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

Posted by msmash on from the going-back-to-rating-people dept.

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.

5 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Truth is not truth... by The+Original+CDR · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Trustworthiness is the new truthiness?

  2. Yay, we're getting Sesame Credits in America! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    I feel so much better.

  3. Facebook by beep54 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

  4. Re:Zuckerbook == China? by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. No it's not by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.