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"OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." If you re

"OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." If you read between the lines, this is what the article condenses to. The discussion here is mostly creepy groupthink shit. Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-check your mail? Facebook is not a real news source and never going to be one. At best it's a communication medium. At worst it's a giant propaganda machine. Any moves to get it further away from the former and closer to the latter are just machinations to change who benefits from the propaganda and nothing else. We don't need an "improved" Facebook. We need a working replacement for old-school newspapers, TV stations and radio channels. The "new media" eroded all of those, but failed (so far, at least) to provide anything of equal utility and value. Hence all the issues involved in the coverage of these elections.

erdevs 10y ago
> "OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." This is a ridiculous oversimplification of a complex and important set of issues. The issue is the spread of facts vs misinformation, not liberalism vs conservativism, nor Democrats vs Republicans, nor Trump vs anti-Trump. Facts can work on both sides, as can misinformation. It's kind of fucked up to assume facts somehow only go one way. > Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-check your mail? Well, gee... Let's think carefully. Are your private phone calls on AT&T a public discourse? Is your mail? Do either AT&T or USPS signal boost some of your discussions during public transmittal? Is your analogy even logical? Facebook is a communication medium, as you said. Moreover, it has a set of rules and policies governing what can be shared, which shared content gets shown to a given user, and how the content is further propagated and boosted. The entire discussion, which your post is completely sidestepping, is what content should or shouldn't be propagated and boosted. One can make arguments for more rules or fewer on this, for different rules or keeping the same rules. But asserting that it is a non-issue or drawing false equivalences are non-arguments irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
erdevs 10y ago
> "OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." This is a ridiculous oversimplification of a complex and important set of issues. The issue is the spread of facts vs misinformation, not liberalism vs conservativism, nor Democrats vs Republicans, nor Trump vs anti-Trump. Facts can work on both sides, as can misinformation. It's kind of fucked up to assume facts somehow only go one way. > Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-check your mail? Well, gee... Let's think carefully. Are your private phone calls on AT&T a public discourse? Is your mail? Do either AT&T or USPS signal boost some of your discussions during public transmittal? Is your analogy even logical? Facebook is a communication medium, as you said. Moreover, it has a set of rules and policies governing what can be shared, which shared content gets shown to a given user, and how the content is further propagated and boosted. The entire discussion, which your post is completely sidestepping, is what content should or shouldn't be propagated and boosted. One can make arguments for more rules or fewer on this, for different rules or keeping the same rules. But saying it's a month issue or drawing false equivalences are non-arguments irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
samsonasu 10y ago
What would be so bad about at&t offering a service that banned fraudsters from calling you? Or if the USPS refused to deliver mail that said "URGENT TIME SENSITIVE" on the envelope unless the sender could prove it really was urgent? As someone with elderly relatives who've fallen for scams over email (which major email providers already do block, automatically), I would celebrate both of those outcomes.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  > What would be so bad about at&t offering a service that banned fraudsters from calling you? That isn't what we're talking about, now is it?
- mememachine 10y ago
  Labeling something "misinformation" is not an objective act, period. Facebook will be engaging in censorship if they pursue this.
  - gdubs 10y ago
    Objectivity is literally about things being factual regardless of subjective opinions. There's nuance in the world, but if someone says "The earth is flat", it's not dystopian for a newspaper or online newsfeed to editorialize and minimize those claims.
    - mememachine 10y ago
      its impossible to label an article presenting a theory or perspective as non-factual. no one ever said it was fact. anyone trying to claim it is fact is a fool. Facts are things like: I have 20$ in my pocket Creationism isnt misinformation, even if it is lacking in evidence.
B-Con 10y ago
Agreed. The problem is the users, not the platform. If users propagate misinformation, the users propagate misinformation. The easy solution people often jump to is fighting negatives with negatives, assuming it yields a positive. But often a positive approach is more effective. Offering incentives for good acts, not just disincentives for bad acts, is a fairly popular recent trend backed by research. In this case I can't help but think that the best solution is to focus on education and the propagation of correct information, not censorship (or at least, something that smells like censorship) of bad information. If "new media" is a problem we should be fighting it closer to the source. I don't know what Facebook's role in that would be, but ideally, as a platform, it would be minimal. But ultimately, it's worth remembering that it's hard to build a good system with bad raw materials. If people are interested in falsehoods and echo chambers, their social media will reflect that.
- tdaltonc 10y ago
  If the news feed were just a reveres chronological list of everything your friends posted, then I'd agree with you -- facebook would be just a medium. But they filter and sort it. I would actually like to have a knob or a switch I could use to add or remove certain elements from the news feed filter algo. I think it would be great if one of those parameters was a (open source) "factuality score." they're already doing this with click-bate, why not brain-rot? Especially if it's an optional feature.
- mememachine 10y ago
  I don't see why facebook is attempting to manipulate its users at all nor how anyone thinks this is acceptable. If people spread misinformation, than the way to stop it is to spread correct information. If facebook takes a more active role in shaping peoples' perceptions, i think it would be incredibly immoral and I would hope the company tanks.
- bo1024 10y ago
  Hmm, I mostly agree, but it's important to remember that a bad mechanism can encourage bad behavior as well. Facebook must make choices about design of the feed algorithm that have important effects on incentives and behavior. So even if they take a minimal censorship role, we cannot ignore the effect of the feed algorithm - in fact, we should focus on how to design it! For example, the extent to which one "bubbles" users into their own echo chamber is largely up to the algorithm designer. If you look at "content aggregator" sites like HN, reddit, Facebook, they all have pros and cons. HN and reddit give incentives in the form of karma. They all have different levels of "bubbling" and opting into or out of bubbles. Good design of such sites is an open problem -- even formalizing good goals for such sites is an open problem -- but it is a design problem we should be thinking about and addressing.
deleted 10y ago
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jklinger410 10y ago
The irony here is also the idea that all of this so-called propaganda comes from the right. The left is constantly selecting it's own set of "facts" and tactfully leaves out whatever doesn't agree with their agenda. Simply look at all the disingenuous pro-Clinton fact checking throughout the election. Just look at the number of rape, assault, race-baity bullshit that is circulated by liberals every day. There articles may not fly in the face of science, but they are usually equally misleading. Is this a veiled attempt at trying to silence wikileaks? Infowars? There is a reason they are being called the regressive left. They want some articles to be banned from social media because they believe they aren't true. They believe, yet again, that people should not be allowed to make their own decisions in life.
- justinpombrio 10y ago
  Please don't make generalizations about large groups of people. It leads to irreconcilable feuds.
  - mememachine 10y ago
    You shouldnt let a fear of feuds control you.
    - justinpombrio 10y ago
      Maybe the word "feud" wasn't strong enough. Have you seen what's happening in Turkey? My Turkish friend suggested that's where this leads.
  - slowmotiony 10y ago
    Should the world stop generalizing because it hurts your feelings? Because you could just look up the dictionary and understand that generalizing does not mean that whatever is said concerns every single person of the generalized group. It should be way easier for both you and the world.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Eh... unless you have numbers, I'm going to disagree. I don't visit FB much, but I've seen enough other social media to know that both sides play the same game. They both leave out data, mis-use existing data, and outright lie. I'd love statistics to prove me wrong.
briholt 10y ago
Agreed. This appears to advocate to fight propaganda with more propaganda. I don't trust anyone at Facebook to determine "facts."
- erdevs 10y ago
  Why? Facts are facts. The definition of a fact is that is an objective, verifiable statement. Trust does not come into play because you don't need to trust anyone judgment to verify a fact. Judgment is not involved. Whether Fox fired Megyn Kelly or not is a fact. Facebook's is judgment is not involved in verifying it. Whether an FBI agent that examined Clinton's emails is now dead or not is a fact. Facebook's judgment is not involved in verifying this fact. You are conflating fact checking with opinion editing. The suggestion here is not that FB should filter out any kind of objectively verifiable fact, no matter which way the fact is used. It's that perhaps FB should filter out or at least not signal boost objectively verifiably false information.
  - briholt 10y ago
    Humans are bad at determining facts. That is a fact. Consider the irony of refuting that statement. Yes the word "fact" has a definition, but that doesn't mean humans can or will obey that definition. In early 2003 the NY Times reported Iraq had WMD, so that was a fact, right? How long would it take me to find a Facebook employee who would tell me it's a "fact" that vaccines cause autism? Anyone who claims they can differentiate facts from opinion and truth from fiction without bias, is the last person that should have that responsibility.
MichaelMoser123 10y ago
facebook will be less effective as a medium/content distributor if people become aware of the filtering that they do; i think they are shooting themselves in the foot if they start to actively censor the messages, people will just move on to twitter for politics and use facebook for the personal stuff only. trust the market, there is plenty of competition that puts things into their proper place. Facebook doesn't own their users either.
lingben 10y ago
Such a comment betrays an incredibly unsophisticated understanding of the issues being discussed. Perhaps a revisit to McLuhan's maxim would be enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoCrx0scCkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoCrx0scCkM
- emodendroket 10y ago
  Perhaps you could avail yourself of some of your erudition and explain what relationship these three links have to your objection.
  - lingben 10y ago
    https://www.fastcoexist.com/3061574/the-new-nationalism-of-brexit-and-trump-is-a-product-of-the-digital-age https://www.fastcoexist.com/3061574/the-new-nationalism-of-b...
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Brexit and Trump and Syriza and Bernie and all the rest of it point to the collapse of the middle class across the industrialized world more than anything else.
      - enraged_camel 10y ago
        The middle class is doing fine. It's the working class that has been suffering, and they are the ones who voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers in swing states.
        emodendroket 10y ago
        Sure, whichever. The terms are imprecise and many of the people we're talking about probably could have reasonably considered themselves middle-class in the past.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rtpg 10y ago
I agree with some of this, but the main difference between AT&T and Facebook is that FB is controlling what you're receiving. Imagine if USPS sent you things that were sent to you, but also random packages they thought were good for you. Facebook, even just through its algorithm, is exercising some editorial control and distribution.
rocho 10y ago
Couldn't agree more. There is no actual problem: social networks are simply not the right media to be a news source, and they were never meant to be. Moreover, to expect to be fed "correct" information all the time, without no effort on the consumer's part, is flat out delusional. What we need, and what we have always needed, is to apply critical thinking. Do you believe everything someone says? Well, then you have a problem.
lerpa 10y ago
They can fact check whatever they want, it's their site. It's stupid but people that should leave to greener pastures, it's not like in the beginning there was Facebook and we're bound to use that forever. The problem is people want to 1) trust blindly and 2) not be taken advantage of that. You can only have one of those.
linkregister 10y ago
I agree that the idea of "fact-checking" stories is troubling and is overall a bad idea. You are not at all addressing what is actually in the article: the Newsfeed feature that surfaces the most shared stories. Facebook isn't discussing deleting homeopathy, Clinton body count, or Trump kompromat articles from our various Facebook walls.

erdevs 10y ago

> "OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." This is a ridiculous oversimplification of a complex and important set of issues. The issue is the spread of facts vs misinformation, not liberalism vs conservativism, nor Democrats vs Republicans, nor Trump vs anti-Trump. Facts can work on both sides, as can misinformation. It's kind of fucked up to assume facts somehow only go one way. > Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-check your mail? Well, gee... Let's think carefully. Are your private phone calls on AT&T a public discourse? Is your mail? Do either AT&T or USPS signal boost some of your discussions during public transmittal? Is your analogy even logical? Facebook is a communication medium, as you said. Moreover, it has a set of rules and policies governing what can be shared, which shared content gets shown to a given user, and how the content is further propagated and boosted. The entire discussion, which your post is completely sidestepping, is what content should or shouldn't be propagated and boosted. One can make arguments for more rules or fewer on this, for different rules or keeping the same rules. But asserting that it is a non-issue or drawing false equivalences are non-arguments irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

erdevs 10y ago

> "OMG, Trump has won through lies and deception! We failed to stop him. How on Earth did that happen? We must out-manipulate our opponents next time." This is a ridiculous oversimplification of a complex and important set of issues. The issue is the spread of facts vs misinformation, not liberalism vs conservativism, nor Democrats vs Republicans, nor Trump vs anti-Trump. Facts can work on both sides, as can misinformation. It's kind of fucked up to assume facts somehow only go one way. > Social networks fact-checking their content? What's next? Should AT&T stop the spread of misinformation over its phone lines? Should USPS fact-check your mail? Well, gee... Let's think carefully. Are your private phone calls on AT&T a public discourse? Is your mail? Do either AT&T or USPS signal boost some of your discussions during public transmittal? Is your analogy even logical? Facebook is a communication medium, as you said. Moreover, it has a set of rules and policies governing what can be shared, which shared content gets shown to a given user, and how the content is further propagated and boosted. The entire discussion, which your post is completely sidestepping, is what content should or shouldn't be propagated and boosted. One can make arguments for more rules or fewer on this, for different rules or keeping the same rules. But saying it's a month issue or drawing false equivalences are non-arguments irrelevant to the discussion at hand.

samsonasu 10y ago

What would be so bad about at&t offering a service that banned fraudsters from calling you? Or if the USPS refused to deliver mail that said "URGENT TIME SENSITIVE" on the envelope unless the sender could prove it really was urgent? As someone with elderly relatives who've fallen for scams over email (which major email providers already do block, automatically), I would celebrate both of those outcomes.

emodendroket 10y ago
> What would be so bad about at&t offering a service that banned fraudsters from calling you? That isn't what we're talking about, now is it?
mememachine 10y ago
Labeling something "misinformation" is not an objective act, period. Facebook will be engaging in censorship if they pursue this.
- gdubs 10y ago
  Objectivity is literally about things being factual regardless of subjective opinions. There's nuance in the world, but if someone says "The earth is flat", it's not dystopian for a newspaper or online newsfeed to editorialize and minimize those claims.
  - mememachine 10y ago
    its impossible to label an article presenting a theory or perspective as non-factual. no one ever said it was fact. anyone trying to claim it is fact is a fool. Facts are things like: I have 20$ in my pocket Creationism isnt misinformation, even if it is lacking in evidence.

B-Con 10y ago

Agreed. The problem is the users, not the platform. If users propagate misinformation, the users propagate misinformation. The easy solution people often jump to is fighting negatives with negatives, assuming it yields a positive. But often a positive approach is more effective. Offering incentives for good acts, not just disincentives for bad acts, is a fairly popular recent trend backed by research. In this case I can't help but think that the best solution is to focus on education and the propagation of correct information, not censorship (or at least, something that smells like censorship) of bad information. If "new media" is a problem we should be fighting it closer to the source. I don't know what Facebook's role in that would be, but ideally, as a platform, it would be minimal. But ultimately, it's worth remembering that it's hard to build a good system with bad raw materials. If people are interested in falsehoods and echo chambers, their social media will reflect that.

tdaltonc 10y ago
If the news feed were just a reveres chronological list of everything your friends posted, then I'd agree with you -- facebook would be just a medium. But they filter and sort it. I would actually like to have a knob or a switch I could use to add or remove certain elements from the news feed filter algo. I think it would be great if one of those parameters was a (open source) "factuality score." they're already doing this with click-bate, why not brain-rot? Especially if it's an optional feature.
mememachine 10y ago
I don't see why facebook is attempting to manipulate its users at all nor how anyone thinks this is acceptable. If people spread misinformation, than the way to stop it is to spread correct information. If facebook takes a more active role in shaping peoples' perceptions, i think it would be incredibly immoral and I would hope the company tanks.
bo1024 10y ago
Hmm, I mostly agree, but it's important to remember that a bad mechanism can encourage bad behavior as well. Facebook must make choices about design of the feed algorithm that have important effects on incentives and behavior. So even if they take a minimal censorship role, we cannot ignore the effect of the feed algorithm - in fact, we should focus on how to design it! For example, the extent to which one "bubbles" users into their own echo chamber is largely up to the algorithm designer. If you look at "content aggregator" sites like HN, reddit, Facebook, they all have pros and cons. HN and reddit give incentives in the form of karma. They all have different levels of "bubbling" and opting into or out of bubbles. Good design of such sites is an open problem -- even formalizing good goals for such sites is an open problem -- but it is a design problem we should be thinking about and addressing.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

jklinger410 10y ago

The irony here is also the idea that all of this so-called propaganda comes from the right. The left is constantly selecting it's own set of "facts" and tactfully leaves out whatever doesn't agree with their agenda. Simply look at all the disingenuous pro-Clinton fact checking throughout the election. Just look at the number of rape, assault, race-baity bullshit that is circulated by liberals every day. There articles may not fly in the face of science, but they are usually equally misleading. Is this a veiled attempt at trying to silence wikileaks? Infowars? There is a reason they are being called the regressive left. They want some articles to be banned from social media because they believe they aren't true. They believe, yet again, that people should not be allowed to make their own decisions in life.

justinpombrio 10y ago
Please don't make generalizations about large groups of people. It leads to irreconcilable feuds.
- mememachine 10y ago
  You shouldnt let a fear of feuds control you.
  - justinpombrio 10y ago
    Maybe the word "feud" wasn't strong enough. Have you seen what's happening in Turkey? My Turkish friend suggested that's where this leads.
- slowmotiony 10y ago
  Should the world stop generalizing because it hurts your feelings? Because you could just look up the dictionary and understand that generalizing does not mean that whatever is said concerns every single person of the generalized group. It should be way easier for both you and the world.
CaptSpify 10y ago
Eh... unless you have numbers, I'm going to disagree. I don't visit FB much, but I've seen enough other social media to know that both sides play the same game. They both leave out data, mis-use existing data, and outright lie. I'd love statistics to prove me wrong.

briholt 10y ago

Agreed. This appears to advocate to fight propaganda with more propaganda. I don't trust anyone at Facebook to determine "facts."

erdevs 10y ago
Why? Facts are facts. The definition of a fact is that is an objective, verifiable statement. Trust does not come into play because you don't need to trust anyone judgment to verify a fact. Judgment is not involved. Whether Fox fired Megyn Kelly or not is a fact. Facebook's is judgment is not involved in verifying it. Whether an FBI agent that examined Clinton's emails is now dead or not is a fact. Facebook's judgment is not involved in verifying this fact. You are conflating fact checking with opinion editing. The suggestion here is not that FB should filter out any kind of objectively verifiable fact, no matter which way the fact is used. It's that perhaps FB should filter out or at least not signal boost objectively verifiably false information.
- briholt 10y ago
  Humans are bad at determining facts. That is a fact. Consider the irony of refuting that statement. Yes the word "fact" has a definition, but that doesn't mean humans can or will obey that definition. In early 2003 the NY Times reported Iraq had WMD, so that was a fact, right? How long would it take me to find a Facebook employee who would tell me it's a "fact" that vaccines cause autism? Anyone who claims they can differentiate facts from opinion and truth from fiction without bias, is the last person that should have that responsibility.

MichaelMoser123 10y ago

facebook will be less effective as a medium/content distributor if people become aware of the filtering that they do; i think they are shooting themselves in the foot if they start to actively censor the messages, people will just move on to twitter for politics and use facebook for the personal stuff only. trust the market, there is plenty of competition that puts things into their proper place. Facebook doesn't own their users either.

lingben 10y ago

Such a comment betrays an incredibly unsophisticated understanding of the issues being discussed. Perhaps a revisit to McLuhan's maxim would be enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6J9v1C9zE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoCrx0scCkM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoCrx0scCkM

emodendroket 10y ago
Perhaps you could avail yourself of some of your erudition and explain what relationship these three links have to your objection.
- lingben 10y ago
  https://www.fastcoexist.com/3061574/the-new-nationalism-of-brexit-and-trump-is-a-product-of-the-digital-age https://www.fastcoexist.com/3061574/the-new-nationalism-of-b...
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    Brexit and Trump and Syriza and Bernie and all the rest of it point to the collapse of the middle class across the industrialized world more than anything else.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      The middle class is doing fine. It's the working class that has been suffering, and they are the ones who voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers in swing states.
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        Sure, whichever. The terms are imprecise and many of the people we're talking about probably could have reasonably considered themselves middle-class in the past.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

rtpg 10y ago

I agree with some of this, but the main difference between AT&T and Facebook is that FB is controlling what you're receiving. Imagine if USPS sent you things that were sent to you, but also random packages they thought were good for you. Facebook, even just through its algorithm, is exercising some editorial control and distribution.

rocho 10y ago

Couldn't agree more. There is no actual problem: social networks are simply not the right media to be a news source, and they were never meant to be. Moreover, to expect to be fed "correct" information all the time, without no effort on the consumer's part, is flat out delusional. What we need, and what we have always needed, is to apply critical thinking. Do you believe everything someone says? Well, then you have a problem.

lerpa 10y ago

They can fact check whatever they want, it's their site. It's stupid but people that should leave to greener pastures, it's not like in the beginning there was Facebook and we're bound to use that forever. The problem is people want to 1) trust blindly and 2) not be taken advantage of that. You can only have one of those.

linkregister 10y ago

I agree that the idea of "fact-checking" stories is troubling and is overall a bad idea. You are not at all addressing what is actually in the article: the Newsfeed feature that surfaces the most shared stories. Facebook isn't discussing deleting homeopathy, Clinton body count, or Trump kompromat articles from our various Facebook walls.