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

reuters.com

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

#41

Post by cbhl »

cbhl wrote: post #38
spangry wrote: post #27

"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…

Trying to overcompensate for bias is how we got into this mess in the first place. Rather than picking a set of biases and viewpoints and presenting that, news orgs and silicon valley have decided that $thing_i_agree_with and $the_opposite_view deserve equal reach/airtime.

I totally expect that Facebook will just pick biased "fact-checkers" on both sides of the aisle and call it done.

Google has over 150 organizations that are allowed to "fact check" through their API: https://www.blog.google/products/search/fact-check-now-avail...

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

#42

Post by x220 »

cbhl wrote: post #38
spangry wrote: post #27

"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…

Trying to overcompensate for bias is how we got into this mess in the first place. Rather than picking a set of biases and viewpoints and presenting that, news orgs and silicon valley have decided that $thing_i_agree_with and $the_opposite_view deserve equal reach/airtime.

>Rather than picking a set of biases and viewpoints and presenting that, news orgs and silicon valley have decided that $thing_i_agree_with and $the_opposite_view deserve equal reach/airtime

No, we do that because a marketplace of subjective ideas is a good thing.

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

#43

Post by aaaaaaaaaab »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #36
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…

The academics are wrong, the problem is tribalism. Facts don't matter, thought doesn't matter, even ideology doesn't matter. It's just about tribes at this point for a decent chunk of the population. Now, social media is an excellent platform for whipping up further tribalism. But it's not so straightforward as "a few cambridge analytica ad buys -> electoral zombies".

Wait a sec! There is nothing wrong with tribalism per se. The problem is that fake news are convincing people that my tribe is wrong, which is obviously nonsense!

/s

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

#44

Post by 6nf »

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

5% is a lot. Political ads are 5% of Facebook's revenue? Wow that's way more than I expected.

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

#46

Post by r00fus »

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 have a fiduciary duty to their investors to not leave money on the table... blah blah blah.

There is a lot of cheerleading of bloodthirsty capitalism in the hallowed halls of CNBC and the like.

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

#47

Post by donatj »

x220 wrote: post #40

I really don't think you should remove information (or even be able to sue someone, except for defamation) for it being false, because it gives people the false impression that if information is printed or allowed on Facebook that it's probably accurate. We need to give everyone the impression that whatever they read might be false, because it actually might be false. Maybe that will make people think critically abou…

This. Assume everything is false until proven otherwise.

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

#48

Post by dev_dull »

This is such a slippery slope. Even now snopes hasn’t debunked the “Trump tower server communicating to Russia”[1] story even though it was simply spam and is soundly debunked.

And when we learned that or national intelligence agencies wire tapped a duly elected president? CNN called it fake news (“we’re dumber for having heard that”).

If we let these “fact checkers” control the narrative we’re sacrificing our own ability to critically judge things for ourselves. Because we’ll never see it.

I have zero doubt that “misinformation” is simply — or already — overloaded with political biases.

1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russi...

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

#49

Post by x220 »

donatj wrote: post #47
x220 wrote: post #40

I really don't think you should remove information (or even be able to sue someone, except for defamation) for it being false, because it gives people the false impression that if information is printed or allowed on Facebook that it's probably accurate. We need to give everyone the impression that whatever they read might be false, because it actually might be false. Maybe that will make people think critically abou…

This. Assume everything is false until proven otherwise.

I don't go that far. I tend to look at a few things:

* what is the source? do they have a reputable history?

* do they have conflicts of interest?

* do they have a history of faithfully printing retractions and admitting mistakes, or a history of exaggerating facts?

* do they have a history of writing accurately about subjects I am an expert about? (e.g. subfields of computer science)

If they score pretty well, I tend to believe in the facts (and evaluate the interpretation) they espouse until I come across something that contradicts it. So far the only source I regularly trust is the Economist, but I haven't researched the history of many news organizations. It's just a starting point for me.

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

#50

Post by f39uyc3 »

x220 wrote: post #40

I really don't think you should remove information (or even be able to sue someone, except for defamation) for it being false, because it gives people the false impression that if information is printed or allowed on Facebook that it's probably accurate. We need to give everyone the impression that whatever they read might be false, because it actually might be false. Maybe that will make people think critically abou…

An ability to trace the sources of the posts might be interesting. And connecting that to discourse about the typical accuracy of those sources.

"This content paid for by... here's the other content they paid for/posted, the trend of topics they discuss, and a weighted bullshit meter"

But Facebook plainly wants to moderate the narratives for themselves; until recently their entire news feed was human curated. Now they're just going to keep it behind the scenes, use some algorithms, and offer pay to play, so yeah, they'll get right on doing something that offers visibility.

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