Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News • Hacker News Board

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#321

Post by sedachv » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:09 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #230

sedachv wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

How do you personally tell if a news story is suspicious? The publication it originated in, the places where it gets syndicated, shared, and re-posted, the style of the writing, and how sensational the content is. Authors that specialize in writing fake news stories will also have an identifiable individual writing style. There are a lot of signals you can use to classify news as fake or real, and that is before going to databases like Snopes.

This is IMO a much easier problem than a lot of the NLP work for sentiment analysis and other marketing stuff that is working or being funded today. The problem is not technical, the problem is that fake news is profitable.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#322

Post by sedachv » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:13 PM UTC

yosito wrote: post #287

sedachv wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

AI has not advanced to the point where it can go out into the real world and verify whether or not events actually took place.

It is not hard to see some statement about or purportedly by an organization, government office, or celebrity and then call the organization, government office, or celebrity media contact to verify that information. Anonymous sources are protected by journalists and in that case you will have to have a trust metric for the journalist writing the story.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#323

Post by sebtoast » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

gnuvince wrote: post #22

Back in late August when I started my new job, my first purchase with my first paycheck was to get a subscription to Le Devoir, Montreal's independent newspaper. It's amazing how much more informed I feel now: because the content only changes every 24 hours, I have the opportunity to get to the less sexy stories, stories that would be buried on a fast moving website because they don't generate clicks, but which still…

Le Devoir has a reputation of having a left bias doesn't it?

I like the newspaper and I would like to subscribe, I'm just saying I often heard some bias complaints.

It also has a cool founding history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Devoir

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#324

Post by icpmacdo » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 9:14 PM UTC

renaudg wrote: post #227

icpmacdo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ?

Yes. Rarely ever visit facebook.com . Unfollowed everyone before they released messenger.com but now use that primarily. The only other benefit of FB now is party invitations.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#325

Post by lightbyte » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

deno wrote: post #300

lake99 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This extreme partisanship is one of the reasons I'm wary of John Oliver. For example, Politifact, despite its biases or subjectivity, has documented examples of practically every major politian making untrue statements. Including the current POTUS. We need a systemic approach to dealing with lies and untruths of the people who weild power. If you make it partisan, the liar/politican will just block you out, and so wi…

Politifact is infamous for their bias. Here’s an example of them rating the same exact statement very differently, depending on who made it: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do... There are numerous studies that also show significant selection bias, that is they cherry-pick statements they fact-check. Politifact itself makes no a…

Those are not the exact same statements at all, they are talking about two (similar sounding) different things.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#326

Post by Pica_soO » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

Maybe there should be something like the hacker-news reputation, only derived by the validated truth of the sources you quote and forward. And it should be mandatory on all things you post. And people should have the option to hide "unreliable" narrators - and gain the loss of a falsifieer, by disproving somebody else s story.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#327

Post by anigbrowl » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #108

anigbrowl wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but ignoring the news and political changes is kind of a luxury, it means your life is secure enough that you can afford not to pay much attention to any of that stuff because you feel confident it won't affect you personally.

Are you sure this is the case? Is your livelihood or security really dependent on daily churn of news? Here's a thought: what if most news is misinformation?

Yes, and yes. I already assume that to be the case.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#328

Post by tempestn » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 9:39 PM UTC

briandon wrote: post #319

tempestn wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the most recent Last Week tonight. Features clips of President Elect Trump making almost identical comments. In March he claimed a man who rushed the stage at one of his rallies had ties to ISIS. When confronted with the fact that the source he'd linked to was a hoax, his response was, "What do I know about it? All I know is it was on the internet." [1] Then there was an interview with Bill O'Reilly: Bill:…

Your comment spurred me to look for some stats. "Race, Ethnicity, and Sex of Victim by Race, Ethnicity, and Sex of Offender, 2015" https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-... According to the FBI, in single-victim, single-offender homicides in 2015, 3,167 white people were slain and 500 of those murders were committed by black/African-American people. In the same year, 2,664 black/African-American…

You're probably right that that's the original source of the messed up "fact", but what Trump originally tweeted was an image, now removed, with these contents according to politifact[1]:

    "Blacks killed by whites -- 2%"

    "Blacks killed by police -- 1%"

    "Whites killed by police -- 3%"

    "Whites killed by whites -- 16%"

    "Whites killed by blacks -- 81%"

    "Blacks killed by blacks -- 97%’

[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/...

Edit: I'm sure there are screenshots of the initial image so you don't have to rely on politifact.. here, this includes the image and a transcript of the O'Reilly interview: http://www.factcheck.org/2015/11/trump-retweets-bogus-crime-...

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#329

Post by tempestn » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 9:47 PM UTC

lake99 wrote: post #275

leonroy wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Oliver clearly has a political leaning but I don't believe he states anything untrue as fact.

That was not my point. Where exactly did I say he does that? He commits glaring omissions in favour of the people on his side.

I agree with you that reporting selective truths can still be a very strong form of bias. However, Oliver is completely open about the fact that he's entirely biased. It's clearly editorial. (And also clearly a comedy, not a serious news program.) I could still see an argument that the bias is unfair, but in my opinion far more insidious are organizations like Breitbart (and I'm sure some left-leaning ones as well) that use this selective truth-telling to serve their biases while making an effort to appear unbiased.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#330

Post by prawn » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 11:58 PM UTC

tottenhm wrote: post #186

prawn wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's come down to "the end justifies the means". And I'm not sure there's a way to stop it given the core buttons being pushed: confirming bias, bringing audiences to companies, giving people attention. Facebook could probably give people a public rating based on the accuracy of the information they shared, and shame the worst offenders, but neither they nor their users would have an interest in this being establishe…

> neither they nor their users would have an interest in this being established. I'm on the fence about that one. On the flip-side: 1. If they don't police it, then Facebook as a whole gets a reputation for disinformation. (When I look at Facebook, I personally ignore most shared articles because they're mostly crap, and I don't want to look at them. I only care about the personal goings-on of friends, and the signal…

True on the latter. A bit like the verified tick on Twitter being a desirable thing. Social networks could open additional features for someone with a better record.

Remember on your first point though that it might not be a factor for the majority of people. Can also reach people through ad networks, or social networks, etc.