4 ms·

Facebook sat idly by during an election cycle as their platform was used to propagate fake news because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship, and now

by snarf 10y ago

Facebook sat idly by during an election cycle as their platform was used to propagate fake news because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship, and now they suddenly have the moral imperative to police your private messages? I am so glad I quit Facebook a long time ago. They are the big tech company I like the least.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship Facebook fired its "news curators" in response to criticism of it suppressing "news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential 'trending' news section" [1]. This happened in May of last year. [1] http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006 http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp...
- snarf 10y ago
  Right, in an effort not to appear as though they are editorializing legitimate news stories for one side or the other via what appears in the trending news section, they threw the baby out with the bath water. Fake news is not legitimate news. It's a form of spam. They did nothing to remove this spam once they got rid of the human editors. So the trending news section went from left leaning legitimate news stories under human editors to a bunch of spam. Now they want to use automated methods to police your private messages when they couldn't be bothered to figure out an automated method to remove spam from their trending news section when it really mattered.
s_kilk 10y ago
> because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship Or because they were raking in money off the back of it.
- nl 10y ago
  This maybe true, but the mechanics of it escape me? Many fake news sites were destination sites which carried ads. It seems unlikely that the margin on that traffic would have been enough to pay for significant Facebook traffic. The version of this play which I've heard was: - Create fake "news" site with outrageous stories. - Cover it with ads (from Google and others) - Seed it in Facebook groups - Rely on organic reach to generate traffic. I maybe wrong about the ability to to arbitrage on this traffic. If anyone has numbers I'd love to see them.
  - mcbits 10y ago
    When our granparents did this, they called it satire and had to chop down a lot of trees to like and share.
  - snarf 10y ago
    I believe the parent means Facebook makes money off of this indirectly. The more salacious fake news on Facebook, the higher the user engagement rate with the news feed, and the more time spent on Facebook reading and sharing this stuff. This translates to more ad revenue for Facebook.
    - nl 10y ago
      Yeah, maybe, if we are stretching. But I wouldn't describe that as "raking in money" - more like a marginal increase which might have been matched by other changes in the news feed algorithm.
mcbits 10y ago
The policing of private messages is not new or sudden. Facebook has censored "offensive" (yet legal) private messages for years. One can assume they also already detect and report criminal activity to some degree. But it's understandable that they wouldn't want to shine the spotlight on this practice.
- lostlogin 10y ago
  For a while there it was headline news every time a breastfeeding mother got censored.
  - mcbits 10y ago
    AFAIK those are images posted publicly or semi-publicly and getting flagged by prudes, or at least that's how it gets portrayed. But my friend sent a series of Middle East carnage images to me in "private" messages, and they were removed a few days later with a message about being inappropriate for the site. Neither of us flagged them.
    - p49k 10y ago
      Those same photos might have just been posted elsewhere on Facebook publicly and flagged there. Not that I am supporting Facebook or censorship or anything, but on the technical aspect, maybe there's an explanation that doesn't involve reading the private messages.
      - titraprutr 10y ago
        There is an easy to prove that they do read private messages. Send a private message with a link that points to your private website. Wait a few minutes and you should see in your server's logs that Facebook's bot is trying to crawl that url.
        p49k 10y ago
        True, but they also show a preview of the page in the message, which would require fetching it. Pretty much every messaging service does that now. Also, there are legitimate reasons to scan URLs (malware, for example). Again, not trying to defend Facebook or absolve them of violating privacy, just saying that for these specific criticisms, there are technical explanations.
SixSigma 10y ago
> Facebook sat idly by if you think that, you have been reading Fake News

by snarf 10y ago

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

> because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship Facebook fired its "news curators" in response to criticism of it suppressing "news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential 'trending' news section" [1]. This happened in May of last year. [1] http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-conser-1775461006 http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-supp...

snarf 10y ago
Right, in an effort not to appear as though they are editorializing legitimate news stories for one side or the other via what appears in the trending news section, they threw the baby out with the bath water. Fake news is not legitimate news. It's a form of spam. They did nothing to remove this spam once they got rid of the human editors. So the trending news section went from left leaning legitimate news stories under human editors to a bunch of spam. Now they want to use automated methods to police your private messages when they couldn't be bothered to figure out an automated method to remove spam from their trending news section when it really mattered.

s_kilk 10y ago

> because blocking this stuff would amount to censorship Or because they were raking in money off the back of it.

nl 10y ago
This maybe true, but the mechanics of it escape me? Many fake news sites were destination sites which carried ads. It seems unlikely that the margin on that traffic would have been enough to pay for significant Facebook traffic. The version of this play which I've heard was: - Create fake "news" site with outrageous stories. - Cover it with ads (from Google and others) - Seed it in Facebook groups - Rely on organic reach to generate traffic. I maybe wrong about the ability to to arbitrage on this traffic. If anyone has numbers I'd love to see them.
- mcbits 10y ago
  When our granparents did this, they called it satire and had to chop down a lot of trees to like and share.
- snarf 10y ago
  I believe the parent means Facebook makes money off of this indirectly. The more salacious fake news on Facebook, the higher the user engagement rate with the news feed, and the more time spent on Facebook reading and sharing this stuff. This translates to more ad revenue for Facebook.
  - nl 10y ago
    Yeah, maybe, if we are stretching. But I wouldn't describe that as "raking in money" - more like a marginal increase which might have been matched by other changes in the news feed algorithm.

mcbits 10y ago

The policing of private messages is not new or sudden. Facebook has censored "offensive" (yet legal) private messages for years. One can assume they also already detect and report criminal activity to some degree. But it's understandable that they wouldn't want to shine the spotlight on this practice.

lostlogin 10y ago
For a while there it was headline news every time a breastfeeding mother got censored.
- mcbits 10y ago
  AFAIK those are images posted publicly or semi-publicly and getting flagged by prudes, or at least that's how it gets portrayed. But my friend sent a series of Middle East carnage images to me in "private" messages, and they were removed a few days later with a message about being inappropriate for the site. Neither of us flagged them.
  - p49k 10y ago
    Those same photos might have just been posted elsewhere on Facebook publicly and flagged there. Not that I am supporting Facebook or censorship or anything, but on the technical aspect, maybe there's an explanation that doesn't involve reading the private messages.
    - titraprutr 10y ago
      There is an easy to prove that they do read private messages. Send a private message with a link that points to your private website. Wait a few minutes and you should see in your server's logs that Facebook's bot is trying to crawl that url.
      - p49k 10y ago
        True, but they also show a preview of the page in the message, which would require fetching it. Pretty much every messaging service does that now. Also, there are legitimate reasons to scan URLs (malware, for example). Again, not trying to defend Facebook or absolve them of violating privacy, just saying that for these specific criticisms, there are technical explanations.

SixSigma 10y ago

> Facebook sat idly by if you think that, you have been reading Fake News