Slashdot Mirror
The Washington Post Tracked Facebook's Trending Topics For 3 Weeks, Found 5 Fake Stories and 3 Inaccurate Articles (washingtonpost.com)
An alarming number of people rely on social media, including and especially Facebook, for news. Over the past few months, we have seen how Facebook's Trending Topics feature is often biased, and moreover, how sometimes fake news slips through its filter. The Washington Post monitored the website for over three weeks and found that Facebook is still struggling to get its algorithm right. From the report: The Megyn Kelly incident was supposed to be an anomaly. An unfortunate one-off. A bit of (very public, embarrassing) bad luck. But in the six weeks since Facebook revamped its Trending system -- and a hoax about the Fox News Channel star subsequently trended -- the site has repeatedly promoted "news" stories that are actually works of fiction. As part of a larger audit of Facebook's Trending topics, the Intersect logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly inaccurate (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternate source). On top of that, we found that news releases, blog posts from sites such as Medium and links to online stores such as iTunes regularly trended. Facebook declined to comment about Trending on the record. "I'm not at all surprised how many fake stories have trended," one former member of the team that used to oversee Trending told the Post. "It was beyond predictable by anyone who spent time with the actual functionality of the product, not just the code."The Post adds that "there's no guarantee" that it was able to catch every hoax, since it looked at Trending feature only once every hour.
The feature is called "Trending", not "Factual News". If I photoshop a picture of my cat flying a jet and it goes viral... it's trending. That doesn't mean he's actually flying the jet.
Here's some news for you... Satire can be popular.
Funny how that works, how she can commit crimes and the media chooses to ignore her evil ways.
google services such as kisscartoon are down today due to the massive child porn they are trading on rio grande do sul. btw,
I wonder what a similar analysis on the Washington Post would show.
- Bill C had a son with another woman. Hillary didn't want him in their lives. Btw, the son is black. The kind Hillary hates.
- The Obamas are getting divorced.
I saw these trending in the grocery store line yesterday.
Did they have any fake or inaccurate stories over the same period of time? How many corrections did they have to make? The New York Times had to make two corrections to an article about Gary Johnson's Aleppo gaffe on the same day.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Stupid, fake news and racist trolling trends on Facebook?
Say it ain't so.
That the Washington Post feels it has the epistemic authority to fact check anybody gives me a heh.
Heh.
You do realize, of course, that there exists an entire "industry" devoted to manipulating automated search systems to push snake oil and all manner of other bullshit in to your face. Once you remove the human element to identify and remove the obvious garbage, what you're left with is what the armies of trolls are furiously clicking on throughout the night.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Kind of ironic coming from WashPo which basically has become a PR outlet for the DNC
Hillary has created the most effective propaganda arm ever made.
Hillary Propaganda Divisions ABC,NBC,CBS,CNN, NYT, Bumberg, Huffy Post, NewYanker, Politicon, Politifalsehoods, Last Twit Tonight,Washington Post
https://theintercept.com/2016/...
http://www.americanthinker.com...
http://dcleaks.com/emails/cApR...
I am glad that I am not caught out by this. I go to serious, bona fide news websites to get my news. They are always objective, accurate, impartial, don't put some slant on stories, and above all, do not ignore some stories that I think are important.
So let's see how many whooshes this piece of sarcasm creates...
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
So how many stories total did they track? Is 5 stories half the stories? Is it 5% of the stories? Without context '5 stories' is meaningless.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Facebook is entertainment, not news
Facebook is entertainment, not news
Facebook is entertainment, not news
(/. won't let me repeat that as many times as I had wanted to...)
It would only be news if WaPo ran an expose on their biased reporting, see
http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/10/11/wikileaks-eilperin-warning-podesta/
Everyone knows faceplant's news is crap but WaPo isn't that much better in terms of integrity.
There were accurate, real news stories posted on Facebook? I must have the wrong friends.
I hate to defend Facebook here, but if you RTFA, you will see that some of the supposed "fake" and "inaccurate" articles were actually spoofs. People posted them because they were funny. That's like stopping by The Onion and complaining that the news is biased and inaccurate.
Why are you fools still using Facebook (or FAILbook, which I think is more accurate)? It's BAD for your life overall. Dump Facebook!
Irrelevant, stay on subject.
...anybody that chooses Facebook as their primary news source deserves all they get, including ridicule.
Perhaps its just me, and though I have a FB account I don't use it much so I'm not the primary 'target audience' for 'Trending Topics' but seriously it is NOT called 'Trending Accurate News Stories' its called 'Trending Topics' why would anyone ever believe that a 'Topic' has to imply 'accurate news' in the least. This is especially true of the nature of the web where anyone can post & say pretty much anything they want, people can get 'interested' in that (and thus cause it to 'trend') for various reasons, including just 'slap stick stupidity/entertainment'.
I would argue if you are getting your 'news' from FB than you've already failed in regards to any desires a person may have to 'keep up to date on what is going on in the world'.
Beyond that, who the F is the 'Washington Post' to speak about 'bias'...if they actually believe they are an 'unbiased source' then they need to go back to the drawing board. I'd say this about any 'traditional news organization' which have all be shown to be 'biased' which can show up as favouring certain 'opinion pieces' to how they supposedly right up the 'facts of a story'
I know that pilling up on Facebook is the new trend now, but just so people know, that number can't be much different from several news portals, blogs and other social networks that are being used as news sources nowadays.
Facebook shouldn't be considered a source for reliable news, but several other portals also shouldn't in the very same way.
Arguably, traditional media is just on the same page, as they'll often use Internet sources for their news too nowadays.
So, in the end, the recommendation stays the same. Consult multiple independent sources first, and take everything you read with a grain of salt.
Washington Post monitors Facebook Trending for three weeks and find it is working better than the Washington Post. Journalist scramble to discredit system out of fear of being replaced.
...give credit where it is due. Love it or hate it FNC has perfected the art of propaganda in the US media.
Where's the control? How many fake and inaccurate stories are published by other media?
An absolute number like "5" or "8" is meaningless. Even the most serious newspapers get hoaxed or lie sometimes.
The only thing I found in TFA is this:
Our results shouldn’t be taken as conclusive: Since Facebook personalizes its trends to each user, and we tracked results only during work hours, there’s no guarantee that we caught every hoax. But the observation that Facebook periodically trends fake news still stands — if anything, we’ve underestimated how often it occurs.
You said it : inconclusive. What is important is the ratio. If you reviewed 20 articles and 5 are fake, that's horrible. If it is 5 out of 500, it needs improvement but it is not so bad.
I believe it linked to a story that linked to the real scientific evidence of 9/11
THIS is what had the washington post brainwashed misinformed up in arms.. the truth actually trending, instead of some useless fluff story or propaganda.
FTFY
Just look at the way you spout lies in support of a politician who somehow garnered over $100 million in contributions and fees from people, like say, Russian oligarchs interested in buying the US uranium industry just when Crooked Liar Hillary! was Secretary of State and in position to approve such deals.
Calling you a brainless howler monkey would be an insult to brainless howler monkeys.
How do you know when the Washington Post is lying? When you are reading any output from their so-called ;journalists'.
Want an example. When the infinitely depraved USA purposely bombed the Amiriyah shelter in Iraq, murdering half a thousand women and chdren, the WaPo spent the next TWO YEARS lying to its readers that the atrocity had been 'accidental'. In reality, the war criminals of the US government had located the architect of the shelter in Europe, threatened his family if he didn't turn over the plans, and then used those plans to arrange a multi-missile strike EXACTLY like that seen days ago against the funeral gathering in Yemen (also, carried out in fact by US pilots flying in saudi colours).
The first American missile hit the ventilation opening (the only weak point), so the second incendary missile could enter via that opening and burn all the occupants alive.
But the Washington Post told its readers DEFINITIVELY that anyone claiming the strike on the shelter was NOT an 'unfortunate accident' was a 'conspiracy theorist'. By the time the truth appeared beyond all doubt, the FILTH that own the WaPo knew that 99.999% of their readers were no longer paying attention.
Of course, the owners of Slashdot use the exact same methods as the owners of the WaPo.
If you look at the Wikileaks dump, you'll see that the Washington Post was too busy holding illegal fundraisers with the DNC that the DNC's own lawyers told them they could never do and sending their articles to the DNC for editorial review. I've yet to see a story from them or any sort of investigation regarding that and that gives me reason to distrust them.
Thanks for the unbiased tip.
The start of world wars. Nothing more dangerous to society than fake news.
Only thing bound to wipe your family off the map.
Deserve? These people/idiots ARE the product, that makes sure that status quo won't change. So its less about what you "deserve", and more about what your opponents can get away with?
OTOH, an "alarming number of people" think it's a good idea to give Trump the POTUS job, an "alarming number of people" think IS, Front National, AFD, or any other radical party is a good idea. An "alarming number of people" rail for OrbÃn, Putin, Frauke Petry, ErdoÄYan, Marine LePen or worse.
Alarming.
It REALLY freaks you lefties out that ONE media outlet only pushed democrat talking points half of the time, unlike all the other outlets who are full-time appendages on the buttocks of the Democrat jackass, doesn't it?
Half the people on Fox, like gay news anchor Shep Smith, elitist former-Republican George Will, former Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale worker Krauthammer, Megyn Kelly, libertarian Greg Gutfeld, Mike Wallace's son Chris, Former Bush people Brit Hume and Karl Rove, frequent guests like Rich Lowry and Stephen Hayes etc despise Trump just like the Hillbots at all the other networks.
ANY shred of non-conformance by even a fraction of the news business is intolerable to you "tolerant" people.
just change the channel to any of the Democrat party puppet channels like ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, PBS, Comedy Central, or get any big news paper like the NYT, the WaPo, the SF Chronicle, the LA Times, etc and you will be back in your happy little progressive snowflake zone where free thought and free speech are safely off-limits.
Rival extensions of the DNC disguised as news point fingers at how terribly sourced their content is
LePereZg:~$ apropos facebook
facebook: nothing appropriate.