4 ms·
Ask HN: Why is “fake news” Facebook's problem?
We have had this way before Facebook and we will always have it beyond Facebook. Why does Facebook have to carry the burden? I don't think they are the ones generating the news. Everyone is free to share what they want, so why put the blame on Facebook? Unless we want them to police everything we share...
- Artwick 10y agoThe problem is not fb "generating" news. Nor of "policing everythung". The problem is the algorithm of fb, which determines what you see, how often you see it and how important it appears to you. And this algorithm is intransparent and manipulative. And for this algorithn the responsibility is solely with fb.
- Cozumel 10y agoFacebook experimented with a satire tag http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/18/facebook_experiments_with_satire_tag/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/18/facebook_experiments... If an article is posted from a known satire site then it's flagged as 'fake/satire', then if that's reblogged by a 'legit' site it'll pick up on the similarity in the title and flag it again. I had this functionality on my social site a few years ago (before FB) and the tech side of it works beautifully but the people side of it, not so much. I implemented it after seeing people spending hours arguing over posts from The Onion and similar sites, but it doesn't work because you get accused of censorship. Who are you to say it's fake? Why are you censoring me? That's what they want you to believe! etc etc People are their own worst enemy, and there's no technological fix for that, people are jumping on the bandwagon and trying to 'fix' it now ( http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/11/heres-a-browser-extension-that-will-flag-fake-news-sites.html?mid=fb-share-selectall http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/11/heres-a-browser-extension... ) but they're ignorant that all this has been tried and failed before.