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> And all of these signals exist at present, but as soon as Facebook starts suppressing posts based on machine classification then obviously fake news publisher

by sedachv 10y ago

> And all of these signals exist at present, but as soon as Facebook starts suppressing posts based on machine classification then obviously fake news publishers will adapt and it won't work anymore. The only reliable identifying factor of fake news is that it reports facts that aren't. Replace "news" with "email" and your argument remains the same. But spam filtering is working and working well right now with less signals to classify on. > To speculate, perhaps part of it a lack of respect for the hard work of real journalism, education, and geniune political dialogue, so the fantasy of surfacing all the crap from social media and then extracting the ground truth with a magical algorithm appeals to some people despite being a completely hopeless idea. Why are you ranting about synthesizing real news from social media? The problem I specifically mentioned was identifying fake news articles. > What you're actually arguing for is the negative twin of today's filter bubble effect. If you do not understand the difference between recommendation and classification you should not be arguing right now. It is a subtle and important distinction. Your argument is about as subtle as "computers can't solve it!" > It's concerning to me that the relatively intelligent folks here could be taking this at all seriously. In what substantive way is "fake news trying to get you to vote for a particular politician" different from "fake email trying to get you to buy fake pills"?

inimino 10y ago
Indeed, "computers can't solve it". Software cannot replace fact checking. > In what substantive way is "fake news trying to get you to vote for a particular politician" different from "fake email trying to get you to buy fake pills"? You don't normally get ham email asking you to buy pills, do you? But you read and share news that has an ideological perspective all the time. Again, the only reliable distinction between true and false news is whether it actually happened. By definition this is not to be found by looking at the text alone. Let me give you a concrete example of a hypothetical pair of fake and real news items. You can tell me how your classifier would fare distinguishing them. Real news item: Pope calls Trump "not Christian" Fake news item: Pope calls Trump "not Christian" The difference, of course, is that the real news item is published the day after this actually happened and the fake news item can be published at any time, and is easier to write. Let me give you another example. There have been reports of hate crimes following the election. There have been claims that some of these reports are fabricated. So I give you two articles: Article A: Chanting Trump Slogans, Mob Assaults Local Man Article B: Assault Story "Made Up", Local Man Admits Now, tell me again about your algorithm.

by sedachv 10y ago

inimino 10y ago

Indeed, "computers can't solve it". Software cannot replace fact checking. > In what substantive way is "fake news trying to get you to vote for a particular politician" different from "fake email trying to get you to buy fake pills"? You don't normally get ham email asking you to buy pills, do you? But you read and share news that has an ideological perspective all the time. Again, the only reliable distinction between true and false news is whether it actually happened. By definition this is not to be found by looking at the text alone. Let me give you a concrete example of a hypothetical pair of fake and real news items. You can tell me how your classifier would fare distinguishing them. Real news item: Pope calls Trump "not Christian" Fake news item: Pope calls Trump "not Christian" The difference, of course, is that the real news item is published the day after this actually happened and the fake news item can be published at any time, and is easier to write. Let me give you another example. There have been reports of hate crimes following the election. There have been claims that some of these reports are fabricated. So I give you two articles: Article A: Chanting Trump Slogans, Mob Assaults Local Man Article B: Assault Story "Made Up", Local Man Admits Now, tell me again about your algorithm.