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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

#411

Post by tmptmp »

I am not a Trump supporter, as far as his anti-Muslim stance is concerned. But I do support some of his economic stances which are labeled as "protectionist" by mainstream media. I may be wrong as I am not an economic expert also his take on immigration is certainly a thing of significance.

A related note regarding Facebook here: AFAIK, Facebook's curators were very biased and were always removing anything to do support what "mainstream vocal leftists" find objectionable. e.g. Be it to do with the shameless suppression of news related to people like Geert Wilders or Pamella Geller who are not by any means right wing fanatics. Geert Wilders is a staunch supporter of homosexuals. Just because he criticizes the barbaric ideology of Islam he is labeled as a "right-wing nut" by leftists with covert/overt Islam-apologetic stances.

It is well known that Saudi kingdom has large investments in mainstream US media, that's what Trump drew people's attention to. Who knows how much of Facebook is controlled by Saudi and the likes. [1]

It's no surprise that mainstream media got the prediction about Trump wrong. I guess, there predictions and poll-results were in fact propaganda against Trump. I felt it that way, many people I know felt it and I am sure many more people must also have felt it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex9ldUHSgjs

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

#412

Post by briholt »

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. This appears to advocate to fight propaganda with more propaganda. I don't trust anyone at Facebook to determine "facts."

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

#413

Post by kbutler »

ethbro wrote: post #379
MarkPNeyer wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To determine correctness, the adjudicator requires knowledge outside the system. In the scientific method, this is done by generating falsifiable hypotheses and performing the experiment. Failing that, you have to fall back on heuristics, like "what I already believe", Occam's razor (simplest theory consistent with observations wins), or reliance on authority/consensus.

Consistency is simply majority wins, which completely stifles new ideas or minority opinions.

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

#414

Post by jerf »

sethrin wrote: post #385
jerf wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This problem isn't that hard. You filter this stuff and rank it by its SOURCE, not by the content of individual articles." I don't think reifying ad hominem into code is the solution to the problem. Of course, if you don't mind a rare few false positives here and there on articles, I've got your filter right here: def source_is_trustworthy(source): return False Remember as you sit here thinking through your exceptio…

As someone who vehemently opposes Trump, I feel that allegations of anti-Trump bias in the mainstream media were entirely correct and somewhat to be expected. Although Trump is certainly a name that sells papers, Trump's repeated threats to open up news media to broader libel laws were not well received. The news organizations' endorsements were pretty one-sided[0]. I don't want to take you too literally, but it seem…

"source_is_trustworthy" applies to all sources, not just "MSM". As I said, I don't have anything right now that I can point to and say "If they say it, I trust it."

I used to try to apply a correctional factor, but I've found it not even worthwhile anymore. I honestly don't know entirely why. I don't know if the news has gotten that much more biased to the point where it almost swamps the signal entirely, or if the combined financial pressures away from expensive real reporting and towards click-bait headlines has removed the signal, or what, but beyond very bare facts they just aren't worth much anymore. It is also possible this has always been the case and I wasn't aware enough to realize it; there's some classic history stories that back that possibility up.

I do know primary sources are getting easier and easier to consult directly. Which could itself also be a reason my opinion of them has plummeted so much in the past 10 years; it was a lot harder to see through media spin and simplification (deliberately for their audience, and accidentally when they in fact don't understand what's going on themselves, see especially science journalism for that) when they were the only source of information.

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

#417

Post by masonic »

danieltillett wrote: post #376
DrScump wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Have you heard of this newfangled thing called a "search engine"?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q="We+are+going+to+have+to+rebuild+w...

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

#418

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

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…

facebook will be less effective as a medium/content distributor if people become aware of the filtering that they do; i think they are shooting themselves in the foot if they start to actively censor the messages, people will just move on to twitter for politics and use facebook for the personal stuff only.

trust the market, there is plenty of competition that puts things into their proper place. Facebook doesn't own their users either.

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

#419

Post by lingben »

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…

Such a comment betrays an incredibly unsophisticated understanding of the issues being discussed. Perhaps a revisit to McLuhan's maxim would be enlightening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoCrx0scCkM

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

#420

Post by 69mlgsniperdad »

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…

Misinformation? They got caught using humans, to manually sort through the trending stories, and prune stories that were anti-Hillary. The stories they are referring to I'm guessing are wiki-leaks? Not fallacies, but instead, things that the authors didn't originally intend the public to see. There is a big difference. And the reason they had to stop tweaking the trending stories feed, was because they were creating a large mis-trust across their platform. They were literally doing the opposite of what this story claims..... They were censoring free speech, to further their agenda. What they were doing is no different then places like CNN claiming that certain Wikileaks are not based on fact. CNN went as far as to tell their viewers that it was illegal to read the Wikileaks emails. They claimed only employees of the media were permitted to legally read the emails. Facebook is now claiming that they should have censored things like wikileaks, without telling anyone, just delete them. However, CNN is not now claiming they should have told more people it was illegal to read the wikileaks that aren't true.(they were gmail dkim verified). But Facebook however now claiming that they should silently remove more stories which don't further their agenda. This is going to be a nightmare when shareholders start having an issue with stories like these. As soon as people start realizing the truth, people will flee the platform.
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