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Facebook blocks links to B.S. Detector, fake news warning plugin
- nanis 10y agoFrom Hustler Magazine v. Falwell to this ... sad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell#/media/File:Falwellhustler.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell#/m...
- joatmon-snoo 10y agoIn what way is this relevant at all?
- sschueller 10y agoFake news is protected under free speech. Not on Facebook since it's private but it's a bad thing if everyone has a walled garden. People are actively trying to turn the internet into a safe space ignoring free speech and all the hard work that came before to keep it. There is no 100% filter for fake news especially with all this propaganda from governments not excluding the United States.
- oh_sigh 10y agoNot sure how that is relevant...Has anyone proposed removing fake news from the internet entirely?
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoThe problem isn't that fake news exists, it's that Facebook's algorithm promotes it over real news.
- tedunangst 10y agoStill not seeing the connection to Hustler.
- poorman 10y agoI'm not sure why anyone uses Facebook anymore. I think a better plugin would be to remove any posts that contain remote content. Then you are simply left with updates about your friends.
- trendia 10y agoAn even better plugin would block Facebook altogether.
- tsm 10y agoThat'd be a great plugin and seems relatively easy to make…does it exist?
- daveguy 10y agoAnd you think the B.S. detector was blocked quickly. There would be a pure vacuum left in the internet due to the quickness with which a third party remover would disappear. I expect Facebook is saturated and or declining in the US due to excess BS. A few years ago it was rare that I would find a "fb free" person. Now it is much more common (maybe as much my age group as fb though).
- notadoc 10y agoPretty sure the only reason most people I know use Facebook is for Tinder.
- RickS 10y agoThis is funny, because the only reason tinder values a facebook login is if users were robust facebook users pre-tinder (and thus easily verifiable as real people), so it's ultimately all for naught.
- quickquicker 10y agoSame here. Hadn't been active on it for years, basically since college.
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- Neliquat 10y agoClearly, they are part of the problem. Perhaps even symbolicly the problem(s) itself.
- convolvatron 10y agoexactly. if it comes down to people internalizing information from various sources without any critical thought, its really too late for democracy. trying to vet the sources after the fact is pointless. if any random person can bring down society purely by spewing innuendo, then the whole premise of the fourth estate is flawed.
- notadoc 10y agoHow about a plugin that blocks Facebook completely?
- oh_sigh 10y agoInsert 127.0.0.1 facebook.com 127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com 127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com into your /etc/hosts file.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoEven better, use 0.0.0.0 to avoid timing out on localhost. Or :: for IPv6.
- akeck 10y agoI use a Rasp Pi running Unbound DNS to block it. Using a dedicated DNS server provides coverage for mobile devices with no /etc/hosts access.
- artemisyna 10y agoI just saw a link to the site on my feed and it was working fine for me -- anyone else seeing it blocked?
- tintor 10y agoJust tried to post the link on my FB feed and it works fine. There is no blocking.
- joatmon-snoo 10y agoPeople keep saying that Facebook should be doing more to block fake news, but here's the part that I don't get: why do you want Facebook to exercise even _more_ discretion over what kind of news people see? That's to say nothing of the sheer difficulty of classifying something as "fake news". What's the threshold? How do you determine if something is fake news? Should stuff like Clickhole and The Onion - y'know, satire news - be considered fake news? What about sources like the Huffington Post, which masquerades as a newspaper but is literally a glorified blogger platform?
- NikolaeVarius 10y agoIt's easy to be outraged rather than actually thinking about the problem. HEADLINE:"FACEBOOK NEWS FEED POPULATED BY BIASED EDITORS" INTERNET:"MACHINE LEARNING IS UNBIASED WHY ISN"T FB USING ML?" -- HEADLINE:"FACEBOOK NEWS FEED POPULATED BY FAKE NEWS BECAUSE ML ISN'T DIFFERENTIATING NEWS TYPES" INTERNET:"FACEBOOK NEEDS TO CONTROL WHAT NEWS GETS ON THE NEWS FEED" --- HEADLINE:"FACEBOOK CENSORING CONTROVERSIAL NEWS" INTERNET:"FACEBOOK NEEDS TO HIRE EDITORS THAT WON'T CENSOR THINGS" GOTO 1
- Gargoyle 10y agoI don't think Facebook needs to control what gets on the news feed.
- EdHominem 10y agoThey could have avoided all of that by not interfering. All they need to do is nothing. Don't favor some news, don't block fact-checkers. Just let me see everything my friends post.
- bryansum 10y agoGreat point; the question then becomes why is this interference necessary? Largely due to ads. Instagram made their feed algorithmic recently for this reason.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
- tener 10y agoIsn't Facebook blocking any plugins that interfere with the site contents? Perhaps it just got popular enough for them to notice?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- forrestthewoods 10y agoThe problem with this, of course, is that even Pulitzer winning organizations are guilty of being fake news. And they're, arguably, far more damaging than National Enquirer type headlines. https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-propaganda-about-russian-propaganda/amp https://www.google.com/amp/www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/...
- makomk 10y agoThat got even more ridiculous when Josh Marshall of TPM and Paul Krugman of the New York Times got pissed off at all the people who didn't buy it because of course, everyone knows that Russia was influencing the election: https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/802192619627540480 https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/802192619627540480 Just like the most obnoxious fake-news-spreading social media users, the fact that it confirmed their belief was more important than its obvious fakeness. And make no mistake, a dodgy anonymous group spreading dubious but terrifying stats about Russian propaganda whilst redefining that to mean any site posting politicial views they disagree with is a form of fake news, even if they eventually managed to find a reputable news organisation that would launder their claims for them.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoThe problem with the NSA database -- and I assume the Russian equivalent -- is that it can be used to hide interference in other nations (or domestically), using social graph information and psychology profiles. I don't believe that the issues which won Trump the election are because of Russian influence -- they're generational scale strategic blunders on the part of the US -- but that several of them became "active" at a critical moment in US politics is precisely how covert warfare between large nations is enacted (or, at least, is the obvious extension of Cold War tactics). It's very likely that Russia executed an operation against the US during the most recent election cycle. The actual effectiveness of that, and the culpability we bear in leaving the nation is such a vulnerable state is a matter of considerable debate.
- clifanatic 10y agoWhich, incidentally, "detects" any non-left-wing news source as "B.S.".
- quadrangle 10y agoDidn't check myself, can you just provide any example of that? Poster above says it blocks Wikileaks as a rumor site which is, um, not even non-left-wing. Wikileaks is a legitimate source that isn't partisan, but partisan people love or hate it whenever it reveals something good or bad for their side. :P
- fudged71 10y agoRemember Facebook before news? It was fantastic. Newsfeed advertisements lead to rich multimedia posts which lead to news and then fake news. From a product standpoint, I think they should not have allowed news organizations on the platform.
- netsharc 10y agoAh, Facebook nowadays is just idiots writing their friends' names underneath meme pics, because they think that's how you share stuff with friends: some content has 100K comments, but most of it is just people's names, such a tragic UX. The great news is that this 9gag-level junk content is what will turn away their eyeballs base.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoBlame the interface, not the user. This just tells you tagging is more discoverable than sharing.
- treebeard901 10y agoIt's too easy to blame Facebook in this case. Fake news has a market because people seek it out. Some may want to believe the fake news to confirm a world view they hold and others may see it as entertainment. The real problem here is why do people want to believe things that are obviously not true? Maybe some of it is that the world is increasingly more complicated. You can't explain most issues without researching current events and having a firm grasp of history. Perhaps it is comforting for people who do not have the time or the ability to understand complex problems. In my opinion, the easiest thing for Facebook to do to fix the problem is to just bring back the chronological news feed. If a friend of mine shares something Facebook assumes I don't agree with then I should be the one to make that decision, not an algorithm. This will break the "bubbles" by forcing people to talk to each other again.
- sdenton4 10y agoFake news is a problem because the wrong metrics are being targeted. Fake news vendors are seeking clicks because ctr maps directly to their revenue stream. So they make outrage click bait, get the money, and compete to make the most outrageous stuff. There's a mix of human psychology and general platform failure going on here.
- treebeard901 10y ago> Fake news vendors are seeking clicks because ctr maps directly to their revenue stream. This is an absolutely important aspect of the fake news problem. It goes back to when news started to be run for profit, which has always been the case to some degree. In recent decades it appears to have accelerated. The internet during this time started to become commercialized as well. The ad supported internet and for profit news combine to create this scenario. Maybe it is a chicken and egg problem... Does supply drive demand in this case or is it the other way around? I genuinely do not have an answer and suspect it is somewhere in the middle. It is an unfortunate symbiotic relationship we have found ourselves in.
- __jal 10y agoUgh. Facebook should quit pretending to be part of the web. Just recreate the AOL experience and be done with it. It is beyond embarrassing that they're blocking people from helping each other in order to fail at saving, er, face. "Share with your friends in any way our PR department approves!" At least China isn't weaselly about its control-freakery. Zuck & pals really should own theirs.
- partycoder 10y agoSome challenges: - it's hard to draw a line between true and false in the presence of subjective information. - it's hard to do a classification without false positives and false negatives. - it's hard to defend yourself from accusations of bias and manipulation in the presence of false positives/false negatives. - it's hard to scale a process involving human reviewers. So, in short, what they did is to let the community regulate their own content. If people visit some stupid article about curing cancer by eating cheetos while twerking then that is what is going to trend. If people want to read about Brawndo, the thirst mutilator and how awesome it is on plants let them read it.
- partycoder 10y agoThen, just like television is not responsible for TV addicts, Facebook may not be responsible for the susceptibility of people to believe and share fake news.
- DefaultUserHN 10y agoWhy should Facebook be responsible? Do we really need to "protect" people by preventing them from reading tabloid magazines?
- partycoder 10y agoI think the problem to address should be improving education. If you are well educated it would take a much more elaborate effort to trick you. It's still possible, e.g: race baiting and conspiracy theories have become a thing lately.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tmaly 10y agoI would like to see a raw unfiltered stream on Facebook with some colored labels like satire, entertainment, opinon, etc. Rather than label an entire source, each story should be labeled, perhaps by a community effort. Deciding what is fake and what is not with an algorithm is a slippery slope. Mainstream media rushed stories that created their own echo chambers last week with the Ohio State incident. Newsweek was just on air the other day saying they published a story that they did not read or write. If mainstream journalists are not doing their job, how can we trust an algorithm to get it right?
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- danielam 10y ago"The list of domains powering the B.S. Detector was somewhat indiscriminately compiled from various sources around the web." You don't say. Could that be why thedailywtf.com is in that list?
- kian3210 10y agoThinking about politics first is a backward way to look at the world. We need to know the truth about facts.http://www.drasticdsemulator.com/2016/11/drastic-ds-emulator.html http://www.drasticdsemulator.com/2016/11/drastic-ds-emulator...
- kian3210 10y agoBlocking is not the only answer BTW. Simple labeling would go a long way. The Onion would still be funny with a little "satire" tag. http://www.pradhanmantriyojana.org/2016/08/02/digilocker/ http://www.pradhanmantriyojana.org/2016/08/02/digilocker/
- mikebay 10y agoFacebook policing fake news haha let me laugh, is facebook serious? Facebook is having trust issues left and right, but still they want block and controll and play judge of fake news.. this is hilarious indeed! Facebook, go home please. Your business is censorship and thats not what I'm after. Freedom of speech, thanks!
- problems 10y agoThis plugin blocks wikileaks.org as a "rumor" site. This is what I feared would happen with plugins and concepts like this.
- gohrt 10y agoThe plugin doesn't block anything, it labels things. Wikileaks is a "rumor" site. It doesn't provide verified information.
- glitchdout 10y ago> Wikileaks is a "rumor" site. It doesn't provide verified information. This is a blatant lie. But I guess this is the type of propaganda and JTRIG ops that we have to get used to. https://wikileaks.org/About.html https://wikileaks.org/About.html > We are fearless in our efforts to get the unvarnished truth out to the public. When information comes in, our journalists analyse the material, verify it and write a news piece about it describing its significance to society. We then publish both the news story and the original material in order to enable readers to analyse the story in the context of the original source material themselves.
- brilliantcode 10y agowhat's going under the hood here to reliably tell if an article is fake or not?
- OJFord 10y agoChecking against a PR-curated list: https://github.com/selfagency/bs-detector/blob/master/chrome/data/data.json https://github.com/selfagency/bs-detector/blob/master/chrome...
- brilliantcode 10y agothat's incredibly simple, I thought some NLP and web crawling was involved. The bigger challenge are fake news generating disinformation and fake comments on various social media platforms. This is especially true in reddit where sockpuppetry and vote manipulation as well as band wagoning is rampant. Anonymity in social network seems to serve the voice of those who exploit it's weakness as well as the general naivety and indifference from it's audiences. For example, in various cryptocoin subreddits I'm seeing a lot of said activities, even where it is blatantly obvious, the moderators seem to turn the other cheeck as it generates long debates. As I recall, Zuckerberg did the same shit in the early days according the movie The social network where he would jump in discussion and generate long debates. Except, now the very technique is being used for political and manipulations in un-regulated "crypto-anarchist-code-is-law" market exchanges. It's a matter of time before more tools that help the user cut through the bullshit appears. There will be tit for tats on both sides but in the long run it's to make fake information expensive to be disseminated.
- pipio21 10y agoWell, you have it, your ministry of Truth. Now the question is, the fake news detector: Will detect the lies about weapons of mass destruction? Will detect about lies in basic statistics like gross product or unemployment done by Gov agencies? It is said that the first victim in any war is Truth, as we get nearer a financial collapse because debt unsustainable path the people in power are getting more and more worried and want to exert some kind of censure about news and data they can't control. It would be great to have fake news and data detector that are not centralized. Oh wait, they already exist: places like shadowstats.com But I bet that if you access those places you will become labeled a fake news subversive that doubts the sacred news that people in power want you to believe.
- jewbooksucks 10y agoBut, there is no fake news problem =[ ony a censorship problem.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gunther24 10y agoEveryone gets what they want from facebook
- gunther24 10y agoEveryone gets what they want out of Facebook.