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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

#361

Post by MarkPNeyer »

ethbro wrote: post #180
jerf wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This problem isn't that hard. You filter this stuff and rank it by its SOURCE, not by the content of individual articles." I don't think reifying ad hominem into code is the solution to the problem. Of course, if you don't mind a rare few false positives here and there on articles, I've got your filter right here: def source_is_trustworthy(source): return False Remember as you sit here thinking through your exceptio…

I don't think you're ever going to detect truth correctly, but you can absolutely detect falsehood. Compare "{Candidate} up over 5000% in polls" vs "{Candidate} up over 15% in polls". Baby steps. PageRank wasn't built in a day.

It's a lot easier to look for inconsistency than it is to look for incorrectness.

Here's a pagerank like reputation system i've built.

http://github.com/neyer/respect

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

#362

Post by tomp »

tdb7893 wrote: post #247
overcast wrote: post #156

This is seriously hilarious. Now that's he's won, against seemingly all odds, we have to find some other reason for why EVERYONE ELSE, was completely WRONG. Every media outlet, everyone in politics, all the polls, completely shit on Trump. Now look who is the most powerful person in the entire world. The Democrats, and the rest, did it to themselves. Overconfidence, smear campaigns, and all of the morons doing the po…

The polls weren't that off actually. They missed the mark overall by about 2%, which is actually pretty similar to the error in past elections. That's not very surprising because without being able to sample the actual distribution you need to make some assumptions for the statistics to work.

When you take wildly changing vote count estimates (from +10 to +2 within two weeks) and turn that into more than 80% of probability of a specific candidate winning, that's a completely special level of stupidity.

Nassim Taleb also wrote about this https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/796357059813974017

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

#363

Post by colllectorof »

"OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time."

If you read between the lines, this is what the article condenses to.

The discussion here is mostly creepy groupthink shit.

Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-check your mail?

Facebook is not a real news source and never going to be one. At best it's a communication medium. At worst it's a giant propaganda machine. Any moves to get it further away from the former and closer to the latter are just machinations to change who benefits from the propaganda and nothing else.

We don't need an "improved" Facebook. We need a working replacement for old-school newspapers, TV stations and radio channels. The "new media" eroded all of those, but failed (so far, at least) to provide anything of equal utility and value. Hence all the issues involved in the coverage of these elections.

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

#365

Post by darawk »

hawkice wrote: post #352
darawk wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I would argue that this is beyond an AI-complete problem, it is an unanswerable problem. For instance, consider the following spectrum of ideas: - The earth is flat - 9/11 conspiracy theories - Barack Obama was born in Kenya - Anti-vax - Climate change denial - Anti-GMO - Denial of underlying quantum randomness in the universe - The Clinton Foundation has been or is involved in some shady dealings - Muslims w…

Man, it must be me, but you ranked "Monetary policy" WAY more likely than I would (rates near zero for so long doing so little must at least put SOME doubt in your model), and "denial of quantum randomness" way less credible than I see it as. Like, man, reasonable people can disagree about pilot waves and many worlds. Are there some confusing, emotionally laden, difficult questions of fact in there? Yes. Are some thi…

Haha, sorry I knew this list would cause this sort of trouble. I'm a big believer in pilot wave theory myself, it's just very much not the 'mainstream' view. And I didn't mean to imply that the last two were close together, either. I do think monetary policy probably has some effect (whether we understand or can model that effect is another matter), but I didn't mean at all to imply that it was anywhere near the certainty of the sun rising, it just happened to be the closest :).

I think perhaps we disagree more about the probability of these two:

- The Clinton Foundation has been or is involved in some shady dealings

- Muslims want to implement Sharia law in Europe

Than the other two. I think both of those are, in some sense, almost certainly true. There are Muslims who want to implement Sharia law in Europe. The Clinton Foundation has been involved in transactions that at least have the appearance of moral uncertainty. The headlines that I listed are just overly strong statements/generalizations of those (IMO undeniable) facts.

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

#366

Post by yarou »

Spellman wrote: post #314
meric wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the wikileaks emails yourself. You've got eyes, you don't need to rely on New York Times editors to read it for you.

Did and done. However, I fail to see why Wikileaks is considered a Fact-checker, or how this pertains to a belief that NO fact-checker is reliable. Are you claiming that Wikileaks is trustworthy and can replace a fact-checker, but isn't a fact-checker? Because that seems a bit circular and oxymoronic to me. Perhaps if you provided an alternative fact-checker source? The person in my original post has written off all…

You missed the point and sentiment of his comment.

Wikileaks is not the fact checker in this case, you are.

You were being invited to look at the raw data and draw your own conclusions/truths from it, not somebody else's.

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

#367

Post by donw »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #96
nostrademons wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a problem with human wetware - there are several cognitive biases [1][2][3][4] that make people engage more strongly with ideas that fit their preconceptions and discount ideas that don't. Add information-sharing to the mix and the aggregate effect you get is large information cascades that fracture the population into tribes that believe things not necessarily because they're true, but because they are state…

> The fix is for people to be aware of these cognitive biases in themselves, to actively seek out information that differs from their preconceptions, and to challenge inaccurate information (with evidence!) when presented with it. You are right, but I hope you are aware that this would require a giant leap to an essentially superhuman state of rationality and clear thinking for a vast majority of people. Just stop fo…

Well, a good first step would be an education system that encouraged a culture of curiosity and respectful questioning, rather than just "obey".

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

#368

Post by baby »

OliverJones wrote: post #296

Here's what to do about Facebook. (1) permanently close your account. https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account (2) if you're like me and you can't do that, "unfriend" everybody except the people you work with. Delete all your affiliations and locations. If enough people did this FB would have to do a little struggling to retain membership. That's the kind of incentive they need. Altruism demonstrably doesn't work…

No. I find facebook actually useful to talk to my friends and keep in touch with them.

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

#369

Post by wang_li »

tomp wrote: post #357
gdulli wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I knew people who supported Romney, I felt no need based on that to exclude them from my life or my social media circles. One's ability to support Trump tells me much more about a person. There are too many things that are good and should be fundamental about a functional, enlightened society that one must reject in order to support Trump. Prejudice, fraud, bullying, and sexual harassment must all be accepted. P…

And to support Hillary, one must accept lies, corruption, warmongering, corporatism, voter manipulation and unfettered globalization. It's a choice between two evils, however you look at it.

Don't forget tolerance of rape and child prostitution. (See Jeffery Epstein and William Jefferson Clinton.)

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

#370

Post by hawkice »

darawk wrote: post #365
hawkice wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, it must be me, but you ranked "Monetary policy" WAY more likely than I would (rates near zero for so long doing so little must at least put SOME doubt in your model), and "denial of quantum randomness" way less credible than I see it as. Like, man, reasonable people can disagree about pilot waves and many worlds. Are there some confusing, emotionally laden, difficult questions of fact in there? Yes. Are some thi…

Haha, sorry I knew this list would cause this sort of trouble. I'm a big believer in pilot wave theory myself, it's just very much not the 'mainstream' view. And I didn't mean to imply that the last two were close together, either. I do think monetary policy probably has some effect (whether we understand or can model that effect is another matter), but I didn't mean at all to imply that it was anywhere near the cert…

I keep getting sidetracked by other issues, but you're statements are about certainty and uncertainty and where do you draw the line for heavy-handed intervention, so I might as well get into them:

"undeniable" does not mean what you think it means. Example: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/hillary-clinton-defends-founda...

There, Clinton denies the foundation has been engaged in anything shady. Boom, definitely not undeniable #hackernewsdrama, hahaha.

If you want a disagreement, though, I prefer many-worlds over pilot wave theories, largely because I'm not entirely sure _what_ the propagation speed of the pilot waves would be. 'Greater than the speed of light' either (1) doesn't really narrow it down at all or (2) narrows it down to having no options at all. But they should have _a_ speed, because I'm not sure you can even have standing waves if the disturbances propagate instantly.

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