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

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

#221

Post by Nadya »

ktRolster wrote: post #216
masmullin wrote: post #177

> Last week Buzzfeed reported on an entire cottage industry of web users in Macedonia generating fake news stories related to Trump vs Clinton in order to inject them into Facebook’s Newsfeed as a way to drive viral views and generate ad revenue from lucrative US eyeballs. Does anyone else find this incredibly ironic? Buzzfeed ratting out others doing clickbait?

Buzzfeed lately has been trying to 'outgrow' their reputation as clickbait, and actually do traditional investigative reporting. With moderate success. I agree with you though, it's hard to take them seriously.

"Actual journalism" Buzzfeed articles are of surprisingly great quality. They fund that quality through clickbait, which is their primary monetization strategy if I recall correctly.

It does make the right hand difficult to believe when the left hand is off being silly - but I'm actually impressed by the level of works produced by their journalism department.

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

#222

Post by caseysoftware »

brightball wrote: post #154
btilly wrote: post #11

This article criticizes Facebook for firing the human editors that had been keeping things sane. However they were pushed to that by accusations of bias in the right-wing media. Accusations that looked likely to lead to a Congressional investigation. See, for example, http://thehill.com/policy/technology/279361-top-republican-d... . Now they are in a situation where they are damned if they do, damned if they don't. A…

It seems like the best thing to do would be penalize a site if it shows verifiably false content until it both updates the original story and issues a retraction. Facebook could prioritize retractions in its algorithm and ensure that people who saw the original story would see the retraction as well. Content providers who abide by journalistic guidelines could be prioritized. Providers who actually have an editor cou…

Do you really want Facebook in this role?

I guess it works as long as you agree with their choices, prioritization, and opinions but as we saw this cycle, there was a collusion between "journalists" and the Clinton campaign. Even if you see no problem with that, would you see a problem if the Trump campaign had done it?

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

#223

Post by mucker »

nickysielicki wrote: post #81
kevingadd wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, Twitter, the left-leaning echo chamber where alt-right types and racists don't bombard jews and black people constantly with death threats and gas chamber jokes. Free speech has been suppressed so vigorously by the Safety Council :( (Spoiler alert: Twitter basically doesn't moderate anything and their department responsible for handling abuse reports doesn't do anything)

Okay but to be fair, there are something like 6000 tweets every second. Are they not moderating because they believe in the principle of free speech, or because it would be impractical? I do think that they manually curate their trending sidebar. After Comey announced that the emails on the Wiener laptop were cleared by the FBI, the sidebar looked like this: http://i.imgur.com/9LW0iaU.png Now, since when do hashtags…

Thanks for bringing that up. I had been unaware since I don't follow twitter much anymore. You are right that is amazingly vile.

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

#225

Post by muad »

This is not the role of FB in our society.

FB attempted to sway public opinion through censoring and media manipulation. Now that it has failed they want to police misinformation better.

If you are working at FB now you need to take a long look at yourself and your role in this.

FB is a communication platform, not a political tool.

Reddit and Twitter are equal guilty in this regard.

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

#226

Post by caseysoftware »

weberc2 wrote: post #183
r00fus wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original "bias squad" was not a first amendment issue. Facebook isn't the government (despite their incredible reach).

I think if they control 60% of the news pipeline (and climbing), they're categorically different. The U.S. government regularly investigates similarly large entities.

Facebook, et al, campaigned to have internet access be considered a utility instead of a luxury. The UN is pushing it as a human right.

If you follow that line of reasoning, the companies who run the pipes and control the flow of information aren't just companies playing favorites. They're potentially influencing - if not outright regulating - human rights worldwide.. which means they should have a much higher level of scrutiny.

And they walked right into that one.

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

#227

Post by xs »

squozzer wrote: post #165

A humble question -- Had Hillary won, would this post even be on HN?

Probably not. What's probably happened is that people of Facebook looked internally and realized they had the power to sway this election and didn't act on it. It's weird because we want Facebook to not sway us and let us build our own belief structure, yet in this case maybe I would want Facebook to do something, and help not spread lies and misinformation may be something everyone can get behind (except snopes).

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

#228

Post by acbabis »

mstade wrote: post #70

I read somewhere that Facebook isn't liable for information posted there, that the user's posting the information is the liable party. Here in Sweden, that's not how news organizations work. Here, whatever they publish they are liable for, regardless of who originally wrote it. I know Facebook isn't a news organization, but it's treading a fine line isn't it? At some point one might argue that by being an aggregator…

I'm not a lawyer either, but I don't think what worked in Sweden will work for the US. Not only is it hard to sue people for libel, but content sites like YouTube fought pretty to hard to make sure they couldn't be responsible for things other people post on their sites (as long as they promptly respond to DCMA notices).

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

#230

Post by [deleted] »

japhyr wrote: post #210

It's also on us to resist the temptation to build social media bubbles around ourselves, and to poke into each other's bubbles. Every time I've wanted to block a friend or relative on facebook, I've put my phone down and come back to it later. Looking away from people we disagree with isn't working. My cousin shared a post this morning asking why people on the left aren't celebrating the fact that a female campaign m…

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