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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

#161

Post by igravious »

bogomipz wrote: post #156
igravious wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm merely pointing out that I'm not from the US so that people know that I don't have a dog in the race. Just so you know I would vote for neither of the two big teams in the US. What I am trying to do is to say that from a neutral perspective the politicking here is reaching a toxic level. It distracts from the real issues of giant monopolistic tech companies and other such real social ills. You think it's amusing,…

I know, my comment was completely rooted in sarcasm :) I agree with you but I also think given the prominent role FB had in the last US election and the uncertainty of its potential role in the upcoming election its ensures that peoples's emotions on the subject tend to run hot. Cheers.

Ah ok :) That went whooshing by over my head – I've been spending too long in YouTube comment sections recently and have grown unaccustomed to the subtle wit of HNers.

As regards FB, is it a utility or a medium? If it is a medium then they exercise editorial control over the content on their platform and are liable for said content; if it is a utility then they should not censor any content (which they totally do – be it timeline manipulation or shadow-banning or deplatforming). Tech companies want it every which way – they want to behave like a utility but also censor (and monetize) content. Whatever they (FB, Twitter, YouTube, et. al.) are, they're leading an ad-fueled muddled existence. I really think we need anti-trust legislation to chop them into pieces and reboot with some much needed global competition. What we need is effectively an ITU‡ (which was founded in 1865 btw) for the 21st century.

‡ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunicatio...

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

#162

Post by dragonwriter »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #121
dragonwriter wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obviously, that's either factual or it’s not. Sure, but unless people actually work at PP or carry out their own individual on-site investigation, their knowledge of the fact is going to be based on what third-party sources they trust (including those acting as fact checkers), which is tightly correlated with viewpoint. > Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of false, they would vote…

> their knowledge of the fact is going to be based on what third-party sources they trust (including those acting as fact checkers), which is tightly correlated with viewpoint. But that's true of nearly everything. On anything controversial, users will generally vote based on what they like to believe, and such a system of ranking news stories or posters of news stories would never be reliable.

> But that's true of nearly everything.

Yes, that's my whole point: the claim made that users flag content bases on ideology rather than factual disagreement is essentially impossible to be justified, since perception of facts and ideological viewpoints are deeply intertwined.

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

#163

Post by cabalamat »

web007 wrote: post #149
cabalamat wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be a viable alternative? Not attempting to the arbiter of truth and falsehood would be one. Or reporting on what users think of a story's truthfulness: "49% rate this story as true, 21% rate it as untrue". Or, if they want to be honest, acknowledging that it is about policing taboo thoughts. "Smith, 4980203 Winston. This article is crimethink! Warning: If you read too many articles like it your Citizen C…

There are a lot of cases where truth and falsehood are absolute. Those cases where something is provably false should be called out as such. Think of something like Pizzagate - the fact that the restaurant in question didn't have a basement belied the assertions that bad things were happening in said basement. Any article or comment that passed on that provable lie should be flagged as a lie. Sure, there are grey are…

> There are a lot of cases where truth and falsehood are absolute

Sure, but for most contentious political issues, this is not the case.

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

#164

Post by paulvorobyev »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #30
mic47 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fa…

The thing is that pretty much all reporting has bias. Interpretation is inextricable from observation. Bias in and of itself is not a bad thing -- it provides a framework for meaningful discourse. IMO the real issue is being unaware of these biases. Introspection and constant self-evaluation is key.

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

#165

Post by dragonwriter »

web007 wrote: post #149
cabalamat wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What would be a viable alternative? Not attempting to the arbiter of truth and falsehood would be one. Or reporting on what users think of a story's truthfulness: "49% rate this story as true, 21% rate it as untrue". Or, if they want to be honest, acknowledging that it is about policing taboo thoughts. "Smith, 4980203 Winston. This article is crimethink! Warning: If you read too many articles like it your Citizen C…

There are a lot of cases where truth and falsehood are absolute. Those cases where something is provably false should be called out as such. Think of something like Pizzagate - the fact that the restaurant in question didn't have a basement belied the assertions that bad things were happening in said basement. Any article or comment that passed on that provable lie should be flagged as a lie. Sure, there are grey are…

> There are a lot of cases where truth and falsehood are absolute

Truth and falsehood are absolute for pretty much all fact claims.

Whether they can easily by determined is another story.

> Think of something like Pizzagate - the fact that the restaurant in question didn't have a basement belied the assertions that bad things were happening in said basement.

Sure, but suppose (they weren't, by for sake of illustrating the problem) bad things were happening in, say, a attached a controlled by the owners of the restaurant, but somehiw as the story got out and before it was fixed in text, it was distorted so that it referred to a non-existent basement instead. Would actively suppressing the story because of the impossible location described really be in the public interest?

Sure, in strict terms any single factual error in the most involved story makes the story false. But, most accounts will accumulate some false elements in a complex story: there has to be consideration of importance and materiality.

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

#166

Post by hunter2_ »

dragonwriter wrote: post #117
ithilglin909 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I’m overly pessimistic about how people collectively behave. But seriously, imagine an article posted on Facebook stating that Planned Parenthood sells body parts of aborted fetuses (or something similarly likely to elicit reactions). Obviously, that's either factual or it’s not. Yet I'm certain that if Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of false, they would vote based on person…

> Obviously, that's either factual or it’s not. Sure, but unless people actually work at PP or carry out their own individual on-site investigation, their knowledge of the fact is going to be based on what third-party sources they trust (including those acting as fact checkers), which is tightly correlated with viewpoint. > Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of false, they would vote…

> carry out their own individual on-site investigation

This is the crux of the whole issue. Everyone's talking about "facts" but should be talking about "proof". We would need a vouching system where only people who possess evidence or can otherwise demonstrate proof will even have their vote counted. Who watches the watchman yada yada. The whole thing is an impossible feat. The best we as content consumers can do is only trust that which is created by trusted hardware (i.e., is actual live action video and not CGI) rather than that which is created by journalists or reporters of any reputation whatsoever.

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

#167

Post by trobertson »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

I am tempted to paraphrase the Elephant man, "I am not a sigmoid function, I am a human being!" in response to that headline :-) That said, I think it is great that they are trying to characterize this sort of thing. The second law of institutions is that every process must require more people to execute than can conspire without being detected[1]. But relying so much on humans in one way or another is going to gum i…

> The second law of institutions is that every process must require more people to execute than can conspire without being detected[1]

> [1] No, I just made that up.

You didn't, actually. This is the Byzantine Generals problems as described by Leslie Lamport back in 1982. It is huge in fault tolerance for distributed systems.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance#Byza...

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

#169

Post by ChuckMcM »

trobertson wrote: post #167
ChuckMcM wrote: post #59

I am tempted to paraphrase the Elephant man, "I am not a sigmoid function, I am a human being!" in response to that headline :-) That said, I think it is great that they are trying to characterize this sort of thing. The second law of institutions is that every process must require more people to execute than can conspire without being detected[1]. But relying so much on humans in one way or another is going to gum i…

> The second law of institutions is that every process must require more people to execute than can conspire without being detected[1] > [1] No, I just made that up. You didn't, actually. This is the Byzantine Generals problems as described by Leslie Lamport back in 1982. It is huge in fault tolerance for distributed systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance#Byza...

You are correct, the origin of that principal is in Lamport's paper (which is one of my favorites by the way).

Where I was coming from was that there aren't, as far as I know, a codified set of rules for creating a stable institution. I was thinking that someone would say "there is no such thing" and ignore the advice so in my footnote I pointed out the the basic idea was in fact quite sound. I probably should have referenced the paper as well but assumed most people would already know about it.

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

#170

Post by bogomipz »

igravious wrote: post #161
bogomipz wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know, my comment was completely rooted in sarcasm :) I agree with you but I also think given the prominent role FB had in the last US election and the uncertainty of its potential role in the upcoming election its ensures that peoples's emotions on the subject tend to run hot. Cheers.

Ah ok :) That went whooshing by over my head – I've been spending too long in YouTube comment sections recently and have grown unaccustomed to the subtle wit of HNers. As regards FB, is it a utility or a medium? If it is a medium then they exercise editorial control over the content on their platform and are liable for said content; if it is a utility then they should not censor any content (which they totally do – b…

>"As regards FB, is it a utility or a medium?"

I'm assuming this is the question of are they a publisher or a platform? They seem to want to be both depending on the context and who is asking:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/02/facebook-...

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