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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

#541

Post by JabavuAdams »

hx87 wrote: post #260
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Separate ideology (or whatever happens to be the object of bias) from identity, and you're halfway there. People are much more amenable to changing their minds if their identities aren't at stake. For example, most people can discuss the pros and cons of F-150s and Silverados fairly rationally; those with the Calvin pissing logos, not so much.

We have to design systems that work with the people we have, not the people we wish we had.

Fail to recognize that, and you've failed before you've started.

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

#542

Post by JabavuAdams »

Bud wrote: post #104
jerf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, trying to solve this problem by creating a definition of "misinformation" sufficiently precise to act on it for all possible articles, then trying to remove it somehow is probably an AI-complete problem. If it's not AI-complete it's probably just plain an ill-formed question. That's before we ask questions about the biases that get embedded into the misinformation detector. This can't be fixed at Facebook scales…

There is no need to create a Grand Unified Theory of misinformation, here. This problem isn't that hard. You filter this stuff and rank it by its SOURCE, not by the content of individual articles. It's not hard to figure out which online sources are pushing out most of the abjectly-bad propaganda, and de-rank them.

Non-starter. The NYTimes and Washington Post, for example, are respected but have a very strong yet subtle bias.

On the one hand, they seem more interested in fact-checking. On the other, they propagate concepts like: on-balance the US is a force for good and should lead the world. This is highly contentious and non-obvious for many (most?) people outside the US.

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

#543

Post by jwm4 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #273
hx87 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Separate ideology (or whatever happens to be the object of bias) from identity, and you're halfway there. People are much more amenable to changing their minds if their identities aren't at stake. For example, most people can discuss the pros and cons of F-150s and Silverados fairly rationally; those with the Calvin pissing logos, not so much.

Again agreed. But how would you accomplish that? For large majorities of voters, dropping that ballot in the box is over 90% an identity game.

Prove that assumption, please.

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

#544

Post by jwm4 »

Bud wrote: post #56
agildehaus wrote: post #19

Earlier 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.

Would your definition of professional liars include Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

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

#545

Post by jwm4 »

majani wrote: post #498
Animats wrote: post #439

Here's a tool someone could write. Write a browser add-on which modifies Facebook pages so that the news links are changed to Google, Bing, and Wikipedia searches for the news headline. Connect to Google/Bing in a mode with no signin or cookie info, so you don't get "search personalization". This will get you out of Facebook's filter bubble quickly. Google and Bing have problems, too, but they are somewhat better at…

Better and easier to do a Google News search for the link itself. If the link doesn't show up in news search, it can be considered a less credible source. If the link shows up, it'll be accompanied by follow up sources

Google as the arbitrator of what's good or bad? Please!

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

#546

Post by crystalmeph »

B-Con wrote: post #375
colllectorof wrote: post #363

"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-che…

Agreed. The problem is the users, not the platform. If users propagate misinformation, the users propagate misinformation. The easy solution people often jump to is fighting negatives with negatives, assuming it yields a positive. But often a positive approach is more effective. Offering incentives for good acts, not just disincentives for bad acts, is a fairly popular recent trend backed by research. In this case I…

>>But ultimately, it's worth remembering that it's hard to build a good system with bad raw materials. If people are interested in falsehoods and echo chambers, their social media will reflect that.

I wouldn't phrase it quite so negatively, but I think you're on to something here. If people don't enjoy going on Facebook, they won't go on Facebook. What do people enjoy going to Facebook for? Interacting with their Facebook friends, whom they likely friended in at least some part due to their shared beliefs.

"Fixing" Facebook in this regard means forcing people to interact more with entities outside their self-selected social group, when the whole reason they got on Facebook in the first place is to interact with their self-selected social group! Facebook would be foolish to fix this problem, it would drive their users away.

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

#547

Post by JabavuAdams »

DominikR wrote: post #297
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…

Why exactly shouldn't it be beneficial if we let the market (the viewer) without any regulation decide which information should spread and which shouldn't? If people prefer seeing outrageous stuff then let them have it. The reason why governments and institutions want to control this is in order to control its people, all the other reasons given are just an attempt to mask this.

> Why exactly shouldn't it be beneficial if we let the market (the viewer) without any regulation decide which information should spread and which shouldn't?

1) It doesn't work. It leads to the lowest common-denominator winning.

2) Humans aren't rational.

3) The world is complicated enough that the median person simply doesn't know much about anything outside of their silo.

4) There are powerful forces conspiring to profit off of people's ignorance, rather than to turn them into less ignorant, more rational, more empathetic people, more curious people.

5) There are many people who simply aren't that curious. Left to their own devices, they will be overly susceptible to trickery and populism.

This might be a nice idea in a socially homogeneous group of a small number of like-minded farmers. It fails surely and predictably in a large group trying to make good decisions in a complex and technical world.

Read: Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes And How To Correct Them: Lessons From The New Science Of Behavioral Economics

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

#548

Post by tomp »

knz wrote: post #425
tomp wrote: post #360

Earlier 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.

The way I understand, they've been burned before by leaking all at the same time - there's an initial "shock", theneveryone forgets about it. If your purpose is generating the maximum amount of outrage and controversy (and, consequentially, change), it makes sense to publish things slowly.

Although I agree that the timing was probably connected with the US elections. But again, that's a good think - the only way organisations will change is if it will hurt them. Now both US parties know that they can easily be targets next time.

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

#549

Post by JabavuAdams »

dasil003 wrote: post #68
Bud wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a proper response to "accusations of bias" from alt-right white-nationalist thug media. Never mind whether the accusations "looked likely to lead to a Congressional investigation". The response is to tell them to fuck off, and that the professional editors in your private company will continue to do their job however they see fit. Period, paragraph.

Telling people who aren't aligned to with the liberal intelligentsia to fuck off is exactly what got us in the current mess. Most people are reasonable, but when the reasonable and rational media ignores their issues, we leave the door open to demagogues and dictators. How else could a silver spoon like Donald Trump ever claim to represent the everyman?

You make some good points, but this:

> Most people are reasonable

Is blatantly false. People are tribal.

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