7 ms·

Facebook's Zuckerberg discloses steps to fight fake news

30 points by mnmlsm 10y ago

sparkzilla 10y ago
The fake news meme has been cooked up by the mainstream media to shift blame for Clinton's loss on new media. Nobody cared about fake news on Facebook. Meanwhile the mainstream media lied and manipulated the truth to suit their narrative constantly. These trusted publications took advantage of their reader's trust to lie to them, causing far greater damage than any fake Facebook article. A great example is how the New York Times and the "fact checkers" used a reporter's disability to lie to their readers. As a liberal, Zuckerberg is particularly vulnerable to criticism from the liberal media. He should "do a Trump" and tell them to f off. [1]http://newslines.org/blog/lets-talk-about-fake-news/ http://newslines.org/blog/lets-talk-about-fake-news/
- akerro 10y ago
  NYT admitted they were biased against Trump, spreading fake news and putting Trump in bad light, publishing pro-Clinton stories. They were digging into Trumps family more and completely ignored Clintons family, mostly ignored her bribed and Podesta emails - only because blaming Trump was more trendy.
  - skj 10y ago
    Citation?
    - akerro 10y ago
      https://nypost.com/2016/11/14/the-new-york-times-cant-improve-until-it-admits-bias/ https://nypost.com/2016/11/14/the-new-york-times-cant-improv...
      - mcintyre1994 10y ago
        Where is the bit where NYT admitted it? Your link seems to be the opposite, making accusations NYT denied.
      - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
        ... That is an incredibly biased editorial from a competing newspaper. Not the NYT admitting any of the things you claimed See, this is kind of what people mean by "fake news". It isn't "Our sources were wrong" as with the Iraqi WMDs and instead "We made up some sources and completely distorted things to push our agenda"
    - nunobrito 10y ago
      Not sure if they have admitted the obvious bias. Especially after reading: "We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team." http://nypost.com/2016/11/11/new-york-times-we-blew-it-on-trump/ http://nypost.com/2016/11/11/new-york-times-we-blew-it-on-tr...
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- dictum 10y ago
  From that 1984 quote, > Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then? There's an interesting parallel between two political/cultural phenomena, even though they're only discussed by opposite groups: - Believing in fake information that confirms your beliefs, and - Believing that self-identification beats all other indications.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  This seems like relativism. Regular media isn't perfect, so therefore blatant lies are fine. Is this embracing the "post-truth society"? It no longer matters what is true, only what gets the most likes/shares/upvotes.
  - cthor 10y ago
    I think the point being made is that Facebook, NYT, et al. are not in a position to moralise about journalistic ethics. I would go further and say that the half-truths being peddled by these outlets are far more dangerous than obvious non-truths peddled by "fake news" outlets, because seeing through their lies is much harder. If we live in a world where "fake news" has been successfully censored, but the merely partisan outlets remain, the only result is people being lulled into a false sense of security: "It has to be true -- fake news is banned!"
    - karmelapple 10y ago
      I'd argue it's not worse. I've ran across many people with higher ed degrees sharing fake news, sincerely thinking they have shared a reasonably-researched article. I'm talking news from a website which says it publishes stories that are not true - but are not humor - on its about page. When that fake news reinforces their perspective, they simply clicked share because they liked how it sounds. Every time when I've pointed out something was blatantly false, they also sincerely said thank you, including one person admitting they couldn't tell the difference between a reasonably-researched news site and one that is not.
    - EarthIsHome 10y ago
      > these outlets are far more dangerous than obvious non-truths peddled by "fake news" outlets While apparently obvious to us, fake news articles are being shared by more people than factual news. [0][1] > If we live in a world where "fake news" has been successfully censored There's a difference between fake news and partisan news: one is flat out lies the other is factually true. Fake news is more akin to false advertising than censorship is. No one says that banning false advertising is censorship; banning false advertising is keeping people from buying products based on lies. [0]: https://imgur.com/xJ7eDbs https://imgur.com/xJ7eDbs [1]: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-...
- return0 10y ago
  > Nobody cared about fake news on Facebook And crucially nobody cared during the thousands of elections/uprisings around the world in which facebook played a role.
akerro 10y ago
I hope they are going to verify every single news to determine whether it's fake and then fight it!
mirekrusin 10y ago
I wonder how labelling would work with news like saddam hussain's weapons of mass destruction - reported by cia, backed by the goverment as truth, but turns out it was all fake. Labels will probably have to change retrospectively. Maybe they should also include "according to ..." reference? I can imagine that some statements will be flagged as truth by one side and as fake by the other. If you play this game further with creating graph of dependencies and recorded switches from truth to fake you can even get "accuracy score" for source reference - I wonder how CIA as source ref would score in this game - hopefully not somewhere in the area of "compulsive liar"?
- chronic6l 10y ago
  > I wonder how labelling would work with news like saddam hussain's weapons of mass destruction - reported by cia, backed by the goverment as truth, but turns out it was all fake. There's no need to talk technical about graph nodes and machine learning. It's very simple - the fake news labels are, and will always be biased in favor of the liberal/progressive/Democrat agenda. Objective news is a lie. No one wants to hear it. We want echo chambers that make us feel good. The labels will shift to accommodate this desire.
  - nunobrito 10y ago
    Indeed we'll keep seeing the mass stream media biased to omit objective news. Otherwise you would see the US population asking themselves why on earth are their armed forces so deep involved in Syria, just short of military invasion. They get spoon-fed that the country is ruled by a dictator and their population needs to be freed, but so is Saudi Arabia with a far worse regime where people get their heads cut on monthly basis, which are praised as critical ally in the region. "Fake news" is a way to block the things deemed as dissident from the main stream, effectively blocking the room for logical argument and exposing the facts.
  - mirekrusin 10y ago
    I think there are many people who are interested in truth - whatever it is, without feeling the need to associate their position with any red/blue person (politician). There was no mention of machine learning (no predictions of any kind) - the idea is to keep track of history of raw data (labelling and it's changes) and report on "reliability score ..." (how many times labelling itself was false). The thing is it doesn't need to be biased at all. You just keep all data for all sources. There's no "objective truth" per se, there are only true/false labels according to source. Of course you can create your own "beyond reasonable doubt by xyz" or "government xyz pov" source and assume that this is going to be your objective truth reference. But, just like any other sources, your source will just have reliability rating in context of any other source.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
myf01d 10y ago
The "fake news" term is itself actually fake news (unless you're liberal). It is synonymous with "we did everything we can to influence the election outcome and yet we lost, now we should regulate the news media industry so only WE can publish our agenda."
- nyolfen 10y ago
  i realize there's a partisan bent to the fake news story, but the indisputable fact of the matter is that there are a lot of sites that straight up fabricate outrageous news to generate clicks that have a lot of circulation on facebook now. the liberal side of the media is beating the drum about it right now, but it's still a true claim. https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became... https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-... also i may be wrong, but as far as i know buzzfeed isnt known for being especially partisan towards liberal causes
  - douche 10y ago
    It's sort of ironic citing BuzzFeed here, as they were long a primary supplier of bullshit news and questionable listicles, before they pivoted into actual journalism.
    - nyolfen 10y ago
      to be fair, i think there's a pretty big difference between 'bullshit' (ie inconsequential) and fabricated news. i remember when i still used facebook, being intensely annoyed every time i saw news that seemed to have vaguely plausible but clearly fake content -- the sites in question were 'satire', a la the onion, though much less clever. in retrospect, now, it seems predestined that at some point they would drop the pretense altogether, though.
- pohl 10y ago
  There is a real (and relatively new) phenomenon here that the phrase refers to, and it goes beyond bias and even beyond propaganda. There are businesses whose only agenda is to harvest ad revenue from viral shares. They are working for neither the red team nor the blue team. Their agenda is to tap into the reflex to share, and it makes no difference what achieves that aim. It just so happens that everyone's racist uncle is the easiest vein for them. Google "fake news Macedonia", it's pretty fascinating.
dilemma 10y ago
News don't just come into existence as the result of some law of nature. News is created when someone publishes it. Therefore, all news is fake based on these absurd criteria. And now one side wants to make sure that only their fake news can be published.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  That's a false dilemma.
kriro 10y ago
I don't think FB should be required to do this (I don't think they are but who knows what people will demand) nor do I think that Google should be forced to filter these stories out of their search results etc. Ultimately the responsibility for judging news lies with the consumer of the news. It may very well be in the interest of FB/Google to apply a filter to serve the users the best possible results...but that's a potentially dangerous path. I wonder how viable it would be to provide these filters as a service (seems like large scale machine learning). There might even be a market for a "confirmation filter" where I can elect to filter out everything that is conservative/liberal if I so choose (since I hear a lot of people claiming media is biased in favour of the other side anyway). Spam filter 2.0 (or is it 4.0 theses days?)
karmelapple 10y ago
Every time we click Share, Post, or Like, we are being a journalist. There's no journalism classes or ethics training before clicking those buttons. Should there be?
- return0 10y ago
  mainly there is no repercussion
  - csbrooks 10y ago
    There is some repercussion: if you have any sense at all, when someone on your feed consistently keeps sharing this garbage, you stop paying any attention to what they share.
    - karmelapple 10y ago
      If the "garbage" agrees with your views, will you stop paying attention to it? We'd like to think we will, but not everyone will do that. Over time, that constant drip of misinformation can significantly harden someone's opinion on a topic.
krige 10y ago
Can't help but feel that this sudden 'fake news' push seems more like a movement to enforce mainstream media control versus alternative/grassroots in light of the recent U.S. election, rather than any actual concern. After all, the CNN, Huffington et al. had their own share of misrepresentation and outright lies[1] - but will those be targeted by this new effort? [1] for example, http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/cnn-caught-rigging-its-methodology-to-produce-phony-poll-claiming-donald-trump-is-winning/25981/ http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/cnn-caught-rigging-its-meth...
- fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago
  This ^ is the beginning of the end of free press.
return0 10y ago
Kudos move for Zuck to try to appease investors but i think he knows himself this thing is not working, and i m glad he does.
fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago
Serious question, will all celebrity (aka tabloid) news be considered fake news? For example, Pop star Jane Doe in relationship with Actor John Smith? Stuff at the supermarket counters. Side note.. what ever happened to bat-boy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)
mindcrash 10y ago
While the upper echelons in society are deciding what "fake news" and "real news" is, and thus what you should consume or not, I would like everyone to remember this particular quote: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, and allow very lively debate within that spectrum" Looks familiar? This is Noam Chomsky talking, by the way.

30 points by mnmlsm 10y ago

The fake news meme has been cooked up by the mainstream media to shift blame for Clinton's loss on new media. Nobody cared about fake news on Facebook. Meanwhile the mainstream media lied and manipulated the truth to suit their narrative constantly. These trusted publications took advantage of their reader's trust to lie to them, causing far greater damage than any fake Facebook article. A great example is how the New York Times and the "fact checkers" used a reporter's disability to lie to their readers. As a liberal, Zuckerberg is particularly vulnerable to criticism from the liberal media. He should "do a Trump" and tell them to f off. [1]http://newslines.org/blog/lets-talk-about-fake-news/ http://newslines.org/blog/lets-talk-about-fake-news/

akerro 10y ago
NYT admitted they were biased against Trump, spreading fake news and putting Trump in bad light, publishing pro-Clinton stories. They were digging into Trumps family more and completely ignored Clintons family, mostly ignored her bribed and Podesta emails - only because blaming Trump was more trendy.
- skj 10y ago
  Citation?
  - akerro 10y ago
    https://nypost.com/2016/11/14/the-new-york-times-cant-improve-until-it-admits-bias/ https://nypost.com/2016/11/14/the-new-york-times-cant-improv...
    - mcintyre1994 10y ago
      Where is the bit where NYT admitted it? Your link seems to be the opposite, making accusations NYT denied.
    - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
      ... That is an incredibly biased editorial from a competing newspaper. Not the NYT admitting any of the things you claimed See, this is kind of what people mean by "fake news". It isn't "Our sources were wrong" as with the Iraqi WMDs and instead "We made up some sources and completely distorted things to push our agenda"
  - nunobrito 10y ago
    Not sure if they have admitted the obvious bias. Especially after reading: "We believe we reported on both candidates fairly during the presidential campaign. You can rely on The New York Times to bring the same fairness, the same level of scrutiny, the same independence to our coverage of the new president and his team." http://nypost.com/2016/11/11/new-york-times-we-blew-it-on-trump/ http://nypost.com/2016/11/11/new-york-times-we-blew-it-on-tr...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
dictum 10y ago
From that 1984 quote, > Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then? There's an interesting parallel between two political/cultural phenomena, even though they're only discussed by opposite groups: - Believing in fake information that confirms your beliefs, and - Believing that self-identification beats all other indications.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
This seems like relativism. Regular media isn't perfect, so therefore blatant lies are fine. Is this embracing the "post-truth society"? It no longer matters what is true, only what gets the most likes/shares/upvotes.
- cthor 10y ago
  I think the point being made is that Facebook, NYT, et al. are not in a position to moralise about journalistic ethics. I would go further and say that the half-truths being peddled by these outlets are far more dangerous than obvious non-truths peddled by "fake news" outlets, because seeing through their lies is much harder. If we live in a world where "fake news" has been successfully censored, but the merely partisan outlets remain, the only result is people being lulled into a false sense of security: "It has to be true -- fake news is banned!"
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    I'd argue it's not worse. I've ran across many people with higher ed degrees sharing fake news, sincerely thinking they have shared a reasonably-researched article. I'm talking news from a website which says it publishes stories that are not true - but are not humor - on its about page. When that fake news reinforces their perspective, they simply clicked share because they liked how it sounds. Every time when I've pointed out something was blatantly false, they also sincerely said thank you, including one person admitting they couldn't tell the difference between a reasonably-researched news site and one that is not.
  - EarthIsHome 10y ago
    > these outlets are far more dangerous than obvious non-truths peddled by "fake news" outlets While apparently obvious to us, fake news articles are being shared by more people than factual news. [0][1] > If we live in a world where "fake news" has been successfully censored There's a difference between fake news and partisan news: one is flat out lies the other is factually true. Fake news is more akin to false advertising than censorship is. No one says that banning false advertising is censorship; banning false advertising is keeping people from buying products based on lies. [0]: https://imgur.com/xJ7eDbs https://imgur.com/xJ7eDbs [1]: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-...
return0 10y ago
> Nobody cared about fake news on Facebook And crucially nobody cared during the thousands of elections/uprisings around the world in which facebook played a role.

akerro 10y ago

I hope they are going to verify every single news to determine whether it's fake and then fight it!

mirekrusin 10y ago

I wonder how labelling would work with news like saddam hussain's weapons of mass destruction - reported by cia, backed by the goverment as truth, but turns out it was all fake. Labels will probably have to change retrospectively. Maybe they should also include "according to ..." reference? I can imagine that some statements will be flagged as truth by one side and as fake by the other. If you play this game further with creating graph of dependencies and recorded switches from truth to fake you can even get "accuracy score" for source reference - I wonder how CIA as source ref would score in this game - hopefully not somewhere in the area of "compulsive liar"?

chronic6l 10y ago
> I wonder how labelling would work with news like saddam hussain's weapons of mass destruction - reported by cia, backed by the goverment as truth, but turns out it was all fake. There's no need to talk technical about graph nodes and machine learning. It's very simple - the fake news labels are, and will always be biased in favor of the liberal/progressive/Democrat agenda. Objective news is a lie. No one wants to hear it. We want echo chambers that make us feel good. The labels will shift to accommodate this desire.
- nunobrito 10y ago
  Indeed we'll keep seeing the mass stream media biased to omit objective news. Otherwise you would see the US population asking themselves why on earth are their armed forces so deep involved in Syria, just short of military invasion. They get spoon-fed that the country is ruled by a dictator and their population needs to be freed, but so is Saudi Arabia with a far worse regime where people get their heads cut on monthly basis, which are praised as critical ally in the region. "Fake news" is a way to block the things deemed as dissident from the main stream, effectively blocking the room for logical argument and exposing the facts.
- mirekrusin 10y ago
  I think there are many people who are interested in truth - whatever it is, without feeling the need to associate their position with any red/blue person (politician). There was no mention of machine learning (no predictions of any kind) - the idea is to keep track of history of raw data (labelling and it's changes) and report on "reliability score ..." (how many times labelling itself was false). The thing is it doesn't need to be biased at all. You just keep all data for all sources. There's no "objective truth" per se, there are only true/false labels according to source. Of course you can create your own "beyond reasonable doubt by xyz" or "government xyz pov" source and assume that this is going to be your objective truth reference. But, just like any other sources, your source will just have reliability rating in context of any other source.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

myf01d 10y ago

The "fake news" term is itself actually fake news (unless you're liberal). It is synonymous with "we did everything we can to influence the election outcome and yet we lost, now we should regulate the news media industry so only WE can publish our agenda."

nyolfen 10y ago
i realize there's a partisan bent to the fake news story, but the indisputable fact of the matter is that there are a lot of sites that straight up fabricate outrageous news to generate clicks that have a lot of circulation on facebook now. the liberal side of the media is beating the drum about it right now, but it's still a true claim. https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became... https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-... also i may be wrong, but as far as i know buzzfeed isnt known for being especially partisan towards liberal causes
- douche 10y ago
  It's sort of ironic citing BuzzFeed here, as they were long a primary supplier of bullshit news and questionable listicles, before they pivoted into actual journalism.
  - nyolfen 10y ago
    to be fair, i think there's a pretty big difference between 'bullshit' (ie inconsequential) and fabricated news. i remember when i still used facebook, being intensely annoyed every time i saw news that seemed to have vaguely plausible but clearly fake content -- the sites in question were 'satire', a la the onion, though much less clever. in retrospect, now, it seems predestined that at some point they would drop the pretense altogether, though.
pohl 10y ago
There is a real (and relatively new) phenomenon here that the phrase refers to, and it goes beyond bias and even beyond propaganda. There are businesses whose only agenda is to harvest ad revenue from viral shares. They are working for neither the red team nor the blue team. Their agenda is to tap into the reflex to share, and it makes no difference what achieves that aim. It just so happens that everyone's racist uncle is the easiest vein for them. Google "fake news Macedonia", it's pretty fascinating.

dilemma 10y ago

News don't just come into existence as the result of some law of nature. News is created when someone publishes it. Therefore, all news is fake based on these absurd criteria. And now one side wants to make sure that only their fake news can be published.

maxerickson 10y ago
That's a false dilemma.

kriro 10y ago

I don't think FB should be required to do this (I don't think they are but who knows what people will demand) nor do I think that Google should be forced to filter these stories out of their search results etc. Ultimately the responsibility for judging news lies with the consumer of the news. It may very well be in the interest of FB/Google to apply a filter to serve the users the best possible results...but that's a potentially dangerous path. I wonder how viable it would be to provide these filters as a service (seems like large scale machine learning). There might even be a market for a "confirmation filter" where I can elect to filter out everything that is conservative/liberal if I so choose (since I hear a lot of people claiming media is biased in favour of the other side anyway). Spam filter 2.0 (or is it 4.0 theses days?)

karmelapple 10y ago

Every time we click Share, Post, or Like, we are being a journalist. There's no journalism classes or ethics training before clicking those buttons. Should there be?

return0 10y ago
mainly there is no repercussion
- csbrooks 10y ago
  There is some repercussion: if you have any sense at all, when someone on your feed consistently keeps sharing this garbage, you stop paying any attention to what they share.
  - karmelapple 10y ago
    If the "garbage" agrees with your views, will you stop paying attention to it? We'd like to think we will, but not everyone will do that. Over time, that constant drip of misinformation can significantly harden someone's opinion on a topic.

krige 10y ago

Can't help but feel that this sudden 'fake news' push seems more like a movement to enforce mainstream media control versus alternative/grassroots in light of the recent U.S. election, rather than any actual concern. After all, the CNN, Huffington et al. had their own share of misrepresentation and outright lies[1] - but will those be targeted by this new effort? [1] for example, http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/cnn-caught-rigging-its-methodology-to-produce-phony-poll-claiming-donald-trump-is-winning/25981/ http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/cnn-caught-rigging-its-meth...

fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago
This ^ is the beginning of the end of free press.

return0 10y ago

Kudos move for Zuck to try to appease investors but i think he knows himself this thing is not working, and i m glad he does.

fil_a_del_fee_a 10y ago

Serious question, will all celebrity (aka tabloid) news be considered fake news? For example, Pop star Jane Doe in relationship with Actor John Smith? Stuff at the supermarket counters. Side note.. what ever happened to bat-boy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_Boy_(character)

mindcrash 10y ago

While the upper echelons in society are deciding what "fake news" and "real news" is, and thus what you should consume or not, I would like everyone to remember this particular quote: "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, and allow very lively debate within that spectrum" Looks familiar? This is Noam Chomsky talking, by the way.