Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#181

Post by dr-detroit » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:02 PM UTC

intrasight wrote: post #165

drawkbox wrote: post #33

Repeat after me, social media is not reality. Social media is the new tabloid salacious media. Yes it can be fun, entertaining, informative and educational, it can also be propaganda, misinformation, astroturfing, and a big high school like popularity contest where people are fake and narcissistic but probably insecure. The truth is the internet is teaching the biggest lesson ever in critical thinking and getting you…

I have hundreds of Facebook friends. I read their posts or add my own posts perhaps twice a day. 90% are status updates and/or photos of what they are up to. I find it extremely useful. It's a micro-blogging service. When did this moniker "social media" come into being? What does that even mean? I should say that I have everything except direct posts disabled - including all "shares" and all ads - and that's why to m…

Thats a hot take. Most blogs are not sex apps turned CIA backed brain experiments and don't read all the text messages on my phone and then distribute them to anyone/everyone in the deep web.

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#182

Post by unethical_ban » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

apostacy wrote: post #154

unethical_ban wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? Think you're the smartest person on the planet, unaffected by misinformation? "Feed me the libraries worth of bullshit from the Internet, and I will sort through this free market firehose to come to a logical, evidence based conclusion", hm? Have you ever read spam ads on Craigslist, fake comments on news sites, bots on Tinder, etc? There are patterns, there are foul motives, and with their i…

> I understand the gut feeling to be suspicious of any large org to filter information. People on this very thread are screaming "censorship!" as if they were Orwell in the streets warning us the end is nigh. I mean, these companies have a monopoly or near monopoly on communications, and they have openly said they are going to arbitrarily remove information that they don't like, without any kind of transparency or ac…

Your first sentence contains the lie, er, problem.

>arbitrarily

What is arbitrary about it? do you assume that because you don't have a list of their rules of engagement, that you don't have the "warrant" for these takedowns yourself, that it is arbitrary and politically biased in motive?

>Telling someone to mask up in early March could get you banned.

I straight up think that's bullshit. I would want evidence of that occurring or evidence that that was ever laid out as policy.

>Would you be ok with other private networks doing it?

"Private networks" do it all the time. Newspapers decide what to print, and whether they print lies or truths, and whether they do so fairly. The best journalists put truth first. These virtual bulletin boards are, as a matter of fact, massive platforms where any small amount of gamesmanship can lead to the very quick spread of information, good-faith or not. To think they should sit and do nothing is folly.

>Posting first party evidence of the chaos in China in January could get you banned. It was fake news and disinformation. They were protecting us.

What

>Not just are these companies fallible, but they also have a very obvious neoliberal agenda. I've watched every single progressive podcast I liked get shadowbanned or outright removed from every major platform over the last year.

What

Your entire post is filled with so much unsubstantiated statement-as-fact I don't know where to begin.

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#183

Post by null0pointer » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:09 PM UTC

rednerrus wrote: post #75

Does this mean they're shutting down?

I thought this as well. FB and Twitter are themselves the misinformation networks.

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#184

Post by driverdan » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

kache_ wrote: post #19

My dream is to work for the engineering divisions for these companies regarding automation around controlling the flow of information. It seems like such a fascinating problem

Seems like hell to me. It's obvious they're not willing to actually take action.

For example, Twitter could easily and automatically remove a ton of white supremacist accounts using machine learning but haven't. Many of these accounts follow obvious patterns that ML can easily detect. Why don't they do it?

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#185

Post by luckylion » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

twitter_anon wrote: post #173

luckylion wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe the same to be true for Facebook as well? Why is Twitter encouraging outrage-engagement via the (somewhat filtered) Trending section? Why aren't you actively trying to decrease political engagement if it's a net negative?

> Do you believe the same to be true for Facebook as well? I have no idea about Facebook. I barely even use it so all my information is second-hand. > Why is Twitter encouraging outrage-engagement via the (somewhat filtered) Trending section? We're not, at least not intentionally. Do you think we are? If so, why? The Trending section is still biased towards things that are being talked about frequently. Unfortunately…

> We're not, at least not intentionally. Do you think we are? If so, why?

I haven't been an active Twitter user for years, but whenever I visit it these days, Trending looks like it's at least partially optimized for outrage. I understand it's not actually "what's popular" (because otherwise it would constantly be about Justin Bieber & co), it's curated, or at least topics need to be approved in some form to be allowed to trend, right?

> Non-toxic political engagement is a net positive for us.

I've seen very few non-toxic political engagement on Twitter, but maybe we have a different understanding of what is healthy engagement. I'm not sure there is a baby in that bathwater. I'm not even sure it's bathwater.

From my perspective, it's either a shouting match with a lot of groupthink and -speech or somebody talking to their followers about how evil the outgroup is. And that's not because I'm looking at controversial things, I believe. I visit some developer's Twitter feed and one or two clicks later I'm in the middle. It's like that Wikipedia game where you start on a random article and need to make it to Hitler with the least amount of clicks, but it's less challenging because almost all clicks lead to outrage.

You seem to be more focused on whether what engages the users is factually true. Is it that advertisers don't want to be seen next to obvious fake news? Do advertisers not care to have their brand associate with not-actually-honest-but-not-fake-news-either outrage-engagement by, say, Robert Reich?

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#186

Post by vorpalhex » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

redisman wrote: post #145

vorpalhex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe the general public is better at filtering out misinformation than they were 100 years ago? What about 500 years ago? It takes time but people do seem to get better at filtering out mis-information. I believe (and we have some evidence) that we can speed this up by helping teach critical dissection of articles and content and build the skill set to weigh sources. The problem will never go away entirely.…

We've never had yellow journalism powered by trillion dollar companies that are extremely good at manipulating your average Joe to keep consuming more based on their addiction algorithms.

Those were the conditions of the original yellow journalism, including people who would literally chase you down on the streets shouting headlines at you and trying to get you to buy a paper on your way to and from work. You had people in backrooms analyzing sales based on different newspaper features and writers - and figuring out what headlines would sell the most.

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#187

Post by dicomdan » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

gralx wrote: post #35

aresant wrote: post #21

Disinformation content works because it drives huge engagement. Huge engagement pays the bills for FB and twitter. If we expect change we need an analog to a carbon or pollution tax for social. “Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.”- Charlie Munger

That it drives huge engagement is an indictment of public education.

There's a lot of educated people who are nevertheless highly partisan.

Social networks pray on the deeply rooted instincts that are hard to suppress.

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#188

Post by vorpalhex » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 9:03 PM UTC

convolvatron wrote: post #98

vorpalhex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe the general public is better at filtering out misinformation than they were 100 years ago? What about 500 years ago? It takes time but people do seem to get better at filtering out mis-information. I believe (and we have some evidence) that we can speed this up by helping teach critical dissection of articles and content and build the skill set to weigh sources. The problem will never go away entirely.…

the problem will never go away entirely because unless you're discussing the physical state of some matter, there really isn't any truth

+ I ate two slices of proscuitto and blue cheese pizza for lunch

+ Software engineers get paid a higher average salary than babysitters

+ Yesterday was before today (and any other tautology)

+ My feet are cold

There are plenty of truth value functions we can evaluate for non-physical states including tautologies, personal opinions, statistical norms with broad support, historical events and so on. They may have different truth value functions (how we determine the truth of my opinions on how cold my feet are is different than how we determine the truth of what I ate for lunch) but they still have truth/non-truth outcomes.

Anytime you get into awkward philosophical quandries about the state of things, state the problem to a small child and see how they answer. This technique would of really saved Anselm a whole bunch of time and trouble.

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#189

Post by pbalau » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

prostoalex wrote: post #50

gralx wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That it drives huge engagement is an indictment of public education.

The primary driver seems to be a psychological need to feel unique, unlike "the sheep" out there https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/why-the-pandemic-is-tu...

This is only half of it. Everyone is copying what the unique people are doing because they think this is the way to be unique.

Re: Facebook, Twitter dismantle global array of disinformation networks

#190

Post by hnracer » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

root_axis wrote: post #170

hnracer wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my main concern is the potential for politically biased vetting, which could lead to an election being swayed. It's a large amount of power over a democratic outcome by a small group of individuals who are not accountable to the public and are not guaranteed to be acting in good faith. It's possible that the fact-checking orgs that have been chosen really are neutral but given the political power they hold in…

> I think my main concern is the potential for politically biased vetting, which could lead to an election being swayed. That ship has already sailed. The problem of politically biased vetting is a universal fact of life on literally every media platform in existence; people just need to be judicial in their consumption of media. > It's possible that the fact-checking orgs that have been chosen really are neutral but…

Being merely flawed is not the concern. If mistakes were made with roughly equal frequency in both directions on the political axis, that is an example of being flawed but is not a serious concern. It's potential political bias that favours a specific party or election outcome which is the concern. The power to swing elections being bestowed on a small group of unelected, unaccountable people is the concern.

It's not valid to compare vetting by the social media oligopoly with legacy media curation. Social media companies are like the new public commons through which the plurality of conversation and debate flows through nowadays. It's not practically possible to opt-out unless you want to exclude yourself from public discourse. There's also a distinct difference between legacy media bias, which is worn on the sleeve, and the shadowy undocumented impact of vettors whose bias can't be scrutinized by the public.