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Zuckerberg Shares Facebook's Plan to Bring Community Together, Edits Out a Questionable Sentence Minutes Later (mashable.com)

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to bring people closer together. He published a 6,000-word letter on his Facebook page Thursday to outline his vision for the kind of world he thinks Facebook can help create. The free-wielding note included few specifics, but offered a number of broad, ambitious goals for how the tech giant can contribute to a better understanding of everything from terrorism to fake news. Interestingly, minutes after the post was published, Zuckerberg edited out a sentence from the letter. Mashable adds: In the post, Zuckerberg briefly touches on how artificial intelligence can be used to detect terrorist propaganda. "Right now, we're starting to explore ways to use AI to tell the difference between news stories about terrorism and actual terrorist propaganda so we can quickly remove anyone trying to use our services to recruit for a terrorist organization," he wrote in the post published Thursday. That sounds like a straightforward enough application of AI -- one that's in line with what Zuckerberg and other executives have discussed in the past -- but it's different from what the CEO had originally written. In an earlier version of the missive, which was shared with a number of news outlets in advance of its publication on Facebook, Zuckerberg took the idea farther. The "long-term promise of AI," he wrote, is that it can be used used to "identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all, including terrorists planning attacks using private channels." Here's an expanded version of the quote from the Associated Press (emphasis ours). "The long term promise of AI is that in addition to identifying risks more quickly and accurately than would have already happened, it may also identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all "including terrorists planning attacks using private channels, people bullying someone too afraid to report it themselves, and other issues both local and global. It will take many years to develop these systems." That's different from what was described in the final version that was shared Thursday, which made no mention of private communication in relation to AI and terrorism.

15 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. That sounds grand! by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    it may also identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all--including terrorists planning attacks using private channels, people bullying someone too afraid to report it themselves...

    And also, coming soon: PRECRIME!

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
  2. First step: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    First step: everyone presto sign up for a FREE AWESOME facebook account!

    Then we will see...

    C'mon, Zuckie, little rich asshole. Your sense of entitlement is absolutely disgusting.

  3. Re:Seriously by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >*Anybody* that uses Facebook is a complete idiot. FTFY

  4. Re:Seriously by DaveyJJ · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I, sadly, lack the tremendous amount of thumbs this deserves. I can only offer two. Bravo, good sir.

    --
    DaveyJJ
  5. Re:Seriously by coastwalker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Indeed and as the owner of an entertainment tool we should be neither surprised or concerned when the chief moron spouts the usual bullshit. What is far more worrying is that most of the population seem to think that this entertainment medium provides them with information. Fucking morons, and worse they get to vote.

    --
    Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
  6. All these words by nyri · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sound like high minded excuse to start use the platform for political purposes. All these words "bullying", "fake news", etc. are code words involved in liberal virtue signalling. "Fake news" is something that those evil right wingers do (especially it does not apply to New York Times, et al. or any garbage coming from BLM or other such outlets). "Bullying" is anything that makes a member of a designated minority group feel bad. Facebook is going the same way as Twitter.

    Given Facebooks enormous reach, I think we can say that rarely has world placed such a huge power in the hands of one individual. We are unfortunate that the individual in case is Mark Zuckenberg, a man so insecure that he needs constantly signal his virtue. I guess it was only a matter of time until he would succumb to this. This is going to be a slippery slope and is going to get worse. As it does, it will become harder and harder to call out liberal bullshit (Trevor Martin -type of misinformation) as contradictory views to orthodoxy is hidden deeper and deeper.

    People who are repelled by this (I think term "red pilled" is used) feel (with justification) that they get better information from such luminaries as infowars.com and breitbart.com. O tempora, o mores. Five years ago I didn't expect that I would seriously say that there are any sane reasons that one should pay any attention to infowars.com. (Just to make it clear: I am NOT endorsing infowars.com in any way possible. I'm just saying that due to general drop in quality in other news, it has become relatively better.)

    As a side note, this trend has pushed me back to the Slashdot. It seems that, one again, this is almost the only place where even some sane voices are heard. (Ten years ago it Slashdot was for the place to be for a different reason.) Reddit has become unreadable, twitter also, now facebook, and so on. Case in point, the coverage of PewDiePie -scandal in past day was covered best here on slashdot. Decent analysis, perspective, opposing views, etc. in comments that was not available anywhere else. Thanks folks, keep it up. You might be the last best hope for humanity until news media fixes it self.

    1. Re:All these words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is that someone (I think intentionally) co-opted "fake news" to mean "biased reporting"- that's not originally what it meant at all and a lot of people are still using the term to mean something else. "Fake news" originally (as in a couple of months ago) meant completely fabricated stories. "Trump derives his power from secret Mayan ceremony" "Hillary feeds on the blood of wildebeasts" - that kind of crap that was going around Facebook at the time like it was legit. Now anything anyone doesn't like is "fake news".

  7. These are not called "terrorists"... by gweihir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The ones "planning" terrorist attacks using a Facebook channel are called "pathetic losers without a clue". Chances are they only think about doing something terroristic because some FBI provocateur suggested it to them and will be providing fake explosives and the like.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  8. Zuck off by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Zuckerberg has some serious delusions of grandeur. He was in the right place at the right time to pinch someone else's idea. He was able to promote it and make a lot of money out of it.

    That doesn't mean he's an expert on everything under the sun. His opinion on most things is worth no more than the typical slashdotter's and he doesn't know more than the proverbial bloke at the pub.

    P.S. Hey manishs, you fucked up the quotes again.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. Re:Slippery slope by Kiuas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Another reason not to rely on a corporate website for your news and information.

    So you don't read any non-tax funded news-sites then, you know the ones ran by news corporations?

    But honestly, it's facebook's decision to decide whether or not they want their platfrom to be used in distribution of non-factual/made up 'news'. I personally do not get my news from FB but I've seen the amount of entirely made up 'news' from blogs that have been shared in the recent years. A simple thing that I've seen repeated time and time again here is this: someone files a report about an immigrant committing some crime, usually theft or assault. The yellow-press then runs this with a headline along the lines of 'Immigrant man under investigation for crime X'. Then some nationalist blog made up to look like a news site runs an article with the headline "yet another immigrant crime, man from *insert country* harassed a teenager.", then, to appear more credible they link to the previous article about an ongoing investigation.

    These spread like wildfire on social media because the headlines are usually shocking and they pander the the preconceived notions and fears that people have, and nobody bothers to check what the source actually says. If you point out in the comment section that the guy has not in fact been convicted of anything and it's an ongoing investigation (you know, innocent until proven guilty and all that) you get attacked for being 'on their side' or 'defending criminals', nevermind that no crime has of yet been proven to take place. If the guy is convicted it's trumpeted again as evidence of how all brown people are dangerous criminals and/or terrorists. If charges are not raised at all or he's found to be innocent, no correcting stories are run.

    There are several sites operating mainly using this principle, many of them receiving funding or support from Russia, which is taking advantage of the immigrant crisis here in Europe to stir up xenophobia and nationalism because a divided and weakened EU is to their benefit. RT is a common 'source' used by these sites, Many of them also cross-link to each other, so that a blog being run in sweden is used as source by blog here in Finland. The traditional media obviously does not report on unsubstantiated rumors which is then further used as 'evidence' that the media is involved in some sort of massive 'cover-up' by not immediately reporting everything someone decided to blog about,

    This is what 'alternative facts' mean, and personally having seen how fast these things can spread even after officials come out and issue corrections, I don't mind social media trying to do something about these sites' visibility, because without the massive speed/inertia that they gain by quick shares and likes they'd be in near obscurity. They are only damaging public discourse, because it's now impossible to even try and have a rational discussion with many of these people as they will not accept any news or reporting from the 'corrupted mainstream media' as evidence that they've in fact been duped by propagandists and ideologues. As a test, reporter from a newspaper submitted a story about being attacked by a foreigner(s) last summer and it was immediately published even though no source or evidence was presented. They'll pretty much run everything that serves their agenda, because that's what propaganda is.

    I see no reason why facebook should allow this to keep happening. They already censor stuff like nudity and gore out, and I don't see nudity and gore anywhere near as dangerous to the society as made up 'news'.

    --
    "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
  10. I'm just surprised he admitted it by EricTDuckman1414 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The Dickian "pre-crime" possibilities of knowing everything someone looks at or talks about on the net is so obvious that I assumed that everyone knew it was coming, so my only surprise in reading this story is that Zuckerberg slipped up, even momentarily, and admitted that's what he was working towards.

  11. Re:Misunderstaning the Problem by JustNiz · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Your retarded assumption there is that everyone necessarily wants to destroy the President of the United States.

    Why is it that democrats can never get their heads around the fact that their arguments are in fact not magically unquestionable?

  12. Re:Seriously by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Ever notice that you're the only person that capitalises the D? SlashDot?

  13. Missing the Point by dave562 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nobody seems to have keyed into the fact that the article implies Facebook is planning to run content analytics and conceptual clustering algorithms across all of their databases. Databases including "private" conversations.

    Having seen first hand what 5+ year old analytics tools can pull out of seeming disparate data sets, I find this both amazing and frightening.

    They key quote from the summary is this one...

    The "long-term promise of AI," he wrote, is that it can be used used to "identify risks that nobody would have flagged at all...

    When you let an "AI" build concept clusters based on linguistic analysis, and then pattern match to find similarities, you will open Pandora's box to all sorts of unexpected correlations.

  14. Re:Zuck off - perhaps... but... by gosand · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know very little to anything about him. However, I think this entire story is such shit.

    yes, he's a multi-billionaire and the CEO of a huge company.
    All he did was post some information that was rattling around in his head - which EVERYONE seems to think is absolutely a necessary thing to do these days.
    Then, he thought better of one sentence, and removed it.

    And people lose their fucking minds and consider that to be NEWS worthy of reporting on. It's all asinine.

    It's not important. It really isn't.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.