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

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

[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: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-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.