Slashdot Mirror


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."

2 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Because ALL news is fake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With the near-zero journalistic integrity of all basically all MSM in America, the obvious problem for Facebook is whatever objective criteria you set for labelling "Fake News", you would include basically all MSM, and also including a lot of (if not all) advertising.

    The day FB successfully combat Fake News is the day FB lost all its ad revenue. Of course they aren't going to solve this.

  2. Re: BAN BUMP STOCKS... apk by DRJlaw · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Because a shotgun does exactly jack shit against a re-feralized 600 pound pig with massive fucking tusks charging your ass or harassing your animals or crops. You need PENETRATING POWER and you quite often need more than one bullet to stop it, AND you need to stop it rapidly, so sticking around fucking with a bolt-action is liable to get your ass gored by aforementioned tusks in a close-range shooting situation, thus the need for semi-automatic capability.

    Yes, you need to COMPENSATE FOR YOUR HEAD-UP-YOUR-ASS-MISTAKES in picking an astonishingly underpowered round, failing to choose the proper ground and/or cover, and blowing your advantage so badly that you're at close-range with a charging animal.

    The M-16/AR-15 standard cailber was expressly selected to favor wounding, not killing, a human-sized animal (shocker, since the principal target was a human being). And you want to use it for boar shooting. SMMFH.

    Because a shotgun does exactly jack shit against a re-feralized 600 pound pig with massive fucking tusks charging your ass or harassing your animals or crops.

    Use a large game round rather than leftover birdshot and you just might learn something.