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Facebook Features 9/11 Conspiracy Theory as 'Trending' (slashdot.org)

Facebook is having a tough time with stories that trend on the social network. The company has been accused of gaming what it shows as "trending" on the site, and sometimes favoring things it showed to people. Not long ago, it fired the human editors who took care of it, but then earlier this month, a fake story about Megyn Kelly. It apologized for the slip, but it has happened again. The Hill reports: Facebook is taking heat yet again for its Trending Topics section after featuring a story from a British tabloid pushing a conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, because of a "controlled demolition." Facebook users who clicked on the "September 11th Anniversary" trending topic Friday were presented an article titled "September 11: The footage that 'proves bombs were planted in Twin Towers.'"

18 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. doesn't say true stories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It says 'Trending' not 'Trending Truthful News Stories'.

  2. Jumping the Shark by sycodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's close...very close

    Facebook will go the way of MySpace, AOL, and the rest of the fad social sites.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    1. Re:Jumping the Shark by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Informative

      AOL lasted about 10 years before the chumps at Time/Warner (overpaid for it/accepted AOL stock). Millions of users etc.

      It took about another year or two before even morons (e.g. Ted Turner) could see how bad a move TW had made.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  3. If that is what is popular so be it by shaitand · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Either we want them to filter and judge or we want them to put what is actually trending which is a purely algorithmic assessment.

    1. Re: If that is what is popular so be it by Plus1Entropy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      something untoward happened as testified to by industry pros

      Who? What "untoward" thing happened? Is the hijacking of planes, destruction of landmarks, and killing of 3000 people not "untoward" enough?

      when the mainstream-news-reported-it-before-it-happened thing has blown over

      Why, if you're the government and you've planned this conspiracy, not just wait for the media to get wind of it the normal way? (I mean, I'm sure someone in the largest city in the country would have noticed the tallest building bursting into flames). Why leak the story to them early? What purpose does that serve in the conspiracy, except to blow it wide open?

      videos of under-wing missiles on the aircraft have disappeared from youtube

      This one is my favorite. So YouTube, which didn't exist until 2005, had these videos at one point that have since mysteriously vanished. In spite of the government being unable to stop ISIS recruiting people, child pornography, piracy... this is the one thing they've managed to completely erase without a single copy being hosted by anyone, anywhere? Why can't I get a torrent of this amazing piece of media? Julian Assange is really slacking off on the job here...

      But let's assume this is true (because it's fun showing how ridiculous this is).

      1. These couldn't have been commercial flights with civilians passengers, right? If the missiles were noticeable from the ground while the planes struck the buildings at 500mph, surely passengers with a window seat would have noticed something. Where are the people who died (or rather, didn't die) on that flight? What about the crews, who were United and American Airlines employees? Where did they disappear to?

      2. They couldn't have taken off from a civilian airport, or else the ground crew, who spend all day every day staring at the underside of aircraft would have probably noticed a few extra engines that look nothing like engines.

      3. The two Boeing 767s, built in 1983 and 1987, didn't come off the factory line with missile mounts on the wings. Either the government seized the planes from United and American Airlines, and then modified them, or they built new planes specifically for the purpose of this conspiracy.

      3.a. If the former, that's quite a few people to keep quiet. You'd think someone at AA or UA would be able to put 2 and 2 together ("Gee, that plane just happens to be the one the government seized from us a few months ago..."). At the very least the accounting department is going to want to know why the fleet is suddenly short a 767.

      3.b. If the latter, it's even more people to keep quiet. I mean, what happened to the original planes? There aren't 767s with those registration numbers flying around, so where are they? No one at Boeing was suspicious when the Government ordered 2 new 767s, with no paint jobs (or UA/AA paint jobs), no registration numbers (or even more suspiciously, with existing registrations that just happened to be the same as those that would be used on 9/11), and told them to keep their construction off the books?

      4. Why bother? If you're going to crash a modified, mostly empty, 767 into a building with missiles under the wings... why not just rip out all the fucking seats and put the missiles inside? Better yet, just pack it full of C4 or dynamite.

      There are a ton of other points I could make about how unbelievably stupid this is, but for now I think that's enough.

      --
      Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
  4. Damnit, I predicted this. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When the story broke about the political bias scandal, I posted here a prediction of what a purely algorithmic news feed would look like. This is pretty close to one of my predictions.

    Here's the problem: The internet is full of *lies*. It is very hard for an algorithm to tell what is true and what is not. Often the not-true stories are the most popular, because they can play into what people wish to believe. That's why you need human editors.

    Now all we need is some nice clickbait. Something like "This housewife makes $120,000 a year from home, see how she does it!"

    1. Re:Damnit, I predicted this. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

      Trending now:

      "The Hidden Connection Between ISIS and the iPhone7's Missing Earphone Jack"

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  5. Re:Analysis of the videos by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "You certainly would not expect it to collapse in a tidy heap at the speed of gravity where the entire building becomes... "

    And I know a guy who doesn't wear a seatbelt because he thinks his arms can keep his face from going through the windshield in a car accident.

    Your intuition about physical processes is meaningless when dealing with materials and processes at these scales.

    Without getting into the stupidity, the utter, mindblowing, holy-crap stupidity of the idea that hundreds of people sitting in offices throughout the WTC wouldn't say "HEY, you had a maintinence guy deliver a giant package and install it in the HVAC two months ago? me too! Maybe it was so that when the guberment crashed the jets into the building, it would make sure that the evacuated buildings blooo flat down! As opposd to havign the tops slide off or sides crumble like they were supposed to!"

  6. How to hide inconventient ideas by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If I wanted to stop people taking alternative explanations to an event seriously I would find convenient nutters to add their wacky ideas to the list of explanations and get them onto talk shows, lecture circuit, etc. The more outlandlish the better; aliens - even better; new physics - great; the proposer have a checkered past and outlandish hairstyle - just who we want. The result is a couple of dozen of competing ideas for people to read; they will, rightly, dismiss many of them as cranky, and, by association, this reduces the credibility of the more considered explanations.

    The ideas become hidden because mainstream media can ignore them by labelling them 'conspiracy theories'.

    I'm not saying who/what caused the 3 buildings to fall on 9/11, but the official story has questions in it that it's authors don't answer; some alternative stories seem to have good evidence behind them.

    1. Re:How to hide inconventient ideas by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If I wanted to stop people taking alternative explanations to an event seriously I would find convenient nutters to add their wacky ideas to the list of explanations and get them onto talk shows, lecture circuit, etc. The more outlandlish the better; aliens - even better; new physics - great; the proposer have a checkered past and outlandish hairstyle - just who we want. The result is a couple of dozen of competing ideas for people to read; they will, rightly, dismiss many of them as cranky, and, by association, this reduces the credibility of the more considered explanations.

      The ideas become hidden because mainstream media can ignore them by labelling them 'conspiracy theories'.

      I'm not saying who/what caused the 3 buildings to fall on 9/11, but the official story has questions in it that it's authors don't answer; some alternative stories seem to have good evidence behind them.

      I thought the planes flying into the buildings were a pretty good explanation for why they fell down.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    2. Re:How to hide inconventient ideas by dryeo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      2 Planes managed to take out 3 buildings, with the third containing much interesting paperwork that conveniently burned up..

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    3. Re:How to hide inconventient ideas by Gavagai80 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I think the more fundamental point for a sane person to consider would be this: no conspiracy would've changed the method used to bring down the buildings. If the CIA (for example) decided to take out the WTC with explosives and blame it on Al-Qaeda, they'd obviously accuse Al-Qaeda of planting the explosives by sending their operatives into the building or getting them jobs as window washers or whatever. All goals would be accomplished by that, and with less economic collateral damage too since it wouldn't have temporarily depressed plane travel. The only reason for the CIA to use hijacked airplanes would be if they felt that was the most effective way to take down the buildings, in which case they would've gone ahead and done it that way.

      Whether it's a conspiracy has nothing to do with the method selected to destroy the buildings. Heck, if one doubts how they were destroyed, one could much more plausibly argue that it was Al-Qaeda who rigged explosives and then pretended the planes did it because they wanted to scare people into thinking they could blow up buildings with just airplanes.

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      This space intentionally left blank
  7. Re:Analysis of the videos by Carewolf · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Trending" means it's popular. People won't watch (and share) something that they don't actually want to watch. Here's the thing though about those WTC and Building 7 videos: a simple analysis of any of the off-the-street real-time videos - of which there were several so it's not like they could all be faked - by using simple equations of motion from O'Level Physics it is undeniably obvious that the tops of all of those buildings are in free-fall, accelerating at 9.8 metres per second squared.

    Now, if a building is hit two thirds of the way up and becomes damaged, you would expect that damage to cause the top to fall over. Maybe some of the outer walls would fall off, but there would be a central core at least 1/2 to 1/3 of the height of the building sticking up. Bits would hit other bits, and it would take a long time and there would be rubble strewn out across a wide area, damaging the surrounding buildings and killing or injuring the people in them. You certainly would not expect it to collapse in a tidy heap at the speed of gravity where the entire building becomes a neat pile of rubble without any kind of significant damage to surrounding buildings.

    For a quite insightful analysis which goes beyond the above brief invitation to use simple physics equations, logical analysis and reasoning, you might want to read this: https://steemit.com/tyranny/@b...

    Bottom line is: not everything that "trends" under automatic algorithms (which would be filtered out by humans too scared of what they're seeing) is bullshit.

    You literally have no idea what you are talking about? Have you have seen video of building collapsing? They ALWAYS collapse straight down. There is rarely any overengineered piece that can withstand forces this far outside its design paramenters, so when good chunk in middle collapses, ALL of it collapses straight down.

  8. Re:Analysis of the videos by nickmalthus · · Score: 4, Informative

    2626 professional architects and engineers want an independent investigation of the events of 9/11. The 9/11 commission was only created after the strong insistence of the 9/11 victims families over a year later after that tragic event. It was initially going to be led by the politically polarizing figure Henry Kissinger and two of the co-chairs claim the commission was setup to fail. A new independent investigation is required to address the deficiencies of the original 9/11 commissions report.

    --
    If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
  9. Forensic Investigation of 9/11 by MrKaos · · Score: 5, Insightful

    An "Official Report" is not a Forensic Investigation that conducts various scientific analysis of the crime scene. The very fact that there has been no formal Forensic Investigation with evidence given from structural engineers and scientists on what was the biggest crime scene in U.S is evidence enough of some sort of conspiracy, regardless of how it was achieved.

    The laws justified after 9/11 were the very ones that enabled the type of police state monitoring of citizens that not just US, but many other countries like the UK, Canada, Australia and, others all endure today. Before 9/11 western governments had not passed laws to remove our freedoms (that terrorists hated) because adequate laws were already in place to deal with terrprism. Those laws were based on what was learned by the UK government dealing with the IRA's terrorism.

    Those two very obvious facts often go unacknowledged by 9/11 theorists and denialists because that allows them to (understandably) ignore the frightening reality that the laws justified by 9/11 moved western societies to an overt surveillance state. These two facts show us how and why, just not who could create such a conspiracy. Since time has revealed these laws to be in-effective at stopping terrorism that shows us who ever wants these laws to monitor us is very powerful indeed.

    I don't know the specifics of how the towers were destroyed, but I do know that the laws passed because of 9/11 left us in a police state.

    --
    My ism, it's full of beliefs.
  10. Re: Trending News must have editors by will_die · · Score: 3

    Lots. Don't forget the first lawsuit for the actual records was from a guy with ties to the hilliary for president office.

  11. Re:"Conspiracy theory" by samkass · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm afraid none of that addresses the suspicious way in which these buildings collapsed. That's why anti-conspiracy theorists are often even worse. They extrapolate their own ideas out of it so they can have a comfort blanket to hold on to and stop looking at what is in front of them.

    The buildings collapsed exactly how you'd expect a building with strong center and shell supports would collapse, thus there's not much to explain there. Fuel heats cross-beams, steel loses half its strength at those temperatures and they bend in the center, one floor falls down to the next and cascades. The outer shell and inner shell hold it all together as its going down. Every single thing that happened to all three buildings and the field in PA is easily explained by physics, and doesn't need the conspiracy. Nothing that happened that day is "comforting," and insulting people doesn't help your case.

    --
    E pluribus unum
  12. Re:Analysis of the videos by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 3, Informative

    Somebody crashed planes into the buildings.

    But it seems that people believe they had secret agents install some super-resillient, ultra-compact, undetectable explosives which would not detonate when a 250,000 lb aircraft hit it at 400 miles an hour, nor from the fire from 10,000 gallons of aviation fuel, but would be wired for a controlled demolition so as to flatten buildings which contained people who were evacuated except for people already dying from smoke and fire?

    Whatever.