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Can Facebook Keep Large-Scale Misinformation From the Free World? (sfgate.com)
You can have a disaster-free Election Day in the social media age, writes New York Times columnist Kevin Roose, "but it turns out that it takes constant vigilance from law enforcement agencies, academic researchers and digital security experts for months on end."
It takes an ad hoc "war room" at Facebook headquarters with dozens of staff members working round-the-clock shifts. It takes hordes of journalists and fact checkers willing to police the service for false news stories and hoaxes so that they can be contained before spreading to millions. And even if you avoid major problems from bad actors domestically, you might still need to disclose, as Facebook did late Tuesday night, that you kicked off yet another group of what appeared to be Kremlin-linked trolls...
Most days, digging up large-scale misinformation on Facebook was as easy as finding baby photos or birthday greetings... Facebook was generally responsive to these problems after they were publicly called out. But its scale means that even people who work there are often in the dark... Other days, combing through Facebook falsehoods has felt like watching a nation poison itself in slow motion. A recent study by the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at the University of Oxford, found that 25 percent of all election-related content shared on Facebook and Twitter during the midterm election season could be classified as "junk news"...
Facebook has framed its struggle as an "arms race" between itself and the bad actors trying to exploit its services. But that mischaracterizes the nature of the problem. This is not two sovereign countries locked in battle, or an intelligence agency trying to stop a nefarious foreign plot. This is a rich and successful corporation that built a giant machine to convert attention into advertising revenue, made billions of dollars by letting that machine run with limited oversight, and is now frantically trying to clean up the mess that has resulted... It's worth asking, over the long term, why a single American company is in the position of protecting free and fair elections all over the world.
Despite whatever progress has been made, the article complains that "It took sustained pressure from lawmakers, regulators, researchers, journalists, employees, investors and users to force the company to pay more attention to misinformation and threats of election interference. Facebook has shown, time and again, that it behaves responsibly only when placed under a well-lit microscope.
"So as our collective attention fades from the midterms, it seems certain that outsiders will need to continue to hold the company accountable, and push it to do more to safeguard its users -- in every country, during every election season -- from a flood of lies and manipulation."
Most days, digging up large-scale misinformation on Facebook was as easy as finding baby photos or birthday greetings... Facebook was generally responsive to these problems after they were publicly called out. But its scale means that even people who work there are often in the dark... Other days, combing through Facebook falsehoods has felt like watching a nation poison itself in slow motion. A recent study by the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at the University of Oxford, found that 25 percent of all election-related content shared on Facebook and Twitter during the midterm election season could be classified as "junk news"...
Facebook has framed its struggle as an "arms race" between itself and the bad actors trying to exploit its services. But that mischaracterizes the nature of the problem. This is not two sovereign countries locked in battle, or an intelligence agency trying to stop a nefarious foreign plot. This is a rich and successful corporation that built a giant machine to convert attention into advertising revenue, made billions of dollars by letting that machine run with limited oversight, and is now frantically trying to clean up the mess that has resulted... It's worth asking, over the long term, why a single American company is in the position of protecting free and fair elections all over the world.
Despite whatever progress has been made, the article complains that "It took sustained pressure from lawmakers, regulators, researchers, journalists, employees, investors and users to force the company to pay more attention to misinformation and threats of election interference. Facebook has shown, time and again, that it behaves responsibly only when placed under a well-lit microscope.
"So as our collective attention fades from the midterms, it seems certain that outsiders will need to continue to hold the company accountable, and push it to do more to safeguard its users -- in every country, during every election season -- from a flood of lies and manipulation."
Here, on Brazil elections, the main "guilty" was WhatsApp... Twitter helped too, besides facebook
What next, someone censoring which books get publshed? There is a fine line between "misinformation" and information which makes some people uncomfortable. Facebook should stay out of the censorship business. One person's "minsinformation" is another person's truth.
That's simple. The fundamental rule has always been that facts are universal, opinion is personal. Virtually every respectable media outlet has a version of that doctrine.
You can say what you like, think what you like, feel what you like, but you can choose only these. You cannot choose a different set of facts.
No, that doesn't stop you writing fantasy or fiction. As the late, great Terry Nation once said, if on your world rocks can talk, then that is fact. On that world, rocks talk.
It does not stop caricatures. Britain has incredibly strong libel laws, but TW3, Spitting Image and HIGNFY are not just applauded by those they put down, the famous and powerful were/are integral to them.
All it stops is malicious, twisted Misty Mountains nastiness. Gollum! That doesn't take a Ministry of Truth, any Bagginses will do.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not my experience through this last election cycle. Just saw a friend who was black-listed from posting because she chose to forward something from a "Secretary of State for CA" FB page. I read the post at it's source - NOTHING there that was either controversial or even partisan (and Partisan SHOULD BE OKAY!) Thought Police are ALREADY HERE!
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Claiming that "misinformation" and "junk news" on social media has any widespread impact on how a majority of people vote is a red herring (and on HRC's very long list of "reasons" why she lost). Most of the people I know that vote in every election cycle don't even use social media. Old people vote much more frequently than young ones. This is an undeniable and time proven fact. Old people also use social media at almost unquantifiably small rates.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!