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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

#371

Post by avivo »

We are developing systems to identify and check the impact of misinformation at scale (triage + human in the loop).

If you're interested in potentially joining or funding us, let us know https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSclhq7zrUKI3nxJFiYw...

-----------------------------

Also relevant — my comment 43 days ago to the new "Request for Startups": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12594955

"I'm really happy to see YC putting attention toward the (increasing) market failure around media quality. It's a serious problem, with IMHO imperils governance and stability worldwide.

I'm exploring a way to improve this dramatically, and fairly rapidly; essentially creating a stronger market for trust & quality, with resulting ranking rewards from FB, Google et al. If you are interested in learning more and perhaps being involved, let me know (yc@aviv.me). Experience with news organizations, partnerships, platform companies, pr, moderation systems, or machine learning are all especially helpful."

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

#372

Post by samsonasu »

colllectorof wrote: post #363

"OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." If you read between the lines, this is what the article condenses to. The discussion here is mostly creepy groupthink shit. Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-che…

What would be so bad about at&t offering a service that banned fraudsters from calling you? Or if the USPS refused to deliver mail that said "URGENT TIME SENSITIVE" on the envelope unless the sender could prove it really was urgent?

As someone with elderly relatives who've fallen for scams over email (which major email providers already do block, automatically), I would celebrate both of those outcomes.

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

#373

Post by lkrubner »

jerf wrote: post #27
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…

How would AI resolve religious issues?

The Jews say they are waiting for the Messiah.

The Christians say the Messiah came once and will come again.

The Muslims say there is only one God and Muhammad is his Prophet.

Which of these groups is correct?

I would love to see the AI algorithm that can finally settle this issue! Seriously, mad props to the programmer who writes that code!

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

#374

Post by at-fates-hands »

hx87 wrote: post #260
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fix is for people to be aware of these cognitive biases in themselves, to actively seek out information that differs from their preconceptions, and to challenge inaccurate information (with evidence!) when presented with it. You are right, but I hope you are aware that this would require a giant leap to an essentially superhuman state of rationality and clear thinking for a vast majority of people. Just stop fo…

Separate ideology (or whatever happens to be the object of bias) from identity, and you're halfway there. People are much more amenable to changing their minds if their identities aren't at stake. For example, most people can discuss the pros and cons of F-150s and Silverados fairly rationally; those with the Calvin pissing logos, not so much.

>> most people can discuss the pros and cons of F-150s and Silverados fairly rationally; those with the Calvin pissing logos, not so much.

How is this different from stereotyping then?

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

#375

Post by B-Con »

colllectorof wrote: post #363

"OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." If you read between the lines, this is what the article condenses to. The discussion here is mostly creepy groupthink shit. Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-che…

Agreed.

The problem is the users, not the platform. If users propagate misinformation, the users propagate misinformation.

The easy solution people often jump to is fighting negatives with negatives, assuming it yields a positive. But often a positive approach is more effective. Offering incentives for good acts, not just disincentives for bad acts, is a fairly popular recent trend backed by research.

In this case I can't help but think that the best solution is to focus on education and the propagation of correct information, not censorship (or at least, something that smells like censorship) of bad information. If "new media" is a problem we should be fighting it closer to the source.

I don't know what Facebook's role in that would be, but ideally, as a platform, it would be minimal.

But ultimately, it's worth remembering that it's hard to build a good system with bad raw materials. If people are interested in falsehoods and echo chambers, their social media will reflect that.

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

#376

Post by danieltillett »

DrScump wrote: post #355
dmode wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please point to the Obama quote on government appointed gatekeepers.

Here's one relevant monologue: "We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to," Obama said at an innovation conference in Pittsburgh. "There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don't have any basis in…

...and where did this quote come from?

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

#377

Post by NhanH »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #358
tropo wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, is there a fact-checker that doesn't claim Trump's very unenthusiastic acceptance of war with Iraq when asked by surprise on the Howard Stern show means that Trump is somehow lying when he says he didn't support the war? It's stuff like this, turning a single reluctant "I guess so" or "probably" or "it seems we should" into support, that make supposed fact-checkers suspect. Who will fact-check the fact checkers…

He said "I guess so" before the war started, and then started opposing it when others started opposing it. That's hardly the political courage he was attempting to convey here, especially when he says "I was against the Iraq war from the start"

I haven't seen the video yet, so this is just my interpretation.

Asking about Iraq war at the time was similar to asking "Should we try to stop ISIS?" now. I'd give 80% courage credits to whoever that dare saying "I'm not sure, I guess so".

All in all, unless Trump had access to more information than the general populace, it doesn't matter whether he opposed or supported it. We decidedly didn't have enough info to make a sound judgement, and the conclusion we made - be it correct or not - would merely be a metaphorical coin toss.

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

#378

Post by erichocean »

tdb7893 wrote: post #247
overcast wrote: post #156

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.

> They missed the mark overall by about 2%

This is misleading. Only on a national level were the polls that close. In the actual swing states that gave Trump the presidency, the polls were off well outside the margin of error.

For instance, in Wisconsin no poll ever showed Trump winning that state, and the closest IIRC showed Client winning by 3%. The average was significantly higher than 3%.

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

#379

Post by ethbro »

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #361
ethbro wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you're ever going to detect truth correctly, but you can absolutely detect falsehood. Compare "{Candidate} up over 5000% in polls" vs "{Candidate} up over 15% in polls". Baby steps. PageRank wasn't built in a day.

It's a lot easier to look for inconsistency than it is to look for incorrectness. Here's a pagerank like reputation system i've built. http://github.com/neyer/respect

Whyso? I defer to your experience, but I would expect that incorrectness is simply inconsistency measured against a more complete/complex basis?
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