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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

#291

Post by knz »

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.

Wikileaks has it's own issues - the suggestions of Russian influence, the timing of their data releases, questions about Assages political bias against the US/Clintons etc.

"People need to do their own research if they want to form conclusions not just little to prepackaged conclusions." - I could not agree more.

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

#292

Post by dmode »

ausjke wrote: post #83

the elite mainstream media and the supposed-to-be-independent reporters are the biggest losers in this election, as they took sides so strongly that the other 50% will never bother to have anything to do with them. facebook needs improvement? sure, but more important, those biased media outlets will be irrelevant for most of the people due to not only technology advancement, but also what the news industry has been d…

What about the non-elite supposedly non-mainstream media ? Like Fox News ? Who perpetrated a false story days before the election and came back to apologize for it ? They are real winners right ?

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

#293

Post by robbrown451 »

cm3 wrote: post #213
robbrown451 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's scary. 100% certain? Nothing is 100% certain. So they can't even say "it's likely to rain tomorrow"? This doesn't seem thought through.

Not all topics warrant certainty, but given the power of news outlets forming opinion and thereby influencing the population's behavior, I do think certain topics demand responsible reporting which doesn't report anything at all if uncertain. It's the same as a good police detective not disclosing speculations to the media because they pursue many leads but only conclude one, and you don't want a mob go lynch people.…

I can understand having some news outlets with a much higher threshold.

I still don't believe the term "100% certain" is meaningful. Maybe if they were to put a label on certain facts: "This fact is considered by our editorial board to be 93% certain." And maybe have a chart, so that figure can change over time.

I think there are better ways, and that there should be accountability. I just am not in favor of black and white terms for concepts that, to me, are purely shades of gray.

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

#294

Post by wyager »

denzil_correa wrote: post #212
wyager wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided the data isn't wrong, we can typically put tight statistical error bounds on the output of various ML algorithms. Most people's understanding of how algorithms can be "biased" is completely wrong. There was a whole furor a while back about algorithms discriminating due to language differerences in the data for people of different races. Guess what; if you give race as a parameter to any half-decent algorithm…

> Guess what; if you give race as a parameter to any half-decent algorithms trained on that data, the algorithm will learn that the written data contains those biases. You know what? Even if you do not give race as a parameter; an algorithm could be biased. It can easily learn race from secondary or tertiary parameters.

I don't think you understood my post; giving race as a parameter allows ML algorithms to detect and counteract human racism.

If an ML algorithm notices a disparity along e.g. racial lines, it's because it's actually there, not because a human imagined it.

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

#295

Post by dhimes »

unethical_ban wrote: post #278
tn13 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Zuckerberg meeting right wing leaders shows that there was great element of truth in it.

It could also mean he was simply running damage control on a bullshit accusation he had no way of denying. If sites are spreading factually provable lies through Facebook as fact, and people are acting on it, should Facebook have any say in telling people "Hey, this is garbage"? It's an open question.

It's also partly a constitutional question. I want my friends and I to be able to share articles we find in whatever press on FB. I'll filter by friend. (Mea Culpa: I haven't read TFA yet, so I may be missing some context.)

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

#296

Post by OliverJones »

Here's what to do about Facebook.

(1) permanently close your account. https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account

(2) if you're like me and you can't do that, "unfriend" everybody except the people you work with. Delete all your affiliations and locations.

If enough people did this FB would have to do a little struggling to retain membership. That's the kind of incentive they need. Altruism demonstrably doesn't work, especially Sand Hill Road altruism.

(I help a couple of little nonprofits so it happens that I need a fb account.)

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

#297

Post by DominikR »

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…

Why exactly shouldn't it be beneficial if we let the market (the viewer) without any regulation decide which information should spread and which shouldn't?

If people prefer seeing outrageous stuff then let them have it.

The reason why governments and institutions want to control this is in order to control its people, all the other reasons given are just an attempt to mask this.

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

#298

Post by ben010783 »

joggery wrote: post #189

You can't prevent false ideas spreading by censorship; quite the contrary. The idea that one can create an AI or censor or committee to separate truth from falsehood and then put it in charge is plainly authoritarian.

What about just keeping out stories that are patently false? If I did an image search for cars, I wouldn't want a boat in there. If I did a search for news, I wouldn't want a fabricated story.

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

#300

Post by dasil003 »

ethbro wrote: post #252
dasil003 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No because popularity does not equal truth.

It doesn't? Because in the sense that popularity is "agreement with consensus scientific opinion" then it absolutely does.

Well, to be more specific about what I mean is, Google's algorithm is successful if it finds the pages that people find valuable. It's sort of baked into the value proposition that the end user will be able to gauge the quality of results, so there is a sort of feedback loop. The problem with misinformation is there is no in-band signal for Google about its truthiness. I suppose there heuristics you can use related to fact-checking quality of certain publications, etc, but it's much trickier than general perceived quality.

Nevertheless, I agree that if anyone can do it algorithmically, it would probably be Google.

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