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Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

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Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#331

Post by inimino »

sedachv wrote: post #321
inimino wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only difference between a fake news story and a real news story that you can rely on is that the events in the real news story actually took place. Obviously there is no way to determine that by looking at the text itself. Yes, at present the fake news may be written more colorfully or poorly. Obviously if you filter on that difference, it will go away.

How do you personally tell if a news story is suspicious? The publication it originated in, the places where it gets syndicated, shared, and re-posted, the style of the writing, and how sensational the content is. Authors that specialize in writing fake news stories will also have an identifiable individual writing style. There are a lot of signals you can use to classify news as fake or real, and that is before goin…

Suspicious, sure, but that's moving the goalposts. And all of these signals exist at present, but as soon as Facebook starts suppressing posts based on machine classification then obviously fake news publishers will adapt and it won't work anymore. The only reliable identifying factor of fake news is that it reports facts that aren't. This obviously cannot be detected by text analysis. People who are suggesting technical solutions just haven't thought past the very first step in the dance.

To speculate, perhaps part of it a lack of respect for the hard work of real journalism, education, and geniune political dialogue, so the fantasy of surfacing all the crap from social media and then extracting the ground truth with a magical algorithm appeals to some people despite being a completely hopeless idea.

What you're actually arguing for is the negative twin of today's filter bubble effect. Algorithms already prioritize things you'll like, but now that the SV elite is shocked (shocked!) by how that worked out, there is a crisis of fake conscience. Obviously the solution is to also filter out the things that you'll think are fake. Or the things that "look fake" to Facebook's algorithm. It's concerning to me that the relatively intelligent folks here could be taking this at all seriously.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#332

Post by ramblerman »

supergarfield wrote: post #78
thebooktocome wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Economist carries just as much propaganda as any other political magazine. They're better at hiding it, perhaps.

Your definition of propaganda probably is a little to inclusive. In my experience, the Economist very rarely gets the facts wrong (including by omission of major elements). The "letters to the editor" at the beginning of every issue are also almost always critical of previous issues of the magazine, and they don't have a problem with publishing them. What the Economist constantly does is give its opinion on the facts…

Idd that's called bias, and it would be naive to assume any article ever written doesn't contain some.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#333

Post by deno »

lightbyte wrote: post #325
deno wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politifact is infamous for their bias. Here’s an example of them rating the same exact statement very differently, depending on who made it: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do... There are numerous studies that also show significant selection bias, that is they cherry-pick statements they fact-check. Politifact itself makes no a…

Those are not the exact same statements at all, they are talking about two (similar sounding) different things.

What different things?

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#334

Post by zaphods-towel »

deno wrote: post #300
lake99 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This extreme partisanship is one of the reasons I'm wary of John Oliver. For example, Politifact, despite its biases or subjectivity, has documented examples of practically every major politian making untrue statements. Including the current POTUS. We need a systemic approach to dealing with lies and untruths of the people who weild power. If you make it partisan, the liar/politican will just block you out, and so wi…

Politifact is infamous for their bias. Here’s an example of them rating the same exact statement very differently, depending on who made it: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do... There are numerous studies that also show significant selection bias, that is they cherry-pick statements they fact-check. Politifact itself makes no a…

Those are different claims. Bernie specifies that he's talking about youths who only had a high school degree or dropped out. Further, Bernie's campaign replied to Politifact's questions and pointed them to a specific source. Trump made a completely different claim (about all African-American youths), and then ignored Politifact's questions. Trump's claim is wrong, and Bernie's is coming from a slightly weird source but has reasonable support. Further, Trump's campaign refuses to provide support...so of course they're not going to have as favorable a response... they don't even claim to have support for their statement.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#335

Post by sedachv »

inimino wrote: post #331
sedachv wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you personally tell if a news story is suspicious? The publication it originated in, the places where it gets syndicated, shared, and re-posted, the style of the writing, and how sensational the content is. Authors that specialize in writing fake news stories will also have an identifiable individual writing style. There are a lot of signals you can use to classify news as fake or real, and that is before goin…

Suspicious, sure, but that's moving the goalposts. And all of these signals exist at present , but as soon as Facebook starts suppressing posts based on machine classification then obviously fake news publishers will adapt and it won't work anymore. The only reliable identifying factor of fake news is that it reports facts that aren't. This obviously cannot be detected by text analysis. People who are suggesting tech…

> And all of these signals exist at present, but as soon as Facebook starts suppressing posts based on machine classification then obviously fake news publishers will adapt and it won't work anymore. The only reliable identifying factor of fake news is that it reports facts that aren't.

Replace "news" with "email" and your argument remains the same. But spam filtering is working and working well right now with less signals to classify on.

> To speculate, perhaps part of it a lack of respect for the hard work of real journalism, education, and geniune political dialogue, so the fantasy of surfacing all the crap from social media and then extracting the ground truth with a magical algorithm appeals to some people despite being a completely hopeless idea.

Why are you ranting about synthesizing real news from social media? The problem I specifically mentioned was identifying fake news articles.

> What you're actually arguing for is the negative twin of today's filter bubble effect.

If you do not understand the difference between recommendation and classification you should not be arguing right now. It is a subtle and important distinction. Your argument is about as subtle as "computers can't solve it!"

> It's concerning to me that the relatively intelligent folks here could be taking this at all seriously.

In what substantive way is "fake news trying to get you to vote for a particular politician" different from "fake email trying to get you to buy fake pills"?

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#336

Post by [deleted] »

zaphods-towel wrote: post #334
deno wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politifact is infamous for their bias. Here’s an example of them rating the same exact statement very differently, depending on who made it: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do... There are numerous studies that also show significant selection bias, that is they cherry-pick statements they fact-check. Politifact itself makes no a…

Those are different claims. Bernie specifies that he's talking about youths who only had a high school degree or dropped out. Further, Bernie's campaign replied to Politifact's questions and pointed them to a specific source. Trump made a completely different claim (about all African-American youths), and then ignored Politifact's questions. Trump's claim is wrong, and Bernie's is coming from a slightly weird source…

[deleted]

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#337

Post by deno »

zaphods-towel wrote: post #334
deno wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politifact is infamous for their bias. Here’s an example of them rating the same exact statement very differently, depending on who made it: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do... There are numerous studies that also show significant selection bias, that is they cherry-pick statements they fact-check. Politifact itself makes no a…

Those are different claims. Bernie specifies that he's talking about youths who only had a high school degree or dropped out. Further, Bernie's campaign replied to Politifact's questions and pointed them to a specific source. Trump made a completely different claim (about all African-American youths), and then ignored Politifact's questions. Trump's claim is wrong, and Bernie's is coming from a slightly weird source…

The quotation in the article is cherry-picked to make Sanders look good. With little research you can see he’s been repeating this claim non-stop without any such disclaimers.

The following is a direct quote from The Nation interview linked in the very same Politifact article:

>  Do you know what real African-American youth unemployment is? It’s over 50 percent.

The fact is both Trump and Sanders were factually wrong. Their usage of the term “unemployment” was at best misleading.

Politifact is however willing to massage Sen. Sander’s statement to make it only “mostly true,” instead of false, which is a clear example of bias.

There are numerous examples of Politifact asserting editorial control in this manner, skewing the results on the Mostly-True–Mostly-False range of the “truthometer.”

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#338

Post by gnuvince »

sebtoast wrote: post #323
gnuvince wrote: post #22

Back in late August when I started my new job, my first purchase with my first paycheck was to get a subscription to Le Devoir, Montreal's independent newspaper. It's amazing how much more informed I feel now: because the content only changes every 24 hours, I have the opportunity to get to the less sexy stories, stories that would be buried on a fast moving website because they don't generate clicks, but which still…

Le Devoir has a reputation of having a left bias doesn't it? I like the newspaper and I would like to subscribe, I'm just saying I often heard some bias complaints. It also has a cool founding history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Devoir

You'll see the left bias in the editorial pieces, but in news stories the writing is as neutral as I've seen. In Montreal, the alternatives are the Journal de Montréal (too much gossip, not enough hard information), La Presse (very good, liberal bias), The Gazette (liberal bias). Another important reason that pushed me toward Le Devoir: it's the only paper (not just in Canada, but everywhere I've looked) that has a PDF version; you get facsimile of the paper edition, which is very nice to read with something like zathura.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#339

Post by inimino »

sedachv wrote: post #335
inimino wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suspicious, sure, but that's moving the goalposts. And all of these signals exist at present , but as soon as Facebook starts suppressing posts based on machine classification then obviously fake news publishers will adapt and it won't work anymore. The only reliable identifying factor of fake news is that it reports facts that aren't. This obviously cannot be detected by text analysis. People who are suggesting tech…

> And all of these signals exist at present, but as soon as Facebook starts suppressing posts based on machine classification then obviously fake news publishers will adapt and it won't work anymore. The only reliable identifying factor of fake news is that it reports facts that aren't. Replace "news" with "email" and your argument remains the same. But spam filtering is working and working well right now with less s…

Indeed, "computers can't solve it". Software cannot replace fact checking.

> In what substantive way is "fake news trying to get you to vote for a particular politician" different from "fake email trying to get you to buy fake pills"?

You don't normally get ham email asking you to buy pills, do you? But you read and share news that has an ideological perspective all the time.

Again, the only reliable distinction between true and false news is whether it actually happened. By definition this is not to be found by looking at the text alone.

Let me give you a concrete example of a hypothetical pair of fake and real news items. You can tell me how your classifier would fare distinguishing them.

Real news item:

Pope calls Trump "not Christian"

Fake news item:

Pope calls Trump "not Christian"

The difference, of course, is that the real news item is published the day after this actually happened and the fake news item can be published at any time, and is easier to write.

Let me give you another example. There have been reports of hate crimes following the election. There have been claims that some of these reports are fabricated.

So I give you two articles:

Article A: Chanting Trump Slogans, Mob Assaults Local Man

Article B: Assault Story "Made Up", Local Man Admits

Now, tell me again about your algorithm.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#340

Post by therealpeal »

igivanov wrote: post #133
ochoseis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist is another good option. They have decent digital versions, including a daily edition that's just enough news for me.

I don't know if anyone should trust such a Russophobic outlet. https://medium.com/@dominicbasulto/russophobia-and-the-dark-...

"Russophobic" people are afraid of countries that invade and occupy other countries (bonus points if it's a dictatorship). This is not irrational.
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