Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation

What if they added a flag button labelled "This post contains misinformation"? Then, if sufficient people click it, it is reviewed by a human editor.

In fairness, I should mention that by "auto snopes" I mean "implement an auto-debunker" or even just "auto fair balance" which automatically adds "the other side" to anything linked on facebook.

I have no hat in the ring with respect to which side publishes the truth, I just think that if something is FALSE facebook could alter their UI to immediately debunk something.

Like the other quote of Trump saying "I'd run as a republican because they're the dumbest" could have a big "FALSE - he never said that" right underneath.

People who thought it was funny could still post it until their hearts were content - but nobody would be FOOLED

How do they define misinformation as many grey area's, for example religion.

So in such grey area's one persons information is another's misinformation and that gets messy for anybody, let alone AI.

Another place where Facebook's failure to detect fakeness has proved costly is in their social graph.

A lot of sites moved away from comments platforms like Disqus to Facebook in the hope that the quality of discourse would improve and trolling would decrease. Instead, clicking on some of the most vehement commentators' names would invariably lead to suspiciously bare accounts (and often suspiciously fake names) with a handful of friends themselves, all with similar characteristics. Unfortunately the people who are influenced by this sort of thing are not tech savvy enough to do even this basic level of checking.

There is a a sort of "uncanny valley" that a technically savvy and experienced person can detect when looking at a fake profile, that I daresay Facebook's algorithms just can't.

Then there is also the problem that Facebook really doesn't care about blatantly fake accounts until they are reported. The sorts of people who are trapped in some filter bubbles are unlikely to be savvy enough to know how to report these profiles (I've reported many-dozens at least-ranging from community noticeboards to cupcake businesses, all pretending to be people and missed by FB's much vaunted ML)

Of course, there is a certain irony in using a throwaway account to discuss fake accounts, but without a patina of "realness", it triggers a greater level of skepticism, which is a good thing.

When the history of 2016 is written, a large part will be filter bubbles and trolls expertly manipulating huge swathes of electorates enabled by the hubris and greed of Social Media networks.

I'm still waiting for the day that there's a responsible entity that only ever publishes things when they're 100% certain and is willing to bet their freedom (going to prison) on it. But given how information and influencing of opinions is a market and means control of the population, I'm afraid this won't happen with official support, and only be seen as the crazy lunatics news agency that publishes stuff a week or month later after having vetted things.

I'd like to say leave speed reporting to the Twittersphere and mandate a clear label on unvetted news reports on any network, but I doubt politics can have such influence on the media. I would love it if the news reports had a watermark that says fresh-and-unvetted just like "preliminary results" or "consult your doctor before taking".

First we have to encourage and support critical thinking, but too much of it may lead to some influencers misusing it to support causes which deny past and current crimes of humanity on itself and the planet.