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Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

lgraham.senate.gov

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Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#81

Post by dragonwriter »

sova wrote: post #31
comex wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t watched the testimony, but I don’t think the suggestion is for the government to make the judgements for the labels - at least, that sounds like an epically terrible idea, especially (but not only) given the current president’s predilection for calling any news he doesn’t like “fake”. Rather, I think social media platforms would be expected to do that themselves, maybe by contracting with external fact chec…

Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion and it is easy enough to put an article in Column Op-Ed instead of Column New Info

> Yes but there IS a legal definition for reporting vs opinion

Please cite the applicable law. (There's clearly a legal difference—relevant for, e.g., defamation claims—between fact and opinion claims, but that operates at a much smaller unit than an entire article, which can contain both kinds of claims.)

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#82

Post by jos3 »

rgbrenner wrote: post #21
sova wrote: post #7

Facebook Counsel says: Our authenticity policy is the cornerstone of how we prevent abuse on our platform, and was the basis of our internal investigation and what we found. From the beginning, we have always believed that Facebook is a place for authentic dialogue, and that the best way to ensure authenticity is to require people to use the names they are known by. Fake accounts undermine this objective, and are clo…

And who determines what's fact and fiction? Is it the news agency? So they just have to say "We 100% believe aliens live on the dark side of the moon" and it gets counted as fact? Or is it the government? And anything the government doesn't like is fake news.. and everything they do like is fact? I think this is much more difficult than you're assuming. Impossible really.

This is an old problem. What is new is how fast things spread.

Delaying when the upvotes/retweet/view counts become visible, will reduce the speed with which info spreads, and there will be less chaos.

Speed is highly overrated and it's value falsely tied to "engagement". Easy to run this experiment on HN - only show users their karma a week after their post gets published post quality will increase and engagement will drop. Which is an ideal outcome in a world where fiction trumps fact by a huge and exponentially increasing margin.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#83

Post by [deleted] »

jos3 wrote: post #82
rgbrenner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who determines what's fact and fiction? Is it the news agency? So they just have to say "We 100% believe aliens live on the dark side of the moon" and it gets counted as fact? Or is it the government? And anything the government doesn't like is fake news.. and everything they do like is fact? I think this is much more difficult than you're assuming. Impossible really.

This is an old problem. What is new is how fast things spread. Delaying when the upvotes/retweet/view counts become visible, will reduce the speed with which info spreads, and there will be less chaos. Speed is highly overrated and it's value falsely tied to "engagement". Easy to run this experiment on HN - only show users their karma a week after their post gets published post quality will increase and engagement wi…

[deleted]

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#84

Post by nfoz »

xienze wrote: post #68

Could we just, you know, get some examples of these stunningly effective ads that have the power to sway elections? Is that too much to ask? Or would we find out that these ads that the Dems have been hyping up are nothing more than run-of-the-mill memes?

> these ads that the Dems have been hyping up

The post under discussion is an article by Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

Here's an interesting example I saw in [1], although I don't know if it was foreign-originating. It's an official-looking ad for Democrats that tells them they can vote from home by texting "Hillary" to a 5-digit phone number.

[1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?436454-1/facebook-google-twitt...

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#85

Post by wutbrodo »

comex wrote: post #28
Xeoncross wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`nutrition labels` are already kind of subjective as we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. Having a "truth vs fiction" rating next to news sites isn't as easy as you think. Sure, some things are easy to qualify - but when it comes to wars, motivations, scandals - many common stories will always be left with two equally disputed sides of the story.…

I haven’t watched the testimony, but I don’t think the suggestion is for the government to make the judgements for the labels - at least, that sounds like an epically terrible idea, especially (but not only) given the current president’s predilection for calling any news he doesn’t like “fake”. Rather, I think social media platforms would be expected to do that themselves, maybe by contracting with external fact chec…

> creating any centralized pseudo-authority on what counts as truth - even a private one committed to neutrality and limited to a specific social media platform - carries significant risks. I think some existing sites, such as Politifact, currently do a pretty good job of distinguishing “this is false” from “this is political spin I disagree with”. But they’re not perfect - they clearly have a bias, like everyone else - and other fact checkers tend to be somewhat worse, from what I’ve seen, ranging from Snopes to fact-checking articles in WaPo, NYT, etc.

This is why I think the concept is so hopelessly naive. News sources are already supposed to be factual, but there's immense difficulty in finding a single, high quality source, and strong incentives pushing them towards developing sources that serve the beliefs that people want to hold.

Why in earth would an extra layer of misdirection help at all? All you'd end up with is a replica of the news ecosystem we have now.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#86

Post by [deleted] »

crazy1van wrote: post #69
ruytlm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nutrition labels treat the symptom, not the cause. IMO the root cause is a neglected and underfunded education system, that does not adequately prepare people for the levels of psychological manipulation the will experience in the form of marketing. Sure, a nutrition label might help, but it's kind of passing the buck - "We don't need to fix our education system, people just need to be able to count to five so they k…

Education might be the root cause and it might be neglected but in the US it certainly isn't underfunded. Source: http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2015/apr/21/jeb...

[deleted]

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#87

Post by mathperson »

fareesh wrote: post #77
mathperson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? Donald is SIGNIFICANTLY more pro-russia than Hilary would have been. Ex-post facto that justified it. Actions of Donald: 1. Intense skepticism of NATO (Russia hates this). 2. attempted to remove sanctions 3. Return spy compounds 4. America turning inwards and rejecting its international role as the hegemonic power and guarantor of western institutions. 5. The russians have preferred the republicans f…

To prove successful influence on elections, one would have to prove that the content of the ad influenced a voter's choice of candidate. This is hard, if not impossible to prove, by anyone, and Mueller certainly isn't the authority on why someone in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Florida voted the way they did. These 3 states sealed the deal for the election. What is proved so far is attempted Russian influence on elections…

To be honest I find a lot of what you wrote here irrelevant. The goal of mueller is not to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that russian support was effective. We can't prove what caused millions of trump voters to be persuaded. (However, I think it is clear it had a significant effect). He is investigating crimes not causality. Frankly whether it worked or not doesn't really matter-the crimes committed by american citizens in the process and how to avoid similar actions by foreign governments again are what matters.

As for your statements about 2008 or 2012 I would need a lot of citations for claims about russian interference in those elections.

Your statement about this current anti-russian wave is wildly off base.

Comparing an innocuous diplomatic statement and a line during a debate with a prolonged and consistent pattern of contact between campaign officials to obtain intelligence provided by the Russian government through hacking....

Moving on-yes- lobbying is bad.

The next paragraph where you talk about Podesta is baffling to me. The strongest case against the president (note these might not actually be crimes-often the cover-up is more damaging and criminal) is that his campaign officials met with agents of the russian government (who represented themselves thusly) and intelligence services to proffer damaging material on a domestic political opponent. Your contention that it is possible that "the campaign was equally clueless about the entire thing" is belied by the fact that three of the key principals (Manafort, Kushner, Don Jr) in the trump campaign met with agents of the russian government...(among many any other incidents).

Hell there was a new york times article this very day about how the trump campaign was aware of the DNC hacks months before it became public knowledge. Donald trump cheered the hackers on in debates. Claiming the campaign was entirely unaware is dead wrong.

You then mention how there needs to be a demonstrated pattern of pro-russian behavior. I mentioned a fair few above-adding in that trump still has not implemented a recent round of sanctions.

To the geopolitical point-the actions of America are very far from perfect. I have many frustrations with the actions of my government. But I do not know if the world would be much more stable if America did not exist and neither do you.

I assure you- the united states is not a russian puppet and will never be so.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#88

Post by kbenson »

peterlk wrote: post #70
kbenson wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not at an article level, it's at an institution level. If an institution is known to publish misleading article with half-truths or non-truths, a rating which indicates that (and links to a list with examples) would be beneficial. Institutions that want to be seen as credible will strive to be accurate and fix any mistakes. There are definitely problems with this, but the idea that we just need to fix our educat…

I disagree that education is a cop-out. Telling people what is credible and what is not is part if the mess that we're in now. If I can stand up a fancy looking "news" site, write my opinion as fact, and have people believe me, that is a problem of our education system. That principle of freedom of information is what the internet is built on. A large number of retweets does not make something factual.

It's not about telling people what's credible and what's not, it's about telling them who has been caught being factually incorrect more than others, linking to additional info, and letting people use that to help them make their own choices. A centralized authority is less likely to be partisan, and whatever shortcomings it has will be widely publicized. Think of it like a credit bureau or a sock/bond ratings company, but without some of the perverse incentives that apply there, and kept from getting too partisan by government oversight.

We investigate and prosecute people that commit fraud. I don't see why we can't at least note where news agencies are failing in a way that's harmful to the populace. It's not perfect, and it may fail, but it might also give us another useful tool to signal the quality of an information source.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#89

Post by jasonlotito »

rgbrenner wrote: post #57
sova wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Independent fact checking firms exist, I don't think it is a stretch to distill their info into an easily comprehended badge icon. Google, according to their Counsel, is already giving anti terror groups flagging software.

So you propose Tampa Bay Times Politifact, and The Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org become arbiters of truth? Have you actually read many of their articles? A lot of it depends on judgement calls of the person doing the fact checking. Leeway is given or taken by the fact checker.. and that amount varies by who is doing the checking. (And you can’t eliminate this because human language is so flexible tha…

Did you actual read the differences, which are bigger than than simply a number. In one case, the number is backed up by evidence which is provided by the campaign. Politifact can then verify that the number isn't just made up or based on nothing. It's mostly true if you understand the context.

As for Trump, they didn't provide anything to back up the statements. They had to dig to find where he got the information, and nothing they found backs up what he said.

Now, you can argue the sources and the meaning, and that's the problem with statistics. But there is a difference between the two, more than just 8 percentage points.

Re: Testimony of Facebook, Google, and Twitter to US Senate

#90

Post by Balgair »

jos3 wrote: post #80
Balgair wrote: post #74

FB: $100K in ads barely made an impression on the election. Nothing to really worry about Also FB: Come buy our ads! Zuck man, either you have the power or you don't. I get trying to save face, but I didn't get that feeling from them. It felt to me that they really are that dissonant.

Skip past the FB/Google/Twitter Lawyers at the hearings and listen to what the Security experts are saying. The tech companies are only reacting to whats happening on THEIR platforms, but the big picture emerges only when looking across multiple platforms and the dark web. This makes sense to me, as modern day marketing/targeting happens across as many channels as your budget allows. The target is not just spending h…

Unfortunately, I agree...

Sorry Cory Doctorow, but the 'open' web is going the way of the open ranges of cattle drives. There's too many banditos robbing stagecoaches now, we need the Cavalry. As you say, this will end in a 'Chinese' manner. Nationalism and borders have proved to be stronger than the net.

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