4 ms·

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 rid

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.
    - pharrington 10y ago
      When the media outlets first coined the term "fake news," http://nationalreport.net/ http://nationalreport.net/ was their Exhibit A. Its current main headline is "Trump Reports World Record 39 Under Par, 12 Holes-in-One, During Golf Outing with Japanese Prime Minister." In November, one of its front page stories was "Chris Christie nominated to head of Supreme Food Court." That is the primary example people were using to make the case to create centralized "trusted news sources." I'm not really sure what the Pareto principle has to do with this.
- stevage 10y ago
  Hopefully there will be a special category for satire.
- pharrington 10y ago
  Surely you can't be suggesting that an entity can only be considered a "legitimate" satirist if it's been around for a long time and there's a high amount of consensus regarding it? Also, you cannot use network effects as an accurate proxy for critical thinking. Humans inherently defer a ton of thought to crowd consensus; this crowd consensus becomes less reliable as the subjects involved become more complex. The increasing complexity of modern society only further necessitates the need to train our critical thinking skills. Codifying network effects as a proxy for critical thinking, as FB is doing here, only accelerates the unreliability of groupthink.
  - throwaway5752 10y ago
    I respectfully disagree with you on both counts. I have no illusion that FB cares what I think and will take my approaching and it's not perfect, but it would improve FB's situation. To address your other response, that is why I invoke the Pareto principle (you can solve 80% of malicious news feed entries with 20% of the effort). Anyway, let me also note I find it strange that you are approaching this the way you are. FB is a proprietary, private platform. They will take actions that are best of the long term growth and profitability of the corporation on behalf of the owners (the shareholders). This whole epistemological/political element perplexes me, I think it entirely misses the mark of why FB is doing this. edit: I should also mention, your comment about groupthink makes me think you misunderstand me. Gaming a PageRank like algorithm is certainly possible, but the eigenvalues of the Markov process on the adjacency matrix of complainants/news sources would take a away a large part of the human bias element. And counter-counter-measures are pretty well researched.
    - pharrington 10y ago
      You express a vital misunderstanding of capitalism. Companies do not take the actions that are best for their long term health. They take the actions that are best for their health in the foreseeable future. Further, FB is a private company that owns largest forum for online socializing and public discourse. They are a private entity that controls the commons. I don't care about FB's profit motives; I care that their actions directly erode one of the core requisites of a healthily functioning complex society, so that is what I will talk about. It is not okay to make money by fucking shit up. edit: I don't understand your stance on satire outfits. Was the Onion a satire publication in 1988? If so, how do you square that with your claim? edit2: You refer to "malicious newsfeed entries." It's interesting that the only large scale activity that can even begin to consistently be considered such is the creation of "dark posts," which FB's censorship program does zilch to combat.
- CalRobert 10y ago
  But surely there has to be room for _new_ satire? One of my favourite humour sites is Waterford Whispers News. (Among their classics is "North Korea Lands Man on the Sun".) I share their links on occasion, and often get one or two people exasperatedly saying how ridiculous so and so is for whatever position. Usually, they've based this purely on the headline.
- rabidrat 10y ago
  Actually I think The Onion is a perfect candidate to be labeled, if not 'disputed' then another tag like 'satire'. That would hopefully help stop their Abortionplex articles from enraging certain people who may be gullible.
ceejayoz 10y ago
https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2015/01/20/facebook-now-allows-report-links-fake-news-posts/ https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2015/01/20/facebook-now-allo... > Facebook isn’t quite targeting satire sites like The Onion, however, saying “we’ve found from testing that people tend not to report satirical content intended to be humorous, or content that is clearly labeled as satire.”
- throwaway5752 10y ago
  It might even help if Facebook had media accounts categorize (and clearly indicated the category of) posts. That way we could just point and laugh at people sharing satire or humor and claiming it as news.
  - rspeer 10y ago
    I thought Facebook already did stick a "Satire" label automatically on The Onion. The problem of Facebook users taking The Onion seriously is something they had to confront years ago.
    - briandear 10y ago
      Why did that need 'confronting?'
isaiahg 10y ago
I would assume Facebook has a built in case for satire. Also if they're using machine learning to filter news then I'm also sure satire has a strong signature. At least the Onion which is very in your face satire.
emmelaich 10y ago
Likewise, many Onion stories get mangled and pop up in serious (often non-American) papers. I also wonder what's going to happen on April Fool's day.
mrdrozdov 10y ago
The Onion is fake news, so it probably should be disputed, especially considering there are many instances of people considering it as real news.
dredmorbius 10y ago
Satire, clearly presented as satire, is legitimate. Satire, deceptively (or unwittingly) packaged as reality, is not.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  Did you miss the boat on the meaning of satire? The whole point is it is packaged as reality. Otherwise it is just parody.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    I confess I'm unfamiliar with that particular definition. Perhaps you might care to point me to an authoritative source?

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.
  - pharrington 10y ago
    When the media outlets first coined the term "fake news," http://nationalreport.net/ http://nationalreport.net/ was their Exhibit A. Its current main headline is "Trump Reports World Record 39 Under Par, 12 Holes-in-One, During Golf Outing with Japanese Prime Minister." In November, one of its front page stories was "Chris Christie nominated to head of Supreme Food Court." That is the primary example people were using to make the case to create centralized "trusted news sources." I'm not really sure what the Pareto principle has to do with this.
stevage 10y ago
Hopefully there will be a special category for satire.
pharrington 10y ago
Surely you can't be suggesting that an entity can only be considered a "legitimate" satirist if it's been around for a long time and there's a high amount of consensus regarding it? Also, you cannot use network effects as an accurate proxy for critical thinking. Humans inherently defer a ton of thought to crowd consensus; this crowd consensus becomes less reliable as the subjects involved become more complex. The increasing complexity of modern society only further necessitates the need to train our critical thinking skills. Codifying network effects as a proxy for critical thinking, as FB is doing here, only accelerates the unreliability of groupthink.
- throwaway5752 10y ago
  I respectfully disagree with you on both counts. I have no illusion that FB cares what I think and will take my approaching and it's not perfect, but it would improve FB's situation. To address your other response, that is why I invoke the Pareto principle (you can solve 80% of malicious news feed entries with 20% of the effort). Anyway, let me also note I find it strange that you are approaching this the way you are. FB is a proprietary, private platform. They will take actions that are best of the long term growth and profitability of the corporation on behalf of the owners (the shareholders). This whole epistemological/political element perplexes me, I think it entirely misses the mark of why FB is doing this. edit: I should also mention, your comment about groupthink makes me think you misunderstand me. Gaming a PageRank like algorithm is certainly possible, but the eigenvalues of the Markov process on the adjacency matrix of complainants/news sources would take a away a large part of the human bias element. And counter-counter-measures are pretty well researched.
  - pharrington 10y ago
    You express a vital misunderstanding of capitalism. Companies do not take the actions that are best for their long term health. They take the actions that are best for their health in the foreseeable future. Further, FB is a private company that owns largest forum for online socializing and public discourse. They are a private entity that controls the commons. I don't care about FB's profit motives; I care that their actions directly erode one of the core requisites of a healthily functioning complex society, so that is what I will talk about. It is not okay to make money by fucking shit up. edit: I don't understand your stance on satire outfits. Was the Onion a satire publication in 1988? If so, how do you square that with your claim? edit2: You refer to "malicious newsfeed entries." It's interesting that the only large scale activity that can even begin to consistently be considered such is the creation of "dark posts," which FB's censorship program does zilch to combat.
CalRobert 10y ago
But surely there has to be room for _new_ satire? One of my favourite humour sites is Waterford Whispers News. (Among their classics is "North Korea Lands Man on the Sun".) I share their links on occasion, and often get one or two people exasperatedly saying how ridiculous so and so is for whatever position. Usually, they've based this purely on the headline.
rabidrat 10y ago
Actually I think The Onion is a perfect candidate to be labeled, if not 'disputed' then another tag like 'satire'. That would hopefully help stop their Abortionplex articles from enraging certain people who may be gullible.

ceejayoz 10y ago

https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2015/01/20/facebook-now-allows-report-links-fake-news-posts/ https://thenextweb.com/facebook/2015/01/20/facebook-now-allo... > Facebook isn’t quite targeting satire sites like The Onion, however, saying “we’ve found from testing that people tend not to report satirical content intended to be humorous, or content that is clearly labeled as satire.”

throwaway5752 10y ago
It might even help if Facebook had media accounts categorize (and clearly indicated the category of) posts. That way we could just point and laugh at people sharing satire or humor and claiming it as news.
- rspeer 10y ago
  I thought Facebook already did stick a "Satire" label automatically on The Onion. The problem of Facebook users taking The Onion seriously is something they had to confront years ago.
  - briandear 10y ago
    Why did that need 'confronting?'

isaiahg 10y ago

I would assume Facebook has a built in case for satire. Also if they're using machine learning to filter news then I'm also sure satire has a strong signature. At least the Onion which is very in your face satire.

emmelaich 10y ago

Likewise, many Onion stories get mangled and pop up in serious (often non-American) papers. I also wonder what's going to happen on April Fool's day.

mrdrozdov 10y ago

The Onion is fake news, so it probably should be disputed, especially considering there are many instances of people considering it as real news.

dredmorbius 10y ago

Satire, clearly presented as satire, is legitimate. Satire, deceptively (or unwittingly) packaged as reality, is not.

Neliquat 10y ago
Did you miss the boat on the meaning of satire? The whole point is it is packaged as reality. Otherwise it is just parody.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I confess I'm unfamiliar with that particular definition. Perhaps you might care to point me to an authoritative source?