Bad or good, this is an admission of failure. Facebook just flat out said "screw it, you all decide what's real...because we sure as shit can't."
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Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
141–150 of 239 posts
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. Should we censor social media, because people are too stupid to deal with it? I don't think so and if you do, you're playing in the hands of corporations who want a cheap work force. Your "solution" isn't a solution, but a hot fix that will cause more damage in the future. It's exactly the shortsighted crap politics are t…
> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. But how do educate yourself though ? The same argument was already made about books or newspapers: depending of the subject a lot of them are trash. Same for TV news. Wikipedia is also not a defacto trustable source. Except for first hand experience on a subject, you will never be able to find a source that is inherentl…
>Except for first hand experience on a subject, you will never be able to find a source that is inherently trustable
Even first hand experience isn't trustworthy. Our memory is so deeply flawed that I can't even tell with certainty which first-hand experiences I had. Simply presenting "evidence" that you should remember something can cause your brain to make that memory up. And if the experience is genuine and and I try to remember some detail I didn't pay close attention to, my brain will most likely just make it up. So the only reliable way to learn from personal experience is to learn during the experience, but confirmation bias will make me miss most opportunities to learn.
Honestly, it's amazing that we are capable of learning at all.
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#143So they're going to ask general accounts to rank things for reliability in the era Russian "bot-armies" able to up-rank en-masse?
Suddenly they're going to be able to buy credibility the way they buy likes?
I'm not sure I'm a fan of this. I hope they've gamed that out.
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#144This is the opposite of what they should have done. Shows just how much of an echo-chamber Facebook has become. This is just adding another metric by which garbage can be made legitimate and vice versa. Facebook would be a much better platform if they removed the like and comment count from every post. It’s those numbers that lead people to believe that garbage is legitimate in the first place. By hiding these number…
Are you talking about yourself or other people?
My Facebook feed is mostly personal updates about hundreds of people I have met, and it feels like the most democratic media I’ve ever seen. It improved a lot when I unfollowed the handful of people who post junk like sportsball.
Are you assuming the faceless masses are exposed to some unimaginable horror that you aren’t seeing? Or tell us more about the horrors you do see.
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#145This is the opposite of what they should have done. Shows just how much of an echo-chamber Facebook has become. This is just adding another metric by which garbage can be made legitimate and vice versa. Facebook would be a much better platform if they removed the like and comment count from every post. It’s those numbers that lead people to believe that garbage is legitimate in the first place. By hiding these number…
I think an interesting way Facebook could approach determining credibility would be by having users bet (betting with some made up points instead of real money). Since this forces readers to speculate, it would encourage critically reading the articles. I think a betting system would push Facebook less in the direction of an echo-chamber. The difficulty with applying a betting system is that it still doesn't tell you…
I like the idea in principle but betting, real money or not, relies on agreed upon, objective results/outcomes. There in lies the problem; who's going to be the arbiter of truth?
However, it seems possible to get further along than we are now by creating betting pools/markets where the participants do agree on a set of sources for information.
Actually, I've thought along these lines before rather indirectly by theorizing that the WSJ was probably the most non-partisan source of "news" because most of it's clientele demanded such due to their participation in the markets. But I realize that's highly speculative.
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#146Holy hell, Facebook! For a cash-rich company employing some of the cleverest people on the planet, you're managing to be incredulously stupid here. People who aren't qualified to rate sources should not be asked their opinion. If you want peer review, do peer review... But ask-the-audience isn't that.
That all said, there is a redeeming possibility here. You could also do an in-house monitored, qualified peer review of select articles from popular sources and use those results to audit users. If somebody keeps hating on WaPo and pushing Fox you could make assumptions about the quality of their judgement.
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#147Will Facebook allow users to rate the credulity of other users? That might make this feature more useful ...
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I do not want Facebook acting as some sort of arbiter of what information is truthful Facebook isn't the arbiter. Their users are. And if a substantial percentage deem a website to be untrustworthy then Facebook simply won't display it as often.
Well, sort of. The votes give them raw material but interpreting the results and then demoting content is Facebook's job (and almost certainly nobody will be able to see how they do it). And getting demoted by Facebook, Twitter, and Google (all of which are involved in similar initiatives that mostly serve to demote independent news sources) makes a huge difference in our increasingly monopolistic media landscape whe…
“I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.” - Stalin (though the sentiment was not original to him. Variations on the same theme have been recorded as far back as 1880, at least).
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#149Holy hell, Facebook! For a cash-rich company employing some of the cleverest people on the planet, you're managing to be incredulously stupid here. People who aren't qualified to rate sources should not be asked their opinion. If you want peer review, do peer review... But ask-the-audience isn't that. That all said, there is a redeeming possibility here. You could also do an in-house monitored, qualified peer review…
What if Facebook is weighting the votes based on content consumption and interests of users? If that's the case, then it's possible to get some interesting results. We need to be doing experiments like this.
Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. I agree, but it's impossible to educate everyone on any subject. I think in this case, people who are experts in the matter, should give a reputation rating on the article. That would be really great. For example, I am no expert in theoretical physics, but I may enjoy an article about it, but how do I know it's not a bu…
> I agree, but it's impossible to educate everyone on any subject. Critical thinking is universal though. It's not a necessity to have a solid judgment of a piece. "Critical abstention" is a possibility, and primarily formal analysis is another (eg. search for common communication red flags). I don't think that the parent idea of removing likes and counts is realistic (in any imaginary scenario I can think of).
> Critical thinking is universal
I'm assuming you don't spend a lot of time on Facebook?