Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#241

Post by joshuamorton » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 7:42 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #223

joshuamorton wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this sentence mean? In what way is Facebook at all comparable to a government? Is there some social contract that all people are entered into with Facebook? If so, what are the rights and responsibilities of that contract? And do note here, I'm talking about an implied social contract, not an actual contract (like an EULA). What large portion of the internet do they "govern"? As best as I can tell you're ar…

> Is there some social contract that all people are entered into with Facebook? They have written community rules (don't know the exact name) that members are expected to comply with. > What large portion of the internet do they "govern"? The Facebook website (duh). Which, for a surprising amount of people, is literally "the internet" (or at least the part of it that they most interact with). > As best as I can tell…

This entire argument is predicated on a misapplication of the term "government". Something that sets rules is not a government in the same way that an actual government is a government, and confusing the two interpretations cannot lead to productive discourse.

Just to be clear, this definition also makes Walmart the government of all Walmart stores, and me the government of my bedroom. Neither of those are in any way related to how the President is (a part of) the government of the United States.

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#242

Post by sqeaky » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #224

ebola1717 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This misunderstands the way technology, social media in particular, have exacerbated problems with misinformation. No one is claiming the media was perfect before. Obviously hoaxes and false rumors have always been a thing. But social media has made disinformation scalable .

For as long as I can remember, National Enquirer and other magazines like that adorned the racks of every grocery store and book store I've ever been to. Yellow journalism was coined as a term over 100 years ago. There's nothing new about "fake news". And it has been scalable since the invention of the printing press.

No one believed bat boy and even the plausible stuff in those was never the subject of design making. The National Enquirer is as much News as the Onion is.

The tragedy now is that there are sites that aren't neatly packaged as entirely false but are. The Internet has empowered people like Alex Jones and other people spouting pure falsehoods.

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#243

Post by peoplewindow » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 7:55 PM UTC

hsod wrote: post #240

peoplewindow wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, seeing as you brought them up. Nazis. You realise - I hope! - that seeing large populations of other people as weak, inferior, morally defective, mentally limited and generally in need of being controlled or removed from public life is exactly the attitude that led to the Nazi horrors, don't you? It wasn't an excess of free speech that led to the concentration camps, which were secret inside Germany and their exi…

Wow. So you're comparing the OP of this subthread to the Nazis because they think the electorate is susceptible to manipulation. That's some shameful sophistry.

Sigh, no. Look. I don't think bringing up "but Nazis" is really helpful to any debate but Frondo did so. His position is - quite literally - I'd love to support free speech but I can't because of Nazis. Also he thinks I lack perspective and am some sort of fetishist, which isn't very nice, but I can put that to one side.

It's impossible to respond to such a rebuttal without using the N-word and I specifically said at the start I was doing so only because of that argument.

I understand why people bring up Hitler in discussions about free speech. Some people do believe that Nazis are some sort of harmful side effect of free speech and if only people with views tending in that direction are prevented from speaking, there will never be a re-occurrence. That's a reasonable view to hold, but one that many people believe to be wrong (I didn't see Congress delete the first amendment post-WW2 after all).

Now if someone is going to take a position of "I'd love to support X but it leads to Hitler", a rebuttal of the form "actually it's not X that led to these bad things, it's the opposite of X" is a completely reasonable response. If you really believe that's sophistry I'd be interested to know how you'd argue that free speech is the solution to and not the cause of Nazi evil, if you genuinely did believe that, without it being sophistry?

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#244

Post by JacobJans » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 7:56 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #237

sqeaky wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people selling microphones get to decide that. This is Facebook's microphone to sell, the liars are free to buy another.

I'm neither a heavy Facebook user nor a fan of Trump, but doesn't it make you at least a little bit nervous that a many-billion-dollar company is going to start selectively censoring (or at least hindering) communication it disagrees with? What happened to the traditional liberal distrust of big corporations? What about if Facebook decides discussion of privacy violations online is "fake news?"

You'd be hard-pressed to find a large media company that doesn't selectively curate the media they distribute.

Anyone that runs a business has the responsibility to consider the ethical ramifications of their business activities, and to respond in a way that aligns with their ethical values.

FYI –– Y Combinator does exactly this on Hacker News: "selectively censoring (or at least hindering) communication it disagrees with"

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#245

Post by JonFish85 » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 7:58 PM UTC

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #238

briholt wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be careful, both Politifact and Snopes have been caught pushing their own slanted narratives. Example: When Bernie says black youth unemployment is ~50%, it's true. When Trump says the same, it's false. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do...

Bernie's statement was limited to people with no education past high school; Trump's wasn't. The inaccurate thing about Bernie's statement was that he cited U6 as a measure of "unemployment" when it would more accurately be called a measure of "underemployment". It includes people who want a full-time job but can only find a part-time job even though they aren't fully unemployed. Trump cited 100% - labor force partic…

"Trump cited 100% - labor force participation rate as a measure of unemployment, which is complete nonsense because it counts people who are full-time students or who are disabled as unemployed."

Perhaps the point here is that what is "true" and what is "false" aren't entirely black or white. Depending on how you look at it, full-time students aren't employed; they are therefore unemployed. In some contexts, people who currently do not hold a job are an accurate representation of unemployed. And therein lies the rub: context is incredibly important.

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#246

Post by kbutler » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 7:58 PM UTC

bllguo wrote: post #204

peoplewindow wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very very rarely downvote anything on HN. I feel downvoting should be used for empty or "me too"-like comments that don't add anything. Your post isn't like that, but in your case I made an exception anyway because you started like this: trying to manipulate the naive herd of sheep who blindly follows whatever people like on Facebook I realise you genuinely do believe that there are vast numbers of people who are l…

Reductive. You seem to be searching for a reason to disagree. He/she stated his point crudely, granted, but he/she did have one: There are certain forms of speech that are outlawed in certain places in the interest of preventing harm to people. For instance, countries with anti-Holocaust-denial laws. Yet they remain reasonably free and tolerant societies. CP is another example. Many governments and people operate wit…

I agree with what you said, but going from, "societies sometimes forbid types of speech" to "let Facebook decide what speech to forbid" is a step I cannot justify.

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#247

Post by sqeaky » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 8:02 PM UTC

graphitezepp wrote: post #101

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find the same crap with slightly better spell checking by the checkout isles in the grocery store. This isn't new.

I find it actually kinda worrying that many seem to have a perception that making up news is a new thing. The only thing that has changed is the volume of information, people in control of news sources have been lying since time immemorial.

People believing in such vast quantities does seem to be new. I don't know anyone who believed the non-sense in the National Enquirer, but I do know a few people who buy because they think it is funny.

People, whole communities of people believe, non-sense today. Not small groups like Flat-earthers or chemtrail theorists who number in the hundreds or thousands (per their website/forums sign-ups). There will always be some people on the fringe.

We avoided truly ridiculous ideas for decades. Things like "911 was an inside job" or "Obama was born in Kenya" are believed by tens of millions of people. This is a new thing in my life at least. The last issue this big and this false was prevalent was McCarthyism.

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#248

Post by bduerst » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 8:07 PM UTC

thomnottom wrote: post #205

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea that picture definitely reinforces the original Parks Service one. You can see all the empty space and people milling around, not that far in the background. The Obama inauguration was shoulder to shoulder standing room only.

It's funny, I never bothered much analyzing these photos but now that I have it's obvious how much the Gigapixel backs up the WaPo photos. And yet the parent seems to believe that pointing out optical perspective differences means we're calling those pictures "right-leaning".

They're using an increasingly popular derailment technique called the common ground fallacy.

The parent is asserting that the truth is merely a compromise between two different opinions, when in reality there's evidence enough to assert the truth, without making it a matter of 'right' or 'left' opinion. Their inability to provide their credible sources ("high def video") is because their opinion doesn't align with the reality of the situation.

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#249

Post by hsod » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 8:11 PM UTC

peoplewindow wrote: post #243

hsod wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. So you're comparing the OP of this subthread to the Nazis because they think the electorate is susceptible to manipulation. That's some shameful sophistry.

Sigh, no. Look. I don't think bringing up "but Nazis" is really helpful to any debate but Frondo did so. His position is - quite literally - I'd love to support free speech but I can't because of Nazis. Also he thinks I lack perspective and am some sort of fetishist, which isn't very nice, but I can put that to one side. It's impossible to respond to such a rebuttal without using the N-word and I specifically said at…

The sophistry is in the un-earned reversal.

OP: People are susceptible to manipulation. We should think carefully about the ways our institutions allow violent and intolerant ideologies to spread.

You: You know who else thought people were susceptible to manipulation? The Nazis.

A hypothetical non-sophist: Our institutions are indeed helping to spread violent and intolerant ideologies, but any attempt to prevent their spread will only make things worse, because #{reasons}.

Re: Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

#250

Post by sqeaky » Mon, Aug 28, 2017, 8:19 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #237

sqeaky wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people selling microphones get to decide that. This is Facebook's microphone to sell, the liars are free to buy another.

I'm neither a heavy Facebook user nor a fan of Trump, but doesn't it make you at least a little bit nervous that a many-billion-dollar company is going to start selectively censoring (or at least hindering) communication it disagrees with? What happened to the traditional liberal distrust of big corporations? What about if Facebook decides discussion of privacy violations online is "fake news?"

Doesn't worry me in the least. I am surprised they weren't already heavily filtered.

I also don't use facebook at all.

It would worry me if an ISP or other group that should be a common carrier were censoring things. Or if the government censored things. But people on facebook are willingly buying into whatever facebook is providing.