Slashdot Mirror
Mark Zuckerberg Announces Facebook Will Fight Fake News -- Next To An Ad With Fake News (facebook.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
"We take misinformation seriously," Facebook's CEO announced in a late-night status update Friday. "Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful, and we know people want accurate information. We've been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously. We've made significant progress, but there is more work to be done."
But you know what's funny? The ad to the right of Zuck's post is fake news. It has the headline "Hugh Hefner Says 'Goodbye' at 90" and a quote from his wife saying "I can't believe he is actually gone," even though Hugh Hefner isn't dead. And clicking through, it's just another lame ad for erectile dysfunction -- on a site that's been tricked up to look like Fox News.
I saw it too. (Here's my screenshot... And yes, it did link to an advertising site with a fake "Fox News" banner across the top.) Oh, the irony. "The CEO said that Facebook is working to develop stronger fake news detection, a warning system, easier reporting and technical ways to classify misinformation," reports CNN, adding "Zuckerberg did not say how quickly the measures would be in place." They also quote Zuckerberg as saying "Some of these ideas will work well, and some will not." But apparently it's pretty easy to get fake news onto Facebook. You just have to pay them.
But you know what's funny? The ad to the right of Zuck's post is fake news. It has the headline "Hugh Hefner Says 'Goodbye' at 90" and a quote from his wife saying "I can't believe he is actually gone," even though Hugh Hefner isn't dead. And clicking through, it's just another lame ad for erectile dysfunction -- on a site that's been tricked up to look like Fox News.
I saw it too. (Here's my screenshot... And yes, it did link to an advertising site with a fake "Fox News" banner across the top.) Oh, the irony. "The CEO said that Facebook is working to develop stronger fake news detection, a warning system, easier reporting and technical ways to classify misinformation," reports CNN, adding "Zuckerberg did not say how quickly the measures would be in place." They also quote Zuckerberg as saying "Some of these ideas will work well, and some will not." But apparently it's pretty easy to get fake news onto Facebook. You just have to pay them.
Would have been nice to post a screenshot since the ads change with every page load. As far as I can tell this is completely made up.
This is fake news. Or that was. Or will be.
Unless it's an advert - then it's real.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
But you know what's funny? The ad to the right of Zuck's post is fake news. It has the headline "Hugh Hefner Says 'Goodbye' at 90"
You wanna know what else is funny? Those ads are personalized. You're the only one seeing a Hugh Hefner-related ad, you perv.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I'll be glad when this 'social media' fad blows over finally and people go back to valuing privacy.
The biggest lies I see on news channels these days are lies of omission. It's not really what they are telling you that's important, it's what they aren't telling you.
...we educate people enough to know better than to go to an entertainment site for news, or to at least be smart enough to know the difference. Naaaa. That sounds like a lot of work. Never mind.
The Clinton propaganda machine wasn't happy about losing the election. There were a lot of dirty tricks they tried and still managed to fail. The mainstream news didn't cover all of her corruption and decided to ignore it. As a progressive I had to turn to the "alt right" news sources to inform myself on the truth of various matters. Now the democrats are being sore losers and want to eliminate the first amendment of the Constitution.
If you let the government censor one form of speech don't be surprised when they start coming after other forms of speech.
Continuous and ongoing. With the big unanswered question: what is fake news? Before Zuck can screen it out, he needs to define it.
It's the lack of Internet.
I was curious about these 'fake news' sites and started reading a few. They loaded fast I looked at the source code and it looks like I could have written it by hand. These pages are optimized for people that lack access to broadband. FreeRepublic is a bare bones site. This is what a forum post looks like. I spent a few minutes trying to figure out if an ad blocker had taken out some obnoxious ad or something.
I know it may be difficult to understand for those in cities but we have shit internet out here. Even at 25/3 my wife complains about how slow some shopping sites load. Gone are the days of being able to surf the web on dialup.
Unfortunately that's what some people are stuck with. I moved 2 years ago and started attending the local town hall meetings, 'broadband meetings' and doing what ever I could to improve the internet in my rural part of the US. A lot of townships are on dialup, some have cable, some have DSL. In households earning less than $34k/year that have K-12 kids 50% have internet. I live in what I consider a fairly 'normal' area. I don't even want to guess what internet adoption looks like in more rural parts of the US. [And for those in ivory towers wondering what we mean when we say 'we feel left behind' this is part of it.]
These 'fake' news sites are likely the only 'news' sites that some of these people can access. And when they post material that they agree with it just amplifies the echo chamber. Huffington Post's front page weighed in at 7 MB. Even if there are people that might be on the fence and want to go out research other opinions they often can't. They flat out physically have no way to get other information.
If any hard core liberals really want to get back at Trump supporters run Fiber out to everywhere. It's easy to mock someone as ignorant when they have literally no way of learning any better.
That said, where the hell are the web page benchmarking tools? I've been using https://pageweight.imgix.com/ but I can't automate that. My interest is piqued and I really want to do a statistical difference between "liberal" and "conservative" (and "real" and "fake") news sites.
"We take misinformation seriously,"
We take bad PR seriously
"Our goal is to connect people with the stories they find most meaningful,
Out goal is to connect people with advertisers
we know people want accurate information.
Dumb fucks
We've been working on this problem for a long time and we take this responsibility seriously. We've made significant progress, but there is more work to be done."
We might start working on it if the media won't stop whining soon
Ive seen a number of traffic accident articles where the vehicle brand in the accident also appears in the ad. Like when a Jeep ran over a sunbather.
Zuckerberg is just angry that all that money he threw at the Hillary campaign was a failed investment and now Trump can easily retaliate with a reduction of the H1B crowd. When he says "no fake news" he means "no nes that puts my suppirted candidate in a bad light".
Am I the only one that doesn't even know that Facebook had news? I assume everything on FB is just Ads. It's every single damn "news" paper out there that seems to be doing fake news or lets face it 99% opinions and 1% reports. You can't even read news.google.com anymore (now I'm guessing it is probably safe to assume you couldn't before either without heavy customization). Sigh. I almost think Facebook is a fall guy from the real fake news places so they could pin everything on anyone but them.
Just thinking about two of his most recent lies that take the cake. He claimed he saved a car factory in Kentucky that wasn't going anywhere (while not lifting a finger for one that is). He also claimed he was going to keep the Obamacare pre-existing provision while his running mate and Paul Ryan go around saying you'll only be protected if there's no gap in coverage (you know, exactly how it was before Obamacare).
There's nothing being omitted there. Just bold face lies. And it's not just him. Nobody calls the American right wing on their lies except an itty bitty left wing press (think Mother Jones) that nobody pays any attention to. Lies by Omission don't even register in the face of falsehood of this magnitude.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
are the pages small because rural voters lack high speed internet or because the message resonates with rural votes and so the message size is tailored for them?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Almost nothing ;)
Will $CURRENT_YEAR be the year of the Linux Desktop?
Well that IS fake then.
hashtag trademark law matters
William Penn believed that the democratic framework he was proposing for Pennsylvania, instituted 105 years before the US Constitution, would only work if there was a literate and informed society. This is one of the reasons that the early Quakers emphasized education in the new colony. A century later Ben Franklin and others in the city of Philadelphia had the same concerns which led them to widen the educational opportunities beyond the just the wealthy. Other framers of the constitution were also concerned about what would happen if an uneducated, uninformed public dominated the electoral process (which didn't prevent many of them from using lies and slander to their own ends).
Now we have a society that has an apparent 99% literacy rate (I got that number from a website, so it must be accurate). Sadly, for the most part, Americans are not taught how to think about what they have read. We have a president-elect that spends his time on Twitter denouncing those who disagree with him (or with his VP-elect). There is doubt about such things as Climate Change in spite of overwhelming evidence. We may have a 99% literacy rate, but we have only an 11% critical thinking rate (I made that number up, but, if you doubt the figure, I'm sure I could come up with some fake data to support it). In many ways, Penn's worst fears have been realized.
We will never be about to stop fake news, misinformation, lies, slander, and propaganda. Beside the fact that attempts to silence free speech (even silly or dangerous free speech) is a perilous precedence, attacking the supply side of the problem will likely have negligible effect.
Focusing on the demand side by teaching our children how to think about what they read will not be easy, especially as we have to deal with so much literacy disparity in our country as it is, but it is the only effective solution. If we are unwilling or unable to do this, then it is best be prepared for the worst.
Except that the definition of fake news has gotten exceptionally broad post-election.
The LA Times, for example, listed Red State, the Blaze, and Breitbart but didn't mention Electronic Intifada, Salon, or Addicting Info, which have the same level of credibility (or lack thereof). If you're going to make lists, or throw these sites into a category with the Onion, then it's important to be even-handed about it. Define the offenders by class.
It's not fake simply because the site has a bias you disagree with. Otherwise, it looks like censorship, which is clearly what's happening here.
Also, you'll remember that it wasn't so long ago that the Daily Show referred to itself as fake news, and that many of these same sites were hailed as the "future of media" and referred to as the "blog-o-sphere" just a couple of years ago.
Having an issue with clickbate ads is one thing. Attempting to shut down websites that that pose dissenting opinion pieces or shed light on points of view other than your own is yet another a fascist hate tactic from the side that smugly considers itself "the tolerant."
If the industry is willing to set aside a uniform code of conduct that could be understood and followed by everyone, I'm all for it. Ban, block, and ex-communicate anyone who violates the terms. Go for it.
Short of that, what we're seeing is a witch hunt, reminiscent of nazi germany or the soviet union. We might as well be burning books.
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