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Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

nytimes.com

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Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#91

Post by RealGeek »

themagician wrote: post #16

This is the opposite of what they should have done. Shows just how much of an echo-chamber Facebook has become. This is just adding another metric by which garbage can be made legitimate and vice versa. Facebook would be a much better platform if they removed the like and comment count from every post. It’s those numbers that lead people to believe that garbage is legitimate in the first place. By hiding these number…

There is no likes and views count on Whatsapp, but the fake news problem is much worse on Whatsapp than Facebook and YouTube.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#92

Post by MaxBarraclough »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #90
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So nix free speech 1. It's Facebook, not the government 2. They aren't banning anything How is this a free speech issue?

No OP, but free speech is an ideal, unlike the first amendment which applies to the government.

It's still not a free speech issue.

The question is how Facebook should order news sources/articles. They're suggesting changing their strategy. This isn't anything like censorship.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#93

Post by elorant »

This is so stupid. For one, people tend to have herd mentality. An article seen the wrong way could trigger an immense backfire where a medium's credibility tanks in a matter of days. And then it would take years to reverse the damage.

Furthermore, it opens the way for anyone with a botnet of infected machines to rig the credibility of any news outlet to his liking.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#95

Post by imgabe »

This seems very lazy on Facebook's part. Rather than employing people who will research and fact-check, they're punting the problem to the users. This whole situation arose because users are very bad at determining which sources are credible. People will believe anything that confirms their biases, and disbelieve anything that doesn't.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#96

Post by swarnie_ »

imgabe wrote: post #95

This seems very lazy on Facebook's part. Rather than employing people who will research and fact-check, they're punting the problem to the users. This whole situation arose because users are very bad at determining which sources are credible. People will believe anything that confirms their biases, and disbelieve anything that doesn't.

Its also a lot cheaper then hiring people.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#97

Post by matt4077 »

elorant wrote: post #93

This is so stupid. For one, people tend to have herd mentality. An article seen the wrong way could trigger an immense backfire where a medium's credibility tanks in a matter of days. And then it would take years to reverse the damage. Furthermore, it opens the way for anyone with a botnet of infected machines to rig the credibility of any news outlet to his liking.

It would seem that Facebook is rather well-positioned to identify such problems in the data.

They could, for example, only count votes by long-term users. They also have almost complete knowledge of their users' political leanings, making it possible to counteract any attempts at manipulation.

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#98

Post by fortythirteen »

elorant wrote: post #93

This is so stupid. For one, people tend to have herd mentality. An article seen the wrong way could trigger an immense backfire where a medium's credibility tanks in a matter of days. And then it would take years to reverse the damage. Furthermore, it opens the way for anyone with a botnet of infected machines to rig the credibility of any news outlet to his liking.

It's only stupid if you believe Facebook wants to solve their echo chamber problem.

Facebook draws its revenue from personality profiling its users for targeted advertising. How much more profit do they make when they can actively push people towards binary thinking, and make them easy to categorize?

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#99

Post by hrktb »

yAnonymous wrote: post #72
themagician wrote: post #16

This is the opposite of what they should have done. Shows just how much of an echo-chamber Facebook has become. This is just adding another metric by which garbage can be made legitimate and vice versa. Facebook would be a much better platform if they removed the like and comment count from every post. It’s those numbers that lead people to believe that garbage is legitimate in the first place. By hiding these number…

If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education. Should we censor social media, because people are too stupid to deal with it? I don't think so and if you do, you're playing in the hands of corporations who want a cheap work force. Your "solution" isn't a solution, but a hot fix that will cause more damage in the future. It's exactly the shortsighted crap politics are t…

> If you really want to fight the root of the problem, it's not likes and comments, but education.

But how do educate yourself though ?

The same argument was already made about books or newspapers: depending of the subject a lot of them are trash. Same for TV news. Wikipedia is also not a defacto trustable source.

Except for first hand experience on a subject, you will never be able to find a source that is inherently trustable (and you might even interpret your experience the wrong way, so you should doubt yourself too...).

To educate yourself, there's a point where you have to try to trust some of the information you get. Having that info come from a trusted source or with a high level of peer review is a useful first level of filtering. From there you can (and surely should) invest in more time to double check or cross check if you want, but IMO quick filtering is necessary, and can't be brushed away saying "people should know better".

Re: Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

#100

Post by matt4077 »

imgabe wrote: post #95

This seems very lazy on Facebook's part. Rather than employing people who will research and fact-check, they're punting the problem to the users. This whole situation arose because users are very bad at determining which sources are credible. People will believe anything that confirms their biases, and disbelieve anything that doesn't.

I'm sure Facebook wouldn't care about a few million spent on a panel of the world's greatest connoisseurs of real news.

This feature is in fact guaranteed to cost far more than a few experts ever would.

But Facebook knows that any expert panel will without a sliver of doubt quickly converge to a ranking that has the Economist and the New York Times in top positions, and Breitbart somewhere behind a random word generator.

Any working statistical method will lead to the same result, obviously. But it gives Facebook the option to invoke HN's favourite argument: "it can't be political because it's the algorithm. See: here are numbers."[0].

[0]: Compare, for example, the libertarian love for bitcoin, and how it's free from the politics that undermine Central Banks,

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