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Facebook Doesn't Care About Fixing Fake News Problem On Its Platform (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Journalists working as factcheckers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation. Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform's collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they've lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook's hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics -- fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk -- should be a deal-breaker.
Facebook now has more than 40 media partners across the globe, including the Associated Press, PolitiFact and the Weekly Standard, and has said false news on the platform is "trending downward." While some newsroom leaders said the relationship was positive, other partners said the results were unclear and that they had grown increasingly resentful of Facebook. Facebook has said that third-party factchecking is one part of its strategy to fight misinformation, and has claimed that a "false" rating leads an article to be ranked lower in news feed, reducing future views by 80% on average. The company has refused, however, to publicly release any data to support these claims. Facebook said in a statement that it had "heard feedback from our partners that they'd like more data on the impact of their efforts," adding that it has started sending "quarterly reports" with "customized statistics" to partners and would be"looking for more statistics to share externally in early 2019." Facebook declined to share the reports with the Guardian.
Facebook now has more than 40 media partners across the globe, including the Associated Press, PolitiFact and the Weekly Standard, and has said false news on the platform is "trending downward." While some newsroom leaders said the relationship was positive, other partners said the results were unclear and that they had grown increasingly resentful of Facebook. Facebook has said that third-party factchecking is one part of its strategy to fight misinformation, and has claimed that a "false" rating leads an article to be ranked lower in news feed, reducing future views by 80% on average. The company has refused, however, to publicly release any data to support these claims. Facebook said in a statement that it had "heard feedback from our partners that they'd like more data on the impact of their efforts," adding that it has started sending "quarterly reports" with "customized statistics" to partners and would be"looking for more statistics to share externally in early 2019." Facebook declined to share the reports with the Guardian.
I believe there is a good chance the report would be ignored at this point. If it is just another rehash of the same stuff from before it really is not worth the trouble. Especially given what they never tell you
Got ourselves a Trumplebonespurs fan here, eh? Draft-dodgin' Donnie. Donnie Moscow. The first, and hopefully only, actual traitor to hold the office of president. Bob Mueller's coming for your fuckhead hero, cunt. Enjoy it. I sure as fuck will.
Seems we got us a fucktard here folks.... Denying their own reality... Here asshat... A Fresh DOSE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
And YES, they ALL do it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Facebook doesn't care.
It's not news and there's no reason to bother expanding the point into anything more than those three words. Next article, please.
The Jew playing the Jew Card
...trust me, we care as much as anyone else in the media and Internet.
I don't take anything I read on Facebook as fact. If I care about it, I double check on some more reputable site. Facebook is like the phone service. They provide the means of communications, but aren't the ones making calls. Don't just believe all the random things your friends or pages you follow post.
Couldnâ(TM)t say it any better !
Basically if you're partnering with institutions like Politifact, Vox and Snopes then you'll get a very one sided narrative and everything else will be labeled fake news. Perhaps censoring content isn't that great of an idea and these reporters are just mad Facebook isn't listening to their ideas on what should be censored.
News and information should be free, even if it's fake, people can do the fact checking for themselves. The problem here is that these journalists are basically saying "everyone else is dumb, we need to filter the information they get". It's a dangerous proposition.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You see there is no such thing as real news or fake news. A smart society disseminates information, checks citations, correlates reported news with evicem and makes a sound judgement. /. which was never pro-censorship.
The cattle class, of which BeauHD is one, are not the true spirit of
There is censorship or no censorship, anything else is a slippery slope to censorship. It's that simple.
As if they both weren't wrong, public lies to get votes, and never really followed anyway. Telling the truth about that - I've watched this crap since Eisenhower - would be news. What we see today, not so much.
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Since when are rules that make sense in a dense city right for farms? And vice versa...I'm sure the land use, pest control, trash burning, and fertilizer requirements are different - or should be. You can't swing your arms in the city without breaking a nose. Does that mean farmers shouldn't be able to swing their arms?
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From what I observe, the whole central statist model has some real serious issues. One size does NOT fit all.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
There are some "New sources" that seem like fully legitimate news sources however if you reads their terms of use " Company furnishes the Company Sites and the Company Services for your personal enjoyment and entertainment." Or in general stating what they say may not be true, as it could be parody. Then there is a wide range of editorial comprehension of the news, where peoples personal feelings of the news gets expressed, often by stating a sentience in a different way, such as "Government Shutdown" vs "Government Slowdown" vs "Placing a hold on paying most bills until a budget is signed"
We also have incomplete and often inaccurate "Breaking News" which is stating what it known at the time, and normal mistakes do happen in the news as well.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Nice one you cool. Mp3 Download
the morons who believe the 'fake news' are more likely to also click on ads.
Sorry but it just not a source that has any credibility.
Why anyone trusts FB for more than posting videos of your pets and vacation photos is beyond me. Even those might be heavily plagiarized or from third parties, but at least they are relatively harmless.
https://xkcd.com/231/
I noticed something the other day when an actual Paper (the dead tree kind) was in front of me (McDonald's of all places) I actually read it cover to cover skipped the parts that were not interesting and it was not as stressful to read as an online version with its blaring video ads etc and crap the news and articles were fairly current and I wasn't presented with clickbait headlines which lead to pages full of ads and an article which is nothing like the headline. On the real paper I even read a few ads that were of interest instead of trying to close them quickly to uncover the article. to me it almost seemed as if the best articles were in the actual paper and the internet version was for some less discriminating and facebook from what I have seen is one big Advert.
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
AP, LA Times, and that's about it when I get news off of Facebook. Otherwise, I go to the main websites. I can't believe anyone would get their news off Facebook unless they follow the major media there and use Facebook to catch current stories.
Anonymous comments are as pathetic as the anonymous "sources" that contaminate gutless journalism from the New York Time
Facebook Doesn't Care About Fixing Conservative Views Problem On Its Platform
Given they FB has at most 5 more years of relevance they will endeavor to make as much money as they can while the sun shines..
Whelp, found the Russian Rats. We really need to get this under control. Putin and the KGB to this day control our news and thusly, our elections, and thusly, our "president" that is nothing more than an orange with hands and legs and an annoying face.
Continue reading Slashdot for your source of great news and information. We make THE effort in Tech News to weed out what needs to be unseen and place a great emphasis on what you need to see.
With perserverence and a keen eye, we can and will learn to identify the toxic points in our culture. And progress onward together.
^xXx^_BeauHD^xXx^
Senior xxx editoR
I don't take anything I read on Facebook as fact.
Who cares? You're one person, vs millions who do believe what they read on facebook, and voted accordingly. As a direct result, western democracies are in decline and retreat, despotism is on the rise, and American influence in the world has waned drastically and is never coming back, even after we get the criminals in the White House out.
So you can take all the superior stance you want, but really, you count one millionth or less compared to the masses this is affecting, and the course of history it has derailed.
Translation: "Facebook isn't caving to our leftist narrative, where the Trump collusion with Russia conspiracy theory has been verified by any evidence, but school shootings are not actually down by 75% over 20 years, gun homicides aren't actually down by 50%, and child traffickers aren't really exploiting the gaping hole in our borders left open by the Democrats."
Only in Trump land does 33 indictments and guilty pleas from an investigation equal no evidence.
https://www.businessinsider.nl...
"Two former employees for the fact-checking site Snopes said Facebook threw fact-checkers under the bus when their work prompted a backlash."
Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform's collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they've lost trust in Facebook...
They had trust in Facebook?
LOL
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
If Facebook isn't going to clean itself up maybe it's time to start blocking them totally.
Hey BeauHD, you need to change your name to Captain Obvious. Does anyone not already know this?
Just another day in Paradise
"Facebook Doesn't Care" works just as well.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If fake is defined by "I don't agree" than all news is fake to someone.
Fake news is NOT defined like that. It is defined as material presented as news that is contrary to observable fact. Whether it was put into our news streams by some ignorant, gullible fool who believes everything they see on Breitbart or Fox, or seeded by an organization or government with intent to deceive or disrupt, is secondary.
Redefining it as "you don't agree with my politics, so pointing out that I'm repeating nonsense and calling it fake news is just you disagreeing" is bullshit. You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts, even if your stupid churches have so eroded your ability to think and reason that you can no longer tell the difference.
It was a platform for kids to play around and search for a hookup on campus. It shouldâ(TM)ve never been more than that.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
People who trust "news" they see on Facebook are about as dumb as the people who trust they're getting an "authentic Rolex" for $15 from a guy on the street.
Here's a tip: any news from *any* source should be (a) weighed for bias based on the source, (b) cross-referenced with a diverse selection of other sources to check validity, and (c) checked against *opposing* sources to see what -- if anything -- is being left out, exaggerated, etc.
Yes, I know that's actual *work* which people are loathe to do these days. However, if you're not going to put any effort into making sure your news isn't actually propaganda, you deserve what you get.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Translation: "Facebook isn't caving to our leftist narrative, where the Trump collusion with Russia conspiracy theory has been verified by any evidence, but school shootings are not actually down by 75% over 20 years, gun homicides aren't actually down by 50%, and child traffickers aren't really exploiting the gaping hole in our borders left open by the Democrats."
Seriously. It's not like Donald Trump, Jr. has admitted to meeting with Russian agents during the campaign in order to get dirt on Clinton. If that had happened, only an idiot would be out in public saying there was no evidence of collusion.
1. YOUR personal data 2. Blocking any conservative content 3. Promoting any liberal/socialist content
The very last thing on Earth I want from a social media company is for them to require a panel of censors to approve my posts before they're visible to anyone else. There is no universe where that increases my confidence in the accuracy of information I receive through that platform. In fact, it will have quite the opposite effect.
What's really pissing people off isn't "fake news," because lies have been an issue since humans could communicate. The problem is the breakdown of trust in our society. There is no longer any trust in our institutions or our press, and we're reaping the consequences. When you can't trust anyone, you tend to trust things that agree with your own biases and opinions. Everyone is living in an information bubble, which means everyone is living in their own reality. What's true for a feminist is patently absurd to a conservative, and both of them are certain that their information is "the facts" and the other is clearly insane. Pretty soon society is fragmented with each "tribe" convinced the rest of the world has gone mad and something has to be done to show them how insane they are.
This isn't an easy problem to solve because trust is incredibly difficult to cultivate, especially when delivering information that is not favorable to someone's opinions. The establishment press have largely destroyed their own credibility by trading in whatever trust they had for the chance to get some shots in on Trump. Now they are completely unable to comprehend the situation in which they have placed themselves, where half of the country wouldn't trust them if they reported that the Earth was round. Ironically (for people who fear a "dictator") their knee-jerk reaction to this predicament is to propose censorship and centralized control of information, AKA a dictatorship.
Idiot.
When you were younger, were you like "I'm going to grow up and become like one of those ranting homeless person on street corners screaming about CIA coverups"? Or did you always have these weird thoughts?
What makes right-wing nutjobs like you SO, SO mad is that deep down you know the gibberish you spout is stupid and crazy, and as you get madder you spout more of it, and you're locked into a neverending cycle of self-hatred and rage.
They're like a person who's not sorry for the thing they did, they're sorry that you were offended by what they did. It's not so much that they intentionally offended you, they just don't personally see the problem, and so aren't willing to pay any consequences to fix it. Keep in mind that they likely have immediate metrics to hand for how many reduced views and shares they'll receive. Even though they likely have no metric for "does that even matter?", it's still harder to argue for doing the right thing when you can see the specific benefit you're giving up. And their entire business is geared towards improving those engagement metrics.
Think of a corporation as a giant artificial intelligence running the business using machine learning. It has tried a bunch of different actions, and has a good idea of which actions cause which outcomes. But it has no human-level comprehension or feelings. As corporations increase their scope of activity, even the humans within have troubles identifying with the consequences of their actions. A local banker maybe feels bad about foreclosing on a neighbor, a back-office bank worker in New York feels less bad about foreclosing on 100 random people across the country because it gets routine, and a programmer at a credit bureau likely never even considers that a decision they're implementing will prevent a million people from ever getting a house.
So, yes, keep the heat on Facebook, but don't expect Facebook to make subtle changes quickly. We have to keep training them.
Facebook does not deserve our traffic.
The "Fake News" on Facebook was a real problem - the fix is to educate your ignorant relatives about actually looking at URLs and how to tell what the real URL is, not the deceptive one and how to click around to a site to confirm it's a real one before sharing something that looks too good to be true. Also CHECK THE STUPID DATE of the article. I don't know how many times dead celebrities have died again on my news feed.
That being set aside - yes, Facebook along with the other big media platforms are using the actual fake-news (a.k.a click-bait) articles as an excuse to censor ideas that don't fit the ideas of their sponsors/management. This is a real issue and needs to be addressed not by the government but the users.
I personally have addressed this issue by looking at why I go to Facebook. The fact is for social media having to do with my interest I've mostly moved over to decentralized IPFS/Crypto platforms. The reason I go to Facebook is those dumb assed relatives who share click-bait but I love them anyways who would have their minds blown and eyes glazed by trying to explain decentralized IPFS/Crypto concepts to them.
My solution? I made my own social media site. The tools are out there and they're simple. I experiment with quite a few, I gave Wordpress a good solid try, but the plugins I needed to make it work right were flaky and needed exact versions of one thing or another to work. Libertree looked promising, but required a tool-kit that I just didn't approve of - I'm not going to use anything that requires me to establish an account and connect to a third-party API just to keep it working. I settled on Friendica. I like it, it's got post-previewing (something that's very important to me) and decent support for just about any kind of media you want to link to/embed. It's still a bit shy of what my family/users want.
My plan if I can get anyone else on-board, I'll host my friends and family, and I'm hoping another nerd is a circle that crosses with mine will start their own server. It works fine on it's own, but Friendica is designed to network with a bunch of other nodes. Mine is removed from the public nodes, I just want it to connect to other friends and family, and I'm not posting pictures of my kids, including my seven week old that has never had his picture put on Facebook by me as a bit of a prod to get friends and relatives on-board with deligitimzing Facebook. You're a bunch of nerds here - the rest of you should pick up on this trend. Instead of a decentralized cluster-fuck of each person for themselves of truly decentralized social media like Minds (which is available and source and was considered instead of Friendica - but was ruled too difficult due to the crypto-not social media stuff) or Akasha, we can make social media look like a relational cluster grid. Not decentralized, not centralized, something with a lot of different centers working together with nerds acting as shepherds of their own nerds.
(After I setup Friendica Hubzilla was recommended to me and will be my next attempt should everyone completely give up on my Friendica site.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Only in Trump land does 33 indictments and guilty pleas from an investigation equal no evidence.
Indictment just means that those individuals were charged; it says nothing about the actual culpability of the accused. Of the guilty pleas, how many were directly related to candidate Trump colluding with Russians to undermine the election?
But GUILTY until proven innocent!
Ask them who was charged, and what they were charged with, and when the trial starts and you'll start to get a picture that they don't know, don't care. The indicted Russians will never see trial, because the are all in Russia. The indicted Russians have 0 ties to Trump or his campaign. None of the indicted Russians have ties to the actual crimes committed by the FBI and Justice Department either, but that's because they don't really care about fraudulent Russian FSB sponsored "Dossier". They don't care about Russians interfering with our elections, they care that their anointed queen (HRC) lost to the worst possible person in the world. They are making sure it doesn't happen again.
Only under the correct narrative does it all make sense.
“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” - Lavrentiy Beria (Stalin's Chief of Secret Police)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Geez, thanks for the advice. Now that I follow your advice of not getting my news from bullshit sources, I can lose all my elections 99% to 1%, instead of being on the winning 100% side.
Your advice turns people into losers.
None of these indictments, and none of the evidence is in any way linked to Trump, nor does any of it suggest collusion.
But you already know that. You're just dishonest and retarded.
Editor of senior xxx? Kinky!
Are you really this fucking stupid?
Opposition research is not a crime. NDAs are not a crime. Hearing dirt on Hillary is not a crime (especially when no dirt is given).
Know what is a crime? Feeding fabricated information to FISA courts. Using the NSA and FBI to spy on political opponents. Storing top secret documents on a secret computer in your home.
However bad Trump is, Obama and Hillary are exponentially worse. Trump hurt your feelings, but the Democrats irreparably hurt the country.
To fix fake news today would require banning the likes of WaPo, NYT and CNN. Are the âoejournalistsâ sure this is what they want?
If you post an idea that is not in favor with the current ruling intelligentsia, you're going to get "fact checked" into oblivion.
The problem, of course, is that there is zero interest in actually checking facts. It's all a ruse to deploy censorship and oppression of those who disagree with the "acceptable" positions on things.
The Facebook Dilemma
That's an excellent documentary, especially Part 2. The Facebook system is seriously flawed. In several countries people have died because of Facebook posts by destructive people.
It is idiots' swallowing anything you write.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
The problem is a bunch of whiny cunts. THAT'S the problem.
You whiny petulant little cunts have completely fell for Operation Mockingbird in which the CIA controls ALL NEWS through AP and Reuters. The CIA tells those orgs what to say exactly and you stupid assholes believe it all, Hook Line and Sinker.
Anything that falls out the Operation Mockingbird narrative is branded as "Fake news". People willing get mind controlled and when their mind control breaks down, hollar FAKE NEWS! MK Ultra scientists are laughing their asses off at your idiots.
Really? PizzaGate again? Jesus I thought all the retards finally got it through their thick skulls that that was all made up bullshit.
Why don't we go back to Birtherism?
Fucking Troll Retard. Blow Me.
When will Facebook users own up to their own stupidity and fuck off already? Nobody gives a shit about fake news or supposed private public information that they gave away for free. Dumb cocksuckers deserve everything that happening to them.
Facebook literally has hundreds of engineers focused on exactly this problem - fake news - so saying "Facebook doesn't care about X"... is a bit of a stretch.
I'm the bona fide GP. I was valedictorian in high school and head and shoulders smarter than everyone around me for many years. Like many smart people, I don't accept the shit I'm fed and call it prime rib. But, like, honestly, have YOU been paying attention? A major CIA coverup is in the fucking news right now, halfwit.
Facebook should not be deciding what is and isn't news or misinformation. It is a platform for users to post articles that may or may not be news articles. Facebook doesn't employ journalists lol. Who decides what's fake news? Seems like many people mistakenly label facts as 'fake news' because they don't like them. And others say that if a news source is funded and promoted by the mainstream, then it couldn't possibly be 'fake news'.
Getting your news only from facebook indictates that you believe anything that's put in front of you without practicing critical thinking skills.
Because criticizing/accusing/slandering* someone that happens to be Jewish, is antisemitic?
Or, if antisemites criticize* someone for something, and you do as well, that makes you antisemitic by association?
AFAIK they have only talked about _actions_ of George Soros, not his race, which is irrelevant.
(* Whatever you want to call it)
...a reputable auditor verifies the source of data and process, reviewing evidence directly from the systems involved. This is standard for anything, it's why we have CPAs to ensure companies aren't cheating investors. If it's really true, then a third-party should be able to verify the results.
But it doesn't matter because Facebook obviously isn't interested in stopping any clickbait like fake news since they depend on the revenue it provides. If they were, they would simply create a whitelist of all reputable news sources which all share the same traits regardless of bias accusations: they have qualified editors and journalists (no, random bloggers who copy/paste/scrape news from the AP wire are not editors or journalists), do fact-checking and verify sources per journalism best practices, publish retractions/corrections as needed, and mark opinion pieces clearly as such. They can come up with whatever criteria they want to make the bar high enough to filter out the clickbait crap. It's really not that hard.
On a side note, I don't know why anyone believes anything that has more likes or followers (aka whenever something "goes viral") has more value since it's highly likely it's all being manipulated by paid spambots.