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Facebook Fights Fake News With Links To Other Angles (techcrunch.com)

Facebook is rolling out "Related Articles" that appear below news links to stories lots of people are posting about on Facebook, or that are suspected to be false news and have been externally fact checked by Facebook's partners. "Appearing before someone reads, Related Articles will surface links to additional reporting on the same topic to provide different view points, and to truthiness reports from the fact checkers," reports TechCrunch. From the report: If users see drastically different angles when they compare a story to its Related Articles, they might deem it suspicious and skip it, be less likely to believe or share it, or could click through the Related Articles and make up their own mind. That could reduce the spread and impact of false news without Facebook itself having to be the honesty police. Related Articles could also balance out some of the radical invective that can subtly polarize the populace. Pre-click Related Articles are rolling out in the U.S., Germany, France, and Nederlands today. These countries were chosen to get the roll out first because Facebook has established fact checking partnerships there. "We don't want to be and are not the arbiters of the truth. The fact checkers can give the signal of whether a story is true or false" says Facebook News Feed integrity product manager Tessa Lyons. Meanwhile, Facebook's machine learning algorithm has improved its accuracy and speed, so the social network will now have it send more potential hoaxes to fact checkers.

4 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. Re:How about fact-checking Seth Rich's murder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    You do know fox is being sued over that right? or are you being sarcastic
    http://www.npr.org/2017/08/01/540783715/lawsuit-alleges-fox-news-and-trump-supporter-created-fake-news-story

    We'll see how that lawsuit plays out..

  2. Re:Fighting the facts with FB's narrative. by werepants · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, third parties have reviewed the fact checkers, and overall found that their bias is minimal. What's more, decent fact-checking organizations document supporting evidence directly in their reports - so you can see things for yourselves.

    This kind of insistent denial of honest journalism is exactly why fake news is the problem it is. You should set a reasonable and equivalent standard for all information sources - are you as skeptical of conservative publications as your are of these supposedly biased fact-checkers? Don't just give a free pass to people that agree with you - lies that confirm your preconceived notions are the easiest ones to believe.

  3. Re:Fighting the facts with FB's narrative. by sethstorm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, third parties have reviewed the fact checkers, and overall found that their bias is minimal

    If you're talking about the Poynter Institute or the International Fact-Checking Network, no such luck. They're effectively self-audited (by a friendly organization), and receive funding from an organization invested in opposing Trump.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  4. Re:memes? by _merlin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Emergency numbers are actually recognised by the phone itself, and it initiates a different call establishment sequence for emergency calls. This allows the network to give emergency calls priority, and allow emergency calls without a SIM card, etc. All GSM-compliant phones (anything with WCDMA 3G or LTE) will recognise 112 as well as any additional emergency numbers programmed in the firmware or the SIM card. Phones sold in the US will recognise at least 112 and 911, phones sold in Australia recognise 112, 000 and usually 911 as well, phones sold in Hong Kong and UK recognise 112 and 999 and possibly other emergency numbers.

    So while the story is wrong, you're wrong too. Unless you're using a Sprint-style CDMA phone, 112 will always work as an emergency number, and the other numbers that work depend on your phone and SIM card. If it's a US phone and/or SIM card, 911 will definitely work, but if you're using a phone and SIM card from overseas, that may not be the case. It has nothing to do with a courtesy to European visitors in cities.

    The story probably got started early in US GSM rollout before the carriers thought to program 911 as an alternate emergency number in phones and SIM cards. If the phone/SIM card don't recognise 911 as an emergency number, it will be established as a normal call, and routed by the network. It will still go to the same destination US but it won't get priority the way an emergency call establishment sequence will. The same was true in Australia before 2000 - most phones/SIM cards didn't recognise 000 as an emergency number.