Facebook Exec Admits 'No Real Understanding' for the Scope of Fake News (mercurynews.com)

Three executives from Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube appeared at Stanford to discuss free speech in the social media age, with one law professor raising concerns about how the online giants are curating their services. All three tech executives talked about increasing transparency and authenticity. But all acknowledge that nothing is foolproof and political speech in particular is most difficult to regulate, if it should be at all. "That puts a lot of control in the hands of the companies sitting here in term of what kind of speech is allowed to have the global reach," said Juniper Downs, YouTube's global head of public policy and government relations. "That is a responsibility we take very seriously and something we owe to the public and a civil society...."

Facebook is making information available on its platform to researchers to help understand the effect of Facebook usage on elections. Still, Facebook's Vice President of Public Policy Elliot Schrage urged caution. "There is no agreement whatsoever on the prevalence of false news and fake propaganda on our platform," he said. "We have no real understanding of what the scope of misinformation is." He suggested that despite these chaotic times, "I do think we should be pretty modest and circumspect in the approaches we take." Social media companies need to find creative ways to improve the spread of information, Schrage said. But it won't be easy. "No one company," he said, "is going to solve this problem."

Comments

Translation

[Shane_Optima]

Translation: Democrats still refuse to admit that they have a problem getting their own party members to give a shit about them, insist that fake news is the only possible explanation for Trump. (Despite numbers clearly showing that it was a lack of turnout among Ds that screwed Hillary, not a surge in the Pizzagate swing vote.)

Oh yes, and I'm still interested in knowing what Facebook plans to do the next time the New York Times, The Guardian, and others do something like fraudulently insert the words "without consent" in their paraphrase of the contents of the Pussygate tape while excluding the words "and they let you do it." If the answer is 'nothing', where exactly is the line going to be drawn?

(Blah blah blah, anti-Trump disclaimer, Republicans are worse in almost all respects than Democrats, etc.)

Re:Translation

[Mashiki]

The short answer: Both Putin and Trump do an absolutely crappy job running their respective countries, so if Putin was telling Trump what to do it would make no difference. Crap in, crap out.

Let's be fully realistic here, if Trump was doing such a 'crappy job' of running the country, his popularity wouldn't be over 50%. Unless of course you're saying that it's all lies, in which case he both controls the media, but doesn't control the media(since 93% of the articles about him are negative). Let's compare Trump to Trudeau, you know the international love child of the media, and world leaders. Trump says if you're illegal or want to enter the country illegally, GTFO. Trudeau opens his mouth and illegals start flooding in to the point where it's broken the entire welfare and social service systems of Quebec and Ontario. Now Trudeau is asking the US to start kicking out people because Canada can't handle the numbers illegally entering. Now let's talk popularity, Trump is nearly universally hated by the media. Trudeau is loved by the media. We're looking at 50% approval for Trump vs 23% and dropping like a rock for Trudeau. Wages in the US are increasing for the first time in over a decade. Wages in Canada are stagnant, while inflation is going through the roof. Let's talk economic policy. Trumps actions are to reduce regulations and taxes, business took off. Trudeau's actions were to push more taxes, then decide he wants to implement a carbon tax on a heavily taxed business and residential sector. To the point where business have stopped expanding and are contracting.

Now you're probably wondering wtf is this Canadian talking about? You probably haven't figured out just how closely both countries are linked, more then any other two country in the world.

Make no mistake. Except for getting caught, Putin was telling Trump what policy he wanted from the US and Trump wanted to give it to him. I assume it has something to do with the blackmail material that Russia has on Trump. It might or might not be a sex tape, but Putin has Trump under his thumb somehow. I think it has to do bribes and international money laundering at a minium. This was going on years before Trump even got into politics.

Really? Have you given this intel to anyone, how about posting your proof? Oh...right...no proof. It's just your feeling that it's true.

So let's see if I've got all this progressive anti-trumper garbage right. Trump is both a genius and idiot, who's bankrupt but rolling in cash. He's both under and not under Putin's thumb. He's blackmailed Putin, and Putin has blackmailed him. Putin both controls him and at the same time, Trump does things that hurt Putin. He's both colluding with Russia, but at the same time acting in a manner that's going to cause WWIII with Russia. He's both a retard and an idiot, but also a Machiavellian super-genius. It's almost like the entire anti-Trump movement is full of the kids on the short bus.

Putin has Trump by his (tiny) balls and you don't care. He's a traitor and you are on his side. What does that make you?

If Trump is a traitor, then Obama was a seditious pile of shit that nearly destroyed the US through unlawful wiretapping and FISA abuses, using EO's as a tool of fiat control, jeopardized multiple long-standing alliances with friendly countries by spying directly on them and wiretapping the leaders of those countries and has probably killed the EU while he was at it. So what does that make me? By the looks of it, smarter then you.

Re:Translation

[Attila Dimedici]

As, Mashiki pointed out, those 3 people from trump's campaign who were indicted were not indicted for anything to do with Russia. One of them, Paul Manafort, was indicted for something that happened long before the campaign, which had previously been investigated by the DoJ. In that previous investigation, the DoJ decided there was insufficient evidence to charge him.

However, regarding Hillary's collusion with Russia, are you aware that she paid Perkins Coie to pay Fusion GPS to pay Christopher Steele to obtain information from agents of the Russian government which could be used to smear Trump? That is not conspiracy theory, that is a matter of public record.

On Facebook, it's the recommender, stupid!

[shanen]

And foolish people will recommend fake or stupid news. I'm much less concerned about the sincere fanatics as the paid propagandists and professional trolls. As it exists now, Facebook is their perfect tool. Not just for propagating the BS but for dividing and conquering the opposition.

Solution time? I feel like I'm wasting the keystrokes since the same solution applied to a recent story and elicited no detectable interest. (ACs don't count and I don't see their comments.) However I think EPR (Earned Public Reputation) would be a strong solution approach. You can think of it as karma on steroids, but the basic insight is that positive interactions (in various dimensions) should earn reputation that is then (among other uses) reflected in the news sources you choose to recommend. In a contrasting example, if you tell (or propagate) a lie and someone is willing to take a bit of time to prove it, then your reputation should go down and your further comments should be seen in that light.

Actually, mostly not seen. The real reason I want EPR is to focus my time on reading comments from people who are demonstrably nicer or better informed or even funnier than I am. The other people would be invisible for me, if'n I had my druthers.

Objectively what is fake?

[Karmashock]

You can say "well, the stuff that isn't true"... well, how do you know what is and isn't true?

Its going to basically boil down to "because X told me it was true and they wouldn't lie." Or "X, Y, and Z all agree so it can't be a lie."

problem is that X will sometimes be wrong whether they're intentionally wrong or not. And thus "X says its true" does not equal truth.

X, Y, and Z agreeing doesn't help either because often information will only have one or two sources. And if you eliminated all news that didn't have lots of sources the news would basically say almost nothing every day. And that would simply cause any news feed that did that to be ignored in favor of more responsive and topical news. What is more, like the first problem... whilst it might be unlikely that X, Y, and Z could be wrong... they can be still. Sometimes lots of people are wrong. And strictly speaking when someone is wrong... if "untrue = fake news"... then "wrong = untrue = fake news"...

Boiling it all down, the fake news argument is a consequence of increasingly politicized and biased press on ALL sides. Coverage is biased. And it is frequently overtly biased. Given publications will sell themselves to readers in fact on being "the most progressive" or "the most conservative" or whatever.

That doesn't mean that partisan press is real or unreal or true or untrue. But it does speak to an increasing intolerance for media other than what you are consuming. And it is totally understandable that when someone is exposed to media that is 180 degrees off their political echo chamber... whatever that is... they woudl see that as "fake news." They'd see it as biased and not trust it.

Totally understandable... at first glance. However, here is where some basic integrity comes to the rescue. "IF" you hear something that you think is fake news... just check it out. It may or may not be fake. And don't just go to your political echo chamber to find out if THEY think it is right or wrong. Play devil's advocate with the position. Honestly vet it.

Typically when there are disagreements on these issues people are just reacting badly to opposition media that isn't saying anything that isn't verified by a lot of sources. And in the few cases otherwise it is often still true but not widely reported. In a very small number of cases, you're dealing with real crap. But by and large its just hostile presentation or obscure information.

monoculture and illness as applied... to facebook

[lkcl]

we're all quite familiar with the concept of a monoculture, from biology. once a population gets dominant it is vulnerable to viruses that take down the *entire* population in one fell swoop. when microsoft was dominant we saw the same concept being analogously applied: computer viruses propagate because of a *monoculture* operating system, the great joke being when Wine was "good enough" to run windows viruses it was actually celebrated - i'm sure there was a story before this one, i remember seeing one on /. involving a word macro-virus https://linux.slashdot.org/sto... ... so with that concept established, let's look at facebook (except from a *psychological* perspective rather than a technical one). it's dominant... it's a mono-culture... and it has the ability to... spread memes. it's therefore perfect for spreading "sickness".

question. is facebook going to *stop* spreading "sickness"? no, of course not, because its *entire business model* revolves around spreading information^sickness.

question. can facebook discern which information is "sick" and which is "well"? clearly they can't.

question. *should* facebook be the one that "determines" which information is "sick" and which is "well"? honestly no they should not, because that's *our* responsibility, as *individuals*, not theirs.

question. if facebook cannot serve us, and we are not being served by facebook, what is the next logical step to stop the "illness" from spreading?

answer: don't have a monoculture. that means terminating facebook as it stands, forcefully (by law) or voluntarily (#DeleteFacebook) or by creating an alternative and communications interoperability standards.

bottom line: an internet-connected world culture is great... until you get internet-connected world cultural "disease". one way or another this is going to get "solved". i'd like it to be the case that people take advantage of that funding that's being made available: https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

Fake news is their cash cow

[VeryFluffyBunny]

Why should they give up fake news? It makes a lot of money and brings them a lot of free publicity and political attention. That's just what rich and powerful people love.

Google's and Facebook's policies have effectively turned most online news into clickbait. Media outlets have to do this to compete with each other and gain advertising revenue in the environment created by them.

Facebook runs on the same principle: If you can incite/provoke enough indignant moral outrage, you can get your messages out there and make some money.

In an environment like that, do you really think that anyone who's in it to make money is worried about journalistic integrity or the truth?

Inciting/provoking indignant moral outrage has always been a problem in news, i.e. there's always competition for people's attention, which is in short supply. What companies like Google and Facebook have done is to magnify this problem to the point where it overwhelms everything else.