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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."
If they hadn't been rigging the news feeds and injecting their own bias, they wouldn't have gotten into this mess.
The auto-filtering criteria apparently caused far more right-leaning stories to be filtered than left-leaning stories, and it was scrapped for that reason.
So basically, it was bad code that they didn't know how to fix, and probably shouldn't have been in production regardless of the political aspect.
or they were bad stories. The truly bad idea was in trying to implement a filter in the first place.
Nullius in verba
The most recent fake one that I've seen, with its supports absolutely adamant that it's real, is the "Clinton didn't really win the popular vote, Trump did!" thing. They defend it to the day they die, despite the fact that it's flatly contradicted by all official sources, can be traced back to the guy who made it up, and is based around factually incorrect statements about how votes are tabulated.
Not that the left is innocent in all of this. I still keep seeing that fake quote about Trump saying that Republican voters are idiots who will believe anything. How many times do you have to point out that it's fake for people to stop circulating it?
We need more fact checks, period. It bugs me to no end that news stations just broadcast politicians giving speeches and pundits making claims, wherein they may reiterate a dozen different things that have literally zero basis in reality... and just let it go uncorrected. That's journalistic malpractice, plain and simple. I know they want to jeep the pace of coverage up, but they're willfully letting their viewers get misinformed in order to do so.
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
The auto-filtering criteria apparently caused far more right-leaning stories to be filtered than left-leaning stories... So basically, it was bad code...
Was the decision made purely based on the fact that it was filtering more right-leaning stories? Did someone evaluate whether it was because there were more false right-leaning stories being posted?
Fake news can and does from both political wings. I see no reason that Facebook cannot squelch bullshit wherever it comes from - impartially, transparently and fairly. And perhaps some (a lot) does target the right and it might spark a backlash to snuff it out. Man the fuck up and do it. The alternative of allowing it so the stupid propagates is FAR worse as we are now witnessing.
The truly bad idea was in trying to implement a filter in the first place.
That is the message that will go unheeded for all time. Let the readers do their own filtering. They do anyway.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
...seriously?
They were afraid of a conservative backlash...BECAUSE THEY'D ALREADY BEEN MANIPULATING THE NEWS.
Jesus wept, people. How far down the rabbit hole of post-facto rationalization do you need to go? 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.
-Styopa
The pollsters used the same techniques they did as before with reasonable success. McCain and Mitt's results pretty much matched them. The problem is that Trump is not a normal candidate and that surveyee's didn't react to him like they did a normal candidate. He's thrown monkey wrenches into a lot things (for good or bad).
There was no reason for DNC to manipulate the polls. A close election produces more turn-out, which is what they wanted. If anything, the bad polls hurt Hillary rather than Trump.
Table-ized A.I.
There's a difference between being wrong and intentionally publishing fake and misleading information. Plus the fact that Hillary won the popular vote (by +650K votes and still counting) just demonstrateshow hard it is to call an election when there are several swing-state votes in the electoral college.
I am in no way alleging that the DNC manipulated polls. My observation is more that the fawning media always interpreted every poll within or near the margin of error as a win for Clinton. I think the DNC proved to be self-defeating and blundering more so than dishonest, but the media showed a lot of bias this time around, IMHO. I think they're going to spend a long time earning trust back. Not a Trump supporter here, by the way.
...reporting that HRC had the election win all sewn up?
The pollsters used the same techniques they did as before with reasonable success. McCain and Mitt's results pretty much matched them.
The media's job is not to coronate. Its job is to report the news. The way the main stream news went so disgustingly overboard in the election cycle to coronate Hillary Clinton is unforgivable. They have tarnished their reputations beyond repair and attempts to excuse them because of "muh polls lol" is disingenuous in the extreme. I see the left wing reality distortion field is still in effect. Can't wait for 2020!
650k votes is minuscule compared to the overal vote totals 121M+
Just because she got 2.5million more votes than Trump in California is not enough to use the popular vote as some sort of vindication.
And they wonder why we don't love censorious asshats who cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas.
The big-money establishment left keeps looking anywhere but a mirror for why they failed. It's not Facebook, guys, nor racism, nor whatever else you came up with. Clinton was simply a toxic candidate. She came across like someone from Capitol City in the Hunger Games, didn't give a press conference for nine months, barely interacted with voters (and almost never with people who hadn't already contributed to her campaign), but spent a lot of time re-assuring Wall Street.
There's no mystery here why voters rejected her. Heck, she couldn't even get the majority of votes from white women - no one felt she was going to represent them. Trump didn't win the primary because people liked him, but because they rejected the big-money establishment right. He didn't win the general because people liked him, but because they rejected the big-money establishment left. Trump won because he's so obviously not a standard politician, and everyone he ran against was. Elections are going to keep going further afield until "business as usual" changes in DC - and that's a bigger driving force than left or right.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Plus the fact that Hillary won the popular vote (by +650K votes and still counting)
I really wish people would stop talking about this. I'm NOT a Trump supporter, but talking about the popular vote is emphasizing an irrelevant aspect of the data given how our system is set up.
Trump and Clinton did NOT campaign to win the popular vote. If they were doing so, they likely would have skipped rallies in many "swing states" and instead held them in places more likely to get out the maximum votes for their side. That could have led to a very different popular vote split.
It's kinda like playing a game of Monopoly and losing but saying, "But, but I had more properties! I should win! I had more properties!" Except Monopoly isn't about accumulating the most property, it's about accumulating more money and bankrupting the opponent. Those are the rules of the game. If you want to play by different rules, fine... but that's a different game. The US election is set up one way, and the candidates "played" to win by those rules (i.e., Electoral College).
By the way, I'm not defending the Electoral College either, and there are legitimate reasons to get rid of it. But the mismatch here isn't really a strong argument -- if you believe that campaigns and rallies and advertisements have ANY effect on voter turnout, then there's absolutely no guarantee that the numbers would have been the same if the candidates were trying to win the popular vote and made campaign choices based on that.
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.
That the Republicans then talked of further delaying for the next 4 years should Clinton win sends an even more ominous message that they care more about politics than the Constitution, the Country and *all* of its people.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Exactly. Trump won the popular vote in 30 out of 50 States.
Or reporting that Trump was racist to Mexicans when he said that illegal immigrant gangs were raping women.
Or reporting that Trump's son's use of Pepe the Frog makes Trump a white supremacist.
Or reporting that Clockmed Achmed had invented a clock and the school was racist, and not that the school was legally required to report him to the police for the felony he committed by making a hoax bomb or else they could be charged with misprision.
Or reporting that Michael Brown had his hands up and was saying don't shoot.
Or reporting that George Zimmerman had stalked and murdered Trayvon Martin.
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.
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.
Or reporting that Peter King was racist for wanting to investigate al-Shabaab recruiting from within the United States.
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.
Or reporting that Gamergate was a harassment campaign.
Or reporting that there is a Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.
Or reporting that the 2nd Amendment gives the National Guard the right to bear arms.
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.
All of this is fake news. All of it is equally as bad as the latest "report circulating in the Kremlin" that Sorcha Faal pulled out of his ass. What is Facebook planning to do about all of this fake news that is published by the New York Times, Reuters, AP, Washington Post, ABC, etc?
The alleged email quote: "We are going to try to do an oversample of seniors on the poll. Sample too small otherwise..."
That can be interpreted at least in two ways. It may mean they simply don't have enough data for a given factor and so use a subset with more factors to extrapolate that factor to a general set. It's a statistical "trick" to tease more info out of a limited data set.
Perhaps one can argue that they are "over-guessing" which makes their poll bad, but that's not the same as introducing intentional bias. It could be being a cheap-skate rather than propagandist. I don't know enough about their data to say for sure.
Further, I cannot tell from that alone that they are talking about an internal poll or a public poll. If it's an internal poll for internal usage, then it's not "public manipulation". It's then for internal reports.
Without more evidence about the context, I see no reason to make a default assumption of malice. Context matters. Don't jump to conclusions.
Table-ized A.I.
And editing 911 calls to make someone sound racist? That kind of fake new?
How about calling a 400-lb thug who just beat up a 5'2" convenience store clerk while robbing him a "teen"? Then perpetrating the LIE of "hands up don't shoot" when the THUG got shot in the face trying to bum rush the police officer? Is that fake news too?
How about all the LIES about Freddy Gray? Who BROKE HIS OWN DAMN NECK throwing himself against the walls of the paddy wagon? The jackass prosecutor tried to use evidence that the driver took "wide turns" and "rolled stops" to say the driver deliberately gave a "rough ride" to injure Freddy Gray - but funny how the OTHER person in the van wasn't hurt at all - and he testified he heard Gray slamming himself against the walls of the van...
But jackass "progressives" cried POLICE BRUTALITY!!! RAAAAAAAAAAAAACIIIIIIISSSTS!!!!!
THOSE are reasons Clinton lost.
How about childish campus crybullies shouting down speakers who DARE to state that handing out welfare checks and allowing unchecked illegal immigration might not be the best way to run a country? That's NOT racist, your smug arrogant jackass. Those are reasons why Clinton lost.
You want fake news?
Just go to the Rolling Stone, whose "Rape on Campus" just lost its first libel suit - to the tune of 7 million dollars. That's FAKE NEWS - and it was all designed to push the "progressive" narrative of how "oppressed" women are on campus.
Meanwhile, women make up 60% of all college students, and no one complains about how that's leaving poor black males behind.
OF COURSE "PROGRESSIVES" DON'T COMPLAIN ABOUT POOR BLACK MALES BEING LEFT BEHIND - THOSE ARE RELIABLE FUTURE VOTERS! POOR, UNEDUCATED, SLAVES BEHOLDEN TO THE WELFARE STATE.
That's ANOTHER reason Clinton LOST (I LOVE typing that - Clinton LOST!!!!! BWWWWAAAAA HAAAA HAAAAA!!!!)
Hell, the media literally has a HISTORY of publishing fake news to hurt Republicans - LITERALLY and legally admitting to publishing "fake" news. (But is was "accurate". Yeah, right.)
So, all you progtards, I'm hoping it's payback time for all your smug "I'm better than you, YOU RAAAACIST HOMOPHOBE!!!" BULLSHIT. It's NOT racist to not want to expand welfare. It's NOT homophobic to not want some 45-year-old man to be allowed to call himself a "woman" and then watch my 12-year-old daughter in the bathroom. And if you think it is, YOU are the closed-minded jackass.
And that's ANOTHER reason Crooked Liar Hillary! lost.
May Attorney General Rudy Guiliani prove Crooked Liar Hillary! knew she set up an illegal server and deliberately used it for classified data. May he show how Crooked Liar Hillary!'s utter arrogant incompetence allowed China, Russia, Israel, Cuba, and a host of other foreign intelligence agencies direct access the emails of the US Secretary of State. May Guiliani PROVE Barack Obama knew of the server. May he PROVE that Bill Clinton illegally influenced Attorney General Lynch, and that Lynch pressured and Democrat Party bribed FBI Directory Comey - whose wife somehow got millions of dollars in campaign contributions for a lame Virginia Senate "campaign" right after the email story broke.
And may Guiliani then turn his sights on the IRS...
Mod me down you slimy progtards - in your hearts, you damn well know that's almost certainly all TRUE. All that about Crooked Liar Hillary!'s illegal email server, that Comey was bribed, that Russia and China were literally reading her emails - you KNOW IT'S TRUE AND YOU FEAR IT WILL COME OUT AN DESTROY THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Well, that's what you deserve for selling your soul to the Clintons.
Yes and his transition team is starting out with a Woman, a Gay Male and an Black, an obvious display of his "Fear of minorities "! Also everybody knows Trump is really a Conservative Democrat who ran as a Republican.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Here's an excellent explanation why the system was set up to have an electoral college: https://geopoliticalfutures.co...
"The United States is a geopolitical invention. The 13 original colonies were very different from each other. As the nation expanded westward, even more exotic states became part of the union. Constantly alienating smaller states through indifference could undermine the national interest. The Senate and the electoral college both stop that from happening, or at least limit it. Any state can matter in any election.
You might charge that this is undemocratic. It is. It was intended to be. The founders did not create a direct democracy for a good reason. It would have prevented the United States from emerging as a stable union. They created a republican form of government based on representation and a federal system based on sovereign states. Because of that, a candidate who ignores or insults the “flyover” states is likely to be writing memoirs instead of governing."
Well, it is shit like the GP posted that is why Clinton lost.
Fear of minorities is why Trump was elected. Period.
As long as that is your rhetoric, you will continue to lose.
Because you continue to blame strawmen instead of learning from your mistakes.
That's one of the things that blows my mind. There are a lot of people in the U.S. who basically said, "I'm sick of all you billionaire New York atheists controlling my life! You're out of touch with the working man, and don't care about me!" and then proceeded to elect Trump. It's like an Onion article.
"I'm saying that if Democrats want to be successful it would certainly help if they can find people to run that weren't accused of committing multiple felonies"
Can you explain why that standard should be applied only to Democrats?
Chris Christie, Scott Walker & Rick Perry have more than a few legal woes
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
And the President-elect is now begging off his own upcoming court appearance regarding Trump University - a case that's been ongoing for over 5 years.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body