3 ms·

ok, so now the obvious question becomes, who fact checks the fact checkers? i don't blame facebook, but the people that have been asking for this i guess are a

by gfodor 10y ago

ok, so now the obvious question becomes, who fact checks the fact checkers? i don't blame facebook, but the people that have been asking for this i guess are about to get what they deserve: more consolidation of the power of persuasion of the masses into the hands of facebook. want to instantly discredit a story? just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ?

basch 10y ago
Why cant facebook just go after blogspam clickbait in general? If a story is a copy of a copy, have the algorithm favor the original instead of the blogspam. If a local news agency copies an AP/Reuters story word for word, have the software suggest replacing the replica with the original. Treat local news duplicates the same as any wordpress+adsense blog. If journalists are adding commentary thats a different story (albeit most commentary is a needless act of faux value addition anyway) but mashable et all are just embedding ingur/youtube content with a catchy headline and the letters h/t appended to the end. This is a continuation of what ebaumsworld did since foreverago. Deaggregate the aggregating middlemen. Ripping the embed out of the blogspam, and turning it into a direct link, is trivial. If the only content on a page is a youtube video covered in a hundred ads, just return me the youtube video. Flag websites as blogspam, and more agressivly return just the content they "stole." Make it hard to get off that shitlist. Id rather facebook make a little money deconstructing the web, than whomever spun up wordpress and paid for a bad theme being rewarded for polluting it. Facebook has an opportunity to add through reduction; to add value by finding signal in noise, leaving noise on the cutting room floor. Deduplication should be something incredibly easy to do algorithmically, compared to fact checking. (Hell facebook is already half way there with trending, anthough it too often lumps semi-unrelated events.) Google News and Techmeme do a great job of it. Techmeme eloquently spells out the solution http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed Too many different ideas are getting conflated here. Clean up the spam/dupe mess FIRST, and sifting the sensationalized salon/dailycaller hyperbole from the blatant false news becomes easier (because we then arent are drowning in nearly identical but different copies of articles.)
- itsdrewmiller 10y ago
  Maybe follow the link and evaluate the ad:content ratio or just the raw number of different ad services on the page. Seems like the collateral damage to such an approach would largely improve the overall web experience.
  - basch 10y ago
    I do think it important to consolidate duplicates of stories, and credit the original copy. Maybe a feature (that users can disable if it fails) that automatically finds the source and replaces the post with the original. Maybe two versions of the newsfeed, the default "sterilized" and a hidden but accessible "raw"
  - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
    If the ads load quickly, from few domains, and work well in mobile, you can assume it is not a legit news site.
- wmf 10y ago
  I hate blogspam, but Facebook has to be seen to be taking direct action against fake news right now. They can't afford to take detours to fix other problems first.
  - basch 10y ago
    they are one in the same problem http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 quite honestly, "mostly fake but slightly rooted in truth blogspam" is 10000x the problem actual straight fake stories are. vitamins, detox, antioxidants, etc, etc, are a much larger pool of fake news than fabricated propaganda. people are making up outrageous stories for ad revenue, not to win elections. state sponsored narratives are unlikely to get flagged by these types of measures because they will be published by credible sources. I doubt NYT will start failing snopes tests. I doubt every SPLC post will get flagged for being out of context or unverified.
- dabockster 10y ago
pg314 10y ago
> just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ? It's not that easy. They need provide a link with an explanation why a certain story is disputed. It's true that Facebook has a lot of power. But that was already the case before this update: they could manipulate what stories a user saw, which could be used to influence a large part of their user base. I don't see this as adding that much power. It's also easier to check this mechanism than feed manipulation.
reilly3000 10y ago
I think you misunderstand the format of a fact check. It's a distinct piece of content that has its own schema.org markup. It should include only editorial analysis and not opinion. It features reference sources and encourages readers to visit them. It is in its ideal form pure objective journalism. Sites adorn themselves with cute logos about the veracity of the claim but really they should be serving a compilation of facts. If they fail to do so regularly Facebook's credibility is on the line so they will be ensuring they only link to quality sources. They couldn't just batch discredit a topic because they need something to link to.
floatrock 10y ago
> who fact checks the fact checkers? Who polices the police? Who governs the government? Who grants authority to the authorities? In western democracies, ideally the answer is all the same: the people. Ideally, once a power broker starts to lose credibility, they start to lose their power. And that's really what this is about. Facebook has lost credibility given the ease these new social technologies have been co-opted into propaganda tools. Sure, on one level they might want to discredit stories, but I think the far more likely scenario is Facebook as a platform for eyeballs has been discredited, and fewer people taking it seriously hurts the stock price. Even as a developer (and potential employee lead), I've more viciously ignored the quarterly facebook recruiter cold-call inbox spam because I frankly don't want to participate in what's become a propaganda mill this election season... I use react and recommend the technology all the time, I have friends who do great work at facebook, and most importantly, I actively use it every day... I just personally want to contribute my efforts elsewhere (after all, cigarette smokers smoke cigarettes every day too). At the end of the day, the credibility of the fact checkers comes from community consensus on the legitimacy of fact checkers. The problem is that micro-targeting groups while maximizing eyeball engagement has connected these groups more closely while breaking community consensus. Without community consensus, fact checkers have no credibility (and neither will Facebook the eyeball platform). In other words, the paradox is we're more social yet more isolated at the same time. I appreciate this fact checker gesture, but at the end of the day, facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community and community consensus, not being individually social.
- floatrock 10y ago
  As a followup thought, > facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community consensus and being community-social, not being individually social. The best litmus test for this is going to be whether everyone will see the same "disputed by 3rd parties" warning, or whether that warning will be micro-targeted to individual echochambers like everything else is. If my echochamber will show a warning next to a breitbart piece but my conservative uncle won't see it because his echochamber disagrees with the fact checking, that's going to be a huge red flag that facebook is only continuing the individually-social behavior that created this credibility problem in the first place.

by gfodor 10y ago

basch 10y ago

Why cant facebook just go after blogspam clickbait in general? If a story is a copy of a copy, have the algorithm favor the original instead of the blogspam. If a local news agency copies an AP/Reuters story word for word, have the software suggest replacing the replica with the original. Treat local news duplicates the same as any wordpress+adsense blog. If journalists are adding commentary thats a different story (albeit most commentary is a needless act of faux value addition anyway) but mashable et all are just embedding ingur/youtube content with a catchy headline and the letters h/t appended to the end. This is a continuation of what ebaumsworld did since foreverago. Deaggregate the aggregating middlemen. Ripping the embed out of the blogspam, and turning it into a direct link, is trivial. If the only content on a page is a youtube video covered in a hundred ads, just return me the youtube video. Flag websites as blogspam, and more agressivly return just the content they "stole." Make it hard to get off that shitlist. Id rather facebook make a little money deconstructing the web, than whomever spun up wordpress and paid for a bad theme being rewarded for polluting it. Facebook has an opportunity to add through reduction; to add value by finding signal in noise, leaving noise on the cutting room floor. Deduplication should be something incredibly easy to do algorithmically, compared to fact checking. (Hell facebook is already half way there with trending, anthough it too often lumps semi-unrelated events.) Google News and Techmeme do a great job of it. Techmeme eloquently spells out the solution http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed Too many different ideas are getting conflated here. Clean up the spam/dupe mess FIRST, and sifting the sensationalized salon/dailycaller hyperbole from the blatant false news becomes easier (because we then arent are drowning in nearly identical but different copies of articles.)

itsdrewmiller 10y ago
Maybe follow the link and evaluate the ad:content ratio or just the raw number of different ad services on the page. Seems like the collateral damage to such an approach would largely improve the overall web experience.
- basch 10y ago
  I do think it important to consolidate duplicates of stories, and credit the original copy. Maybe a feature (that users can disable if it fails) that automatically finds the source and replaces the post with the original. Maybe two versions of the newsfeed, the default "sterilized" and a hidden but accessible "raw"
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  If the ads load quickly, from few domains, and work well in mobile, you can assume it is not a legit news site.
wmf 10y ago
I hate blogspam, but Facebook has to be seen to be taking direct action against fake news right now. They can't afford to take detours to fix other problems first.
- basch 10y ago
  they are one in the same problem http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?n=1174 quite honestly, "mostly fake but slightly rooted in truth blogspam" is 10000x the problem actual straight fake stories are. vitamins, detox, antioxidants, etc, etc, are a much larger pool of fake news than fabricated propaganda. people are making up outrageous stories for ad revenue, not to win elections. state sponsored narratives are unlikely to get flagged by these types of measures because they will be published by credible sources. I doubt NYT will start failing snopes tests. I doubt every SPLC post will get flagged for being out of context or unverified.
dabockster 10y ago

pg314 10y ago

> just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ? It's not that easy. They need provide a link with an explanation why a certain story is disputed. It's true that Facebook has a lot of power. But that was already the case before this update: they could manipulate what stories a user saw, which could be used to influence a large part of their user base. I don't see this as adding that much power. It's also easier to check this mechanism than feed manipulation.

reilly3000 10y ago

I think you misunderstand the format of a fact check. It's a distinct piece of content that has its own schema.org markup. It should include only editorial analysis and not opinion. It features reference sources and encourages readers to visit them. It is in its ideal form pure objective journalism. Sites adorn themselves with cute logos about the veracity of the claim but really they should be serving a compilation of facts. If they fail to do so regularly Facebook's credibility is on the line so they will be ensuring they only link to quality sources. They couldn't just batch discredit a topic because they need something to link to.

floatrock 10y ago

> who fact checks the fact checkers? Who polices the police? Who governs the government? Who grants authority to the authorities? In western democracies, ideally the answer is all the same: the people. Ideally, once a power broker starts to lose credibility, they start to lose their power. And that's really what this is about. Facebook has lost credibility given the ease these new social technologies have been co-opted into propaganda tools. Sure, on one level they might want to discredit stories, but I think the far more likely scenario is Facebook as a platform for eyeballs has been discredited, and fewer people taking it seriously hurts the stock price. Even as a developer (and potential employee lead), I've more viciously ignored the quarterly facebook recruiter cold-call inbox spam because I frankly don't want to participate in what's become a propaganda mill this election season... I use react and recommend the technology all the time, I have friends who do great work at facebook, and most importantly, I actively use it every day... I just personally want to contribute my efforts elsewhere (after all, cigarette smokers smoke cigarettes every day too). At the end of the day, the credibility of the fact checkers comes from community consensus on the legitimacy of fact checkers. The problem is that micro-targeting groups while maximizing eyeball engagement has connected these groups more closely while breaking community consensus. Without community consensus, fact checkers have no credibility (and neither will Facebook the eyeball platform). In other words, the paradox is we're more social yet more isolated at the same time. I appreciate this fact checker gesture, but at the end of the day, facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community and community consensus, not being individually social.

floatrock 10y ago
As a followup thought, > facebook's real credibility problem is they need to align their profits with community consensus and being community-social, not being individually social. The best litmus test for this is going to be whether everyone will see the same "disputed by 3rd parties" warning, or whether that warning will be micro-targeted to individual echochambers like everything else is. If my echochamber will show a warning next to a breitbart piece but my conservative uncle won't see it because his echochamber disagrees with the fact checking, that's going to be a huge red flag that facebook is only continuing the individually-social behavior that created this credibility problem in the first place.