Facebook VP Says Company Won't Use Experts To Fix Fake News Because It is Worried About Criticism (theoutline.com)

Joshua Topolsky, writing for The Outline: According to Axios reporter Ina Fried, the vice president of global communications, marketing, and public policy (phew!) at Facebook shook off suggestions that the network should use outside media literacy watch dogs as opposed to outsourcing its "fake news" problem to a "statistically representative" group of its own users. While speaking at the tech conference DLD (Digital Life Design) in Munich, he revealed that the real motivation behind the company's decision was one based almost entirely on optics. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise, as the company has been totally ignorant and outrageously slow in accepting responsibility for what has been a disaster for its users. While Twitter is turning to media literacy groups such as Common Sense Media and the National Association for Media Literacy for solutions to its own troll and fake news epidemic, Facebook continues to cower behind a broken concept that the company is a neutral platform where all of its participants are equally weighted.

Comments

How about no news at all?

[gatkinso]

I just want to look at my friends kids and pet pics. Is that so much to ask?

Re:How about no news at all?

[swb]

Except a lot of the fake news is coming from your friends political links.

This is the real crux of the problem. People on Facebook have become militantly political, down all the usual dividing lines. People I've known for 10-20 years who never appeared to have any political opinions are now rabidly political on Facebook.

My own sense is that this grew out of Facebook enabling the easy re-sharing of links and pictures. At first it was just mostly dumb memes, but as election season hit it quickly became a way of sharing and ultimately manufacturing and reinforcing partisan outrage.

I don't think Facebook can fix this without some heavy AI analysis of submitted links and images that eliminates the ability to re-share political ones without hindering the ability to re-share non-political content. News links might be more amenable to machine analysis, but images would be touch. The only other option is just disabling re-sharing of any of them, which I think users would find an unacceptable functionality limitation.

An individual can "solve" this themselves by unfriending people who post too much political stuff, but my own sense is that means gutting even moderate-sized friend lists, rendering the entire thing kind of pointless.

I've kind of abandoned it completely myself. I'm missing out on some socialization, but mostly I think it's false socialization with people in ordinary circumstances I wouldn't keep in touch with. A loss perhaps for some old friends and family, but not enough to make it worth putting up with.

Totally unbiased opinion by TFA's 'journalist'

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should Facebook take any responsibility for content that is posted by their users? Why should they suddenly become a media curator, instead of a social network? Why is TFA written as though it was completely obvious and indisputable truth?

Don't get me wrong, I hate Facebook as much as the next guy, but I hate the tone of this article even more and the righteous anger radiating from it is just revolting. It's like the author is begging for even more corporate censorship and is extremely pissed off that it's not being dished out in a timely manner.

Re:Totally unbiased opinion by TFA's 'journalist'

[tsqr]

your utopia sounds nice, but here in the real world there is much more going on. theres a reason its illegal for foriegn governments to influence US elections.

Except for a few well-defined cases, it's not illegal for foreign governments to attempt to influence US elections. For example, In a decision that was later affirmed by the Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the foreign national ban “does not restrain foreign nationals from speaking out about issues or spending money to advocate their views about issues. It restrains them only from a certain form of expressive activity closely tied to the voting process—providing money for a candidate or political party or spending money in order to expressly advocate for or against the election of a candidate.” Bluman v. FEC, 2012.

Note the word "expressly". If an ad paid for by a foreign entity speaks against the policy or behavior of a candidate (whether true or false), but does not explicitly say "Do not vote for " or "Vote for " , it's legal.

Educate yourself..

Fix what?

[InPursuitOfTruth]

The concept that there is a "problem" is premised on several notions: - Only those in the US should have free speech on the Internet. - US readers are unable to think for themselves and scrutinize. They need a protective overlord. What would be more acceptable is tagging content that has certain attributes, then letting readers do what they wish with such tagged content. In fact, instead of debating what algorithms or filters FB, Twitter or any other potential big brother should have, how about letting readers customize their own algorithms and be empowered to control what they see in their feeds? Why isn't this concept being proposed?

Facebook can't win

[MobyDisk]

Facebook can't win here. If they spread fake news people blame them directly. And if they use a panel of experts than the experts are controlling the news people see. That's not good either. The article attacks them for the decision, saying it is marketing, but I think Facebook is right here. It isn't their job to be the news police.

This simply isn't Facebook's problem. The users are to blame, and this isn't a new problem. Just like Slashdot or Reddit or any other internet forum, the content is provided by the users and it is not the responsibility of Facebook to tell people that they are idiots. Studies show that people click like on things, and then repost them, without even reading the articles. And most people don't seem to be able to distinguish political fact from reality even if they do read the articles.

This problem happened before the internet. In the US, go to a grocery store and look at what news is available for purchase. It is 40% tabloids (AKA "fake news"), 40% celebrity gossup, 40% real news. Facebook is no different.

This is why come to Slashdot: there are educated people here, and debunkers here. I go straight to the discussion first because half the stories are garbage.

This is why we don't trust your "experts"

[DeplorableCodeMonkey]

This doesn't violate Facebook standards. Or for those who won't read TFL:

Group Threatening to Burn 'Activist Mommy' Alive Doesn't Violate Standards, Facebook Says

Amazing how the examples in the linked article don't constitute a violation of standards on harassment and threatening violence. Must be like the Sarah Palin principle. You can say "someone should shit down Sarah Palin's throat" on national television and not be roundly condemned, but say anything about women on the other side, no matter how tepid the statement, and it's going to be a 2 minute hate session.

Re: Totally unbiased opinion by TFA's 'journalist

[Archangel Michael]

Its actually worse than that. There is plenty of evidence of Russian Collusion to rig the election, and it is all Hillary, DNC and the Deep State.

Hillary/DNC paid for the Russian Dossier
Russian Dossier was filled with Russian Propaganda from FSB
Hillary's Husband (Bill) was paid millions of dollars from FSB sources for "speeches"
Hillary signed off on Uranium One, in spite of an ongoing investigation into Russian trying to corner the Uranium market.
Obama Justice Dept and FBI agents were actively colluding to overturn the election
Obama and Justice Dept used the Fake Russian FSB Dossier to get a FISA court warrant to spy tap Americans, namely the opposition party.

This is just what we KNOW. I realize that the GP post doesn't account for any of this, because he's probably watching CNN or MSNBC which is talking about how much diet coke and McDonalds Trump consumes, or something equally inane. Or perhaps its on the ScarJo speech at the Liberal Women's march about how awful men are, especially James Franco, while ignoring that she praised Woody Allen or her cuddling up and beaming at Roman Polanski getting a Hollywood Award of some kind.

The selective nature of their outrage is humorous. Their disdain for average people (who knew these people were gross pigs long before Hollywoudn't) extends from Hollywood to the beltway.