Facebook's Fight Against Fake News Was Undercut by Fear of Conservative Backlash (gizmodo.com)

Facebook has been concerned about fake news stories that circulate on its social platform and how often such incidents occur. The company has had high-level internal debates over the matter since May, discussing different options to curb movements of hoax and false stories. Gizmodo reports Monday that Facebook executives conducted a wide-ranging review of products and policies earlier this year with "the goal of eliminating any appearance of political bias." The company even had a major update for the News Feed planned which could have supposedly filtered fake stories, but the update never saw the light of the day because it was afraid to use it. From the report:One source said high-ranking officials were briefed on a planned News Feed update that would have identified fake or hoax news stories, but disproportionately impacted right-wing news sites by downgrading or removing that content from people's feeds. According to the source, the update was shelved and never released to the public. It's unclear if the update had other deficiencies that caused it to be scrubbed. "They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news," said the source, who asked to remain anonymous citing fear of retribution from the company. The source added, "there was a lot of fear about upsetting conservatives after Trending Topics," and that "a lot of product decisions got caught up in that." In an emailed statement, Facebook did not answer Gizmodo's direct questions about whether the company built a News Feed update that was capable of identifying fake or hoax news stories, nor whether such an update would disproportionately impact right-wing or conservative-leaning sites. Instead, Facebook said it "did not build and withhold any News Feed changes based on their potential impact on any one political party."

Comments

Fake stories like...

[trg83]

Reporting that HRC had the election win all sewn up?

Re:Fake stories like...

[budgenator]

Between the UAW and Wayne/Oakland/Macomb Counties, Democrats are used to having Michigan handed to them on a Silver Platter, it didn't happen. The Unions are losing their sway over voters and Trumps mantra of Unfair trade deals really resonate. A lot of minority voters are still smarting from Kwame Kilpatrick, and the Bipartisan involvement in the Flint Water Crisis, and I believe this played a part in sensitising them to Trumps "What have you got to lose" message as well.

Re:Fake stories like...

[Rakarra]

Or reporting that Trump was racist to Mexicans when he said that illegal immigrant gangs were raping women.

There's probably some of that happening. But there's a big difference between that and Trump's public assertion that most Mexican illegal immigrants were rapists and murderers.

Or reporting that there was nothing at all to Benghazi and no reason to investigate. Or reporting that Muslims were mad about a movie about Mohammed and not celebrating the anniversary of 9/11 by showing their strength and attacking US embassies around the world.

Most of the protests, including the one at Benghazi, were a direct result of the Innocence of Muslims video which had just been released. This isn't even questioned by authorities of either political persuasion, what was controversial was whether the administration said that the attacks came because of the protest or because of al-Quaeda terrorism. The truth was that the protests over the video were real, and terrorists used to protests as cover to sneak up to the embassy undetected.

Or reporting that Huma Abedin had been vetted and there was nothing to suggest she had a connection to the Muslim Brotherhood when every member of her family was MB and their journal was funded by one of the first financiers of al-Qaeda.

Not that I trust your "vetting" of her family but this sounds like guilt by association. Not even association, but guilt by family member's association. And it was always bullshit. That was a fake story without merit, and even Michelle Bachmann's campaign manager thought she should apologize for making it up. John McCain also came out against it, saying that the letter offered no prove, and there not a single report to indicate that she was promoting anti-American activities in the government.

Or reporting that Hillary Clinton's email scandal was only about the use of a private server and not about putting classified SCIF and GAMMA data on unsecured systems, destruction of evidence, and lying to federal investigators

The private server was a wildly overblown issue, but just like Nixon, it wasn't the crime that got Hillary into trouble, but the coverup.

Or reporting that Gamergate was a harassment campaign

I guess you weren't paying attention, but both sides looked pretty shitty, and no one won in that conflict. We all lost.

Or reporting that the 2nd Amendment gives the National Guard the right to bear arms.

This is an absolutely bizarre thing to bring up. Why wouldn't the National Guard be able to bear arms? An individual right does not invalidate a group right.

Or reporting that transgender rights are being violated by making them use the correct bathrooms or referring to them by their real names or with the correct pronouns.

Times change, buddy. Used to be that gay folks couldn't get married either, or that women were sold off by their family for marriage with a dowry, and that they didn't any say in the matter. Over time, we get better, and there is NO benefit to the automatic assumption that people in the past had things figured out morally.

Funny way of perceiving reality

[sciengin]

If I recall correctly most fake news were against Trump, not against Hillary.
I am more surprised that despite the many word twists, omissions of context and outright lies about Trump he still managed to win.
Do not mistake me for pro Trump please, I think he is an idiot who is not half as smart as he thinks he is (especially that wall idea is silly), but that does not justify making stuff up about him, such as the 3 (or more) allegations about rape, out of which none proved to be true.
Or the twisting of his word which made him look as if he was against all Mexicans instead of only the illegal ones.

All of that was repeated over and over on the MSM and of course on Facebook too. Thats on top of the blatant manipulations of the newsfeed by Facebook editors in favor of the democrats.

List would have been enormous...

[meta-monkey]

Eliminate fake news? Jesus, you'd have to block CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT, HuffPo, on and on... Would have been a bloodbath.

Re:Climate change

[Rei]

The alt-right is posting more fake stories than the alt-left - 38% to 19%. Now, a lot of people will point to that as a "right is more gullible for fake news than the left!" point, but I see it as "even 19% is really bloody terrible".

A lot of the BS, mind you, isn't to say maliciously done; it's a consequence of the clickbait era that we live in. Many people - including even teens in Macedonia - have learned that if you make up something with dramatic language and a sensationalist headline, people click and share it, and they get ad revenue. Factual accuracy doesn't come into equation - if you can sensationalize a real story: great; if you have to make up a story from whole cloth: also great! A single widely shared article can earn them $3k in a day. So they create fake news sites like "WorldPoliticus.com", "USADailyPolitics.com", etc and fill them with clickbait. Early on many of them did it about equally with the left and right, but they found that they got more clicks and shares from the right.

Re:C'mon

[Rei]

Even the NYT has admitted that they'd abandoned any pretense of objectivity in their coverage, to the point that LIBERALS were getting sick of it.

Actually, that statement is itself based around fake news. Funny, that.

Re:Backlash or Bias?

[Rei]

Obama's fault for not trying to appoint anyone to the Supreme Court

Speaking of living in an alternative reality...

Obama nominated Merrick Garland three quarters of a year ago. It has been official republican strategy to block his nomination until the election so that there would be a chance that the next president might be a Republican and they could get a more conservative court instead. A strategy that ultimately paid off.

For more details, Wikipedia has a full article on the fight, with 88 references.

Re:Best unintentionally funny headline I've ever r

[Jason Levine]

Radical Islamic Terror in the US is very rare - even if we include the outlier of 9-11.

Meanwhile, an anti-Semite has been appointed to Chief Strategist and hate crimes are on the rise. As a Jew, do you really think I should be more afraid of Muslims than of someone who hates Jews whispering in the President's ear?

Re:Best unintentionally funny headline I've ever r

[meta-monkey]

Bannon's not an anti-semite. And what's on the rise is leftist rioters beating people and setting fires in the streets. If Hillary had won and Trump supporters were doing this shit you'd be calling for drone strikes. Oh and most of those "hate crimes" are hoaxes. No Trump supporter is spray painting "make america white again" with a swastika on the side of buildings.

Re:Fake news from whose perspective?

[andydread]

From a conservative website.

Re:Mess of their own making.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a detail that is easy to overlook and its easy to assume that he was elected when you don't know anything about the shitfest that was pre WWII German politics. That Hitler came to power because the two big parties of back then (SPD and the CDU predecessor Zentrum) would not compromise on anything amongst each other or even with the smaller parties - resulting in a deadlocked parliament and the round robin selection of failed president after failed president until it was his turn - is a bit harder to take in than just evil Germans voting the capital E Evil man into office. Hitlers subsequent use of the powers he got this way is also the main reason the German president is relatively irrelevant today.