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Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#191

Post by alkonaut »

soundwave106 wrote: post #179
InternetUser wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> news that nearly noone disagrees with Well, in a country where 30 states voted for Trump, 20 states voted for Hillary, and 100 million people chose not to vote (and that's 42% of the eligible electorate[0]), who shall be arbiter of what news, at least U.S. political news, "nearly noone disagrees with"? I mean, given that a majority of politically active people in a large majority of states voted for Trump, I expect…

Not all news is political news. I don't use my Facebook much except to occasionally share vacation photos these days. Checking recently seems to show no news of any sort. Just some silly memes, weather phenomenon (supermoons!), pop-geek-culture stuff, and daily status updates. Since it's the season, there's some American football discussion, which people obviously have disagreements on, of course, but in that "sport"…

I believe Facebook has a responsibility to not show Alex Jones videos even to those that would agree with them.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#192

Post by ryandrake »

When you let users contribute to any kind of measurement, it turns into a measure of popularity. It's now a game of "get enough users to do X". By relying on end-users to rate and rank things, we're letting popularity stand in for all kinds of quality measurements. Lots of 5 stars on Amazon = must be a good product. Lots of Yelp reviews = must be a good restaurant. Lots of upvotes = must be a good comment. Talk about doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#194

Post by tomc1985 »

jordigh wrote: post #174
mattferderer wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe with your quotes, you may be referring to the phrase "fake news" but fake news has been around as long as humans & probably even longer. I'm glad people are giving this a discussion though.

No, "fake news" refers to a very specific phenomenon. It's not just any kind of misleading or incorrect reporting. Trump was the one to start saying "not fake news, YOU'RE fake news", but the phenomenon as initially encountered was about shoddy and small fraudulent websites, often trying to deceive their audience to believe that they were a different website, pushing the most anger-inducing news. It's a far cry from…

This phenomenon was previously called 'yellow journalism' and should be a core component of any halfway-decent, modern American History course.

Have we forgotten about the Spanish American war?

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#195

Post by mike_hearn »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #180
mike_hearn wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that incredibly unlikely. I used to work in bot fighting on Google. Claims of Russian bots on Twitter and especially claims by academics are invariably riddled with methodological errors that render the "research" useless. I wrote about this problem here: https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-ad66f... These studies are seeing patterns in noise. That's why the narrative changed over time - it u…

>the new spin doesn't even make logical sense. Sure it does. The appearance of a wide division in our political landscape leads to a wide division in our political landscape. People tend to "pick sides" in political fights and when something gives the appearance of a serious political dispute, people are motivated to pick sides and entrench their opinions. This is in keeping with getting Trump elected, as a large par…

The logic makes no sense because it specifically fingers Russia, yet any adversary of the United States could conceivably benefit from "sowing division". Once you've left behind the specific support for Trump the underlying logic linking it to Russia collapses but the conclusion has been kept, which indicates motivated reasoning.

There's a deeper issue here too. It paints the posting of political talking points from both sides of a US election as generic "sowing division". That is a world view that is quite totalitarian. I could describe it equally as "invigorating the democratic process by increasing interest in the election" and be no less accurate.

a large part of his support was due to the fear created by the appearance of growing civil unrest

You haven't shown that, you haven't even laid the groundwork for that. It's actually the first time I've ever seen such a claim. Most analyses of why he won point to the weakness of Clinton, his policies in immigration and trade deals, his opposition to political correctness and so on. Not "the appearance of growing civil unrest".

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#196

Post by hrktb »

InternetUser wrote: post #165
hrktb wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Here are the "peers" that I have reviewing what I hear from politicians: the salary on my paycheck, the tax figures on that paycheck, and the prices at the gas station and supermarket. I don't need to pore over news editorials and blogs posts or watch commentators on any TV channel to know which political figure is making more sense and describing reality more accurately.

I agree that if you have “tangible” evidence of a fact it makes it easier to disprove a claim. I would still be wary of this logic, as chain of events can be unintuitive as well.

For instance some politicians make a bold move that has clear and immediate positive effect. Yet if it has huge indirect and long term consequences that only surface once they are out of office, from your perspective they will get all the credits and none of the blame.

Having different perspectives from “experts” is in my opinion important. The problem is of course to find the right experts, and to have an insight on their limits or their biases, which is usually the beginning of become a kind of expert yourself.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#197

Post by nerfhammer »

imgabe wrote: post #95

This seems very lazy on Facebook's part. Rather than employing people who will research and fact-check, they're punting the problem to the users. This whole situation arose because users are very bad at determining which sources are credible. People will believe anything that confirms their biases, and disbelieve anything that doesn't.

because then people will accuse the fact checkers of being biased and carrying out agendas and conspiracies.

if there's no particular overlord that people can point to then they can't be as outraged at it.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#198

Post by jordigh »

tomc1985 wrote: post #194
jordigh wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, "fake news" refers to a very specific phenomenon. It's not just any kind of misleading or incorrect reporting. Trump was the one to start saying "not fake news, YOU'RE fake news", but the phenomenon as initially encountered was about shoddy and small fraudulent websites, often trying to deceive their audience to believe that they were a different website, pushing the most anger-inducing news. It's a far cry from…

This phenomenon was previously called 'yellow journalism' and should be a core component of any halfway-decent, modern American History course. Have we forgotten about the Spanish American war?

I don't think yellow journalism has the same properties as fake news. For one, yellow journalism doesn't try to deceive its readers as being as the same source as another more reputable source. With print media, this was harder to do.

Fake news has a slightly different approach because it's much easier to reach an audience online and elude trademarks.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#200

Post by emodendroket »

mike_hearn wrote: post #195
hackinthebochs wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the new spin doesn't even make logical sense. Sure it does. The appearance of a wide division in our political landscape leads to a wide division in our political landscape. People tend to "pick sides" in political fights and when something gives the appearance of a serious political dispute, people are motivated to pick sides and entrench their opinions. This is in keeping with getting Trump elected, as a large par…

The logic makes no sense because it specifically fingers Russia, yet any adversary of the United States could conceivably benefit from "sowing division". Once you've left behind the specific support for Trump the underlying logic linking it to Russia collapses but the conclusion has been kept, which indicates motivated reasoning. There's a deeper issue here too. It paints the posting of political talking points from…

I mostly agree with your perspective, but Trump repeated "law and order" like a kind of mantra at the debates and I think a fear of lawlessness is a real motivator for his base.
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