Facebook is Rating Users Based On Their 'Trustworthiness' (engadget.com)

Facebook has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from zero to 1. From a report: Facebook hasn't been shy about rating the trustworthiness of news outlets, but it's now applying that thinking to users as well. The company's Tessa Lyons has revealed to the Washington Post that it's starting to assign users reputation scores on a zero-to-one scale. The system is meant to help Facebook's fight against fake news by flagging people who routinely make false claims against news outlets, whether it's due to an ideological disagreement or a personal grudge. This isn't the only way Facebook gauges credibility, according to Lyons -- it's just one of thousands of behavior markers Facebook is using. The problem: much of how this works is a mystery. Facebook wouldn't say exactly how it calculates scores, who gets these scores and how other factors contributed to a person's trustworthiness.

Comments

Truth is not truth...

[The Original CDR]

Trustworthiness is the new truthiness?

Re:Truth is not truth...

[sdinfoserv]

We live in the era of "truthful fact" being subjective. For example, only 28% of white Evangelicals believe global warming is man made. Remember that "faith" is belief in something despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary. Therefore, you discredit the messenger, refuse to accept the premises, align those who oppose your view with evil, etc.
Trustworthiness is simply someone else who is aligned with your views.

Re:Truth is not truth...

[presidenteloco]

No. Some facts and theories are testable by the scientific community using scientific method.
Some are demonstrable by scientific tests simple enough for anyone (with sufficient resources) to reproduce.

Correspondence (of propositions and theories and terms) or not to measurable aspects of physical reality is a testable thing. Enlightened humans discovered that about 400 years ago.

Maybe you didn't get the memo.

Re:Truth is not truth...

[fazig]

Like you implied, not everyone got the memo.
If you never learned and understood what value the scientific method can have, you probably won't consider it to be of much importance.
Although if you learn and understand "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone" you may thing that discrediting the messenger is a very valid method.

Re:Truth is not truth...

[fish_in_the_c]

sure, but how many of those facts are 'interesting'.

For instance. Let's just suppose one could prove beyond any reasonable doubt that withing 500 years the greenhouse effect would destroy the earth and make in uninhabitable by mankind.

( let's ignore the difficulty of proving that for the sake of the demonstration.)

You will notice what has NOT been proved.
a) that there is anything we SHOULD do about
b) that there is anything we CAN do about

why, because material science can't prove or disprove a moral proposition.

So while science can prove useful facts like. IF you do this ,you have a high likelihood of accomplishing that.
It is entirely useless when it comes to the first part of the preposition. That is to say 'should you do the IF'.

Re:Truth is not truth...

[iMadeGhostzilla]

You don't realize that it has always been like that. But don't take my word for it, take Max Planck's:

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Re:Truth is not truth...

[presidenteloco]

"because material science can't prove or disprove a moral proposition."

Just for the sake of fun argument: One could posit an overarching moral principle which is possibly able to be scientifically and mathematically investigated, and a somewhat objective assessment of ranking of moral states might be based on that:

Here's one candidate general moral principle:
TLDR: Maximize quality complex-life-years summed over some spacetime region (set of situations).
                      Measured in bit-seconds per cubic-parsec (or cubic metre) of life-information conservation, perhaps?

You may recognize this as a vast but defensible generalization of "Thou shalt not kill" or the related "don't covet thy neighbour's wife", "don't steal" or otherwise mess up life-conserving societal cohesion. The Dalai Lama's "My religion is kindness" is also covered, as kindness promotes co-operation, minimization of energy-squandering and life-squandering conflict, and more energy efficient co-operative processes for keeping more people alive longer. It also handles the more controversial "women and children to the lifeboats first" and at least lets you quantify trolley problems. :-) It also covers bio-diverse eco-system conservation as a moral goal.

Details:
Each individual lifeform is most generally characterized by representing it as an information pattern that describes the complex form of the matter-energy pattern that is the lifeform, or perhaps alternatively by an information pattern that encodes the construction of the lifeform (the genome).
We will say that each lifeform embodies its characteristic information pattern. The stable, descriptive,complex information pattern is carried (present) in the form and genome of the organism, even if nowhere else.

The amazing thing about life is that it conserves locally many, very similar but not identical, copies of these complex-information patterns. That, most essentially IS what life is and does. A local particular-information conserving process. A negentropy machine working in an open thermodynamic system.

The complexity of the lifeform is well measured in terms of the bit-length either of its generative genome information-pattern, or if you prefer, the bit-length of the matter-energy-pattern-descriptive information-pattern. Normalized of course by near-maximally compressing the information in the information pattern (so that is close to a Kolmogorov-random bitstring).

The thing about long PARTICULAR bitstrings that can encode complex form is we do not expect them (the bitstrings) to be conserved throughout time in most physical regimes. Too much entropy or free-energy going on all around them. Conservation of the information is a tough job, achievable only through the form and continued functioning of the complex lifeform information-containers. Lifeforms carry forward the complex particular information through time, unexpectedly compared to the average rate of entropy generation in their region. That's life, precisely.

So I'm positing that morality was developed by humans to make life easier (more survival probability per unit of energy expended) for more people. A self-aware, environment-aware, intelligent-agent piece of life (humans) seeking to conserve life-iness through inculcated behaviour guidance. Originally just applied to people, but the extension to lifeforms/ecosystems in general, ranked by complexity, is straightforward (since let's not forget, we're inextricably part of that ecosphere.)

Of course there would still be room for argument, mostly over how to scope the situation-set, and then also about how to define life-quality (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?.) But the basic framework for morality assessment is there.

As long as you accept that my universal moral principle is a valid generalization of most if not all other common moral principles.

Re:Truth is not truth...

[Attila Dimedici]

As long as you accept that my universal moral principle is a valid generalization of most if not all other common moral principles.

The problem is that I do not accept your "universal moral principle". It is certainly NOT a valid generalization of Judaeo-Christian moral principles. Your "universal moral principle" values the individual not at all. Judaeo-Christian moral principles assert that the individual is infinitely valuable. Your principle accepts the call of the group to sacrifice an individual for the good of the group. Judaeo-Christian principles call for an individual to sacrifice themselves for the good of another individual. The success of Western Civilization is a result of the value it places on the individual, on the fact that it does not value the group at the expense of the individual.

Re:Truth is not truth...

[presidenteloco]

I'm saying:

We do agree that moral principles evolved as memes, don't we? If not, I can't talk with you much, since we are on different planets of worldview and discourse. The most likely evolved moral principles are ones which serve to promote human welfare, individual and collective, by governing behaviour, and notably social behaviour.

Conflict between intelligent agent organisms is detrimental to their survival probability, since it uses up some of the energy they acquire and could put to productive purposes of thriving, not to mention the increased risk of physical harm and death through conflict. Small-scale conflict between individuals and small groups is like friction acting on survival effort of individuals. Also, conflict and attendant lack of trust in society lead to inability to get inefficiencies of specialization of labour. Societies with internal conflict and lack of trust are unable to create co-operative economic processes. Co-operative economic processes that emerge in an environment of trust or bad-behaviour constraint, lead to increased energy efficiency of survival maintenance activities.
Bottom line is societal cohesion is adaptive, both for society's memes (such as moral rules and norms), and for individual adherents to the memes; society members.

Moral principles are either completely arbitrary, in which case their longevity needs to be explained, or they are evolved and collectively promulgated and enforced memes which essentially encourage pro-social behaviour, or in other words, encourage upsizing of the entity size that tries to co-operate to survive. This leads directly to decreased energy expenditure per unit of survival probability per individual organism in the society. This in a context in which memes persist when a) their operation in society leads to survival benefits for the individual adherents to the meme or subjects of its operation, and b) because of these benefits to individuals, their is a derived survival advantage for the meme (moral ruleset in this case) itself.

That, my friend, is moral science, as an extension of evolutionary theory.

Hard to test in the real world, admittedly, but should be subject to demonstration and validation by computer simulation.

Zuckerbook == China?

[Rick Schumann]

Gee whiz Zuckerbook, you're starting to sound an awful lot like living under the communist Chinese government, aren't you?

Re:Zuckerbook == China?

[Rick Schumann]

Not so specifically as you're stating it, no, but I do remember the vast majority of people having been 'indoctrinated' that way by social media, to believe that anyone who wanted to preserve their privacy 'must have something to hide' and therefore must be criminals, terrorists, and/or pedophiles. I never fell for any of that, and as the pressure to be brainwashed by social media increased, my aversion to social media increased proportionately, and I don't use ANY social media anymore, and haven't for a long, long time now, and encourage everyone I can to dump Facebook, Twitter, and any other so-called 'social media' and (shocking!) actually be social with live people away from the Internet.

Re:Zuckerbook == China?

[swillden]

Facebook is an opt-in service not mandated by anyone or anything. Don't want to use it, then don't. The only time you "need" Facebook is if you're dealing with public relations, and even then, you're not using Facebook for socialising but for promoting.

A Chinese citizen does not have the same freedoms. Facebook and China are not comparable in any way.

I think the idea that this is going to happen is laughable, but it's worth pointing out that if the Facebook trustworthiness score were to be used like the Chinese "Social Credit" score, it wouldn't be necessary to force people to use it. All that would be required is for various entities to begin relying on the score to make decisions about whether or not to trust someone. In such a world, someone who refuses to use Facebook would be distrusted by anyone who relies on the trust score. If you wanted to be trusted, you'd need to participate, much the way that if you want to be able to borrow money to buy a house you generally need to build a history of borrowing and repayment on smaller loans first.

Re:Zuckerbook == China?

[omnichad]

news[1] site with commenting[2]

not 'social[2] media[1]'.

Yeah, commenting isn't social and the news isn't media. I'm not so sure I believe you on that.

Re:Zuckerbook == China?

[budgenator]

I get this mental image of an entire industry growing around trying to game this "Trustworthiness" index, just like the Search Engine Optimization and Credit repair leaches. I wonder if the index will automatically reindex itself when information moves from "False-news" to "Real-Facts"?

  These Social Media Providers are just bound and determined to exert Editorial Control over postings and forfet their safe-harbor in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act!

Yay, we're getting Sesame Credits in America!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can be secretly tracked and blacklisted by glorious capitalists instead of dirty communists.

I feel so much better.

Facebook

[beep54]

Who is going to rate Facebook's 'trustworthiness'? Anyone....anyone??

Re:Facebook

[PopeRatzo]

Who is going to rate Facebook's 'trustworthiness'? Anyone....anyone??

Their customers. The same people who rate the trustworthiness of any company. And since you may not know this, Facebook's customers are the people who buy targeted advertising and pay for your data, like Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook's users are not their customers. They are just voluntary donors of their personal information and eyeballs. They have no business relationship with Facebook.

Re:Facebook

[SeaFox]

The stock market? That is about the only thing that can make a difference.

Yup, if there's one thing we can depend on as a moral compass, it's the actions of large corporations. /s

Conservatives vs Liberals

[beerlord1]

I've noticed that when commenting on friends' posts or public posts from political parties, messages supporting conservative parties or criticising Islam or immigration tend to be filtered out, whereas liberal comments or support are in the 'top filtered' section.

Re:Conservatives vs Liberals

[ScentCone]

You're confused. You're thinking that the handful of idiots who walk around with tiki torches and fantasize about a long-dead political organization are actual Nazis in any way that actually matters. They're universally scorned and/or laughed at, and on the rare occasions they actually break the law, the get busted and prosecuted. What you're thinking of are the modern day brown shirts - the actual foot soldiers of totalitarian fascism. That would be antifa. Black uniforms, masks, weapons at "peaceful" demonstrations, spoken desire to kill political opponents and leaders, destruction of property and beating people bloody when there's any sense that someone, somewhere may not agree with their violent world view. And of course, they generally do NOT get in any legal trouble for bringing weapons into no-weapons-allowed areas and hurting people. They're all about intimidation, silencing people, and terrorizing those they don't like. And they're cheered on by the statists who now run the left side of politics in the US. There's your contemporary Nazis.

Re:Conservatives vs Liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

Fascists usually wear masks and their defining characteristic is destruction of property and public beatings? This is apparently some new meaning of the word fascist I hadn't previously been aware of.

But by all means please go back to demonizing a small portion of your political opponents as sub-human creatures who are evil to the core and the real cause of society's woes. It makes your accusations of fascism highly ironic and entertaining!

I know how this works

[SuperKendall]

Mention Infowars (even in jest) - rep score 0 forever until the end of you or Facebook.

Post link to Huffington Post article - A++++ GOLD STAR WOULD ALLOW TO POST AGAIN.

I posted just one political comment on Facebook once, expressing a desire that those on the left and right should talk to each other and not shut people out - so I'm pretty sure my trust score is like -5 out of 0-1.

Re:I know how this works

[omnichad]

I know you're joking, but even basing it on posting a link is a bad move. I may post a link to an article that is 100% wrong because I want to comment on how wrong it is.

Re:I know how this works

[iMadeGhostzilla]

I wrote the same thing about two years ago and got comments "when the other side is racist there can be no discussion with them." Those people hate nothing more than someone appealing to balance and reason.

But maybe they are right, likely no one is really neutral in these mindwars, even if they fancy themselves to be.

Re:I know how this works

[SuperKendall]

Yeah, my post was just after the presidential election and got similar dubious responses. I figured people would do what they would do, and it was pointless trying to repair a bridge that so many others were furiously trying to burn down so I never did a political post again. Until some distant day when sanity returns I'll just buy shares in popcorn and sigh with a bit of sadness seeing people drift further away from each other that should be able to work things out.

But maybe they are right, likely no one is really neutral in these mindwars, even if they fancy themselves to be.

I think you can still be relatively neutral but both sides make it very, very hard to stay that way - everyone wants you fully enraged, to one direction or the other. Also not sure it matters how neutral you are if no-one will believe you are actually neutral. Defiantly continued strong pulls in all directions, that's for sure. Or maybe more like strong pushes, as both sides try to out-stupid each other.

Re:I know how this works

[ScentCone]

Why would you assume he's joking? Sites like YouTube are now doing things like flagging a George Will commentary about baseball as possibly dangerous speech and suppressing it in search results... because George Will isn't a progressive cheerleader. He even hates Trump! Doesn't matter. He's vaguely conservative, so he must be silenced on social media.

Re:I know how this works

[Anonymous Coward]

I know plenty of democrats who behave that way but very few of us who are actually on the left.

The problem from our point of view is the right (democrats) and the far right (republicans) dominating all conversation, controlling all major media, and keeping out rivals to themselves despite most of the country really not being either of those. They refuse to talk policy and only want to argue with one another about trivia (Russia, Hilary's emails, etc.) instead of anything that matters while the country is suffering. Presumably because the donor class benefits and the politicians care most about the hands that feed them. We don't need neutrality. We need politicians who talk policy and vote for the interests of their constituents.

Get used to mystery

[presidenteloco]

"The problem: much of how this works is a mystery"

AI algorithms and knowledge-bases/trained models are already too complicated in their function for most people to understand. And they will get even more obscure and indirect in future versions, most likely.

Just as you don't know how I reached a decision or assessment, you won't be able to know how an AI reached a decision or assessment. We are just going to have to get used to that.

The chances are very high that the AI way of assessing will be more objective and principled, going forward, than most individuals' way of assessing.
If you like, to make people less suspicious, perhaps a convention of publishing the code and data in the assessment system (anonymized when references personal data) might be established. But how will this help? A few experts would be able to check it and vouch for its reasoning integrity, but nobody seems to believe experts these days since many of them seem "bought" anyway.

Re:Get used to mystery

[presidenteloco]

Granted, a lot of work still has to go into making AI model and infer better. No doubt.

If anything, I'm insulting the "average" level of human reasoning and judgement these days, as evidenced by the general level of discourse; saying that that is not a very high bar to get over for the tech. Sad but probably true.

As the algorithms get better, and closer to self-learning strong AI, it will become harder to bias them maliciously.
Because awareness of external agents with purposes (including purposes in communicating information),
and resistance to bias in information input, will clearly be requirements of such a system, so those "meta-reasoning" or "epistemic" topics will have to be important in the development of that tech.

Your point about a strong AI developing its own preferences and bias is interesting and valid. I think an interesting class of system for people to research will be ego-less semi-strong AIs, capable of self-learning but highly focussed on a top-level goal of objectivity and information quality assesment and truth assessment based on general epistemic and probability principles.

China is there

[sdinfoserv]

Sounds like a private corporation is taking the United States down the Chinese path of Social Credit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
How long before businesses check your facebook "trustworthy rating" before you can get a loan, rent a home or even get a job.

Black Mirror and 1984 all in one

[Anonymous Coward]

This is LITERALLY a "Black Mirror" episode on netflix, where people's entire self-worth is garnered by their social media score. This is big gov't censorship at it's worst (albiet Facebook is "sort of" a private company). Add that to the fact Facebook is incredibly biased towards the left, censors conservatives and actual truth at all turns, this is literally the end of free speech and the beginning of the "1984" book/movie. As another poster pointed out, link, post or like anything to do with InfoWars or pro-Trump, and your trustworthiness will instantly plummet based on their completely hidden "algorithms". Wow

No it's not

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is an opt-in service

No it's not. We've known for years that Spybook has profiles on individuals who have never signed up.

Re:You have that backwards

[CanHasDIY]

I don't mod often, but when I do, I meta-mod