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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."
Outright banning them is too extreme in my opinion, in part because of the appearance of or risk of censorship.
Instead, tag the suspect stories, or all stories, with a link to lists of alternative sources, viewpoints, and fact-checking sites for the claims given.
By the way, some conservatives consider politifact.com and snopes.com to be left-leaning. Evidence of this is thin, or at least doesn't show significant bias in my inspections. (I see errors in ranking judgement more than bias.)
However, assuming it is left-leaning, where is the right's alternative?
Table-ized A.I.
It looks like maybe the Democrats have the issues. When you rig your primary to insure the candidate most hated by all conservative voters is guaranteed the nomination and then wonder why you lost that's called the issue of self delusion. No matter how bad Trump acted. No matter how rude and obnoxious. No matter what dirt was dug up on him. They still lost the election because they picked a bad, bad candidate and when an outsider challenged her they cheated and undercut him in any way they could. All so they could run the Queen. Well they ran her and Americans rejected her. The only people they have to blame are themselves. I'd be willing to bet there were hundred of other politicians they could have run with and won but they wanted the most corrupt one they could find that wasn't in jail at the moment.
I'm very left leaning, but do understand the importance of an objective, unbiased press. What people aren't getting is that Facebook is the press for the 21st Century. I feel they do need to realize this and figure out some way to deal with it. Otherwise, this problem is going to get worse and cause a huge mess.
Back not so long ago, there were three news networks and a handful of "newspapers of record" that served as almost the sole authoritative source of information for most people. If something made it into the New York Times or Washington Post or Boston Globe, the story was at least believable and researched. it didn't get there just because some reporter bashed some keystrokes into his smartphone without thinking and hit Send. But, this is exactly what happens with Facebook and other Internet publishing media. Fringe groups (on both sides!) who would previously never get the time of day are suddenly given the world's biggest microphone and access to almost the entire population. Using sophisticated, polished publication techniques they can produce whatever content they want and call it unbiased news. Twitter is an even more interesting beast, in that you get access to unfiltered streams of consciousness. Not that it did any good, but look at how many times Donald Trump took to Twitter at 3 AM to personally insult a person or group of people...people loved it.
Why is this bad? I hate to say it because it sounds elitist, but people as a whole are dumb. There's just no getting around it...the average person is much more likely to be swayed by something they see on their Facebook news feed. And since Facebook is an echo chamber, and hones in on exactly what you're interested in, "your" messages keep getting reinforced. Humans are animals, and civil society gets way less civil when people are screaming at each other as loud as they can.
The thing I don't like about this social media revolution is that it brings out all the crazy fringe people on both sides who do things like incessantly post angry comments to news sites or spend hours a day listening to conservative talk radio people...and gives them open free license to yell whatever they want as loud as they want. Over time, moderate people are going to drift over to these extreme sides in an effort to be heard.
Mod parent up.
Not only the the Ds manipulate their own primaries to make room for the Queen, they also engaged in a "pied piper" strategy to put Trump at the front of the pack in the R primary. Instead of playing the game fair, they thought they were smart enough to manipulate it, and caused a series of unintended consequences that bit their junk off.
My D friends who were so eager to get me to vote for Trump in the primaries (I didn't, fwiw), talking down his negatives, and emphasizing their horror at the idea of say, Ted Cruz, are crying their eyes out now.
Hmmm, does anyone know if there's an extension that looks up every post on snopes and puts a badge on it?
That's what I need.
The question is, how much of the right-wing (or the left-wing) stuff is by actual right (or left) leaning people? I wouldn't put it past any of these party operatives to set up fake pages posting fake shit to discredit the other side.
Liberals think that reality doesn't affect them...
They believe that because in their experience it is true. Private college students, government employees with guaranteed employment and large pensions, the wealthy, celebrities. These are all groups insulated from consequences of their own actions. They do not experience scarcity and financial hardship. They receive an inequitable degree of deference from law enforcement and when they do get into trouble they can often buy their way out with money, lawyers or political influence.
None of the people I've known who grew up working their butts off on farms as children grew up liberal. Some Democrat, yes, but none liberal. When the only way the cows get water when the pipes freeze in winter is to smash a hole in the ice on the pond and spend the day dragging 80-pound milk cans of water up a hill in snowstorm, you do not retreat to your safe space.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
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.
If I had to speculate on this, it's because websites like the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, etc. already fill that market. They've already built their brand and there's a certain legitimacy to those sites even if it's known that they are heavily left-leaning. The political right really didn't have anything like that, at least not on the same level. The only one I can think of that gets posted on the the internet regularly is Breitbart, and maybe Drudge Report but the latter doesn't really create its own content. Otherwise the right's main sources for media are still Fox News and AM radio which may not be as easy to share on something like Facebook.
I don't think Facebook can really solve this problem as creating an algorithm that can detect fake news would require some top-notch AI. Otherwise, actual intelligent humans will just figure out how to get around the algorithm and you get a weird cat and mouse approach. The underlying problem is that people want news that confirms their existing beliefs and not something which contains factual information or even an objective assessment of factual information. That's not something Facebook can do anything about.
In their desire to become some all-encompassing one-stop-shop for people, they had to anticipate that they'd drag in political discourse and all of the ire that goes with arguing on the internet. They could have just stayed a nice website where people could post pictures of their family or a recent vacation, but it sprawled out from there. I haven't used it in years (I stopped shortly before the big Facebook game craze swept through the user base and everyone was playing some farm game through Facebook), but I imagine its a bit of an overgrown mess at this point.
The only real solution is for users to engage with each other and point out the fake news. I recall some years (early 2000's around time of the Iraq war) in the past a relative of mine had emailed everyone in the family what was effectively fake news. It was something to the extent about Muslim's taking over America and how in a decade they'd be in complete control. I just pointed out that according to census data, Islam was a tiny minority and that it was essentially impossible for this to happen based on immigration and birth rates. Maybe things have changed, but this person did admit that they were wrong and emailed everyone saying that their previous email probably wasn't true.
You can't stop fake news, but you can train people to spot it and ignore it, removing the profit incentive. However, I don't think that's an easy task either as apparently humans have evolved to possess those cognitive biases and have a tendency to fall into them.
Yes, yes, why couldn't they act humble, abashed, and conciliatory like Trump himself, the paragon of modesty and politeness.
A big chunk of American voters had been shat on for years, so they picked the biggest asshole they could find to answer that. This is why the constant narrative that Trump was an asshole didn't hurt him - feature, not a bug.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Did someone evaluate whether it was because there were more false right-leaning stories being posted?
Of course there are. The right has been much faster to adopt post truth politics. I used to live in eastern Tennessee and have plenty of alt-right relatives, and I am amazed at some of the nonsense they are willing to believe, and how immune they are to factual information. For instance, my idiot brother-in-law has emailed me petitions 3 times to stop atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hare from banning any mention of God on TV, despite the fact that I have told him each time that 1) Her name is spelled "O'Hair", 2) She has no authority over what is on TV, 3) She has been dead for more than 20 years. None of that matters to him, and now he thinks I am part of the God denying conspiracy.
None of the people I've known who grew up working their butts off on farms as children grew up liberal. Some Democrat, yes, but none liberal. When the only way the cows get water when the pipes freeze in winter is to smash a hole in the ice on the pond and spend the day dragging 80-pound milk cans of water up a hill in snowstorm, you do not retreat to your safe space.
The same reason why everyone here in rural western Ohio identifies at Catholic and as Browns fans (NFL). These aren't choices the children made, they were beliefs passed down by their parents and most of the kids never move far enough from home to experience anything out of their comfort zone.
I grew up Catholic, a Browns fan, and Conservative. Religion for me was gone by middle school, probably helps that we were C&E (Christmas and Easter) Catholics except when visiting my grandmother. Never cared enough about the NFL to stick with the Browns. It was my political leaning that remained with me the longest.
But then I started traveling in my early 20s. First it was seeing more of the US, then it was to Brazil a couple times, then to Asia and finally a couple countries in Europe. What I realized is that while the US is a great place, there is so much we can do better. It just happens that the Democrats at least talk about accomplishing some of those things while Republicans wish the 1950s would return.
Since you used hard working farmers as your example, let's not forget that many receive substantial government subsidies.
The tl;dr version is that most people have beliefs imprinted at an early age and rarely adjust their thinking.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
In the 1950's, children didn't riot when they lost. IT might actually be a better time.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.