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

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

#81
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

third-party fact-checkers This is the part that stood out to me. It's allows Facebook to tell lawmakers and the public "Hey, look! We're taking things seriously!" Until something goes wrong. Then they can lay the blame on someone else and issue another non-apology apology saying, "We can do better."

What would a better solution look like, in your view? Is it the third-party aspect that you take issue with, or the fact-checking? Or the combination of the two?

It gets even worse when you find out who the 'fact' 'checkers' are.

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

#82
post #51

> Because Facebook forwards posts that are marked as false to third-party fact-checkers, she said it was important to build systems to assess whether the posts were likely to be false to make efficient use of fact-checkers’ time. This seems like a "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of thing. On one hand, I understand not wanting to forward every single story when a troll is mass-reporting, on the o…

> third party fact checkers Seems like infinite regress and turtles all the way down to me. Who fact checks the fact checkers?

Pretty soon you need to ask the question "what is truth?"

Third party fact checkers seems like the best possible thing that could be in that box. It's not perfect, but there has never been a perfect system to determine truth so waiting until there is one is counterproductive. You do the best with the tools you have available.

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

#83

> Because Facebook forwards posts that are marked as false to third-party fact-checkers, she said it was important to build systems to assess whether the posts were likely to be false to make efficient use of fact-checkers’ time. This seems like a "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of thing. On one hand, I understand not wanting to forward every single story when a troll is mass-reporting, on the o…

Good intentions? I would even argue against that. I find it hard to believe facebook has good intentions with this. Remember, Mr. Zuckerberg is alleged to have called Mr. Trump the night of the election to congratulate him. Let’s stop pretending like the tech industry is full of good intentioned people making an “oops”

As a European I want to make it vocally known that in my opinion US politics has in recent times almost irrevocably poisoned HackerNews; and that is coming from someone who has been on this site eight years.

One _cannot_ in _any way_ infer a lack of good intentions from a single alleged phone call.

Besides, if I were a titan of industry I would do my best to call whoever the hell got elected president the night of the election regardless of my particular party affiliation. Especially considering most corporations lobby both of the main political parties to hedge their bets.

I imagine hardly any corporation lets ideology trump pragmatism – partisan individuals (we do not need to name names) notwithstanding.

For the love of all that is holy, can we please please focus on tech and policy and put identity politics and tribal politics to one side on HN? Please?

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

#85

> Because Facebook forwards posts that are marked as false to third-party fact-checkers, she said it was important to build systems to assess whether the posts were likely to be false to make efficient use of fact-checkers’ time. This seems like a "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" kind of thing. On one hand, I understand not wanting to forward every single story when a troll is mass-reporting, on the o…

What would be a viable alternative? I don't think they can just ignore the issue and, as you mention, can't review every single story. They'll have to rely on some form of sampling for the reviewers. Would it be better to just take a truly random sample of all reports? I don't think that would be very effective given the number of publications they have to review. Do you let users review the content for veracity? See…

Dump the algorithmic timeline and allow people to see the posts from those they follow in chronological order.

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

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the parent commenter's issue does imply a solution! Just add "Biased/slanted coverage" to the list of reasons to report, and now your "Fake News" section is much higher signal to noise.

Everything is biased. True objectivity is effectively impossible, and it's not even clear that perfect objectivity is desirable. People will report any negative coverage of their favorite party/politician as biased, especially now that the current U.S. president hoists that banner every day.

[deleted]

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

#87
post #5

Can you GDPR request this?

If you could, then I suspect that you could do things like makes posts and GPDR the result, if you rinse and repeat you could probably reverse engineer what the algorithm is.

Share Washington Post articles and rat out your neighbors who post Infowars and you'll be set.

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

#88
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would a better solution look like, in your view? Is it the third-party aspect that you take issue with, or the fact-checking? Or the combination of the two?

It gets even worse when you find out who the 'fact' 'checkers' are.

[deleted]

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

#89

> "Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false simply because they did not agree with the content." So, people report posts as false when they do not agree that they are true? I'm struggling to understand how that is a surprise, or what other possible thing you could expect. That's literally exactly what “false” means.

By "agree with the content", the author clearly doesn't means "believe that the content is factually incorrect", rather that they disagree with the viewpoint expressed in the story.

> By "agree with the content", the author clearly doesn't means "believe that the content is factually incorrect"

I disagree that that is obvious, and, moreover, I would disagree with the idea that the author would have any way of telling whether someone flagging merely disagreed with some aspect of the viewpoint/presentation outside of the base facts or disagreed with both the viewpoint and the fact claims, seeing the latter as misrepresented to serve the former. Further, it's virtually impossible to cleanly separate disagreement on viewpoint from disagreement over facts, because the two mutually interact (particularly viewpoints not only shape perception of facts but also perceptions of the; relative importance of facts.)

For instance, there is a story right now circulating in even fairly mainstream, especially conservative, media (notably including Fox News) and being widely shared on social media alleging that a proposed California law would ban restaurants from serving children any drinks except the two choices of milk and water. This story is invariably couches in a lot of viewpoint around crazy nanny state liberals and other conservative stereotypes of California. It is very likely that lots of people would disagree strongly with the viewpoint of the story.

But the actual proposal, as one discovers with a few minutes of research, (1) doesn't limit what restaurants can offer to children (it limits “default drink options” for children's meal combos) and the limitation it proposes isn't to just milk and water (it includes milk, water, flavored water, and nondairy milk alternatives). It is, in other words, factually false in several dimensions.

Now, if one agrees with the viewpoint, one may be more likely to dismiss those factual errors, even if you are aware of them, as minor and tangential. If one disagrees with the viewpoint, one is likely more inclined to see them as significant and central and indicative of a deliberate distortion to push an agenda.

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

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good intentions? I would even argue against that. I find it hard to believe facebook has good intentions with this. Remember, Mr. Zuckerberg is alleged to have called Mr. Trump the night of the election to congratulate him. Let’s stop pretending like the tech industry is full of good intentioned people making an “oops”

As a European I want to make it vocally known that in my opinion US politics has in recent times almost irrevocably poisoned HackerNews; and that is coming from someone who has been on this site eight years. One _cannot_ in _any way_ infer a lack of good intentions from a single alleged phone call. Besides, if I were a titan of industry I would do my best to call whoever the hell got elected president the night of th…

I hate the "identity politics" meme. What is policy that effects humans but "identity politics". From privacy oriented individuals concerned with data collection to social minorities concerned about prosecution any administration is going effect you based on identity.

For racial and sexual minorities, in the current US climate especially, it's hard to avoid "identity politics" when you have literal mobs with torches yelling for your head. And likewise it's hard to not feel a bit betrayed (even if that's completely irrational) when corporations ignore this for the sake of maintaining good relations for profit.

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