Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by moogly » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 12:50 AM UTC

3minus1 wrote: post #85

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

Do you have a problem with political ads on tv? From my perspective we should have campaign finance laws that regulate political ad spending, but there's nothing inherently wrong with showing political ads on tv, facebook, or elsewhere.

Not the person you asked, but yes, I do have a problem with that. Luckily, it's not allowed in most of Europe.

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

#102

Post by pcwalton » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 12:52 AM UTC

x220 wrote: post #82

pcwalton wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This logic would also have us stop prosecuting pickpockets on subways, for fear that people might stop being careful with their belongings. Private social media platforms should both take steps to remove obviously false material and educate users as to how to recognize misinformation.

I don't know what sort of people you talk to, but I don't treat legal behavior in anywhere near a similar way to the way I treat illegal or directly harmful behavior. The idea of even making such an analogy feels wrong to me. Pickpocketing physically damages you and your property. To draw a parallel with speech stretches my imagination too thin.

Conspiracy theories that circulate on social media are causing damage to our democracy.

Facebook is a private platform. It's not, and it shouldn't be, bound by the First Amendment.

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

#103

Post by 08-15 » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 12:57 AM UTC

dymk wrote: post #61

cbhl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Feel free to look at the list of fact-checkers that Facebook uses for any particular country, if you're so inclined: https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/182222309230722

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

#104

Post by error_logic » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 12:59 AM UTC

ianai wrote: post #59

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…

It was clear the internet was full of lies long before the aol dial up days. If the message hasn’t sunk in by now I think people aren’t going to get it, ever. I’m not sure there’s even a positive way out of this for Facebook.

There are always new people learning old things about the Internet. Much like cleaning, you will never get to 100%, but without effort the problem will be far worse.

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

#105

Post by ridgeguy » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:03 AM UTC

taysic wrote: post #39

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…

Yes I think the cons of this outweigh the pros. Ultimately, people will stop getting their information on FB if it becomes too obvious it is being skewed unfairly.

If this were true, Fox news would long ago have disappeared.

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

#106

Post by genericone » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:03 AM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #78

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…

> Is this what you mean by wanting to have social media limits? I wasn't advocating for social media limits. Rather, I was trying to present one method of limiting and contrast with difficulties of enforcing it. How, then, can you "ban" misinformation if the person spreading a link doesn't realize it was incorrect? How can you prevent that same mechanism from censoring satire? How can you prevent that same mechanism…

Ah, I apologize, I attributed semi-advocacy where there was more like devil's-advocacy, and its too late for me to edit my post.

Maybe you don't ban anything at all? Maybe above an item that meets viral criteria (or as a click-thru to the post to increase content friction), a viral-disclaimer is put front and center: "This information has not yet been verified but our algorithms have detected that many organizations and individuals have been sharing this".

Don't ban, just discourage via technical means? Like how many companies use the dark-pattern of making it unbearable, but not impossible, to go through the process of unsubscribing or cancelling an account. Whenever anomalous unsourced information appears to be spreading, just increase the consumption friction. Make viral-response a controls problem. If that sounds like a typical engineer response, yeah, sorry, not sorry.

You want the viral response to be critically damped, some arbitrary compromise between stifling information flow and having a situation like in India where some remote villagers killed traveling strangers for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during a viral WhatsApp misinformation situation about child-kidnappings. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44856910

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

#107

Post by 08-15 » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

x220 wrote: post #79

hug wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except a lot of the "ideas" aren't subjective. The most obvious case would be climate change. Regularly, climate skeptics are given the same amount of airtime as climate scientists, despite the fact that the evidence and opinion is overwhelmingly in support of climate change being a real problem. A realistic panel would be 98 climate scientists on one side, and two climate skeptics on the other. By giving someone wit…

I had a wonderful chemistry teacher once. Someone asked him what he thought about climate change, and he gave a fantastic response. "The atmosphere is a lot like a fish tank full of water. If you put food coloring in that fish tank, it turns slightly red. The more food coloring you put in that tank, the more red it gets. If you take a flashlight and try and shine light through one side of the fishtank and out the oth…

> "That water is like our atmosphere. That food coloring is like CO2. And that flashlight is like our sun."

What an idiot. If this is supposed to be a model for the greenhouse effect, it needs to end with "And that flashlight is like our earth." The water is also completely red already (blue light doesn't pass at all).

> It's not difficult to convincingly and simply explain the evidence for man-made climate change.

Try it. Please. Use all the food coloring you need, but try to get it right, at least approximately.

> The reason why climate scientists fail to convince TV viewers about climate change

is that they try to convince them of catastrophic climate change. You don't get that from simple models. The fish tank with food dye (more properly called radiation balance) gives you a fraction of a degree warming over the next century, which is by no means a disaster. If you want to turn it into a disaster, the fish tank model is insufficient, even if you aren't an illiterate chemistry teacher.

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

#108

Post by bobthepanda » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

claudiawerner wrote: post #69

cbhl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Herbert Marcuse picked up on this idea that mass media broadcasts any opinion no matter how stupid and misinformed in 1965, and it's only gotten worse: >Within the affluent democracy, the affluent discussion prevails, and within the established framework, it is tolerant to a large extent. All points of view can be heard: the Communist and the Fascist, the Left and the Right, the white and the Negro, the crusaders for…

At the same time, sometimes the informed are wrong because of fundamentally flawed assumptions. Most of science at one point thought the world was flat. More recently, the mainstream experts have been wrong on:

- the superiority of American mass motorization

- the environment

- the drug epidemic

- the economic sustainability of a housing-investment-centered economy

So on and so forth. Democracy is great because it allows some level of correction if elites are horribly misguided, even if it can be too late. But you don't see misguided policies rapidly killing millions of domestic innocents because of a lack of feedback: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign And we certainly have not come up with workable alternatives that work better.

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

#109

Post by and1or2 » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:14 AM UTC

08-15 wrote: post #103

dymk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to look at the list of fact-checkers that Facebook uses for any particular country, if you're so inclined: https://www.facebook.com/help/publisher/182222309230722

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The ministry of truth funded by a global oligarch who is famous for breaking the Bank of England. Wake up people!

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

#110

Post by gtirloni » Tue, Oct 16, 2018, 1:25 AM UTC

It's great that FB can even try and I'm sure they will improve things somehow.

My concern is apps like WhatsApp which can't peak into conversations.

We're going through elections in Brazil and the amount of fake news I receive daily from family and friends is shocking . Some days I try to be a fact-checker to send a message that they should know better but it only creates anger (and I never take a position , simply show the facts. I'm sure they catalog me as being a member of whatever other side they hate).

People only want to read/see things that agree with their views to the point that they are happy to forward pure crap to others.