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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

#591

Post by linkregister »

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…

I agree that the idea of "fact-checking" stories is troubling and is overall a bad idea.

You are not at all addressing what is actually in the article: the Newsfeed feature that surfaces the most shared stories. Facebook isn't discussing deleting homeopathy, Clinton body count, or Trump kompromat articles from our various Facebook walls.

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

#592

Post by pmarreck »

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…

There was a quote regarding this which I can't find, but paraphrased it was something like,

"Bullshit flies halfway around the world before the truth has even gotten its pants on."

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

#593

Post by joggery »

kmtrowbr wrote: post #410
joggery wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such stories would not go viral.

That's not true: false, viral stories were the very lifeblood of this election.

I'm sure that it so. However, for a story to spread it has to seem like it might be true to a significant fraction of the readers. So it can't be 'patently false'.

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

#594

Post by enraged_camel »

emodendroket wrote: post #440
lingben wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.fastcoexist.com/3061574/the-new-nationalism-of-b...

Brexit and Trump and Syriza and Bernie and all the rest of it point to the collapse of the middle class across the industrialized world more than anything else.

The middle class is doing fine. It's the working class that has been suffering, and they are the ones who voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers in swing states.

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

#595

Post by astrodust »

darawk wrote: post #582
bogomipz wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on what "AI-complete" means? I have not heard this term before. I am assuming it similar to NP-Complete but in the domain of AI? If this correct I assume that there are also problem that are classified as AI-hard?

AI-complete, I believe, means 'full AI'. An AI-Complete problem is a problem that can't be solved without creating full human-level (or above) AI.

That's a meaningless term since defining "human-level" is already a lost cause.

Some people can multiply ten digit numbers in their head. Some can't even tell you what a number is. There's a very wide bell-curve here.

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

#596

Post by Mesmeron5000 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #96
nostrademons wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with human wetware - there are several cognitive biases [1][2][3][4] that make people engage more strongly with ideas that fit their preconceptions and discount ideas that don't. Add information-sharing to the mix and the aggregate effect you get is large information cascades that fracture the population into tribes that believe things not necessarily because they're true, but because they are state…

> 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…

None of us function in this way. While part of the solution does have to involve people becoming better at vetting their information-sources, it is equally important to acknowledge that for everyone to do this individually would be absolutely impossible given time constraints.

What we need, fundamentally, is a media environment that can harness the collective capacity of humans to vet and debate new information in an organized fashion that can be trusted. This site is a good example where a knowledgeable community, and the simple mechanism of votes does some automatic, crowd-based content curation. But the Reddit-like model is very basic - so much more could possibly be done to allow individual users to contribute to a collective process of knowledge-building.

I think we need more development and discussion devoted to what kind of systems could be designed to encourage transparency, quality, and critical analysis in our news-making.

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

#597

Post by emodendroket »

enraged_camel wrote: post #594
emodendroket wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brexit and Trump and Syriza and Bernie and all the rest of it point to the collapse of the middle class across the industrialized world more than anything else.

The middle class is doing fine. It's the working class that has been suffering, and they are the ones who voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers in swing states.

Sure, whichever. The terms are imprecise and many of the people we're talking about probably could have reasonably considered themselves middle-class in the past.

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

#598

Post by emodendroket »

linkregister wrote: post #590
gozur88 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has less to do with "the digital age" and more to do with governments ignoring large numbers of voters. This is what's supposed to happen when the ruling class gets out of touch.

The idea of a unified "ruling class" is laughable. The current president is constantly at odds with the political party that controls the Senate and the House of Representatives. I also disagree with the notion that most congressmen are out of touch with their voters. Each individual congressman is pursuing the agenda he or she was voted into office by his or her constituents. An example: some constituents want to re…

Of course there are multiple elements of the ruling class with different interests. But I think it's also safe to say there are a lot of issues where Republicans and Democrats are in complete agreement and their constituents are not.

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

#599

Post by grandalf »

debacle wrote: post #581
fullshark wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except he closed the gap in the last few weeks of the race when he stopped saying outrageous shit.

People still want to believe that Trump couldn't have won except by exploiting stupid people.

His message resonated with a lot of people. His tactics exploited social media patterns and mass media patterns effectively. He also ran against a candidate plagued by scandal and widely disliked.

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

#600

Post by EdHominem »

lkrubner wrote: post #451
kisil_reboot wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, you don't really have to solve that problem. It would be sufficient to assess claims of actual fact about the actual world. I think the first step in writing the classifier would be to write something like float IsStatementAboutFacts(string statement); // Returns confidence estimate

Your statement is that of an atheist. You don't seem to realize that many of the followers of these religions believe their assertions to be factual in every way. When I got off the subway today, at the Port Authority, in New York City, there were 2 women, holding up signs about Jesus. One of the signs literally said "Historical fact: Jesus rose from the dead".

Right, they have a few historical claims. But none of them have any proof for those claims and their confidence is off the charts.

Some of their statements pass the first filter, far fewer pass the second.

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