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Facebook Will Now Ask Users To Rank News Organizations They Trust (recode.net)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Facebook is doing a very un-Facebooky thing: It's going to start declaring that some news sources you see in your Facebook feed are better than others, and act accordingly. But Facebook being Facebook, it's going about it in the most Facebooky way possible: It's going to rely on users -- not the super-smart people who work at Facebook -- to figure out which of those sources are better. Mark Zuckerberg says the move is part of an effort to prioritize "news that is trustworthy, informative, and local," within the network and suggests that there will be more announcements to come. The one he describes today will prioritize what kind of news sources pop up in your Facebook News Feed, and will reward ones that Facebook thinks are "broadly trusted," based on user polls, so it can "build a sense of common ground." Facebook is also using today's news to refine last week's roll-out: Zuckerberg says the previously announced changes will reduce the amount of news stories people see in their feed to 4 percent, down from 5 percent.

7 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Dear Facebook by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you ever want me back, you'll let me check a box that:

    1) Only shows me content created by friends
    2) Makes it come in chronological order

    Everything else is pointless.

  2. abuse by PhantomHarlock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This will in no way be abused by ideologues asking their millions of flunkies to upvote their favorite extremist 'news' organizations without a second thought.

  3. Re:Easy. I'll use all my logins by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Fox News, InfoWars, Art Bell. That's really all you need right there.

    Indeed. The alt-right ditto-heads are going to crowdsource these rankings into an echo-chamber in the first 10 minutes. I can't imagine why anyone thought this was a good idea.

  4. Democracy is the new system for fact selection by OrangeTide · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We now can select our facts by majority opinion.

    Next we can take down science as it is a social construct with a bias toward western culture and straight white men specifically. We instead can have a plurality of accepted "facts" and have equally valid viewpoints that we label as science. Instead of logical arguments, a western concept that reeks of colonialism, we can operate based on consensus building and equal time for all sides. Democratic science and culturally sensitive "facts".

    Total bullshit of course, and perhaps an early signal that society is descending into madness.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  5. Re:Easy. I'll use all my logins by aliquis · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Indeed. The alt-right ditto-heads are going to crowdsource these rankings into an echo-chamber in the first 10 minutes. I can't imagine why anyone thought this was a good idea.

    Everyone else does it and we're even forced to it. We're not allowed in the other medias so .. what's the obvious and only solution?

    It's so fucking sad, mental and hillariously non-hillariously destructive that the freedom-hating socialists get away with making claims like "we need to start treating each other with respect!" as an answer to arguments with a harsh tone (note: It's not a counter-argument) after having called us racists and nazis for decades. Yeah.. About that: No. They should be called socialist-bastards, freedom-haters, communists, all of it the whole time and in a negative fashion and easily fend of just because their anti-individual enforced collectivism ideas isn't acceptable whatsoever.

    It's just another way of trying to shut people up. Like always. And then they will be like "our opinion is that of the majority, haven't you noticed? You don't see or hear any other now do you?!" - as if.

  6. Re:The Daily Show by scatbomb · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ... that's pretty sad. Also, there's wonderfully circular about Facebook's proposal.

    1. Users read news on network A

    2. Users use information they read on network A to decide which network is "trustworthy" (network A of course)

    3. Network A becomes "trustworthy"

    What could possibly go wrong?

  7. Re: Easy. I'll use all my logins by Reverend+Green · · Score: 3, Funny

    The "alt-left" wants nothing to do with liberals, labor unionists, socialists, communists, skeptics, humanists, or New Deal style progressives. That pretty well eliminates their mass support.

    I really doubt the world has even a million self loathing, socially degenerate, openly bigoted running dog stooges of big capital. It's just that the few who do exist get a whole fucking lot of airtime from the propaganda organs.