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Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#121

Post by mike_hearn »

MBCook wrote: post #105
emodendroket wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly people on both sides were accused of that but the idea that Black Lives Matter was actually just a Russian plot is frankly pretty repellent, and that paper in the end just defers to Twitter's ideas of who's a Russian troll, and how did they decide? We've seen a lot of really shoddy work in this department.

No, I’m not saying it was a Russian plot at all. It’s a real thing. I’m saying they seized on it as something they could use to push division between people.

I find that incredibly unlikely. I used to work in bot fighting on Google. Claims of Russian bots on Twitter and especially claims by academics are invariably riddled with methodological errors that render the "research" useless. I wrote about this problem here:

https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f...

These studies are seeing patterns in noise. That's why the narrative changed over time - it used to be "Russian twitter bots got Trump elected!" and now it's "they're supporting both sides .... to sow division!".

The former claim was extremely implausible but at least it had some sort of inner logic to it, in that Trump was more friendly to Russia than Clinton. The new spin doesn't even make logical sense. However it makes perfect sense if you're just picking random Twitter users and trying to explain their behaviour through the prism of some convoluted conspiracy.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#122

Post by mattferderer »

peoplewindow wrote: post #112
belorn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The experience from a few months ago during a conference showed me that education won't fix echo chambers. It was a conference that was organized by a organization that holds one of the major initiative against false news, and where one of the main tracks was about addressing the issue of false news. Last year they had a massive booth at the middle of the conference hall about false news. This year they brought in a…

The whole idea of "fake news" came out of US politics to begin with, so no surprise organisations set up specifically with that as a mantra are ideological in nature and uninterested in actual facts.

I believe with your quotes, you may be referring to the phrase "fake news" but fake news has been around as long as humans & probably even longer. I'm glad people are giving this a discussion though.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#123

Post by yAnonymous »

hrktb wrote: post #99
yAnonymous wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. Should we censor social media, because people are too stupid to deal with it? I don't think so and if you do, you're playing in the hands of corporations who want a cheap work force. Your "solution" isn't a solution, but a hot fix that will cause more damage in the future. It's exactly the shortsighted crap politics are t…

> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. But how do educate yourself though ? The same argument was already made about books or newspapers: depending of the subject a lot of them are trash. Same for TV news. Wikipedia is also not a defacto trustable source. Except for first hand experience on a subject, you will never be able to find a source that is inherentl…

First of all, good education should come from schools.

Being able to further educate yourself and judge the trustworthiness of sources are direct results of a good primary education.

Many western states have criminally decreased education expanses for decades and the current state of the civilization is in big parts a result of that.

This shit is infectious, too. Many stupid people think their kids don't need a good education, even if there's a chance for them to get one.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#124

Post by yesenadam »

dvt wrote: post #24

Slightly off-topic: are there any social networks out there not polluted by news -- fake or otherwise? Is there room for a new social network that's for, you know, people? Snapchat's a tabloid, Facebook is basically a news RSS feed, and I'm even starting to get news "stories" when browsing hashtags on Instagram. I just want to discover people and talk to people . Apart from dating apps (Tinder/Bumble/etc.), it seems…

Well, my FB isn't polluted by news. I don't know why people talk as if they're forced to look at their news feeds, I hardly ever do. I use it for chatting with friends around the world, looking at their pics sometimes, making friends.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#125

Post by darkstar999 »

dvt wrote: post #24

Slightly off-topic: are there any social networks out there not polluted by news -- fake or otherwise? Is there room for a new social network that's for, you know, people? Snapchat's a tabloid, Facebook is basically a news RSS feed, and I'm even starting to get news "stories" when browsing hashtags on Instagram. I just want to discover people and talk to people . Apart from dating apps (Tinder/Bumble/etc.), it seems…

In my experience, Instagram is the closest. But the downside is that it's only images.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#126

Post by yAnonymous »

y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #80
yAnonymous wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. Should we censor social media, because people are too stupid to deal with it? I don't think so and if you do, you're playing in the hands of corporations who want a cheap work force. Your "solution" isn't a solution, but a hot fix that will cause more damage in the future. It's exactly the shortsighted crap politics are t…

> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. I agree, but it's impossible to educate everyone on any subject. I think in this case, people who are experts in the matter, should give a reputation rating on the article. That would be really great. For example, I am no expert in theoretical physics, but I may enjoy an article about it, but how do I know it's not a bu…

An educated person can judge the trustworthiness of a source well enough.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#127

Post by gervase »

imgabe wrote: post #95

This seems very lazy on Facebook's part. Rather than employing people who will research and fact-check, they're punting the problem to the users. This whole situation arose because users are very bad at determining which sources are credible. People will believe anything that confirms their biases, and disbelieve anything that doesn't.

I think this is spot on, but it misses the core reasoning: this approach permits them to look like they're doing something, without actually changing the status quo. In other words, this lets them have their cake and eat it too, because users (and news orgs) can't blame Facebook for the rankings - they're "from the users"!

At least, that's how this news reads from my admittedly-cynical perspective.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#128

Post by pixl97 »

yAnonymous wrote: post #123
hrktb wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. But how do educate yourself though ? The same argument was already made about books or newspapers: depending of the subject a lot of them are trash. Same for TV news. Wikipedia is also not a defacto trustable source. Except for first hand experience on a subject, you will never be able to find a source that is inherentl…

First of all, good education should come from schools. Being able to further educate yourself and judge the trustworthiness of sources are direct results of a good primary education. Many western states have criminally decreased education expanses for decades and the current state of the civilization is in big parts a result of that. This shit is infectious, too. Many stupid people think their kids don't need a good…

And if schoolbooks are filled with 'fake news'. All you've done at this point is create an appeal to authority.

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#129

Post by ikeyany »

alexgandy wrote: post #20

Bad or good, this is an admission of failure. Facebook just flat out said "screw it, you all decide what's real...because we sure as shit can't."

They sure as shit can, but they sure as shit don't want to. They could have tackled this 10 years ago but instead they optimized for likes, clicks, traffic, and revenue.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#130

Post by pixl97 »

yAnonymous wrote: post #126
y0ghur7_xxx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. I agree, but it's impossible to educate everyone on any subject. I think in this case, people who are experts in the matter, should give a reputation rating on the article. That would be really great. For example, I am no expert in theoretical physics, but I may enjoy an article about it, but how do I know it's not a bu…

An educated person can judge the trustworthiness of a source well enough.

No they cant.

See, I can make things up too. Furthermore the amount of education necessary to judge the trustworthiness of all potential subjects is not obtainable by an individual, meaning they have to hope the experts they choose to listen to aren't making it up.

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