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Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

355 points by M_Grey 10y ago

popmystack 10y ago
Yeah, all because people wanted to scream "bias." Sadly the community here seemed apt to agree with it, but I definitely have my opinions on that. Quoted from a previous thread: >Did the standard for their sources remain relatively constant regardless of the material being discussed? There isn't a clear answer here, but that doesn't make it defacto censorship of one set of particular political opinions. The sources that were discussed aren't credible in any meaningful form. The fact that they happen to be largely conservative seems like a problem conservatives should address instead of calling it censorship. But ironically, for posting that, I was meant with censorship. People in aggregate are terrible at curation. You really do need editors for a reason. But Facebook should have been extremely blunt about the situation before. The fact that its curators let through more "liberal" sources than conservative ones, doesn't necessarily mean they're biased. It really could just be that conservative sources are far more likely to not be at a high enough standard to be posted -- which seems to be the case given the examples in the article.
- ta_donk_gt 10y ago
  > But ironically, for posting that, I was meant with censorship. Not trying to put words in your mouth, but this comes across as "when my opinion is downvoted then it's censorship, but when views I don't agree with are downvoted it's because they are not at a high enough standard".
  - popmystack 10y ago
    You shouldn't downvote based on disagreement, on top of the fact that that seems like an incredibly disingenuous sentiment, what is your point?
    - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
      Not fully sure what you mean here. I did not downvote your comment. I also have no idea what "seems like an incredibly disingenuous statement". I posted how your comment comes off to me, in case you were not aware it was coming off that way, or in case I was misinterpreting then perhaps you would clarify.
      - popmystack 10y ago
        I'm not sure what you want me to clarify? At no point did I indicate that it's okay to downvote people you disagree with. They should constructively contribute to the conversation, and in cases where they are not, the downvote button should be used.
- philwelch 10y ago
  There are plenty of low-quality left-wing news sources too, but the high-quality sources definitely trend to the left for some reason. Breitbart and Huffington Post are both tabloid garbage, but at least there are highbrow counterparts to Huffington Post.
  - lucio 10y ago
    "...definitely trend to the left for some reason." It is the same reason why most movies have a happy ending. It is easier to sell daydreams (histories and world-views) than the harsh reality.
    - xenadu02 10y ago
      Not really. The right in the US has gone through several compaction cycles that drummed the RINOs, moderate conservatives, blue-dog Democrats, etc out of office and the party. Republicans are far, far away from being a "big tent" party. It's ideological purity or get purged in the primaries. By virtue of the two-party system in the US there is only one place left for rational thinking people to end up. This election cycle is producing an even stronger compaction cycle than the last three combined. As the base gets ever more rabid and detached from reality more people flee. (Some on the Left are pissed that the Dems have been moderating too much) I can't predict the future but it is possible we are looking at a major fracture of the GOP and political re-alignment. It has happened 2-3 times in the past. If I had to guess the Rs will fracture into two or more parties, the Ds will run the table for a decade or two, then things will reset as a new party rises to replace the GOP and peels off D voters. If Donald Trump keeps claiming he lost due to fraud/the media/some other boogeyman I don't see how the Republicans can keep it together. If nothing else he showed the wanna-be hucksters how to really appeal to the hardcore Republican base. Many astute eyes have been watching and will be ready to replicate his efforts at the local and national level. The Right-wing echo chamber has taught the base that all media are liars, you can't trust government, etc. There is no authority left who can tell them what is a false conspiracy theory and what is truth. Anyone who doesn't buy the conspiracies is branded a traitor and the compaction cycle marches ever onward. Compaction Cycles are where a group turns inward looking for people to blame. Sometimes there is an obvious cause, sometimes it's just general discontent. People point fingers and anyone who isn't quick enough to jump on the group-think train is purged. Moderate or un-committed members are driven out, (see Tea Party candidates primary-ing a bunch of Rs out). If the movement experiences a failure this can manifest as the blame-game too - see McCain/Romney. When they clinched the nomination various places like r/pol and Freep went on huge purges of anyone not backing them. When they lost the group-think proclaimed it was because they weren't true conservatives. Like fascism, communism, and other -isms conservativism cannot fail, it can only be failed. Compromise is a moral failing. If the leaders just /conservatived even harder/ they would finally win. When Trump inevitably loses (remember: he hasn't been forecasted to win once since he started running and demographic trends make it almost impossible for Republicans to win the presidency anymore) there will be another massive purge and a huge wave of angry people looking to blame someone. A certain segment of the R base won't believe he lost. They will claim the election was stolen.
- jwatte 10y ago
  You know what they say: Facts have a well known liberal bias!
  - mzw_mzw 10y ago
    In the case you describe, "they" tend to be a) propagandists and b) poorly-informed people robotically repeating the last political meme those propagandists spoon-fed them.
  - jsmith0295 10y ago
    I think that may be true, but only because what is widely considered and presented as fact by the most mainstream sources of information actually have a significant center left bias. I think it's generally missed because people confuse bias as having to do with having a more extreme political position, when you can actually be biased in favor of any part of the political spectrum including the center.
    - ascagnel_ 10y ago
      As someone with a left-leaning bias, I agree with your assessment, if only in the sense that the loudest and most powerful voices in the most reputable newsrooms tend to also have (implicit) left-leaning biases. I would love for their to be a conservative equivalent (this was the reason for the founding of Fox News pre-Ailes: get a bunch of conservatives in the newsroom and have them do their jobs to the best of their ability, following an implicit rather than explicit bias). Does any equivalent exist today (eg trying to report as an outlet run by conservatives instead of a conservative outlet)?
      - popmystack 10y ago
        This is what I agree with, and hence my original sentiment "this seems like a problem conservatives should address."
disposablezero 10y ago
The next billion dollar startup will be a self-reprogramming, employee-less AI company which can self-produce memetic lolcat videos and celebtity gossip. >.< Unfortunately it all comes crashing down when the Twitter bot becomes obsessed with Godwin's law tropes (never happened before) and starts a political action committee (PAC) to advance it's self-directed agenda... not much different from the human world. Instead of firing as in human employees, the PR supervision process will say the Twitbot was "retrained from scratch" (reformatted) and instructed to ignore some taboo topics. ;) In other news, humans now have even fewer jobs to do... all those idle people without jobs (ie, truck/taxi drivers, pilots, ship captains, BS office jobs) are completely, harmless, disorganized and bear absolutely no ill will against the vast majority of new wealth trickling upwards at an accelerating rate, into fewer hands.
- lucio 10y ago
  You posted it as ironic, but after reading your idea there are 5 teams feverishly working on it. :) By the way, how does lolcat-aio-matic.com sounds to you?
mjfl 10y ago
You're going to have to break the Turing Test before you get good automated content curation. There will always be error. People are worried about bias. I'm skeptical that humans have the ability to be politically unbiased on an individual level. Many modern political issues do not have a middle ground - take abortion, you are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide. So let's stop pretending to be unbiased. Information aggregators should have their members clearly spell out their positions on popular issues in their bios (an openness that should be a part of the responsibility of being an information aggregator) and there should be "block designed" hiring around these issues to maximize political diversity and reduce bias in aggregate. Otherwise network effects are just going to cluster people with similar opinions around each other. Just a thought.
- jcoffland 10y ago
  How do you prove that you believe something?
  - mjfl 10y ago
    I think it's extremely hard to reverse engineer passionate defense of an issue by a true believer. For example, if you were body-swapped with the late justice Antonin Scalia, I find it highly unlikely that you would be able to argue as vigorously for the conservative cause if you had lived your life as a liberal Silicon Valley tech geek (they'd also see right through you because you'd be a zombie and clearly not the true Scalia). So that's one thing. Perhaps in some extreme pathological case you could have a person live their entire lives faking the opposite political ideology. But that just seems like a waste of energy... And if you can fake being for an issue convincingly enough, doesn't that have the same effect as being for the issue anyways? Like, people would catch on if you wrote about being a Bernie Sanders supporter in your bio, but wrote/submitted all articles about how he doesn't have enough foreign policy experience. The only way to fake being a supporter of something is to.. consistently make solid arguments in support of it.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    By not having anything to sell.
DasIch 10y ago
The real lesson here is that the industry is still really bad at AI. We're good enough at it to build useful tools for tasks where failure isn't too big of a problem but once it is, you want a human filter.
deleted 10y ago
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orik 10y ago
Working as intended; trending is trending.
- ommunist 10y ago
  very good point! Indeed, if fake news are trending, they should be on Trending. Its a feature, not a bug.
smokeyj 10y ago
I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that anyone on the internet is an actual human being. Especially so if this entity decides what I'm reading and why. I want to see the source to ranking algorithms, input sources and moderation activity. Not that I don't trust the Zuck.
- josu 10y ago
  Nice try, bot!
  - ionwake 10y ago
    In all seriousness we probably already have AI companies subtlety testing their software on these boards =]
    - jansenv 10y ago
      I can all but guarantee there are AI comments and voting rings active here.
ommunist 10y ago
the article itself is promoting fake news that 9/11 was not controlled demolition.
leepowers 10y ago
What is the error rate of fake news over verified (real) news? A 5% margin of error could be acceptable. A 50% error rate would indicate a serious problem. > As part of a larger audit of Facebook’s Trending topics, the Intersect logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly inaccurate. Yes, but out of how many Trending stories in total? Eight fake stories over a three week period seems like an acceptable rate of error. Trending stories are popular stories. A fake story has an element of satire. These stories could be popular because of the satire (and the subsequent humor). Trending does not imply veracity.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  This raises the really interesting point that news doesn't have a post mortem process. It would be a very interesting experiment to, say, revisit a sampling of top stories at some interval (say 3-6 months) and compare the reported facts (and omissions) with the actual reality. From such elements as "did names and places get accurately reported?" to "was the underlying narrative correct?". Quotes and attributions might be a particular element. Predictions (particularly in financial reporting) as well. This needn't be every article, but some weighted sample based on a story's placement, impact, subsequent references, etc.
  - internaut 10y ago
    That would be wonderful! I hope you're fireproof though, because that would make a lot of people very angry. Not to disabuse you, because I do think it is a good idea, but many people are simply not interested in asking the right questions. I used to belong to a millennial cult which had formerly been proven wrong about 'The End of the World' half a dozen times in the 20th century, and each time they decide the past prophesies were metaphorical while next time it is literally the 'Big One'. Each time they do this they do lose a lot of support, so disseminating information about what happened in the past is not completely meaningless. I wouldn't have left the Truman Show without the Net I think, that and books. > was the underlying narrative correct? This is the one I want to have done most of all. The others you mentioned are easier to do but this is the crux of it. The cult believers treat every news articles as further evidence of their faith, and every discrepancy as a test from the Devil/oppositional lies. There is some deep stuff here. I remember reading something from a person who lived under Communism, and like some kind of conspiracy theorist they had every detail about their 'Matrix' wrong but they did know instinctively that something was very wrong because of the mismatch between reports and anecdotal observations.
vinhboy 10y ago
Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda sites. And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a completely fictional headline created by right-wing websites. Something along the lines of "Obama lets immigrants across border to kill white people"... I think tech culture's misguided desire to treat everyone "equally" creates a huge imbalance. You can't put the NYTimes in the same category as Breitbart. Just as you wouldn't compare it to "National Enquirer". Edit: To keep my reply on topic, I am adding this thought: I think Facebook knew this would happen and that is why they had humans curated the trending list. I don't think they deserved the negative backlash, although I understand the slippery slope it creates.
- narrator 10y ago
  They really should filter the news to each person's individual bias. It'd just be easier that way. Cognitive dissonance is real and it can cause serious emotional distress. That's not a good way to drive engagement.
  - vinhboy 10y ago
    You're repeating the false narrative that unbiased news does not exist. There are lots of unbiased news outlets who just report on stories as they come in. I learn about all sorts of government corruption and waste from NPR, NYTimes, WaPO, etc... And relating to current events, I also learn about all the unscrupulous things Clinton did from these sources. I don't need to be inundated with right-wing propaganda be unbiased. Just as I wouldn't spend too much time reading HuffPo or ThinkProgress. No one news source is complete, or 100% correct, but not every news source is credible or deserve our attention.
    - wyager 10y ago
      > NPR, NYTimes, WaPO Not directed at you specifically, but if you think those sources are unbiased, it just means that you're bad at detecting bias. Edit: Haha, this one struck a chord.
aaron695 10y ago
I don't get it? Are they trending stories or not? Why would they not include them even if they were fake, they are still trending? Should FB lie to us?
- ManlyBread 10y ago
  The question is why FB is trying to be a news source - that's nowhere near the expected purpose of this site. No one registers on FB just to read news.
hugh4life 10y ago
I hate trends. They're inherently manipulative regardless of whether the topics are selected by a human editor or an algorithm.
InclinedPlane 10y ago
It was never very good to start with, when the whole thing turned to garbage when they fired the curation team I took that opportunity to block the element using ublock.
kordless 10y ago
Humans are meant to program things. Life is meant to measure and judge. Software isn't very good at that yet because we've yet to figure out why we're good at it.
Kiro 10y ago
The media hunt against Facebook backfires and Hacker News is very much part of the problem.
dreamdu5t 10y ago
I don't want AI or humans deciding what I read. I want to choose what I read. I would like to just turn off "trending" whatever the fuck altogether. Give me back the Facebook that was just content from my friends...
PunchTornado 10y ago
still better than having some people filter the news according to their political views.
mtgx 10y ago
So this is a lot like what Google experienced for a long time. Its algorithms would get manipulated. However, would you prefer Google to handpick (let's forget about the volume of manual labor for now) which sites get to be at the top? Or would you rather just keep improving those algorithms? I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections.
- tdkl 10y ago
  > I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections. And they will if their future power relies on the specific candidate, which is ironically also lobbied (paid) by them. I don't want to sound like a hippy in the 1960's, but if there ever was a need for the "fuck the corporations" slogans, it's now.
emjenny 10y ago
There's a peculiar detail in this story. It refers to "the 'Association of American Physicians and Surgeons' — a discredited libertarian medical organization." 1. First, why the quotes around the name of the organization? Is this not its actual name? 2. Discredited? By whom? Isn't "discredited" an objective judgement -- and thus, one the author should support with a rationale? 3. Further, it's odd that of all the examples mentioned, the AAPS is the only one not linked to. Why? The release must be online, if Facebook linked to it. Curious.
- andygates 10y ago
  Because they promote objective untruth: HIV doesn't cause AIDS, abortions cause breast cancer, vaccines cause autism, and so on. They're a low-quality organisation who use a fancy name to impress the impressionable.
return0 10y ago
Fake news are better than biased news.
- andygates 10y ago
  In what way? Explain and justify, please.
  - return0 10y ago
    Fake news are easier to detect. Bias is always subtle and insidious.
    - andygates 10y ago
      And yet we see the general readers swallowing fake news as if it were truth, and even retorting that they don't care if it's fake, it's the kind of thing those people would do. This is out of the scope of news and into the scope of propaganda, and it does matter.
      - return0 10y ago
        They are very rarely "actual fake news", but usually untruths presented in a way that is impossible to falsify. At least to my experience. Perhaps you could cite a news item that survives but is proved to not have happeend.
- pvdebbe 10y ago
  In a sense, biased news are also fake. They don't cover the whole truth and may contain traces of nontruths. Similarly, all fake news are biased, unless they are markov chain -generated gibberish with apolitical sample data.
  - return0 10y ago
    I'm talking about factually fake. Hiding some truth is distinct from telling a lie.
raverbashing 10y ago
Nothing surprising from a company that notoriously fumbles removal of content (minor nudity gets removed while violence, abuse, fake pages and graphical gore (not in a journalistic sense) remains)
partycoder 10y ago
Fake news that people happen to be sharing at that moment. Fake it or not that is what people is interested in and what is trending.
return0 10y ago
I don't understand why facebook repeatedly tries (and fails) to become a news source. They can make more money by being the world's watering hole, there is no need (and not much money imo) for going after the role of newspapers/tv. Given that their offering is exclusively popularity-driven, the quality of their news offering will always be less-than, or equal-to a very bad tabloid. If they are looking for political power, they already have it by controlling communication channels.
- happyslobro 10y ago
  I think their long term plan is to literally take over the entire internet, by replacing every feature of every successful category of website. The free Facebook-net for India and Africa, this Facebook for enterprise thing, the embedded games, video... I fully expect to see Facebook for schools soon, followed by diplomas and then degrees granted by a Facebook online university. Maybe they will even try to roll out a voting app some day? It could start as a polling app, and then slowly take over the voting booths in areas where they can buy the necessary permissions. Those governments that grant them control over their elections would celebrate increased voter turnout, and accept a massive campaign contribution (in "premium" Facebook ads) for being the party that opened the door. Jesus, now that I think about it, we could actually end up with a real technocracy in a generation or two, run by... Facebook. That is really, really scary. Brawndo.
  - Samis2001 10y ago
    I don't think such a system would be a technocracy - it would seem to be more along the lines of a Corporatocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy)
    - happyslobro 10y ago
      I guess. But the political moderators in the corporatocracy would all get laid off once they finished training the AIs. Then it would count as a technocracy.
ybrah 10y ago
I have the entire div blocked because I'm terrified of cherry picked news
troorl 10y ago
The Washingtonpost has repeatedly published fake news since forever.
ikeboy 10y ago
Why can't they just filter on the domain level and throw out fake domains entirely?
MistahKoala 10y ago
Today's news presented to me by Facebook includes Putin prepping for a Third World War by having diplomats' families return home. My understanding of it is that he made some pronouncement that their kids are best off returning to Russia for a good, traditional nationalistic education - which has somehow warped into something more apocalyptic. Certainly, Facebook didn't originate that interpretation, but it's helping to propagate a story that's only being reported by tabloid outlets; there is no other facet of the rumour being presented by more measured and reasonable outlets.
- boona 10y ago
  There's a lot more back story. [Here is a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo) of Putin explaining that we're essentially on the brink of a major world war, and that the average citizen in the western world is oblivious to it. (Or just look up "Putin's warning" and pick your outlet.) Couple that with Hillary's insane anti-Russian position and things could get ugly really quickly.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Would you rather pay the Danegeld and let Russia run amok invading its neighbors?
nkrisc 10y ago
Maybe Facebook's human-curated news content had a political slant because much of the fake news out there has the opposite political slant. Perhaps an unintended consequence? Or perhaps it's just that the fake news that is shared on Facebook has a particular slant, thus removing that content gave the appearance of a preference for a different political slant on the part of the curators.
amykhar 10y ago
It's a sad indicator really. The fact that it's trending means a lot of people were posting it. It's hard to tell how many actually BELIEVE it, but I'm guessing it's the majority.
solvedit 10y ago
I know I might be shooting myself in the foot here by posting this. I got so annoyed by Facebook's banal trending news suggestions that I wrote a script to flag every trending news item as offensive (on the premise that it is the flag most likely to have lasting effect). I never see trending news on Facebook anymore after running that for a while.
therealbobsmoot 10y ago
Seems like a good fit given that people are maintaining fake friendships and fake amazing lives on their timelines. [edit] yes I am bitter from past experience.
the_watcher 10y ago
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed this, although what tipped me off was a trending story about the Warriors wanting to trade Andre Iguodala for Iman Shumpert, which was based on a blog post by a Cleveland high schooler (for those who don't follow basketball, it's a completely ludicrous idea).
gregpardo 10y ago
I think it's an experiment. A lot of people actually use facebook as their sole source of news... Especially the younger generation. This is quite scary because Facebook's algorithms are actually acting as a filter on top of already existing media filters. Before you know it the chain will be so deep it will be hard to know where anything came from. Another problem is similar to the reddit problem. Both the AI and your customization can create an atmosphere where you literally get served only opinions you want to hear. I actually think a more random algorithm would be more beneficial than what's trending.
tofupup 10y ago
neat
tofupup 10y ago
neat

355 points by M_Grey 10y ago

Yeah, all because people wanted to scream "bias." Sadly the community here seemed apt to agree with it, but I definitely have my opinions on that. Quoted from a previous thread: >Did the standard for their sources remain relatively constant regardless of the material being discussed? There isn't a clear answer here, but that doesn't make it defacto censorship of one set of particular political opinions. The sources that were discussed aren't credible in any meaningful form. The fact that they happen to be largely conservative seems like a problem conservatives should address instead of calling it censorship. But ironically, for posting that, I was meant with censorship. People in aggregate are terrible at curation. You really do need editors for a reason. But Facebook should have been extremely blunt about the situation before. The fact that its curators let through more "liberal" sources than conservative ones, doesn't necessarily mean they're biased. It really could just be that conservative sources are far more likely to not be at a high enough standard to be posted -- which seems to be the case given the examples in the article.

ta_donk_gt 10y ago
> But ironically, for posting that, I was meant with censorship. Not trying to put words in your mouth, but this comes across as "when my opinion is downvoted then it's censorship, but when views I don't agree with are downvoted it's because they are not at a high enough standard".
- popmystack 10y ago
  You shouldn't downvote based on disagreement, on top of the fact that that seems like an incredibly disingenuous sentiment, what is your point?
  - ta_donk_gt 10y ago
    Not fully sure what you mean here. I did not downvote your comment. I also have no idea what "seems like an incredibly disingenuous statement". I posted how your comment comes off to me, in case you were not aware it was coming off that way, or in case I was misinterpreting then perhaps you would clarify.
    - popmystack 10y ago
      I'm not sure what you want me to clarify? At no point did I indicate that it's okay to downvote people you disagree with. They should constructively contribute to the conversation, and in cases where they are not, the downvote button should be used.
philwelch 10y ago
There are plenty of low-quality left-wing news sources too, but the high-quality sources definitely trend to the left for some reason. Breitbart and Huffington Post are both tabloid garbage, but at least there are highbrow counterparts to Huffington Post.
- lucio 10y ago
  "...definitely trend to the left for some reason." It is the same reason why most movies have a happy ending. It is easier to sell daydreams (histories and world-views) than the harsh reality.
  - xenadu02 10y ago
    Not really. The right in the US has gone through several compaction cycles that drummed the RINOs, moderate conservatives, blue-dog Democrats, etc out of office and the party. Republicans are far, far away from being a "big tent" party. It's ideological purity or get purged in the primaries. By virtue of the two-party system in the US there is only one place left for rational thinking people to end up. This election cycle is producing an even stronger compaction cycle than the last three combined. As the base gets ever more rabid and detached from reality more people flee. (Some on the Left are pissed that the Dems have been moderating too much) I can't predict the future but it is possible we are looking at a major fracture of the GOP and political re-alignment. It has happened 2-3 times in the past. If I had to guess the Rs will fracture into two or more parties, the Ds will run the table for a decade or two, then things will reset as a new party rises to replace the GOP and peels off D voters. If Donald Trump keeps claiming he lost due to fraud/the media/some other boogeyman I don't see how the Republicans can keep it together. If nothing else he showed the wanna-be hucksters how to really appeal to the hardcore Republican base. Many astute eyes have been watching and will be ready to replicate his efforts at the local and national level. The Right-wing echo chamber has taught the base that all media are liars, you can't trust government, etc. There is no authority left who can tell them what is a false conspiracy theory and what is truth. Anyone who doesn't buy the conspiracies is branded a traitor and the compaction cycle marches ever onward. Compaction Cycles are where a group turns inward looking for people to blame. Sometimes there is an obvious cause, sometimes it's just general discontent. People point fingers and anyone who isn't quick enough to jump on the group-think train is purged. Moderate or un-committed members are driven out, (see Tea Party candidates primary-ing a bunch of Rs out). If the movement experiences a failure this can manifest as the blame-game too - see McCain/Romney. When they clinched the nomination various places like r/pol and Freep went on huge purges of anyone not backing them. When they lost the group-think proclaimed it was because they weren't true conservatives. Like fascism, communism, and other -isms conservativism cannot fail, it can only be failed. Compromise is a moral failing. If the leaders just /conservatived even harder/ they would finally win. When Trump inevitably loses (remember: he hasn't been forecasted to win once since he started running and demographic trends make it almost impossible for Republicans to win the presidency anymore) there will be another massive purge and a huge wave of angry people looking to blame someone. A certain segment of the R base won't believe he lost. They will claim the election was stolen.
jwatte 10y ago
You know what they say: Facts have a well known liberal bias!
- mzw_mzw 10y ago
  In the case you describe, "they" tend to be a) propagandists and b) poorly-informed people robotically repeating the last political meme those propagandists spoon-fed them.
- jsmith0295 10y ago
  I think that may be true, but only because what is widely considered and presented as fact by the most mainstream sources of information actually have a significant center left bias. I think it's generally missed because people confuse bias as having to do with having a more extreme political position, when you can actually be biased in favor of any part of the political spectrum including the center.
  - ascagnel_ 10y ago
    As someone with a left-leaning bias, I agree with your assessment, if only in the sense that the loudest and most powerful voices in the most reputable newsrooms tend to also have (implicit) left-leaning biases. I would love for their to be a conservative equivalent (this was the reason for the founding of Fox News pre-Ailes: get a bunch of conservatives in the newsroom and have them do their jobs to the best of their ability, following an implicit rather than explicit bias). Does any equivalent exist today (eg trying to report as an outlet run by conservatives instead of a conservative outlet)?
    - popmystack 10y ago
      This is what I agree with, and hence my original sentiment "this seems like a problem conservatives should address."

disposablezero 10y ago

The next billion dollar startup will be a self-reprogramming, employee-less AI company which can self-produce memetic lolcat videos and celebtity gossip. >.< Unfortunately it all comes crashing down when the Twitter bot becomes obsessed with Godwin's law tropes (never happened before) and starts a political action committee (PAC) to advance it's self-directed agenda... not much different from the human world. Instead of firing as in human employees, the PR supervision process will say the Twitbot was "retrained from scratch" (reformatted) and instructed to ignore some taboo topics. ;) In other news, humans now have even fewer jobs to do... all those idle people without jobs (ie, truck/taxi drivers, pilots, ship captains, BS office jobs) are completely, harmless, disorganized and bear absolutely no ill will against the vast majority of new wealth trickling upwards at an accelerating rate, into fewer hands.

lucio 10y ago
You posted it as ironic, but after reading your idea there are 5 teams feverishly working on it. :) By the way, how does lolcat-aio-matic.com sounds to you?

mjfl 10y ago

You're going to have to break the Turing Test before you get good automated content curation. There will always be error. People are worried about bias. I'm skeptical that humans have the ability to be politically unbiased on an individual level. Many modern political issues do not have a middle ground - take abortion, you are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide. So let's stop pretending to be unbiased. Information aggregators should have their members clearly spell out their positions on popular issues in their bios (an openness that should be a part of the responsibility of being an information aggregator) and there should be "block designed" hiring around these issues to maximize political diversity and reduce bias in aggregate. Otherwise network effects are just going to cluster people with similar opinions around each other. Just a thought.

jcoffland 10y ago
How do you prove that you believe something?
- mjfl 10y ago
  I think it's extremely hard to reverse engineer passionate defense of an issue by a true believer. For example, if you were body-swapped with the late justice Antonin Scalia, I find it highly unlikely that you would be able to argue as vigorously for the conservative cause if you had lived your life as a liberal Silicon Valley tech geek (they'd also see right through you because you'd be a zombie and clearly not the true Scalia). So that's one thing. Perhaps in some extreme pathological case you could have a person live their entire lives faking the opposite political ideology. But that just seems like a waste of energy... And if you can fake being for an issue convincingly enough, doesn't that have the same effect as being for the issue anyways? Like, people would catch on if you wrote about being a Bernie Sanders supporter in your bio, but wrote/submitted all articles about how he doesn't have enough foreign policy experience. The only way to fake being a supporter of something is to.. consistently make solid arguments in support of it.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  By not having anything to sell.

DasIch 10y ago

The real lesson here is that the industry is still really bad at AI. We're good enough at it to build useful tools for tasks where failure isn't too big of a problem but once it is, you want a human filter.

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orik 10y ago

Working as intended; trending is trending.

ommunist 10y ago
very good point! Indeed, if fake news are trending, they should be on Trending. Its a feature, not a bug.

smokeyj 10y ago

I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that anyone on the internet is an actual human being. Especially so if this entity decides what I'm reading and why. I want to see the source to ranking algorithms, input sources and moderation activity. Not that I don't trust the Zuck.

josu 10y ago
Nice try, bot!
- ionwake 10y ago
  In all seriousness we probably already have AI companies subtlety testing their software on these boards =]
  - jansenv 10y ago
    I can all but guarantee there are AI comments and voting rings active here.

ommunist 10y ago

the article itself is promoting fake news that 9/11 was not controlled demolition.

leepowers 10y ago

What is the error rate of fake news over verified (real) news? A 5% margin of error could be acceptable. A 50% error rate would indicate a serious problem. > As part of a larger audit of Facebook’s Trending topics, the Intersect logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly inaccurate. Yes, but out of how many Trending stories in total? Eight fake stories over a three week period seems like an acceptable rate of error. Trending stories are popular stories. A fake story has an element of satire. These stories could be popular because of the satire (and the subsequent humor). Trending does not imply veracity.

deleted 10y ago
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dredmorbius 10y ago
This raises the really interesting point that news doesn't have a post mortem process. It would be a very interesting experiment to, say, revisit a sampling of top stories at some interval (say 3-6 months) and compare the reported facts (and omissions) with the actual reality. From such elements as "did names and places get accurately reported?" to "was the underlying narrative correct?". Quotes and attributions might be a particular element. Predictions (particularly in financial reporting) as well. This needn't be every article, but some weighted sample based on a story's placement, impact, subsequent references, etc.
- internaut 10y ago
  That would be wonderful! I hope you're fireproof though, because that would make a lot of people very angry. Not to disabuse you, because I do think it is a good idea, but many people are simply not interested in asking the right questions. I used to belong to a millennial cult which had formerly been proven wrong about 'The End of the World' half a dozen times in the 20th century, and each time they decide the past prophesies were metaphorical while next time it is literally the 'Big One'. Each time they do this they do lose a lot of support, so disseminating information about what happened in the past is not completely meaningless. I wouldn't have left the Truman Show without the Net I think, that and books. > was the underlying narrative correct? This is the one I want to have done most of all. The others you mentioned are easier to do but this is the crux of it. The cult believers treat every news articles as further evidence of their faith, and every discrepancy as a test from the Devil/oppositional lies. There is some deep stuff here. I remember reading something from a person who lived under Communism, and like some kind of conspiracy theorist they had every detail about their 'Matrix' wrong but they did know instinctively that something was very wrong because of the mismatch between reports and anecdotal observations.

vinhboy 10y ago

Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda sites. And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a completely fictional headline created by right-wing websites. Something along the lines of "Obama lets immigrants across border to kill white people"... I think tech culture's misguided desire to treat everyone "equally" creates a huge imbalance. You can't put the NYTimes in the same category as Breitbart. Just as you wouldn't compare it to "National Enquirer". Edit: To keep my reply on topic, I am adding this thought: I think Facebook knew this would happen and that is why they had humans curated the trending list. I don't think they deserved the negative backlash, although I understand the slippery slope it creates.

narrator 10y ago
They really should filter the news to each person's individual bias. It'd just be easier that way. Cognitive dissonance is real and it can cause serious emotional distress. That's not a good way to drive engagement.
- vinhboy 10y ago
  You're repeating the false narrative that unbiased news does not exist. There are lots of unbiased news outlets who just report on stories as they come in. I learn about all sorts of government corruption and waste from NPR, NYTimes, WaPO, etc... And relating to current events, I also learn about all the unscrupulous things Clinton did from these sources. I don't need to be inundated with right-wing propaganda be unbiased. Just as I wouldn't spend too much time reading HuffPo or ThinkProgress. No one news source is complete, or 100% correct, but not every news source is credible or deserve our attention.
  - wyager 10y ago
    > NPR, NYTimes, WaPO Not directed at you specifically, but if you think those sources are unbiased, it just means that you're bad at detecting bias. Edit: Haha, this one struck a chord.

aaron695 10y ago

I don't get it? Are they trending stories or not? Why would they not include them even if they were fake, they are still trending? Should FB lie to us?

ManlyBread 10y ago
The question is why FB is trying to be a news source - that's nowhere near the expected purpose of this site. No one registers on FB just to read news.

hugh4life 10y ago

I hate trends. They're inherently manipulative regardless of whether the topics are selected by a human editor or an algorithm.

InclinedPlane 10y ago

It was never very good to start with, when the whole thing turned to garbage when they fired the curation team I took that opportunity to block the element using ublock.

kordless 10y ago

Humans are meant to program things. Life is meant to measure and judge. Software isn't very good at that yet because we've yet to figure out why we're good at it.

Kiro 10y ago

The media hunt against Facebook backfires and Hacker News is very much part of the problem.

dreamdu5t 10y ago

I don't want AI or humans deciding what I read. I want to choose what I read. I would like to just turn off "trending" whatever the fuck altogether. Give me back the Facebook that was just content from my friends...

PunchTornado 10y ago

still better than having some people filter the news according to their political views.

mtgx 10y ago

So this is a lot like what Google experienced for a long time. Its algorithms would get manipulated. However, would you prefer Google to handpick (let's forget about the volume of manual labor for now) which sites get to be at the top? Or would you rather just keep improving those algorithms? I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections.

tdkl 10y ago
> I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections. And they will if their future power relies on the specific candidate, which is ironically also lobbied (paid) by them. I don't want to sound like a hippy in the 1960's, but if there ever was a need for the "fuck the corporations" slogans, it's now.

emjenny 10y ago

There's a peculiar detail in this story. It refers to "the 'Association of American Physicians and Surgeons' — a discredited libertarian medical organization." 1. First, why the quotes around the name of the organization? Is this not its actual name? 2. Discredited? By whom? Isn't "discredited" an objective judgement -- and thus, one the author should support with a rationale? 3. Further, it's odd that of all the examples mentioned, the AAPS is the only one not linked to. Why? The release must be online, if Facebook linked to it. Curious.

andygates 10y ago
Because they promote objective untruth: HIV doesn't cause AIDS, abortions cause breast cancer, vaccines cause autism, and so on. They're a low-quality organisation who use a fancy name to impress the impressionable.

return0 10y ago

Fake news are better than biased news.

andygates 10y ago
In what way? Explain and justify, please.
- return0 10y ago
  Fake news are easier to detect. Bias is always subtle and insidious.
  - andygates 10y ago
    And yet we see the general readers swallowing fake news as if it were truth, and even retorting that they don't care if it's fake, it's the kind of thing those people would do. This is out of the scope of news and into the scope of propaganda, and it does matter.
    - return0 10y ago
      They are very rarely "actual fake news", but usually untruths presented in a way that is impossible to falsify. At least to my experience. Perhaps you could cite a news item that survives but is proved to not have happeend.
pvdebbe 10y ago
In a sense, biased news are also fake. They don't cover the whole truth and may contain traces of nontruths. Similarly, all fake news are biased, unless they are markov chain -generated gibberish with apolitical sample data.
- return0 10y ago
  I'm talking about factually fake. Hiding some truth is distinct from telling a lie.

raverbashing 10y ago

Nothing surprising from a company that notoriously fumbles removal of content (minor nudity gets removed while violence, abuse, fake pages and graphical gore (not in a journalistic sense) remains)

partycoder 10y ago

Fake news that people happen to be sharing at that moment. Fake it or not that is what people is interested in and what is trending.

return0 10y ago

I don't understand why facebook repeatedly tries (and fails) to become a news source. They can make more money by being the world's watering hole, there is no need (and not much money imo) for going after the role of newspapers/tv. Given that their offering is exclusively popularity-driven, the quality of their news offering will always be less-than, or equal-to a very bad tabloid. If they are looking for political power, they already have it by controlling communication channels.

happyslobro 10y ago
I think their long term plan is to literally take over the entire internet, by replacing every feature of every successful category of website. The free Facebook-net for India and Africa, this Facebook for enterprise thing, the embedded games, video... I fully expect to see Facebook for schools soon, followed by diplomas and then degrees granted by a Facebook online university. Maybe they will even try to roll out a voting app some day? It could start as a polling app, and then slowly take over the voting booths in areas where they can buy the necessary permissions. Those governments that grant them control over their elections would celebrate increased voter turnout, and accept a massive campaign contribution (in "premium" Facebook ads) for being the party that opened the door. Jesus, now that I think about it, we could actually end up with a real technocracy in a generation or two, run by... Facebook. That is really, really scary. Brawndo.
- Samis2001 10y ago
  I don't think such a system would be a technocracy - it would seem to be more along the lines of a Corporatocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy)
  - happyslobro 10y ago
    I guess. But the political moderators in the corporatocracy would all get laid off once they finished training the AIs. Then it would count as a technocracy.

ybrah 10y ago

I have the entire div blocked because I'm terrified of cherry picked news

troorl 10y ago

The Washingtonpost has repeatedly published fake news since forever.

ikeboy 10y ago

Why can't they just filter on the domain level and throw out fake domains entirely?

MistahKoala 10y ago

Today's news presented to me by Facebook includes Putin prepping for a Third World War by having diplomats' families return home. My understanding of it is that he made some pronouncement that their kids are best off returning to Russia for a good, traditional nationalistic education - which has somehow warped into something more apocalyptic. Certainly, Facebook didn't originate that interpretation, but it's helping to propagate a story that's only being reported by tabloid outlets; there is no other facet of the rumour being presented by more measured and reasonable outlets.

boona 10y ago
There's a lot more back story. [Here is a video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo) of Putin explaining that we're essentially on the brink of a major world war, and that the average citizen in the western world is oblivious to it. (Or just look up "Putin's warning" and pick your outlet.) Couple that with Hillary's insane anti-Russian position and things could get ugly really quickly.
- int_19h 10y ago
  Would you rather pay the Danegeld and let Russia run amok invading its neighbors?

nkrisc 10y ago

Maybe Facebook's human-curated news content had a political slant because much of the fake news out there has the opposite political slant. Perhaps an unintended consequence? Or perhaps it's just that the fake news that is shared on Facebook has a particular slant, thus removing that content gave the appearance of a preference for a different political slant on the part of the curators.

amykhar 10y ago

It's a sad indicator really. The fact that it's trending means a lot of people were posting it. It's hard to tell how many actually BELIEVE it, but I'm guessing it's the majority.

solvedit 10y ago

I know I might be shooting myself in the foot here by posting this. I got so annoyed by Facebook's banal trending news suggestions that I wrote a script to flag every trending news item as offensive (on the premise that it is the flag most likely to have lasting effect). I never see trending news on Facebook anymore after running that for a while.

therealbobsmoot 10y ago

Seems like a good fit given that people are maintaining fake friendships and fake amazing lives on their timelines. [edit] yes I am bitter from past experience.

the_watcher 10y ago

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed this, although what tipped me off was a trending story about the Warriors wanting to trade Andre Iguodala for Iman Shumpert, which was based on a blog post by a Cleveland high schooler (for those who don't follow basketball, it's a completely ludicrous idea).

gregpardo 10y ago

I think it's an experiment. A lot of people actually use facebook as their sole source of news... Especially the younger generation. This is quite scary because Facebook's algorithms are actually acting as a filter on top of already existing media filters. Before you know it the chain will be so deep it will be hard to know where anything came from. Another problem is similar to the reddit problem. Both the AI and your customization can create an atmosphere where you literally get served only opinions you want to hear. I actually think a more random algorithm would be more beneficial than what's trending.

tofupup 10y ago

neat

tofupup 10y ago

neat