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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

#71

Post by alva »

morgante wrote: post #69
alva wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah bugger my bad, missed that. I hope the analysis also identifies the organisation/s who provided it.

Presumably it'll be a link to the article on that organization's website.

I really hope that each disputed link is given a comprehensive response and not a cookie cutter response.

I think a template response is probably the most likely outcome, especially considering the number of articles that are going to be checked by these organisations. Do they really have the resources available to give a bespoke response?

I think there is danger if these organisations are allowed to submit template responses.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#72

Post by komali2 »

morgante wrote: post #61
r2dnb wrote: post #55

Remember : - It all started with Facebook being accused of manipulating the timeline to remove conservative stories during the campaign - At the time, their PR was along the lines of : we will fire the staff and replace it with an "objective" algorithm - Shortly before the end of the campaign, the Fake News narrative started to be tested under various forms ("conspiracy theories are going mainstream", "damaging rumor…

First of all, you have the chronology right but the causation wrong. After conservative pressure to stop editorially reviewing news, fake news has increasingly trended. Since the election, people have realized how untenable this is and so Facebook is looking for a solution. This has nothing to do with the bill of rights. Facebook is not the government, government is not requiring fake news to be censored, and the fac…

OOh, juicy controversial comment. I hope some people take the time to read it instead of passing over it because it's slightly greyed out.

I for one don't agree that reddit and facebook have a "duty" to remain uncensored. If Breitbart is allowed to be overtly pro-Conservative while claiming to be the only "real" news source, reddit and facebook should be allowed to do whatever they please. All the other news agencies do it, what makes facebook so special?

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#73

Post by basch »

wmf wrote: post #54
basch wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why cant facebook just go after blogspam clickbait in general? If a story is a copy of a copy, have the algorithm favor the original instead of the blogspam. If a local news agency copies an AP/Reuters story word for word, have the software suggest replacing the replica with the original. Treat local news duplicates the same as any wordpress+adsense blog. If journalists are adding commentary thats a different story (…

I hate blogspam, but Facebook has to be seen to be taking direct action against fake news right now. They can't afford to take detours to fix other problems first.

they are one in the same problem http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174

quite honestly, "mostly fake but slightly rooted in truth blogspam" is 10000x the problem actual straight fake stories are. vitamins, detox, antioxidants, etc, etc, are a much larger pool of fake news than fabricated propaganda. people are making up outrageous stories for ad revenue, not to win elections. state sponsored narratives are unlikely to get flagged by these types of measures because they will be published by credible sources. I doubt NYT will start failing snopes tests. I doubt every SPLC post will get flagged for being out of context or unverified.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#74

Post by floatrock »

floatrock wrote: post #56
gfodor wrote: post #4

ok, so now the obvious question becomes, who fact checks the fact checkers? i don't blame facebook, but the people that have been asking for this i guess are about to get what they deserve: more consolidation of the power of persuasion of the masses into the hands of facebook. want to instantly discredit a story? just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ?

> who fact checks the fact checkers? Who polices the police? Who governs the government? Who grants authority to the authorities? In western democracies, ideally the answer is all the same: the people. Ideally, once a power broker starts to lose credibility, they start to lose their power. And that's really what this is about. Facebook has lost credibility given the ease these new social technologies have been co-opt…

As a followup thought,

> facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community consensus and being community-social, not being individually social.

The best litmus test for this is going to be whether everyone will see the same "disputed by 3rd parties" warning, or whether that warning will be micro-targeted to individual echochambers like everything else is.

If my echochamber will show a warning next to a breitbart piece but my conservative uncle won't see it because his echochamber disagrees with the fact checking, that's going to be a huge red flag that facebook is only continuing the individually-social behavior that created this credibility problem in the first place.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#75

Post by basch »

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #57
basch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would these measures end up blocking something like a modest proposal

A Modest Proposal is not, and never was, "News". It is opinion.

maybe Best In Show, that dog documentary, is a better example.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#76

Post by tyleraldrich »

r2dnb wrote: post #55

Remember : - It all started with Facebook being accused of manipulating the timeline to remove conservative stories during the campaign - At the time, their PR was along the lines of : we will fire the staff and replace it with an "objective" algorithm - Shortly before the end of the campaign, the Fake News narrative started to be tested under various forms ("conspiracy theories are going mainstream", "damaging rumor…

"It seems like citizens are no longer awake and fighting for the bill of rights"

Nothing in the bill of rights applies here. You don't have freedom of speech on Facebook - They make the rules and decide what is allowed and not allowed. It's a company, not the US Government. If enough of their users are upset that fake news like "The Pope endorses Donald Trump" (a real example) is surfacing constantly on their news feeds, it is in Facebook's best interest as a company to try to remedy the situation. They make money when people are actively using their site - and if the "Fake News Epidemic" is causing people to stop using Facebook, they'll try to stop it.

Nobody is making anybody use Facebook - it does seem kind of silly to me, but clearly they see value in this (or not doing this was losing them money). What we really need to do is stop treating large corporations like they are a government entity and getting upset when they start restricting "free speech" - they have no obligation to allow people to post anything they want, and can manipulate your timeline as much as they want because you signed their ToS.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#77

Post by mozumder »

seanca wrote: post #52

Facebook seems to be stumbling down the same page that Twitter did here in terms of attempting to regulate some content, by means that they themselves determines to be un-biased and in the best interests of users... which hasn't quite worked out so well for Twitter. If everything is fine and unmoderated, there is no bias. If some things are flagged, not allowed, etc, I don't care how much a 3rd party is trusted. It's…

Unmoderation = infinite spam.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#78

Post by tyleraldrich »

r2dnb wrote: post #67
jeromegv wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that a problem when a news that says that the Pope supports Donald Trump gets over 1 millions shares? This isn't opinion, this is pure fabrication.

The article could go on and make the case that the actions of the Pope are not aligned with his rethoric which shows that nothing is as black and white as what you suggest.

The example you responded to isn't a "What If" scenario - it actually happened. The headline and body of the article claimed Donald Trump was endorsed by the Pope with no evidence. It's fake news no matter how you look at it.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#79

Post by r2dnb »

morgante wrote: post #61
r2dnb wrote: post #55

Remember : - It all started with Facebook being accused of manipulating the timeline to remove conservative stories during the campaign - At the time, their PR was along the lines of : we will fire the staff and replace it with an "objective" algorithm - Shortly before the end of the campaign, the Fake News narrative started to be tested under various forms ("conspiracy theories are going mainstream", "damaging rumor…

First of all, you have the chronology right but the causation wrong. After conservative pressure to stop editorially reviewing news, fake news has increasingly trended. Since the election, people have realized how untenable this is and so Facebook is looking for a solution. This has nothing to do with the bill of rights. Facebook is not the government, government is not requiring fake news to be censored, and the fac…

>Facebook is this era's nightly news and, just like the nightly news, they have a right to avoid sharing crazy conspiracy theories and outright lies.

I have no problem with that. I have a problem with them choosing what I can share with my friends, and more generally what people can share with each other. "Sorry it's fake news so we limited the reach".

The problem is that they are not open. My only problem is opacity. HN is transparent, Breitbart is transparent. You know their opinions, you know their agenda. But this is not the case with FB which pretends to be neutral, and this is the issue.

>This has nothing to do with the bill of rights. Facebook is not the government, government is not requiring fake news to be censored, and the fact checkers are independent organizations.

Do you remember the anti-trust suits against Microsoft ? You can't pretend that a company having the influence FB has is just a corporation like another. When you have this size, you have added responsibility / expectations since your actions directly impact a significant part/aspect of the country.

Moreover they coordinate with politics, so this has everything to do with the Bill of Rights at this point. The citizen should at least pay attention to what is happening.

Re: News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News

#80

Post by lhnz »

morgante wrote: post #45
throwanem wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it takes a little more to convince anyone of anything than merely to say "no, you're wrong" over and over and over again. Would that the world were so simple, perhaps. Evidence suggests that it is not.

I agree that saying "you're wrong" isn't an effective rhetorical technique, but trying to argue with alt-right trolls is a waste of effort. Sites like Snopes and Politifact do the research, with primary sources, to actually validate claims. Since conservatives can't actually invalidate those claims, they've decided to simply claim that any source which disagrees with them is biased. It's gaslighting.

The evidence is often correct. It's the assignment of weight to each claim, lack of charity when reading, and therefore output of the truth-o-meter which is biased. This isn't just rhetoric; it can be evaluated rationally.

Worth scrolling through this Twitter feed [0] for individual examples. They can be validated and many are not just 'gaslighting by the right'. And others feel this way, too [1].

[0] https://twitter.com/PolitiFactBias

[1] https://twitter.com/jamestaranto/status/809480523693387777

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