Facebook Begins Marking 'Fake News' As 'Disputed' (wdrb.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is now marking fake news as "disputed," several sites reported today. "According to Facebook's Help Center, news stories that are reported as fake by people on Facebook may be reviewed by independent, third-party fact-checkers," writes WDRB Media. "The fact-checkers will be signatories of the non-partisan Poynter Code of Principles. A story will be marked as disputed if fact-checkers find the story to be fake."

Mashable reports that the feature was rolled out quietly, and didn't gain much attention until it was noticed Friday by a reporter from Gizmodo, who tweeted a screenshot showing Facebook's new "disputed" icon. Further investigation revealed Facebook's help center now includes a page explaining how news gets marked as disputed, and another page informing users how to mark a news story as fake (which points out this feature "isn't available to everyone yet.")

Comments

Why not mark it what it really is, fake.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a poor move by Facebook. So basically all articles from Faux News will not say fake but will say disputed. This does almost nothing for the poor people who don't know Fox is pure conservative slanted fantasy and believe it to be fact. On top of this I see it as more ammunition for the right wingers claiming the left is trying to dispute their claims.

Re:Why not mark it what it really is, fake.

[lucm]

What they need is another tag: "biased". Because often news on right or left media outlets are not exactly fake, but they're presented in a way that favors a political view.

Re:Why not mark it what it really is, fake.

[gnick]

...Fox is pure conservative slanted fantasy and [people] believe it to be fact.

Fox may be "conservative slanted" and it's not to my taste - I stick mostly to CNN & BBC - but it is typically factually accurate. O'Reilly having a miscredited guest on talking about Sweden was enough to make headlines and is a rare exception to the rule. Neither CNN nor Fox make a habit out of mis-stating facts and, when they do, they both have reasonable track records of correcting themselves. Both have stellar records compared to our current White House.

All sources are slanted and there are many places you can seek out and find genuinely bogus stories, but neither CNN nor Fox should be labelled blanketly "fake news."

Re:Why not mark it what it really is, fake.

[Chris Mattern]

And who gets to determine that a news item has "turned out to be true"?

Re: Why not mark it what it really is, fake.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Under Obama we saw an escalation of tensions between the US and Russia

Funny, I thought we saw it under Putin.

Oh, well, as long as they SIGNED something.

[ScentCone]

The fact-checkers will be signatories of the non-partisan Poynter Code of Principles.

The very people that I see on social media passing around some of the most egregiously toxic meme "explainers" and the like also won't go a week without citing posts on Poynter about how important it is to show integrity in reporting. Being "a signatory" to something doesn't mean squat. Hillary Clinton, for example, signed all sorts of things recording her promises not to do the very things she then went right and did as secretary of state. People who illegally register to vote do so by signing a document that, among other things, asserts that they're not doing so illegally. A Facebook news moderator sitting in Menlo Park deciding whether or not some HuffPo piece should or shouldn't be considered "disputed" ... should be considered informed and neutral because they signed the thing that they were told they had to sign in order to get that gig?

Re:Oh, well, as long as they SIGNED something.

[lucm]

Yes. Those who sign that should be considered informed and neutral in the context of Facebook employees, given a spectrum that starts with "anti-Trump" and ends with "supporters of violent anti-Trump demonstrations and opposed to democracy if it means Trump can get elected".

Re:Oh, well, as long as they SIGNED something.

[AmiMoJo]

It's the lesser of two evils. There are too many gullible idiots out there. Look at how many people on Slashdot fell for pizzagate.

You either have a small number of errors marking stuff as fake, or you have a tidal wave of fake news. And I'm sure if it does get abused, we will see hundreds of articles pointing it out.

Re:Oh, well, as long as they SIGNED something.

[ScentCone]

"Being "a signatory" to something doesn't mean squat. "

John Hancock would like a word with you.

John Hancock was then willing to take up arms and put his life on the line to back up the liberty proclaimed in the document he risked everything by signing. Do you REALLY think you're making some sort of valid point by comparing that to a Facebook employee sitting in a cubicle clicking "disputed" when something runs against the narratives they're paid to favor?

Everything is disputed

[Doctor Morbius]

There are nuts everywhere that dispute evolution, heliocentrism, The Big bang theory, you name it. What a stupid classification. FB is just trying to have it both ways and not piss off the nut jobs.

A fair system

[Kohath]

All it would take for a fair system is for Facebook to let news viewers vote Real/Misleading/Unknown and show the percentages underneath like "30% real/60% misleading/10% unknown". You see a large percentage of Misleading, you can double check the story.

Why would Facebook choose to hire a group of "fact checkers" instead? Unless they wanted "fact checking" to be biased is a particular way...

Re:A fair system

[Anonymous Coward]

That just leads to the problem of poll-flooding.

Re:Living language

[quantaman]

I'm seeing lots of people on gab.ai who are completely blase' about being called racist.

Because racism is being made more socially acceptable in certain subgroups, the election of a man who is extremely reluctant to criticize actual racists (the KKK, anti-Semites, etc), and who nominated an attorney general who was rejected as a judge for racist statements, is a big reason.

Not 1 year ago the term "racist" meant that you believed a particular race was inferior. Nowadays you are a racist for having a particular body posture - even when you *don't* think some race is inferior.

I'm not sure what you mean about the body posture, but I think "racist" still means that you believe a race is inferior. I think a big difference in the past few years is social media. It used to be people would make racist jokes or comments and no one would call it racist because their friends had similar views, and even if they were offended it's extremely awkward to call someone racist to their face.

But now they make those racist comments on the Internet for everyone to see, and everyone feels less awkward about calling it racist in a tweet or facebook post.

"Disputed" by the left.

[sethstorm]

This is just another way to cover for their bias, especially when they're as selective on policy enforcement as Twitter.

I guess the new bar of "making it" will be having your story 'disputed' by Facebook's favorites.