt Gingrich? Are you kidding me?). It's clear that Trump was mostly a protest vote against the establishment, but it was an incredibly hollow one and made literally no sense if the supporters looked beyond catchy slogans and strongman signaling. And every Trump voter, no matter how intelligent or decent or caring, still cast a vote for a racist and sexist candidate and that is something I find to be unconscionable.

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

#268

This is seriously hilarious. Now that's he's won, against seemingly all odds, we have to find some other reason for why EVERYONE ELSE, was completely WRONG. Every media outlet, everyone in politics, all the polls, completely shit on Trump. Now look who is the most powerful person in the entire world. The Democrats, and the rest, did it to themselves. Overconfidence, smear campaigns, and all of the morons doing the po…

The polls weren't that off actually. They missed the mark overall by about 2%, which is actually pretty similar to the error in past elections. That's not very surprising because without being able to sample the actual distribution you need to make some assumptions for the statistics to work.

I presume that pollsters did their job well. There is a pattern here, they got it wrong both with Brexit and with Trump. I think bad polling was not the reason. The media, the government and academia have created an atmosphere of militant orhodox liberalism, where dissenting voices are not only silenced, but often ridiculed, doxxed, forced to resign etc. These people will choose to disappear from the polls. They will "Think as they want, but behave like others", until they are given the chance to fight back.

Thankfully, in democracies we have elections to release those tensions. And setbacks in democracies are inevitable.

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

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Telling people who aren't aligned to with the liberal intelligentsia to fuck off is exactly what got us in the current mess. I am so sick of this argument that Trump's victory is somehow the fault of bubble-trapped city-dwelling liberals for not understanding how the rest of the country thinks. Trump supporters are the ones who have either been manipulated to vote against their own interests; implicitly elected a Re…

Personally I blame it on the left's constant, ruthless beratement and demonization of Christian|white|rural|blue-collar|conservative people. I'm not surprised they pushed back after a decade of bullying in the name of tolerance.

Oh yeah I forgot it was the evil left that was demonizing people during the past ten years. Certainly no Christians during that time berated and demonized someone just on the basis of say, their sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

Give me a break. The right lost the culture wars (for good reason as their regressive social policies trampled all over civic rights) and this is them sending our country into a suicide because they'd rather die than face the reality that America is no longer a white monoculture.

Your reasoning is basically "maybe if you weren't so mean to the white supremacists Trump wouldn't have happened". Are we supposed to appease neo-Nazis and ignorance now? There were racially motivated attacks across the country last night, all done in the name of Trump. It does not look good.

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