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Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#21

Post by drivingmenuts »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #9
bilbo0s wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Facebook users can rate Facebook's trustworthiness by simply not using Facebook. Which I would recommend. What impact on physical and mental health does it have to sit around checking different screens for InstaFaceSnap or RedditTwitTube updates?

Users/useds: Bill (not FB user) Sue (FB user) Jill (FB user) Conversation: Sue: Bill is just so unreliable. He says things and doesnt do them. Jill: Yah he did the same to me! ------ (Notices Bill's ghost profile's trustworthiness score go down, without any interaction from Bill at all. What exactly do we do about that? We in the US have no rights like this. The corps can do whatever they want, and maybe just maybe,…

> maybe just maybe, a decent law will be passed to protect us.

Against what? A company rating their trust in our ability to use their resources? This happens on a daily basis with almost any company; it's just less formalized.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#22

Post by mic47 »

ForHackernews wrote: post #3

Interesting. I wonder if this includes lies told in private messages?

According to article it looks like it's about marking something as fake news (i.e. how "correct" you are in that). At least that is how I understood it.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#23

Post by SN76477 »

pjc50 wrote: post #13

"Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false simply because they did not agree with the content." Well, yes. Have they not learned from any of the preceding work on moderating?

Always expecting humans to be rational, this is why we fail.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#26

Post by patrickg_zill »

pc86 wrote: post #11
_bxg1 wrote: post #10

I'll just leave this here https://www.wired.co.uk/article/china-social-credit

A. A dictatorial, totalitarian government rating all its citizens based on opaque criteria and using that to restrict access to essential services, financial support, and general life and liberty. B. A private company scoring its users to combat spam, as all social networks do.

To close the loop: government immigration authority claims the right to use your social media accounts as input to determine whether you may enter the country.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#28

Post by deanclatworthy »

It's smart to go public with this. There is established research in this area and a trove of algorithms for measuring trust. Even if it's as simple as lowering a user's trust ranking after false reports - when applied across a dataset as large as FB's it's going to be somewhat accurate.

The article goes on to suggest this is just one of a range of heuristics use to determine trustworthiness. I can imagine all kinds of profile interactions that would be be good indicators of this.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#29

Post by eivarv »

I don't understand why the big players such as Facebook and Google keeps insisting on using (appeals to) authority as a proxy to truth, when we have rules and systems for critical thinking.

It seems to me that if the claims and stories in question could be re-posed (e.g. as falsifiable, logically coherent statements or arguments) the worst of "fake news" could be weeded out.

The rest (and biases, etc.) would likely have to be left as an exercise for the (critical) reader.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#30

Post by WiseWeasel »

mic47 wrote: post #20
pjc50 wrote: post #13

"Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false simply because they did not agree with the content." Well, yes. Have they not learned from any of the preceding work on moderating?

I worked for FB anti-spam team, and believe me, nobody trusted user feedback absolutely (i.e. it's good to send to review, but not automatically take down). I guess that with fake news the signal to noise ratio is even worse. The whole article sounds more like focusing on one implementation details of review queue prioritization (i.e. what is the difference of definition of "fake news" for this user vs Facebook's def…

To me, fake news also includes slanted coverage of true events (i.e. covering events in such a way as to convey a sponsored message, biased polling methodology, etc.). That encompasses statistically approaching 100% of trashy sources you’re likely to encounter as 'sponsored content', as well as a healthy portion of more established sources' content. I'd be likely to report a majority as fake news in perfectly good faith if given the option.

Maybe the term isn’t as narrowly defined as your (former?) employer would like.

Edit: upon a bit more reflection, I do take for granted a desire to protect life and liberty (in that order), and anything that appears to threaten that view will draw special scrutiny, and potential abuse of reporting features.

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