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Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

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Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#131

Post by albertTJames »

zimpenfish wrote: post #104
albertTJames wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any example ?

"Misinformation and the 2010 Election: A Study of the US Electorate" https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/11375/Misinfo...

No mention of social media, facebook or any other platform. If the argument is that there was political misinformation before 2016 then of course, it has existed for centuries. I am referring to the spread of misinformation through social media, at scale, which is the theme of the article. This was not seen at scale before cambridge analytica/brexit/trump/troll factories. Yet the platform existed for ~8years before it started.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#132

Post by smaryjerry »

unmdplyr wrote: post #2

> When a Utah county accidentally sent out 13,000 absentee ballots without a signature line, the NewsGuard Red-rated site LawEnforcementToday.com called this a "cheat-by-mail scheme." This isn't a Facebook problem as such. It's just sensationalistic journalism. Just that Facebook as a platform helps amplfiy it. Just my 2 cents.

This is the perfect description. Facebook amplifies your communication and I find that a perfect purpose for Facebook. No one should blame Facebook for what someone posts there for “allowing” it to be said. Facebook has had live streamed murders, that actually helps catch a killer. When Google bans a website doing illegal things, all it does it keep that website from being noticed but the activity continues. Maybe you think it limits the spread of something bad but no it just hides it. People who want to do bad things still do them. The only people who need to be protected from content are children, adults have the ability to critically think about a topic. Amplification of a message is only good. It is an argument about transparency.The phase the best disinfectant is sunlight is great because once it reaches a wide enough audience the people who can dispute the claim will appear rather than just an echo chamber.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#133

Post by eloisius »

smaryjerry wrote: post #132
unmdplyr wrote: post #2

> When a Utah county accidentally sent out 13,000 absentee ballots without a signature line, the NewsGuard Red-rated site LawEnforcementToday.com called this a "cheat-by-mail scheme." This isn't a Facebook problem as such. It's just sensationalistic journalism. Just that Facebook as a platform helps amplfiy it. Just my 2 cents.

This is the perfect description. Facebook amplifies your communication and I find that a perfect purpose for Facebook. No one should blame Facebook for what someone posts there for “allowing” it to be said. Facebook has had live streamed murders, that actually helps catch a killer. When Google bans a website doing illegal things, all it does it keep that website from being noticed but the activity continues. Maybe yo…

I agree about sunlight being the best disinfectant, but I think social media like Facebook is a little more insidious than just "increased exposure." Facebook is designed for targeted messaging to people who are likely to engage with it. We've known about filter bubbles for at least a decade now. Amplifying disinformation specifically to an audience that is vulnerable to it is different than airing it on TV and increasing awareness.

That's exactly what algorithmically curated content feeds like Facebook and YouTube recommendations do. They amplify messages to certain people who are susceptible, and there's little awareness until somebody shoots up a mosque and then suddenly we realize there's a whole subculture of people that have semi-willingly brainwashed themselves with conspiracies floating around about white people being "replaced" and think Shariah law is being implemented in Western countries.

I don't think censorship of the content is the right answer. Short of calling for violence, people should obviously be free to propagate conspiracies, alternative history, whatever. The component that I am wary of is the algorithmic curation. It seems to tend towards "you like that? How about this slightly more extreme piece of related content?"

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#134

Post by fakedang »

croon wrote: post #85
fakedang wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be honest here. Facebook for Zuckerberg is just a political tool for him now. Earlier, he wanted to run for President, which is obviously at severe conflict with the FB board's stated vision. Now he has realized that he can just twist any nation into his image. Money and power, at the end of the day.

I'm unsure of his politics, but if I'm understanding them correctly, he's failing quite miserably if that's what he's trying.

Not really. On the contrary, he's succeeding quite well - being on good terms with Facebook is now essential for any government seeking to get reelected, or seeking to stay in power (in the case of dictatorships). Zuckerberg wants to outwardly lean Democrat, but inside, it's all about maintaining money and power. Just check his natural progression - first laughing at the idiocy of his Harvard peers for sharing their personal details out in the open, all the way to very recently trying to launch his own crypto coin, which would have enabled his "alliance" to gather data on spending habits of its users.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#135

Post by amanaplanacanal »

Dansvidania wrote: post #59
crispyporkbites wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ads are different to the things people post on social media. Facebook can’t moderate and fact check ads? Why not? Because it would cost them too much of their 17billion dollar revenue? Boohoo

Because that allows the people in charge to censorship ads with the excuse of fact checking, for one.

But haven’t publishers always done that? Why is that now a bad idea?

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#136

Post by smaryjerry »

eloisius wrote: post #133
smaryjerry wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the perfect description. Facebook amplifies your communication and I find that a perfect purpose for Facebook. No one should blame Facebook for what someone posts there for “allowing” it to be said. Facebook has had live streamed murders, that actually helps catch a killer. When Google bans a website doing illegal things, all it does it keep that website from being noticed but the activity continues. Maybe yo…

I agree about sunlight being the best disinfectant, but I think social media like Facebook is a little more insidious than just "increased exposure." Facebook is designed for targeted messaging to people who are likely to engage with it. We've known about filter bubbles for at least a decade now. Amplifying disinformation specifically to an audience that is vulnerable to it is different than airing it on TV and incre…

I disagree that people are vulnerable to it. I honestly can’t think of a single Facebook ad that has ever changed my mind in a topic. Adults are not vulnerable. The point is is so identify and catch the people who are posting conspiracies and getting radicalized before they do something. You can do that if you don’t see it. I doubt some random reader gets radicalized simply from reading things and never engaging in conversations. With those conversations you are now to identify people and actually prevent more radicalization. For example Facebook knows if you make a death threat, via their algorithms as well as flagging by users. Not only that but their algorithms can identify them in private messages sent, and report them to law enforcement. This may shock people but if these people don’t post on Facebook they then create heir own websites, post in chat rooms, recruit their friends. Then you are left with a completely uncontrolled website or app where these people get stuck in an echo chamber.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#137

Post by cryptica »

bananaface wrote: post #72
pjc50 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The BBC, our nationalised TV producer, has now been explicitly politicised by the government. It's very hard to have a state-owned media enterprise that doesn't end up propping up the status quo.

I would say the BBC is biased towards people holding long-term political office, i.e. the bureaucratic class, not the incumbent party. They're pretty good at bringing the hammer down on representatives. They were explicitly anti-Brexit, and arguably anti-Corbyn. They're fairly anti-Boris. The common factor is bias against threats to the bureaucracy. It always puzzled me that they could get away with criticizing the p…

It is way better that way. As someone who lived outside of the UK, I have been watching BBC news, documentaries, series and films for over a decade online. The BBC is probably the most wholesome source of mainstream media that I can imagine. To point to the BBC as an argument against nationalization makes a very weak case.

Very few media organizations have the kind of international reach as the BBC has. Frankly, that says something about its quality and wholesomeness. I'm not a US citizen but the only reason I ever watch Fox news and CNN is to get a sense of how bad things are going in the US. They're more like reality shows than news.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#138

Post by cryptica »

cloverich wrote: post #126
cryptica wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally disagree. They look like the same thing today, but this is merely a consequence of the fact that everyone is under Facebook's thumb and Facebook works in the interest of corporations/big money who pay for their ads. If you shift the control to government, the dynamics change fundamentally. The power will once again start at the government (like it should) and not at the corporations. Money will still influe…

> decouple state from economics. Nationalizing businesses is the literal opposite of decoupling the state from economics isn't it?

Government intervention is unavoidable. It's just a matter of choosing the right kind of intervention. Facebook wouldn't exist without government support and expansionary monetary policy.

We can go to an extreme and point out that to properly decouple state from economics, we'd have to abolish corporate personhood first. We would need to abolish 'limited liability' legal entities; the real purpose of these entities is to allow individuals to repudiate responsibility for their actions by deflecting blame towards these abstract legal entities. This doesn't make any sense aside from facilitating criminal activity. Whenever a corporation commits a crime and isn't shut down (which is 100% of the time), that is government interference of the worst kind.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#139

Post by Dansvidania »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #135
Dansvidania wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that allows the people in charge to censorship ads with the excuse of fact checking, for one.

But haven’t publishers always done that? Why is that now a bad idea?

again, I do not think Facebook is a publisher, but rather a platform, so I do not see how the parallel applies.

At any rate, if you are asking why censorship, I guess there are angles and perspectives from which it is not, but that risks becoming a path to various dystopian scenarios (freedom of expression/speech negatively correlates with authoritarianism of governments, for example)

If you want to publish something and some publisher does not want to publish it for you, chances are you can find a different publisher that is willing to, without necessarily negatively impacting the spread of your content and ideas.

For platforms such as Facebook that is fundamentally different: A- they gain their power by offering a service, not spreading ideology... users come to them to access content produced by others, so their influence to the content that they are, or are not, able to access is "unfair" and should be in my opinion unlawful; B- exclusion from them pretty much disconnects you from a large amount of fellows humans in a significant way.

Re: Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

#140

Post by bananaface »

cryptica wrote: post #137
bananaface wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say the BBC is biased towards people holding long-term political office, i.e. the bureaucratic class, not the incumbent party. They're pretty good at bringing the hammer down on representatives. They were explicitly anti-Brexit, and arguably anti-Corbyn. They're fairly anti-Boris. The common factor is bias against threats to the bureaucracy. It always puzzled me that they could get away with criticizing the p…

It is way better that way. As someone who lived outside of the UK, I have been watching BBC news, documentaries, series and films for over a decade online. The BBC is probably the most wholesome source of mainstream media that I can imagine. To point to the BBC as an argument against nationalization makes a very weak case. Very few media organizations have the kind of international reach as the BBC has. Frankly, that…

Important is that the BBC isn't nationalised, at least not in the typical sense. The government is prohibited from direct intervention[0] and the safeguards (surprisingly) seem to work. It's much less nationalised than e.g. Russia Times.

I agree with you. I don't really like media organizations but as media goes the BBC is great.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC#Governance_and_corporate_s...

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