Is anyone on HN relying on Facebook for news?
Do people outside of typical HN users know who is/take advice from Snowden?
This seems a bubble of pointlessness.
Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
221–230 of 342 posts
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#222I have interacted with several people on Facebook who rely on fake news sources. I pointed out fake news articles several times on one person's Facebook page. She agreed the articles were not true. However, she added "I don't have time to figure out if they're true. People can read your comments." I asked her what she thought of the fact that this particular article, which was blatantly false, was shared 16,000 times…
I don't really go on Facebook. Can you give an example of the type of fake news story you're talking about?
Buzzfeed, of all places, actually has a great article on this: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-...
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't really have an independent press anymore, and blog-sphere can be trivially gamed by interested and powerful actors. Have we as a civilization ever witnessed such a pervasive disinformation culture? I forget who said this, possibly a character in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but the idea was that when a population perceives that the social order is unfair (due to bad faith power actors) the genera…
When I put on my rose-colored glasses and look back at the past (1950s??) it seems that lying was very much looked down upon. Not so much any more. Seems like it's 'anything goes that you can get away with'. Is this because we're not teaching ethics in school? Decline in churches? Apathy from feeling helpless?
Your own clarity of view has gone up.
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#224Simple answer: don't use social media.
I don't understand why this is controversial. If you don't approve of the way they do business, don't use their products. I use no social media accounts and my life is plenty-full of engaging, useful discussion.
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#225The bigger issue is, many of these same folks are not gonna stop buying into "echo chamber" news and gossip just because FB stops publishing it. Sad as it is, this is what Fox News is to a super lesser extent. This is what shooting the sh-t at the bar with your buddies is.
We don't need less fake news. We need a more educated and engaged public. Now that we have a president-elect that campaigned on gutting public funding, including Dept. of Education, well, we'll see how that goes.
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Feelings don't care about your facts. It's actually amazing that a breed of primates made it this far when you consider how irrational we really are with regard to so many things: who we cede power to, how we judge truth and falsity, etc.
We didn't get this far despite our irrationality, we got this far because of it.
Interesting. Care to elaborate?
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had the same thing happen where I pointed out something was false to an acquaintance who shares frequently and he said "well we each play our part, thankfully there are people like you" or something to that affect. The idea that it was my job to screen the bullshit... I didn't delete my facebook but I did unfollow every person and group on the app and it has been quite pleasurable to have an empty newsfeed.
>I didn't delete my facebook but I did unfollow every person and group on the app and it has been quite pleasurable to have an empty newsfeed. Same. Now its just a messaging platform now, its great
Ever tried messenger.com ?
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's time for startup to develop a Chrome Extension to detect fake news on Facebook.
I've thought the same thing, but the people interested in using such an extension would get their news from places other than Facebook. Self-selection bias greatly reduces the efficacy of such an extension.
They could get their news from Facebook too, they would just more likely subscribe to more reputable pages and have less hoax-sharing friends.
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#229I have interacted with several people on Facebook who rely on fake news sources. I pointed out fake news articles several times on one person's Facebook page. She agreed the articles were not true. However, she added "I don't have time to figure out if they're true. People can read your comments." I asked her what she thought of the fact that this particular article, which was blatantly false, was shared 16,000 times…
Note that when confronted about false stories (which were sourced from white aupremacist propaganda) he retweeted, the President-elect, while still a candidate, responded fairly similarly, so, yeah, it's definitely an attitude that is becoming quite normalized.
Just wondering, was this sentence intentionally written in an extremely complicated way? It took me a while to figure out what it was saying.
Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think those technologies are well suited to this problem at all. I was just talking to some Swiss journalists last night. You know what Swiss news organizations are using those technologies for? To make their writing more "engaging", i.e. more sensationalist, not for fact-checking.
> I don't think those technologies are well suited to this problem at all. How so? Deciding whether news is fake or not seems like a textbook application of natural language classification and search.
The only difference between a fake news story and a real news story that you can rely on is that the events in the real news story actually took place. Obviously there is no way to determine that by looking at the text itself.
Yes, at present the fake news may be written more colorfully or poorly. Obviously if you filter on that difference, it will go away.