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...

[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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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

[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.