Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 151 posts

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#21

Post by tomp »

buboard wrote: post #9

The upcoming US elections may prove to be a watershed moment for modern democracies in general. There is a widely held belief in academic cycles that mass voter manipulation through social media has managed to trump all other kinds of propaganda, causing people to become electoral zombies. This belief is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias. I hope facebook and the other media do everything by the book…

> This will be an easy way to finally dissolve these mass delusions and make it obvious that societal change is real.

How so? If the democrats win, the republicans will be able to claim that Silicon Valley is manipulating the voters by deplatforming conservatives. If the republicans win, the democrats will be able to claim more Russian bot/fake news manipulation.

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#22

Post by thefounder »

narrator wrote: post #14
buboard wrote: post #9

The upcoming US elections may prove to be a watershed moment for modern democracies in general. There is a widely held belief in academic cycles that mass voter manipulation through social media has managed to trump all other kinds of propaganda, causing people to become electoral zombies. This belief is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias. I hope facebook and the other media do everything by the book…

Instead of mass voter manipulation of voters through the establishment media? Nobody would be in a panic at all if Hillary had won.

The issue with Facebook is that it's too easy for someone from Russia for example to place ads. I believe the established media doesn't run thousands of ads paid by thousands of unknown individuals.

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#24

Post by gonehome »

misterprime wrote: post #15
buboard wrote: post #9

The upcoming US elections may prove to be a watershed moment for modern democracies in general. There is a widely held belief in academic cycles that mass voter manipulation through social media has managed to trump all other kinds of propaganda, causing people to become electoral zombies. This belief is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias. I hope facebook and the other media do everything by the book…

They spent over $100,000 on ads during the 2016 campaign. You can't deny that the voters were manipulated! /s

The scale of people affected went beyond ads - there was a lot of group creation and stirring controversy. They also got Americans to organize protests, I think the full reach was around 126 million people.

"When Facebook first acknowledged last year the Russian intrusion on its platform, it seemed modest in scale. The $100,000 spent on ads was a trivial sum compared with the tens of millions spent on Facebook by both the Trump and Clinton campaigns.

But it quickly became clear that the Russians had used a different model for their influence campaign: posting inflammatory messages and relying on free, viral spread. Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone. That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential election."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/r...

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#25

Post by spiznnx »

fooker wrote: post #19
genericone wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order to prevent virality on WeChat, they impose a 100 share limit before limiting new shares to invites-only and only for people who have a linked mobile number. What this effectively means is that if WeChat detects a 'viral-event', anonymity can be squashed and those responsible for causing the viral-event can be identified and I suppose questioned at a later date on whether they are anti-government or simply ra…

Limiting to 100 is still a large exponential. In just 5 'levels' of share, it can reach about 300 million people.

I think 100 refers to total 100 shares of an original story, not 100 levels of share.

(Example: You can hit 100 shares in 2 levels of share. You have 100 friends share your story, each share reaches their 100 friends. That's only 10,000 people)

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#26

Post by spiznnx »

dlivingston wrote: post #7
394549 wrote: post #4

> Months ago, senior Facebook executives briefly debated banning all political ads, which produce less than 5 percent of the company’s revenue, sources said. The company rejected that because product managers were loath to leave advertising dollars on the table... Gotta remember what's most important. /s

They are a business, after all.

Well, by not "leaving money on the table" they now have an existential crisis.

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#27

Post by spangry »

"On the issue of fake news, Facebook has held off on a total ban, instead limiting the spread of articles marked as false by vetted fact-checkers. However, that approach can leave fact-checkers overwhelmed and able to tackle only the most viral hoaxes."

Does anyone else find this concerning? Even the smallest bias held by fact-checkers can dramatically skew things towards one side e.g. only "fact-check" articles that favour one side.

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#28

Post by chmln »

thefounder wrote: post #22
narrator wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of mass voter manipulation of voters through the establishment media? Nobody would be in a panic at all if Hillary had won.

The issue with Facebook is that it's too easy for someone from Russia for example to place ads. I believe the established media doesn't run thousands of ads paid by thousands of unknown individuals.

I think it was just recently that China placed ads in the Des Moines Register, with reports of similar activity on the Times etc.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/20...

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#29

Post by nickodell »

tivert wrote: post #20
dlivingston wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a business, after all.

> They are a business, after all. Just like a cigarette company that doesn't want to leave money on the table from not courting youth sales. It's a twisted idea that the logic of business success can be used to justify all kinds of destructive and harmful decisions by businesses.

There are both business and public policy arguments for not banning political ads, as the article notes.

Re: Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections

#30

Post by x220 »

apatheticonion wrote: post #18
buboard wrote: post #9

The upcoming US elections may prove to be a watershed moment for modern democracies in general. There is a widely held belief in academic cycles that mass voter manipulation through social media has managed to trump all other kinds of propaganda, causing people to become electoral zombies. This belief is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias. I hope facebook and the other media do everything by the book…

It seems that Trump being in power has been a negative force for Facebook. I wonder if there is a legitimate business incentive for the company to manipulate the distributed information to provide an anti-conservative bias

are you implying that a social media company known to manipulate the mental state of its users might want to influence the people who vote for the politicians that talk about Facebook like a monopoly and want to break it up? that's unbelievable
Post reply on HN