4 ms·
The article is reasonably written but I believe the author makes his main points through false claims. Don't take my word for it; see for yourself. The ups
by iamthepieman 10y ago
The article is reasonably written but I believe the author makes his main points through false claims. Don't take my word for it; see for yourself.
The upshot of all this is to say that a 1–2%
difference in election results based on the assault of
the <1% of fake news articles on Facebook is an entirely
plausible outcome. We can’t know for sure, of course,
but there is real, hard science to back up this theory.
There isn't real hard science to back up that Facebook had a 1-2% difference in election results. There's real, hard science that long-running general marketing campaigns can sway consumers of popular brands (at least that's what he says in the previous paragraph)
Moving to news, then, let’s state the obvious. Saying
you’re 99% accurate in the news is a complete failure.
Can you imagine the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
CNN or, hell, even Breitbart saying “hey, only 1% or so
of our stories are wrong.” Even one incorrect news story
is a terrible tragedy
Does the author read news? Reporters and news organizations are not injection molders. They don't churn out the same story over and over where the inputs are all clearly defined and subject to their own quality control. Actually, that's more true of the type of fake news the author is criticizing here. A 1% error rate would be amazing in a news organization.
And the real kicker of the whole thing
Thus far, all of your proposed solutions to these
very real problems are predicated upon a still-unproven
hypothesis: That communities at scale can police
themselves ... This is not true, and has never been true.
Well, I guess every democratic nation on earth is well and truly fucked. Get out the big black markers, fire up the government presses, turn back the clock 300 years[0].
[0]http://www.nycourts.gov/history/legal-history-new-york/legal-history-eras-01/history-new-york-legal-eras-crown-zenger.html http://www.nycourts.gov/history/legal-history-new-york/legal...
EDIT: Less derogatory initial sentence.
- CodeMage 10y agoSorry, I don't get it: which democratic nation has the community that polices itself in the same sense FB (or HN) community is expected to?
- iamthepieman 10y agoAll of the ones that haven't sunk to civil war yet.
- fudgie 10y agoFrom the facebook statement about the percent fake news, they state Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. which isn't the same as 1% of the news items being fake, since they don't specify how much of the content is news.