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

Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 197 posts

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#111

Post by macintux »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #93
macintux wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is biased. True objectivity is effectively impossible, and it's not even clear that perfect objectivity is desirable. People will report any negative coverage of their favorite party/politician as biased, especially now that the current U.S. president hoists that banner every day.

Certain content might be more or less blatant about it, and as seymour1 suggests, gathering that additional data and cleaning up the currently actionable data really only has upsides. One avenue would be to put those who report the same things as biased in cohorts, to be shown or not shown similar content.

> One avenue would be to put those who report the same things as biased in cohorts, to be shown or not shown similar content.

That just reinforces the current self-silo effect we see, with people only seeing the point of view with which they agree.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#112

Post by ithilglin909 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #89
ithilglin909 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "agree with the content", the author clearly doesn't means "believe that the content is factually incorrect", rather that they disagree with the viewpoint expressed in the story.

> By "agree with the content", the author clearly doesn't means "believe that the content is factually incorrect" I disagree that that is obvious, and, moreover, I would disagree with the idea that the author would have any way of telling whether someone flagging merely disagreed with some aspect of the viewpoint/presentation outside of the base facts or disagreed with both the viewpoint and the fact claims, seeing t…

Maybe I’m overly pessimistic about how people collectively behave.

But seriously, imagine an article posted on Facebook stating that Planned Parenthood sells body parts of aborted fetuses (or something similarly likely to elicit reactions). Obviously, that's either factual or it’s not. Yet I'm certain that if Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of false, they would vote based on personal beliefs, not on what they would find by fact-checking the story.

Likewise, for anything else that in any way touched on an inflammatory issue. Do you actually think otherwise?

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#113

Post by makecheck »

One of the things I liked about Slashdot was the option to periodically review random comments (with context), and how they were rated, with the option to state whether this was appropriate. Furthermore, the ratings themselves had descriptors: Insightful, Funny, etc.

I think this idea should be taken further so that you can’t post as much (or even at all) unless you are actively participating in meta-moderating, i.e. helping the community.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#114

Post by trumped »

gfo wrote: post #76

Is there such a thing as a perfect algorithm where you can publish it and trying to "game" is nearly impossible? In this context, a "perfect" algorithm would be one where someone trying to "game" the system would essentially be forced to post only true content to achieve a near perfect score? I hope one factor in their scoring involves number of cases where someone reports factually accurate content as false on numer…

It's not a matter of if they will game the system, it's a matter of when (no software is perfect, not even PageRank).

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#117

Post by dragonwriter »

ithilglin909 wrote: post #112
dragonwriter wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By "agree with the content", the author clearly doesn't means "believe that the content is factually incorrect" I disagree that that is obvious, and, moreover, I would disagree with the idea that the author would have any way of telling whether someone flagging merely disagreed with some aspect of the viewpoint/presentation outside of the base facts or disagreed with both the viewpoint and the fact claims, seeing t…

Maybe I’m overly pessimistic about how people collectively behave. But seriously, imagine an article posted on Facebook stating that Planned Parenthood sells body parts of aborted fetuses (or something similarly likely to elicit reactions). Obviously, that's either factual or it’s not. Yet I'm certain that if Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of false, they would vote based on person…

> Obviously, that's either factual or it’s not.

Sure, but unless people actually work at PP or carry out their own individual on-site investigation, their knowledge of the fact is going to be based on what third-party sources they trust (including those acting as fact checkers), which is tightly correlated with viewpoint.

> Facebook users had the ability to vote on whether the story is true of false, they would vote based on personal beliefs, not on what they would find by fact-checking the story.

They'd probably vote based on their beliefs about the facts, which would often include checking with sources they trust on facts. Of course, those beliefs—and where fact checking is involved, the set of trusted sources—will be strongly correlated with their beliefs about abortion.

The ivory tower ideal of a clean separation between how people address fact claims and the value system in which they give significance to facts, where you could then isolate which process was involved in a decision excluding the other, is, while convenient, not at all a reflection of reality.

Re: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one

#120

Post by creaghpatr »

tomrod wrote: post #108
dragonwriter wrote: post #57

> "Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false simply because they did not agree with the content." So, people report posts as false when they do not agree that they are true? I'm struggling to understand how that is a surprise, or what other possible thing you could expect. That's literally exactly what “false” means.

My question: how many lies can be nested in until it passes the threshold of "fake news"? In no way can FB identify intent of a news story.

Your IntentTM score is presumably derived from your TrustworthinessTM score.
Post reply on HN