News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

Facebook seems to be stumbling down the same page that Twitter did here in terms of attempting to regulate some content, by means that they themselves determines to be un-biased and in the best interests of users... which hasn't quite worked out so well for Twitter.

If everything is fine and unmoderated, there is no bias. If some things are flagged, not allowed, etc, I don't care how much a 3rd party is trusted. It's still humans picking and choosing one piece of content over another, and there are inherent biases involved there.

I hate blogspam, but Facebook has to be seen to be taking direct action against fake news right now. They can't afford to take detours to fix other problems first.

> who fact checks the fact checkers?

Who polices the police? Who governs the government? Who grants authority to the authorities?

In western democracies, ideally the answer is all the same: the people. Ideally, once a power broker starts to lose credibility, they start to lose their power.

And that's really what this is about. Facebook has lost credibility given the ease these new social technologies have been co-opted into propaganda tools. Sure, on one level they might want to discredit stories, but I think the far more likely scenario is Facebook as a platform for eyeballs has been discredited, and fewer people taking it seriously hurts the stock price.

Even as a developer (and potential employee lead), I've more viciously ignored the quarterly facebook recruiter cold-call inbox spam because I frankly don't want to participate in what's become a propaganda mill this election season... I use react and recommend the technology all the time, I have friends who do great work at facebook, and most importantly, I actively use it every day... I just personally want to contribute my efforts elsewhere (after all, cigarette smokers smoke cigarettes every day too).

At the end of the day, the credibility of the fact checkers comes from community consensus on the legitimacy of fact checkers. The problem is that micro-targeting groups while maximizing eyeball engagement has connected these groups more closely while breaking community consensus. Without community consensus, fact checkers have no credibility (and neither will Facebook the eyeball platform).

In other words, the paradox is we're more social yet more isolated at the same time.

I appreciate this fact checker gesture, but at the end of the day, facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community and community consensus, not being individually social.

> the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral

The American right's association with reality is well known to be, uhh... tenuous. So it's not too surprising that they tend to disagree with people who verify facts.

Edit for downvoters: The mainstream positions of the Republican party are, objectively, factually incorrect on the issues of climate change, evolution, and women's health. I'm not aware of any issue where the left's position completely disagrees with established scientific fact. Thus, anyone concerned with basing their understanding of reality on facts is going to be "left-leaning" by simple virtue of the right's disregard for fact.

I kind of wish they took no action. It is inevitable fb will be the "war of the worlds" or National Enquirer wrt "news" doing nothing gets them there quicker.

Fb is unparalled in sharing photos and personal information to friend. News? Not.