Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

Post by oliwarner » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

thedoops wrote: post #149

oliwarner wrote: post #146

Holy 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.

Post by ucaetano » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #41

ucaetano wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, it weren't independent sources which were punished, but far-left and far-right sources. > However, in addition to AlterNet and other left-wing news sites, Rosenfeld said right-wing, alternative media outlets have also seen a reduction in viewership due to the change in Google’s algorithm.

So? Independent news sources almost always have a non-mainstream political bent; that's why the writers aren't just writing in the New York Times. I don't think most people understand "weeding out fake news" to mean "only allowing a narrow spectrum of respectable opinion." And these sources do real reporting and break real news.

Post by InternetUser » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

hrktb wrote: post #99

yAnonymous wrote: post #72

Earlier 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…

Post by kristiandupont » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

themagician wrote: post #16

This 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…

Post by InternetUser » Mon, Jan 22, 2018, 4:48 PM UTC

romanovcode wrote: post #85

This is a horrible idea in general, but very good for facebook. Facebook users will be in even greater echo-chamber re-assuring their world-views therefore they will be more engaged with the website, and this is all FB cares about.