Let people develop critical thinking skills and determine their trusted sources. Keep censorship out of this!
That's been tried. It scaled poorly.
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
#532Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the voting system. I think the voting system ruins online discourse. Let me explain. Within my own social media and online forum bubbles, there are a certain set of norms and beliefs that are easy to express. But should I express the 'wrong' beliefs in the 'wrong' forum, I simply get downvoted to oblivion. And then people don't see what I have to say. Look what happens here o…
Truth isn't a majority opinion.
It's correspondence to an external Universe.
Voting systems _may_ help get you there, but not if the voting-group tendency rewards values other than truth.
Related: Celine's 2nd law.
The problem is complex: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#533So who's going to be Head of Truth at Facebook?
Someone very good at it, I hope.
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where does he use the words "SOME women" then, if you want to be this anal?
Your comment implies that the commentor was axe-grinding with women in general. The complaint was about two particular women writers at the guardian using their own sex and feminism as a shield against criticism and fuel for their own click bait.
> Your comment implies that the commentor was axe-grinding with women in general. The complaint was about two particular women writers at the guardian using their own sex and feminism as a shield against criticism and fuel for their own click bait.
So it's okay for you to infer what other people mean, but not okay for me to do it? Where did I say "women in general"? Why would my post imply what he said, when everyone can read exactly what he said and interpret it for themselves, just like you did?
He's grinding an axe (completely out of nowhere) about "feminist clickbait", "female writers", the "dogma" that "women have it worse", and singling out two women (and "people like" them) as examples. What am I supposed to do, pretend he's talking about men?
Likewise, why should I pretend that he said "some women" when he didn't? I have no idea what proportion of women he has a problem with.
None of this is relevant to my point though, which was that his rant about women (however many it may be) had absolutely nothing to do with what he was replying to, and was simply an attempt to inject this particular hobby horse of his into a thread where it doesn't belong.
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#535The linked article from NiemanLab [1] is a really odd read. It ends like this:
"It’s been said that we get the media we deserve: that the journalism we see is a reflection of business structures and audience decisions, not the result of an elite’s decisions to shape public opinion. There’s a lot of truth to that. But the information we produce and consume is generated by human beings, not systems, and those human beings have just gotten the shock of their professional lives."
So he starts by saying that the journalism we see is not the result of an elite's decisions to shape public opinion as if it is a good thing (which you would probably agree with).
Then the next line says that the result of the opposite - the unwashed masses? - is (some bad thing will occur).
At this point, you are probably expecting something neutral to follow. I mean, after all, the author talks about the journalism profession, which is supposed to provide both sides of the picture.
What actually follows is this:
"If we’re going to build a better environment for news, we need to think about these issues in a much bigger context than one election night. And it’ll take everyone — journalists, readers, tech companies, and more — to make it happen."
Great, so the author has just defined himself, Facebook, the general media and the people who agree with his views as the "elite" who wants to "fix" the problem by shaping public opinion in a way which is more palatable to him.
Maybe this attitude is what caused this "systemic shock"?
[1] http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/11/the-forces-that-drove-this-...
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, Federal jobs should have been moved from cities to fill those lost. Norway did something similar.
That sounds like an interesting story, how can I find more about it?
Here is one article on the subject. I am sure there are more out there. http://www.lifeinnorway.net/2013/03/have-the-norwegians-got-...
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#537Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would argue that wikileaks on it's own can also be very misleading. Reading emails out of context and without knowing if they've been altered is probably not the best way to get a full picture. The value add of media looking at them is they can also go and get other sources to add context or to corroborate what they are reading in the wikileaks releases. Sources which aren't available to everyone. It's also easy to…
Give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, and I would find something in them to have him hanged. ... and now Wikileaks has invited the whole internet to come play Richelieu with them, only with ten thousand times the ammunition the Cardinal (apocryphally) asked for. The online mob has been accusing (eg) Podesta and his correspondents of all kinds of insane things - from corruption & arms dealing t…
Oh I'm not saying that they could not be faked or altered. And to be honest when you have a supposedly accurate track record like this it's a perfect brewing storm for someone to come in and exploit it.
But dismissing them as Russian hacking didn't really give a lot of people the choice to make up for themselves. Yes I believe according to wikileaks that the DNC colluded with media and fact checking orgs and pushed their agenda too far. I read the information and made up my mind. So when someone points to Politifact again I'll do the same. Not saying they can't be saved but it's the idea of looking at it as doctrine from the start with a stamp of 'True' or 'False' that I don't like. Things are never that simple.
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you rather that Wikileaks kept the information for itself? Wouldn't that be just as much of an influence on the election?
Personally I think they should just leak it all rather than controlling the flow to suit their political agenda.
I'll agree with this.
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whyso? I defer to your experience, but I would expect that incorrectness is simply inconsistency measured against a more complete/complex basis?
To determine correctness, the adjudicator requires knowledge outside the system. In the scientific method, this is done by generating falsifiable hypotheses and performing the experiment. Failing that, you have to fall back on heuristics, like "what I already believe", Occam's razor (simplest theory consistent with observations wins), or reliance on authority/consensus. Consistency is simply majority wins, which comp…
I am not saying build a machine to detect correctness, I'm saying build one to detect incorrectness.
Re: Facebook admits it must do more to stop the spread of misinformation
#540Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the solution to "damned if you do, damned if you don't" here is to just remove the stupid news sidebar.
No. The solution is to continue to provide news, to curate it, to shut down professional liars, and to tell the critics that if they don't like it, they are free to encourage their followers to use other social media.
Agreed! They just need a panel of curators from a diverse background (men, women, race, religion, education...) who can provide different perspectives and reduce bias (I say reduce...human decisions will always have bias). Hell maybe an indepndent company does the creation so there's no bias for anti FB postings.
If there's no consensus on the "truthiness" then the default is benefit of the doubt that it's true.
I know we are all in IT, but not all problems are best solved by algorithms.