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News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

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Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#31

Post by morgante »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #24
pavanky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? Right now the alternative is to add another layer of bias in between.

The alternative is to allow free and open communication that is unmediated, unannotated, and unmoderated by any authority, and to allow information consumers to decide what they should and should not read and believe themselves. It's the difference between the web and a walled garden. I get that FB is interested in mediating, annotating, and moderating content, since they are a walled garden. That's why I choose not…

Since you're not a Facebook user, why do you care?

They have the right to do whatever they damn well please on their website. This isn't breaking the "open internet." Nothing about the design of the internet allows you to dictate how people run their websites.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#33

Post by SamBam »

lhnz wrote: post #6

I wonder if this will be as sketchy as politifact? I hope it won't be, but I reckon it might be. (What I mean is: extremely uncharitable readings of things that they don't like, but overly charitable readings of anything that they like.)

How do you come to the conclusion that politifact is as sketchy as the sites that were churning out fake news during the election?

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#34

Post by danso »

> We’ve found that a lot of fake news is financially motivated. Spammers make money by masquerading as well-known news organizations, and posting hoaxes that get people to visit to their sites, which are often mostly ads. So we’re doing several things to reduce the financial incentives. On the buying side we’ve eliminated the ability to spoof domains, which will reduce the prevalence of sites that pretend to be real publications.

What do they mean "the ability to spoof domains"? Was that a technical issue? Or do they mean they're blacklisting sites such as http://abcnews.com.co/, progenitor of such hoaxes as El Chapo escaping from prison (again) [0]

Given how easy it is to fool people with ambiguous characters/names, blacklisting URLs that aren't all ASCII might be a good precaution too.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#36

Post by st3v3r »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #24
pavanky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? Right now the alternative is to add another layer of bias in between.

The alternative is to allow free and open communication that is unmediated, unannotated, and unmoderated by any authority, and to allow information consumers to decide what they should and should not read and believe themselves. It's the difference between the web and a walled garden. I get that FB is interested in mediating, annotating, and moderating content, since they are a walled garden. That's why I choose not…

No. That causes Pizzagate to happen.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#37

Post by pavanky »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #24
pavanky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the alternative? Right now the alternative is to add another layer of bias in between.

The alternative is to allow free and open communication that is unmediated, unannotated, and unmoderated by any authority, and to allow information consumers to decide what they should and should not read and believe themselves. It's the difference between the web and a walled garden. I get that FB is interested in mediating, annotating, and moderating content, since they are a walled garden. That's why I choose not…

I am all for free and open communication as long as it is unrestricted in all respects.

But facebook has been filtering content to show you what they think is relevant. In such a scenario, I'd prefer if they added moderation to weed out fake news or at the very least mark it as such.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#39

Post by basch »

pg314 wrote: post #22
throwanem wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politifact is one of the organizations on the approved list [1], and the closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the left is likely to regard as politically neutral is the Associated Press. So I'm not really seeing what Facebook expects this to help. [1] http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/

Maybe stop the spread of nonsense like 'pope endorses Trump' or pizzagate?

would these measures end up blocking something like a modest proposal
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