Facebook Pages Spreading Fake News Won't Be Able To Buy Ads (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Facebook says it's taking another step against Pages that share fabricated news stories. The company has already been working with outside fact-checkers like Snopes and the AP to flag inaccurate news stories. (These aren't supposed to be stories that are disputed for reasons of opinion or partisanship, but rather outright hoaxes and lies.) It also says that when a story is marked as disputed, the link can can no longer be promoted through Facebook ads. The next step, which the company is announcing today, involves stopping Pages that regularly share these stories from buying any Facebook ads at all, regardless of whether or not the ad includes a disputed link. In this case, Leathern said blocking ad-buying is meant to change the economic incentives. Facebook is concerned that "there are Pages posting this information that are using Facebook Ads to build audiences" to spread false news. By changing the ad policy, Facebook makes it harder for companies to attract that audience.

Comments

Get News From Facebook?

[oldgraybeard]

Now there is something I would have never expected. Facebook a real world news source.

Going to get really interesting in a year or 2. Can Facebook be a real news source and the Epicenter of the Zuck for President Universe.

The great censoring has begun

[johannesg]

And any valid potlical opinion 'people' might disagree with will be labeled 'extremist', 'alt-right', 'racist', 'inciting hatred', or simply 'nazi', and disappeared, no matter if it is actually true or not. And whoever controls the censors gets to decide what is true and what is not.

Re:The great censoring has begun

[DevilM]

That does sound concerning... Of course, you have to wonder where all the cries of fake news would lead. The problem with weaponizing news is that it can be turned against you.

Re:The great censoring has begun

[doctorvo]

Well, the definition of "alt-right" is evidently "anybody who didn't vote for Hillary". That's because in the minds of Democrats, Trump was so awful that even decent Republicans should have come around and voted for her, as much of the Republican establishment and conservative dutifully did.

Of course, that makes about 3/4 of US voters "alt-right".

Good luck trying to win the next election, Democrats or establishment Republicans!

Re:The great censoring has begun

[geekymachoman]

> And any valid potlical opinion 'people' might disagree with will be labeled 'extremist', 'alt-right', 'racist', 'inciting hatred', or simply 'nazi', and disappeared, no matter if it is actually true or not. And whoever controls the censors gets to decide what is true and what is not.

It'll not work because every year more and more people are getting pissed off at those that label everything they disagree with as racist, alt right, nazi, etc, and there's already a number of them that you cannot ignore, and this number is growing.

It grew to a point where these people elected president who's a bit of an idiot, out of spite. They say they believe in Trump, but in reality... they just really dislike political establishment, the left, CNN, Clinton's and their breed. More they call people nazis, more quasi anti-fascist groups like Antifa, or whiny racists like BLM that call everybody else racist (even black people that don't agree with them), more power they give to those they oppose.

All attempts to quiet down, censor, and beat other people because their different opinions will eventually die.

Re:The great censoring has begun

[ArylAkamov]

Damn straight. I've already been labeled a "free speech nazi" and have had people try to dox me on there (Good thing I paid attention in school and never use any identifiable information, back when that was taught).

If advocating for free speech and railing against censorship of any political opinion or ideology makes me a Nazi, sign me up for the SS.

Re:The great censoring has begun

[e_pluribus_funk]

That's it exactly.

None of the damaging information on Clinton or the DNC was refuted, nor did they even attempt to refute it. It wasn't fake news, it was real news that the media elected not to cover until it was already common knowledge because events outpaced their ability to contain the flow of information. This move by Facebook and others is simply a move to take back control of the information flow so they can keep the proles from getting information their betters deem they shouldn't have.

Re:The great censoring has begun

[doctorvo]

Wrong, quoting Wikipedia:

Dearest, I'm telling you about the way that Democrats are using the term today.

The only people who think that Alt-Right refers to anyone who "didn't vote for hillary" are people who are extremely deluded.

That's the way Democrats are using the term.

Trying to change the definition of terms is a tactic favoured by extremists in an attempt to disguise what is ultimately a very distasteful philosophy to most people.

Oh, you're so right. Just read Alinsky.

Re:The great censoring has begun

[Shotgun]

The problem is, using the defence of free speech to defend neo-nazis is ultimately self defeating.
 

You lack imagination.

Firstly, Nazi's are people who want to deny a large number of inalienable rights to people because they have the wrong colour skin or believe in the wrong sky faerie. And we're not just talking about free speech, of your So claiming their having their rights taken away (especially when they aren't) is hypocritical in the extreme. Of your bill of rights, white supremacists and nazis wish to see numbers 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of your bill of rights denied to those they view as subhuman (and I'm assuming that 3 and 10 don't apply to the situation).
 

And they are completely powerless to enforce their wants until they garner enough support to win elections. The response to them is not to violently shut them down. The response is to intelligently point out how wrong they are. They want to keep a statue in a park. You want it removed. They have just as much a right to ask for it to remain as you have to ask that it be removed. NEITHER of you have the right to violently silence the other!!

Secondly, if the best defence you can think of to justify what a group is saying is that it is literally not illegal to say it, you've defeated your own argument. You've admitted that their points have no merit.
 

The merit of what they have to say is not a factor. Neither you nor I get to decide on the merit of what anyone else has to say. Stop trying to be a dictator.

Finally, their right to free speech is not being taken away, they wont be arrested for being hateful little shits. However that does not mean everyone else has to listen to their bullshit and silently agree. They're being told that no-one wants to hear their bollocks and to go away (#9 on aforementioned bill of rights). Just because they can say something, does not mean everyone else should be forced to listen.

This is the most self delusional statement I've seen on /.
If a group applies for a permit, is refused, but then wins the right to march in a court of law, then on the day of the march, large numbers of people show up to pelt them with rock, urine and feces, they have in fact had their right to free speech taken away. If you don't want to hear what they have to say, stay out of the park that day, but they do have right to say things loudly in the park. They have just as much a right to speak as people wearing vagina hats.

Next Deletion of Pages Just Like Domain Names

[Anonymous Coward]

It's easy to see where this is heading. Next will be the deletion of Facebook pages that spread so-called fake news. Or anything Facebook finds objectionable.

In the recent past, the simple work-around would be buy a domain name and link to such content hosted somewhere. However, GoDaddy, Dreamhost, Network Solutions, and others have now taken it upon themselves to, in effect, censor content by deleting the domain name associated with any site they find objectionable.

Interesting how many internet neutrality proponents are all for it except when it concerns content and expression they don't like. Seems to me that domain name registrars, DNS providers, co-location facilities, ISPs, communication providers, and network access points should all be considered common carrier utilities and not permitted to arbitrarily block usage nor content unless dictated so by law.

Re:They're neither "outside" nor "fact-checkers"

[dgatwood]

Facts don't have a political slant, but collections of facts do. By choosing which facts to present, you can shape the narrative to support a particular position or weaken support for that position. For example, you might:

• point out the number of times guns were used to protect people while leaving out the number of times guns were used for homicide and suicide, or vice versa
• tell the number of abortions by minors lacking parental consent without telling how many of the unwanted pregnancies were caused by parents or family members
• tell how raising minimum wage will improve the amount of money available to the working poor, but ignore the increased cost of goods or ignore the number of workers replaced by automation sooner than they otherwise would have been

And so on. The problem is, all the sources of news are so skewed in one way or another that people don't know who to trust anymore. Clearly, some sources are particularly bad, and filtering out that noise is a laudable effort, but without a quality source of news to replace it, I fear that the void will just be filled by more noise.

Re:They're neither "outside" nor "fact-checkers"

[Gussington]

Since the people vetting the ads are almost all leftists, it'd be easy for them to decree something as non-fact.

They're vetting themselves.

Citation?
You see that is generally how fact checking works, it isn't purely an opinion, it is an opinion based on cited sources.

Suck it up buttercup ...

[CaptainDork]

... fake news is easy to identify. It's not a matter of bias, it's a matter of fact.

Either something happened or it didn't.

It's not hard.

However, why in tarnation is anybody getting their real goddam news on fucking Facebook?

That's the question.

Lib-left always feared free uncensored internet

[knorthern knight]

Bill Clinton feared the open internet in 1995

http://www.breitbart.com/big-j...

> Three years before Matt Drudge changed the world and how news
> would be consumed, President Bill Clinton's White House feared
> that the Internet was allowing average citizens, especially conservatives,
> to bypass legacy gatekeepers and access information that had
> previously been denied to them by the mainstream press.

Hillary Clinton whining about an internet "Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function"

http://www.freerepublic.com/fo...

Apparently CNN (Clinton News Network) wasn't winning the battle for hearts and minds, so the Democrats wanted to destroy Breitbart website... Hillary Campaign Vows To Destroy Opposition Website
http://dailycaller.com/2016/08...

Re:They're neither "outside" nor "fact-checkers"

[jwhyche]

Well looking at these facts I see a bunch of claims by Trump that could or could not be tree. Then I see a bunch of claims by the Washington post that say these claim's by Trump are not true. What I don't see is evidence from the Washington Post that can be used to check their facts. So, what we have here is a bunch of unverified claims by the Great Orange being counter claimed by a bunch of unverifiable claims by a failing media rag.

This put the counter claims by the Washington Post exactly in the same frame as those they are saying are false. In other words not worth the web page they are printed on.

Re: They're neither "outside" nor "fact-checker

[Ebsolas]

Can we please just change model away from the "political spectrum". Otherwise it just becomes a game of everyone calling all right-wings Hitler and all left-wings Stalin. Let's make it a political forest where we have a bunch of political trees such as conservatives, liberals, libertarians, progressive conservatives, etc. That are all able to have their own political stance without this game of strawman shovong eachother into political stances that nether side actually believes. Oh, on a side note this site is called slashdot. It's a site about technology.

Re:They're neither "outside" nor "fact-checkers"

[Shadow of Eternity]

A silently released "woopsy so sad too bad" blurb well after the damage has been done isn't a meaningful retraction or correction, it's a joke at best. Just look at how many people STILL vehemently insist on prosecuting the UVA rape that never was. Or even better look at the AP's institutionalized bias against Israel in all its reporting, as revealed by its own former reporters such as Matti Friedman.

Re:In this thread

[AmiMoJo]

There is another winning move. It's not an easy one to make and occasionally goes wrong, but it's not impossible.

Filter the unquestionably, demonstrably fake news. Forget all the questionable or biased stuff, just focus on the total bullshit that has no basis in reality. Pizzagate, Brietbart articles about churches on fire that photographic evidence incontrovertibly proves to be false, blog posts claiming that the Clintons murdered dozens of people, Euro myths that have been widely debunked since the 1990s.

Set the bar high. Require multiple reputable sources debunking the stories. Fake news is a hot topic, these days you won't have trouble finding them. And then don't ban the speech, just de-monetize it and put a note saying that reputable sources dispute it with links to their debunkings.

Even then, it will occasionally fail, but you can be sure that many reputable news sources will notice and make damn sure that the truth does get out.

If you plan to disagree with this, please include examples where this has been tried and it failed systematically.