27 ms·

How is news marked as disputed on Facebook?

89 points by dplgk 10y ago

r_singh 10y ago
"This feature isn't available to everyone yet." How do they determine who to make this feature available to? Only demographics, or some other parameter?
- mgiannopoulos 10y ago
  Facebook does gradual releases. One can guess this is available only in the US (or even just a part of the US) for now.
  - idw 10y ago
    It's launched in the US, Germany, and France so far. It started in the US, and Germany and France both have elections coming up. Launching depends at least on having factcheckers or mainstream media outlets doing factchecking active in that country and willing to join the scheme. (I work for a factchecker in a different country).
- mrdrozdov 10y ago
  I'd expect they have a reasonably effective approach for A/B testing. Essentially, you want a uniformly random sample of your users, but you also want to enforce some properties about "connectedness" of the users in the sample, since user-user interaction might be an interesting metric to track. I think the buzzwords related to this sort of thing is "causal inference." Based on the performance of some sample, you might decide to tweak the feature and release it to a new sample. The buzzwords for this would be "bandit algorithms."
felipemesquita 10y ago
Do we all get the message saying the feature isn't available for erveyone or do some (logged in, I presume) get an actual explanation?
- mgiannopoulos 10y ago
  No explanation on my end (Europe) either
alexilliamson 10y ago
What happens when I dispute The Onion? What happens when FAKENEWS_OUTLET gets disputed and claims it's The Onion? It feels like Facebook is taking us for a ride here...
- throwaway5752 10y ago
  1) When you dispute the Onion, Facebook should take no action because it's legitimate satire (well known, founded 30 years ago) 2) When you dispute FAKENEWS_OUTLET, Facebook should decide against the fake news outlet, because it's not The Onion. FAKENEWS_OUTLET should have a means of being notified and disputing the decision. Further, Facebook should not allow anonymous disputes, track what individuals dispute, and should use something that looks a bit like PageRank to determine complainant credibility (credible complainant are ones that report many fake sites, fake sites are ones reported by good complainants) supplemented by social graph metrics (eg, lots of credible friends, or follower of sites known to be uncredible). Or was that rhetorical? I'm glad Facebook is doing this.
  - ptaipale 10y ago
    It's not one or two times when I've seen people take seriously some piece from Onion or equivalents (and then go ranting about Trump or whatever, even after pointing out it was satire, because it could be true).
    - throwaway5752 10y ago
      Okay, but so what? People are always going to be stupid, but any reasonable person knows The Onion intends to entertain and there were a number of other sites that intended to mislead for money or other reasons. One thing we do kind of poorly as a field in software many times is we get to clever about counterexamples from the 20% side of the pareto principle and say, "well, nothing can be done". As far as fake, news, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it is usually fine.
      - 10y ago
thinkmassive 10y ago
This is actually a link to discover why a story is marked as fake. How do I mark a news story as fake? https://www.facebook.com/help/572838089565953 https://www.facebook.com/help/572838089565953
nodesocket 10y ago
Won't people just mark disputed to stories and articles they don't agree with? There should be a penalty for doing this. Perhaps remove their ability to dispute stories after two or three confirmed offenses. Even on Hacker News where the average user is much more responsible and thoughtful, I've gotten downvoted and flagged to death for opinions/comments/links that don't fall within the echo chamber.
- ythn 10y ago
  So who gets to be the ultimate keeper of truth? If CNN spins a story to be police brutality, but you happen to be an eyewitness who saw that it was actually self-defense, can you mark the CNN story as disputed? Who decides if you are right or wrong?
  - deegles 10y ago
    Unbiased algorithms. /s
  - harshreality 10y ago
    If the race of the victim isn't Caucasian, it's obviously police brutality because of the power and authority disparity between police as an institution and people of the victim's race. I'm not even joking. That's an accepted (approximate) SJW definition. It makes perfect sense if you accept that SJW definition, where violence and brutality and racism depend more on relative social power of the primary social groups of the involved persons, rather than facts relating to the incident in question. When you start drinking that kool-aid, it's a small step to believe that the mere existence of police vis-à-vis historically disadvantaged minority groups is violence, abuse, and brutality. An incident isn't even required. When there is an incident, it's merely a manifestation of the underlying police discrimination, violence and brutality inherent in the system.
    - nodesocket 10y ago
      > If the race of the victim isn't Caucasian, it's obviously police brutality because of the power and authority disparity between police as an institution and people of the victim's race. I can't tell what you are tying to say here. I hope you are not saying if the person is not white then by default it's police brutality.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
iamdave 10y ago
Taking a long/high level view on this: When people are uncritical about that immediate reaction to share, repost, reblog, retweet anything that feeds into that dopamine high of "this coincides with my preconceived notions of n" regardless of how factual or accurate it is, how effective do we really expect Facebook-a site that actively encourages rabid sharing to be with something like this? How effective will any tool, widget or service be at weeding out "fake news" when one can't counter a questionable news source in social media without being called "snowflake" or some other pointless pejorative for committing the cardinal sin of disagreeing? Am I asking this the right way?
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  It's absolutely valid to point out that the entire incentive structure, from advertising to outrage to virality to dopaminagenic, of the current state of online media, is antithetical to promotion of truth. Yes, the systems themselves, and their incentives, are at fault. And must be changed. For the sake of the Liberal Democratic Experiment (referencing liberalism, not the similarly named political party).
unicornporn 10y ago
This is what greets me: "This feature isn't available to everyone yet." I get no info from the linked page.
0x0 10y ago
This page shows, for me, simply: How is news marked as disputed on Facebook? This feature isn't available to everyone yet. How helpful did you find this answer? :< :( :| :) :D Of course, I clicked the saddest-face feedback button.
- roymurdock 10y ago
  "You may see that certain news stories are marked as disputed on Facebook. News stories that are reported as fake by people on Facebook may be reviewed by independent third-party fact-checkers. These fact-checkers will be signatories of the non-partisan Poynter Code of Principles. A story may be marked as disputed if these fact-checkers find the story to be fake. To see why a news story was marked as disputed on Facebook: Hover and click underneath the disputed story. Click About Disputed Stories, or go directly to the independent fact-checking website."
- DaUR 10y ago
  That may be your adblock/noscript, but: > This feature isn't available to everyone yet. Really refers to the fact that Facebook is partnering with mainstream media in each individual country, and so they need time to roll this out internationally. Most countries don't even have a developed fact-checking infrastructure.
  - rebuilder 10y ago
    Now I'm curious - what countries do have a developed fact-checking infrastructure? For the public, I mean, so intelligence services don't qualify if they don't publish their findings ;)
    - DaUR 10y ago
      The US has (Politifact, Snopes, etc). Many countries just don't have well-known companies doing this.
artursapek 10y ago
It's impossible to assign a "true"/"fake" value to all news stories... especially with our increasingly biased and divided media. Here's an example of what happens when we try: Politifact, a consistently liberal-biased source, didn't like that Trump took credit for a hard and proven fact. So they called it "mostly false" even though nothing he said was false. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/25/donald-trump/why-donald-trumps-tweet-about-decline-national-deb/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/... This thing Facebook is doing is bound to just end up becoming crowd-sourced echo-chamber censorship. And they probably know that.
- divbit 10y ago
  >And they probably know that. I imagine their hands are kind of tied- if they don't do anything, then people complain. If they do something, it is possibly not perfect, unless they can come up with some amazing spam reducing innovation which probably close to an AGI fake news bouncer. The only thing to really do is throw some tools up, and adjust them as adversaries (fake news makers) get more tricky, until finally, after a long time, you get the big innovation. In any case, deciding to take a stand is clearly better than doing nothing at all.
  - pharrington 10y ago
    In line with your first sentence: the stand to take is to do nothing.
  - narrator 10y ago
    If the person who was supposed to win the election had won the election there wouldn't have been this huge fake news crisis. The system was working just fine until it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. The tsunami like immune reaction of all the players in the political system to the incorrect person being elected president is certainly awesome to behold.
    - wernercd 10y ago
      Which person who was "supposed" to win the election didn't win the election? The person who was supposed to win did win. There was only one person with the most Electoral College votes...
zyxzevn 10y ago
What about "grey" things for which different groups can be correct in some way. Adding clarity to the information can improve things more than "disputing" it. Some scientific articles are click-bait like: "Reality does not exist until we measure it". http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-m... But it says: an atom can be in superposition state until it is measured. Which tells something about a single atom, not about reality. Or things that are claimed by officials or experts, but for which there is not enough evidence, no evidence at all, or even contrary evidence? Like: Is Russian hacking disputed for which there was no real evidence? Or is wikileaks disputed who exposed quite some corruption? Is Snowden disputed? Is dirty wars (drone assassinations) disputed? Or can we ask deeper questions, like: How much are we being spied on by Facebook? Is Facebook trying to change what we think? What organisations are behind Facebook? I think that both sides should have a fair say in things. With the emphasis on fair. If we declare it disputed and only show one side, we push people apart and stop any deeper discussions. Stupidity is caused by knowing only one side of the story. Adding a joke from the U.S. army: How can you tell if an official from the pentagon is lying? Answer: მиιʌow ƨι ʜ⊥now ƨιʜ.
- mrdrozdov 10y ago
  What are the two sides? Why should they have a say? Some information can be definitely marked as False without taking opinion into account. I have three feet. <= False
peteretep 10y ago
Any fact checking site will end up reflecting reality's well-documented liberal bias.
- toehead2000 10y ago
  haha cuba venezuela ussr
  - peteretep 10y ago
    I'm sure this is meant to mean something, but I can't figure out what.
    - thomasahle 10y ago
      Perhaps just "The liberals are left of the conservatives. The ussr, Cuba and Venezuela were left and didn't work out. Hence liberals aren't always right."?
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        China seems to be doing ... reasonably well presently. Certain other-than-communist nations somewhat less so. I'm not convinced that ideology has all that much to do with it.
  - dang 10y ago
    We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and/or uncivil comments.
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't post ideological boilerplate here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793576 and marked it off-topic.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
thomk 10y ago
Why aren't we focusing on the source of news instead of the truth of it? Nothing is purely true or false because everything falls on a continuum. Words can be strictly true but the sentiment can be false or vice versa. So, a better system is one that attempts to trace back to the source and then you let the reader decide if it's true. Lots of things happen along the way until a news story gets to you. Even direct access to the POTUS twitter account isn't the original source, he's just reciting something he heard. Until there is a technological system that quickly and immediately traces news stories back to the source we will all just continue to be stuck in our own confirmation biases. News outlets protect their sources? Fine. Then the endpoint is that news source. I can then use analytics to discern how true that source has proven to be in the past and/or if the person saying it is typically left/right etc. Based on data you can decide what to believe. I'd also like to see some data on why the POTUS may be lying and not just the fact that he is lying. Sometimes its ego but other times its a red herring. I like John Oliver (in doses) but after watching a few shows it's clear that his show is full of cognitive biases. It is impossible that he doesn't know that he's cutting corners at a minimum. It got me thinking after his show on Apple and encryption. It was pretty clear that in that show he definitely took some creative license. After I thought about it, it makes sense; his whole show is about how ridiculous something is and not to provide both sides of a story. Here's how you know the media is biased. When was the last time you turned on MSNBC and heard them say anything positive at all about the POTUS? Even by accident he must have done something they would normally consider good. You will lie to yourself (cognitive bias). the media lies in a number of ways, politicians lie in many different ways for different reasons and all of that comes to you by way of massive corporations who, well, you get my point. Forget trying to find the truth. Focus on the source of the story then tear apart that source with data and analytics until you can reach some kind of consensus about the degree of truth you are hearing.
- mrdrozdov 10y ago
  What do you mean by source?
  - thomk 10y ago
    Where the story first originated. Who was the first person to say it.
mrdrozdov 10y ago
Considering that anyone can publish anything online, and then collect money for advertising dollars on that topic, this seems like a very reasonable feature regardless of the political climate.
Girlang 10y ago
Will they, for example, mark as "disputed" that the Ryzen is faster than a core i7? (No, as far as I can tell.)
MrInvisible 10y ago
It's just so hard these days to build the globalist, anarcho-communist utopia with all the damn plebs going and thinking for THEMSELVES! Zucc knows best. Just let him handle what you see and no more troubling hate facts will bother you.
R0GUE 10y ago
Third party "fact checkers"???-- factcheck[dot]org "FactCheck.org was launched in December 2003 by Brooks Jackson, a former Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and CNN reporter" Just sayin.....
coconut_crab 10y ago
I think people will just mark anything they don't like as disputed. IMO they can try suggesting posts with different view points than the one users click 'share' or 'like' (combining ML and user provided data to pick the articles). Maybe that will help people have a bit more balanced view on the matter.
golergka 10y ago
All I see on the OP link is: > This feature isn't available to everyone yet.
known 10y ago
"Media does not spread free opinion; It generates opinion" --Oswald, 1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West
libeclipse 10y ago
I just get a "This feature isn't available to everyone yet" message. Is it just me?
ManlyBread 10y ago
In my country the people who maintain facebook have a clear agenda which they are not afraid of showing. These people have already went as far as blocking the accounts of people who dared to question them in the guise of "verification" (that is, being forced to send your actual ID or having your account blocked). Now they'll be able to decide which news are real and which ones are fake. I'm sure that absolutely nothing wrong will come out of this.

89 points by dplgk 10y ago

"This feature isn't available to everyone yet." How do they determine who to make this feature available to? Only demographics, or some other parameter?

mgiannopoulos 10y ago
Facebook does gradual releases. One can guess this is available only in the US (or even just a part of the US) for now.
- idw 10y ago
  It's launched in the US, Germany, and France so far. It started in the US, and Germany and France both have elections coming up. Launching depends at least on having factcheckers or mainstream media outlets doing factchecking active in that country and willing to join the scheme. (I work for a factchecker in a different country).
mrdrozdov 10y ago
I'd expect they have a reasonably effective approach for A/B testing. Essentially, you want a uniformly random sample of your users, but you also want to enforce some properties about "connectedness" of the users in the sample, since user-user interaction might be an interesting metric to track. I think the buzzwords related to this sort of thing is "causal inference." Based on the performance of some sample, you might decide to tweak the feature and release it to a new sample. The buzzwords for this would be "bandit algorithms."

felipemesquita 10y ago

Do we all get the message saying the feature isn't available for erveyone or do some (logged in, I presume) get an actual explanation?

mgiannopoulos 10y ago
No explanation on my end (Europe) either

alexilliamson 10y ago

What happens when I dispute The Onion? What happens when FAKENEWS_OUTLET gets disputed and claims it's The Onion? It feels like Facebook is taking us for a ride here...

throwaway5752 10y ago
1) When you dispute the Onion, Facebook should take no action because it's legitimate satire (well known, founded 30 years ago) 2) When you dispute FAKENEWS_OUTLET, Facebook should decide against the fake news outlet, because it's not The Onion. FAKENEWS_OUTLET should have a means of being notified and disputing the decision. Further, Facebook should not allow anonymous disputes, track what individuals dispute, and should use something that looks a bit like PageRank to determine complainant credibility (credible complainant are ones that report many fake sites, fake sites are ones reported by good complainants) supplemented by social graph metrics (eg, lots of credible friends, or follower of sites known to be uncredible). Or was that rhetorical? I'm glad Facebook is doing this.
- ptaipale 10y ago
  It's not one or two times when I've seen people take seriously some piece from Onion or equivalents (and then go ranting about Trump or whatever, even after pointing out it was satire, because it could be true).
  - throwaway5752 10y ago
    Okay, but so what? People are always going to be stupid, but any reasonable person knows The Onion intends to entertain and there were a number of other sites that intended to mislead for money or other reasons. One thing we do kind of poorly as a field in software many times is we get to clever about counterexamples from the 20% side of the pareto principle and say, "well, nothing can be done". As far as fake, news, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it is usually fine.
    - 10y ago

thinkmassive 10y ago

This is actually a link to discover why a story is marked as fake. How do I mark a news story as fake? https://www.facebook.com/help/572838089565953 https://www.facebook.com/help/572838089565953

nodesocket 10y ago

Won't people just mark disputed to stories and articles they don't agree with? There should be a penalty for doing this. Perhaps remove their ability to dispute stories after two or three confirmed offenses. Even on Hacker News where the average user is much more responsible and thoughtful, I've gotten downvoted and flagged to death for opinions/comments/links that don't fall within the echo chamber.

ythn 10y ago
So who gets to be the ultimate keeper of truth? If CNN spins a story to be police brutality, but you happen to be an eyewitness who saw that it was actually self-defense, can you mark the CNN story as disputed? Who decides if you are right or wrong?
- deegles 10y ago
  Unbiased algorithms. /s
- harshreality 10y ago
  If the race of the victim isn't Caucasian, it's obviously police brutality because of the power and authority disparity between police as an institution and people of the victim's race. I'm not even joking. That's an accepted (approximate) SJW definition. It makes perfect sense if you accept that SJW definition, where violence and brutality and racism depend more on relative social power of the primary social groups of the involved persons, rather than facts relating to the incident in question. When you start drinking that kool-aid, it's a small step to believe that the mere existence of police vis-à-vis historically disadvantaged minority groups is violence, abuse, and brutality. An incident isn't even required. When there is an incident, it's merely a manifestation of the underlying police discrimination, violence and brutality inherent in the system.
  - nodesocket 10y ago
    > If the race of the victim isn't Caucasian, it's obviously police brutality because of the power and authority disparity between police as an institution and people of the victim's race. I can't tell what you are tying to say here. I hope you are not saying if the person is not white then by default it's police brutality.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

iamdave 10y ago

Taking a long/high level view on this: When people are uncritical about that immediate reaction to share, repost, reblog, retweet anything that feeds into that dopamine high of "this coincides with my preconceived notions of n" regardless of how factual or accurate it is, how effective do we really expect Facebook-a site that actively encourages rabid sharing to be with something like this? How effective will any tool, widget or service be at weeding out "fake news" when one can't counter a questionable news source in social media without being called "snowflake" or some other pointless pejorative for committing the cardinal sin of disagreeing? Am I asking this the right way?

dredmorbius 10y ago
It's absolutely valid to point out that the entire incentive structure, from advertising to outrage to virality to dopaminagenic, of the current state of online media, is antithetical to promotion of truth. Yes, the systems themselves, and their incentives, are at fault. And must be changed. For the sake of the Liberal Democratic Experiment (referencing liberalism, not the similarly named political party).

unicornporn 10y ago

This is what greets me: "This feature isn't available to everyone yet." I get no info from the linked page.

0x0 10y ago

This page shows, for me, simply: How is news marked as disputed on Facebook? This feature isn't available to everyone yet. How helpful did you find this answer? :< :( :| :) :D Of course, I clicked the saddest-face feedback button.

roymurdock 10y ago
"You may see that certain news stories are marked as disputed on Facebook. News stories that are reported as fake by people on Facebook may be reviewed by independent third-party fact-checkers. These fact-checkers will be signatories of the non-partisan Poynter Code of Principles. A story may be marked as disputed if these fact-checkers find the story to be fake. To see why a news story was marked as disputed on Facebook: Hover and click underneath the disputed story. Click About Disputed Stories, or go directly to the independent fact-checking website."
DaUR 10y ago
That may be your adblock/noscript, but: > This feature isn't available to everyone yet. Really refers to the fact that Facebook is partnering with mainstream media in each individual country, and so they need time to roll this out internationally. Most countries don't even have a developed fact-checking infrastructure.
- rebuilder 10y ago
  Now I'm curious - what countries do have a developed fact-checking infrastructure? For the public, I mean, so intelligence services don't qualify if they don't publish their findings ;)
  - DaUR 10y ago
    The US has (Politifact, Snopes, etc). Many countries just don't have well-known companies doing this.

artursapek 10y ago

It's impossible to assign a "true"/"fake" value to all news stories... especially with our increasingly biased and divided media. Here's an example of what happens when we try: Politifact, a consistently liberal-biased source, didn't like that Trump took credit for a hard and proven fact. So they called it "mostly false" even though nothing he said was false. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/25/donald-trump/why-donald-trumps-tweet-about-decline-national-deb/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/feb/... This thing Facebook is doing is bound to just end up becoming crowd-sourced echo-chamber censorship. And they probably know that.

divbit 10y ago
>And they probably know that. I imagine their hands are kind of tied- if they don't do anything, then people complain. If they do something, it is possibly not perfect, unless they can come up with some amazing spam reducing innovation which probably close to an AGI fake news bouncer. The only thing to really do is throw some tools up, and adjust them as adversaries (fake news makers) get more tricky, until finally, after a long time, you get the big innovation. In any case, deciding to take a stand is clearly better than doing nothing at all.
- pharrington 10y ago
  In line with your first sentence: the stand to take is to do nothing.
- narrator 10y ago
  If the person who was supposed to win the election had won the election there wouldn't have been this huge fake news crisis. The system was working just fine until it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. The tsunami like immune reaction of all the players in the political system to the incorrect person being elected president is certainly awesome to behold.
  - wernercd 10y ago
    Which person who was "supposed" to win the election didn't win the election? The person who was supposed to win did win. There was only one person with the most Electoral College votes...

zyxzevn 10y ago

What about "grey" things for which different groups can be correct in some way. Adding clarity to the information can improve things more than "disputing" it. Some scientific articles are click-bait like: "Reality does not exist until we measure it". http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-m... But it says: an atom can be in superposition state until it is measured. Which tells something about a single atom, not about reality. Or things that are claimed by officials or experts, but for which there is not enough evidence, no evidence at all, or even contrary evidence? Like: Is Russian hacking disputed for which there was no real evidence? Or is wikileaks disputed who exposed quite some corruption? Is Snowden disputed? Is dirty wars (drone assassinations) disputed? Or can we ask deeper questions, like: How much are we being spied on by Facebook? Is Facebook trying to change what we think? What organisations are behind Facebook? I think that both sides should have a fair say in things. With the emphasis on fair. If we declare it disputed and only show one side, we push people apart and stop any deeper discussions. Stupidity is caused by knowing only one side of the story. Adding a joke from the U.S. army: How can you tell if an official from the pentagon is lying? Answer: მиιʌow ƨι ʜ⊥now ƨιʜ.

mrdrozdov 10y ago
What are the two sides? Why should they have a say? Some information can be definitely marked as False without taking opinion into account. I have three feet. <= False

peteretep 10y ago

Any fact checking site will end up reflecting reality's well-documented liberal bias.

toehead2000 10y ago
haha cuba venezuela ussr
- peteretep 10y ago
  I'm sure this is meant to mean something, but I can't figure out what.
  - thomasahle 10y ago
    Perhaps just "The liberals are left of the conservatives. The ussr, Cuba and Venezuela were left and didn't work out. Hence liberals aren't always right."?
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      China seems to be doing ... reasonably well presently. Certain other-than-communist nations somewhat less so. I'm not convinced that ideology has all that much to do with it.
- dang 10y ago
  We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and/or uncivil comments.
dang 10y ago
Please don't post ideological boilerplate here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13793576 and marked it off-topic.
- dredmorbius 10y ago

thomk 10y ago

Why aren't we focusing on the source of news instead of the truth of it? Nothing is purely true or false because everything falls on a continuum. Words can be strictly true but the sentiment can be false or vice versa. So, a better system is one that attempts to trace back to the source and then you let the reader decide if it's true. Lots of things happen along the way until a news story gets to you. Even direct access to the POTUS twitter account isn't the original source, he's just reciting something he heard. Until there is a technological system that quickly and immediately traces news stories back to the source we will all just continue to be stuck in our own confirmation biases. News outlets protect their sources? Fine. Then the endpoint is that news source. I can then use analytics to discern how true that source has proven to be in the past and/or if the person saying it is typically left/right etc. Based on data you can decide what to believe. I'd also like to see some data on why the POTUS may be lying and not just the fact that he is lying. Sometimes its ego but other times its a red herring. I like John Oliver (in doses) but after watching a few shows it's clear that his show is full of cognitive biases. It is impossible that he doesn't know that he's cutting corners at a minimum. It got me thinking after his show on Apple and encryption. It was pretty clear that in that show he definitely took some creative license. After I thought about it, it makes sense; his whole show is about how ridiculous something is and not to provide both sides of a story. Here's how you know the media is biased. When was the last time you turned on MSNBC and heard them say anything positive at all about the POTUS? Even by accident he must have done something they would normally consider good. You will lie to yourself (cognitive bias). the media lies in a number of ways, politicians lie in many different ways for different reasons and all of that comes to you by way of massive corporations who, well, you get my point. Forget trying to find the truth. Focus on the source of the story then tear apart that source with data and analytics until you can reach some kind of consensus about the degree of truth you are hearing.

mrdrozdov 10y ago
What do you mean by source?
- thomk 10y ago
  Where the story first originated. Who was the first person to say it.

mrdrozdov 10y ago

Considering that anyone can publish anything online, and then collect money for advertising dollars on that topic, this seems like a very reasonable feature regardless of the political climate.

Girlang 10y ago

Will they, for example, mark as "disputed" that the Ryzen is faster than a core i7? (No, as far as I can tell.)

MrInvisible 10y ago

It's just so hard these days to build the globalist, anarcho-communist utopia with all the damn plebs going and thinking for THEMSELVES! Zucc knows best. Just let him handle what you see and no more troubling hate facts will bother you.

R0GUE 10y ago

Third party "fact checkers"???-- factcheck[dot]org "FactCheck.org was launched in December 2003 by Brooks Jackson, a former Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, and CNN reporter" Just sayin.....

coconut_crab 10y ago

I think people will just mark anything they don't like as disputed. IMO they can try suggesting posts with different view points than the one users click 'share' or 'like' (combining ML and user provided data to pick the articles). Maybe that will help people have a bit more balanced view on the matter.

golergka 10y ago

All I see on the OP link is: > This feature isn't available to everyone yet.

known 10y ago

"Media does not spread free opinion; It generates opinion" --Oswald, 1918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West

libeclipse 10y ago

I just get a "This feature isn't available to everyone yet" message. Is it just me?

ManlyBread 10y ago

In my country the people who maintain facebook have a clear agenda which they are not afraid of showing. These people have already went as far as blocking the accounts of people who dared to question them in the guise of "verification" (that is, being forced to send your actual ID or having your account blocked). Now they'll be able to decide which news are real and which ones are fake. I'm sure that absolutely nothing wrong will come out of this.