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I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral. Even if I have own opinions on the subject, I think the whole "fake news

I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral. Even if I have own opinions on the subject, I think the whole "fake news" thingy seems to politicaly motivated. Doesn't mean they are wrong by doing this, but it's hard to be claiming they are still somehow neutral.

loceng 10y ago
All of their actions should be transparent and a forum exist for people to discuss those actions and specific moderators (they can and should likely have a pseudonym associated with their actions); a little more difficult for moderation that aren't published as public.
yincrash 10y ago
Are you saying that news of fake news is fake news?
ma2rten 10y ago
As long as they have clear and fair guidelines, I don't see an issue.
- ProAm 10y ago
  Have you seen the moderators on reddit or stack overflow?
  - Moter8 10y ago
    Moderators on reddit have 1) full control of their subreddit and only have a few basic guidelines/rules to follow but basically they can do/ban what/who they want 2) are not paid.
    - MisterBastahrd 10y ago
      This is correct. I started r/cubancigars for example. It's mine. I can kick every single moderator off the team, shut the sub down, or change the rules without care. I don't, but I can, and nobody would stop me.
      - golergka 10y ago
        This comment sounds exactly like something a stereotypical cigar smoker would say.
        MisterBastahrd 10y ago
        No, my comment illustrates the basic facts of being the top moderator on a subreddit. If I'm not breaking reddit rules, then as long as I've been active any time within the past 6 months, I own the subreddit and can make changes to the direction of the sub and its moderation team as I see fit. That subreddit was created, by the way, because I disagreed with rules regarding the discussion of Cuban cigar sources which ship to the US in the main cigar subreddit. They're free to administer their subreddit as they see fit, and I'm free to do the same.
      - theseatoms 10y ago
        MisterBastahrd : r/cubancigars :: Zuck : Facebook
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    The moderators on Reddit and stack overflow aren't paid, and broadly set their own guidelines. Anyone with enough points on SO becomes a mod automatically, and gets to deal with "how dare you close my shitty off topic question, I have every right not to follow the rules and homogenise so into every other discussion forum". Anyone who starts a subreddit becomes the mod of it and can promote other mods at will.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  The guidelines don't matter if enforcement, non-enforcement, and target selection isn't audited for compliance. Give me a clear and fair guideline and an agenda to push / person to punish, and they'll get suppressed.
notadoc 10y ago
> I think the whole "fake news" thingy seems to politicaly motivated. Sure, branding real news as fake news is politically motivated, whereas labeling what is the clearly the equivalent of the most absurd supermarket tabloids as "fake news" is accurate and appropriate. It is curious that many people are somehow oblivious to tabloid headlines when they appear on the internet, whereas nearly everyone discards the supermarket checkout stand "The Pope is a space alien!" stories.
- PierreRochard 10y ago
  And then there's everything in between. That's where the actual debate is. Was "WMDs in Iraq!" fake news in 2002, 2003, or 2004?
  - Consultant32452 10y ago
    Watching this has helped me, at least somewhat, decipher what is said in the media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmoXze-Higc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmoXze-Higc Of course, it doesn't help for outright lies like WMDs in Iraq.
    - JBReefer 10y ago
      Though your broader point holds, they did in fact find WMDs in Iraq, but it wasn't really big news (or especially serious weapons) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Post-war_discoveries_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
      - PierreRochard 10y ago
        Wow! This is interesting. I thought the "WMDs in Iraq" was fake news, turns out the "no WMDs in Iraq" is fake news! So much fake news, hard to sort everything out.
        deleted 10y ago
yellow_viper 10y ago
They're doing this because people were calling on tougher penalties and an independent watchdog for social media. They don't want oversight so they pay extra for moderation.
tmaly 10y ago
We are all human and we bring with us all sorts of biases. I was listening to a podcast on my commute today, and the person mentioned a book called Think Twice that was about decision making. How we make decisions with these different biases. I think I even remember a great post on HN about all the most popular biases. I guess what I am getting at is its no at all clear cut how someone's post will be judged given all the baggage each one of us carries with us.
- autotune 10y ago
  This might be interesting as well for a free way to access a list of biases we can fall in to: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
Joeri 10y ago
What is "neutral"? Neutral as in halfway between political extremes, even if that does a disservice to the truth? Or neutral as in only reporting fact-checked stories, even if they're incredibly biased to one side? There is obviously false, and then there is everything else. I guess the best facebook can do is weed out the obviously false. If they do that, it is a guarantee that they will get attacked for being biased, because with the shifting of the political winds usually one party or the other spreads more misinformation.
- rustynails 10y ago
  Neural to me means stop favouring one special interest group over everybody else. When the NYT was seeking to hire a gender editor (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/jobs/nyt-gender-editor.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/jobs/nyt-gender-edi...) and said "women ruled the Olympics", "men used to dominate", etc. were they impartial? Was there any need for such divisiveness? What did they hope to gain? The special interest groups will move into Facebook. They will shut down anything they don't like and allow everything (no matter how intolerant) that aligns with their political agenda. Use "domestic violence" as an example by searching that term at Google. Almost all publications ignore worldwide government stats that show huge numbers of female perpetrators. Almost all media outlets say domestic violence is something only males do and only females are victims of, in spite of overwhelming evidence this is false. That's an example of non neutrality by a special interest group. It's lead to a starvation of funding and support for one sex. It's lead to animosity. Do you think Facebook will be impartial in their moderation? The special interest groups will apply extreme pressure and the result will be extreme views.
diogenescynic 10y ago
Neutrality is a mirage. Journalism can and should be fair without trying to appear 'balanced' or neutral. For example, there aren't really two sides to climate change when 99% of scientists and experts agree. It's really only the news who tries to position issues as if they are competing arguments like sports teams. This seems like it's had a negative impact over all by giving a false equivalency, for politically motivated reasons, to issues that are by and large not contestable or debatable.
- killjoywashere 10y ago
  I think the networks way over-adopted the spirit of the FCC's Fairness doctrine (1) and the equal time rule (2). It's so easy to build controversy and call if "fair and balanced", which drives up ratings while suppressing the evolution of any meaningful progress in any of the affected areas. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
  - diogenescynic 10y ago
    I think a lot of it has to do with CNN and cable news presenting politics as sport. Jon Stewart's take down of Crossfire is still relevant and if anything, CNN doubled down on what Jon was criticizing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
- nonbel 10y ago
  >"there aren't really two sides to climate change when 99% of scientists and experts agree" So what exactly is this one side that 99% of experts agree upon?
  - vkou 10y ago
    That it's happening, that we're causing it, and that if we don't change something, we are fucked. The only disagreements are on extent to which we will be fucked - will we see hundreds of millions of climate refugees, or billions.
adekok 10y ago
> I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral. I don't. They will, of course, push a particular agenda. In the worst possible way. As we've seen with Twitter and other organizations, the ToS don't matter. Or at least, don't matter for the right people. The "bad people" get punished even if they don't violate the ToS. The "good people" don't get punished even if they do violate the ToS. I'd be OK with even egregious ToS, if they were applied evenly. But as we've seen too often, they're not. Whatever agenda FB and friends are peddling, it's hidden in the guise of "safety", and "fairness", and "community standards".
- golergka 10y ago
  That's because the real incentive FB and Twitter have is not to avoid PR fallout - and one side of american political spectrum has an upper hand in that battle.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    For the demographic FB cares about, yes they lean left (which is what I am assuming you are getting at, and I agree with you that most of the time it's safe to just do left leaning PR). But Target openly supported bathroom access rights (left leaning) and have been met with a huge backlash from many right leaning markets which has materially impacted their bottom line with defections to Walmart and ecommerce. It's not automatic who you need to PR for.
    - golergka 10y ago
      Why the hell don't we just adopt individual bathroom stalls? This whole debate is so stupid I can't get behind any of the sides.
      - theseatoms 10y ago
        Cost, probably.
ljk 10y ago
maybe related to the rumor? https://qz.com/882475/facebook-fb-ceo-mark-zuckberg-hires-david-plouffe-and-ken-mehlman-to-the-chan-zuckerberg-initiative/ https://qz.com/882475/facebook-fb-ceo-mark-zuckberg-hires-da... https://www.wired.com/2017/01/zucks-sure-acting-like-someone-might-run-president/ https://www.wired.com/2017/01/zucks-sure-acting-like-someone...
- notatoad 10y ago
  All that speculation seems kind of weird to me. Zuck is already president of facebook (pop. 2bn), why would he want to be president of America (pop. 300m)? As the article you linked to says, the Chan-Zuckerberg initiative is the sort of thing retired presidents do - he's not angling to become a world leader, he already is one.
  - rocqua 10y ago
    If you want the world to be a certain way, president of the USA does a lot for letting you make that happen. If you want america to be a certain way, that holds even more strongly. How 'murica moves forward will depend heavily on the political parties stances. Being able to move (I'm guessing) the democrats will have a massive effect on politics. Not being beholden to a share price also really helps.
olavk 10y ago
Moderation is political, it is unavoidable. There is no such thing as neutral.
- rustynails 10y ago
  Somebody needs to watch the watchers. Accepting that politically motivated interests will manipulate is not acceptable.
dotnetisnotdead 10y ago
They will definitely push their own agenda, because that's the agenda of most of their market. We democrats tend to stick to tech pretty hard, and we buy things. Billy joe bob will post his pro-trump rants on Facebook all day, but will still go to a walk in store to buy things. Of course I'm generalizing and oversimplifying it, but the leadership at FB is strongly left leaning, and they know how to cater to their audience, keep them happy and make money from them. The issue is of course branding everything that might help the right "fake news". Sure, there's a lot of it (from both sides really) but the idea that they have the power to shape people's opinions in a political direction, and are willing to do it is dangerous for all of us.

loceng 10y ago

All of their actions should be transparent and a forum exist for people to discuss those actions and specific moderators (they can and should likely have a pseudonym associated with their actions); a little more difficult for moderation that aren't published as public.

yincrash 10y ago

Are you saying that news of fake news is fake news?

ma2rten 10y ago

As long as they have clear and fair guidelines, I don't see an issue.

ProAm 10y ago
Have you seen the moderators on reddit or stack overflow?
- Moter8 10y ago
  Moderators on reddit have 1) full control of their subreddit and only have a few basic guidelines/rules to follow but basically they can do/ban what/who they want 2) are not paid.
  - MisterBastahrd 10y ago
    This is correct. I started r/cubancigars for example. It's mine. I can kick every single moderator off the team, shut the sub down, or change the rules without care. I don't, but I can, and nobody would stop me.
    - golergka 10y ago
      This comment sounds exactly like something a stereotypical cigar smoker would say.
      - MisterBastahrd 10y ago
        No, my comment illustrates the basic facts of being the top moderator on a subreddit. If I'm not breaking reddit rules, then as long as I've been active any time within the past 6 months, I own the subreddit and can make changes to the direction of the sub and its moderation team as I see fit. That subreddit was created, by the way, because I disagreed with rules regarding the discussion of Cuban cigar sources which ship to the US in the main cigar subreddit. They're free to administer their subreddit as they see fit, and I'm free to do the same.
    - theseatoms 10y ago
      MisterBastahrd : r/cubancigars :: Zuck : Facebook
- jodrellblank 10y ago
  The moderators on Reddit and stack overflow aren't paid, and broadly set their own guidelines. Anyone with enough points on SO becomes a mod automatically, and gets to deal with "how dare you close my shitty off topic question, I have every right not to follow the rules and homogenise so into every other discussion forum". Anyone who starts a subreddit becomes the mod of it and can promote other mods at will.
ThrustVectoring 10y ago
The guidelines don't matter if enforcement, non-enforcement, and target selection isn't audited for compliance. Give me a clear and fair guideline and an agenda to push / person to punish, and they'll get suppressed.

notadoc 10y ago

> I think the whole "fake news" thingy seems to politicaly motivated. Sure, branding real news as fake news is politically motivated, whereas labeling what is the clearly the equivalent of the most absurd supermarket tabloids as "fake news" is accurate and appropriate. It is curious that many people are somehow oblivious to tabloid headlines when they appear on the internet, whereas nearly everyone discards the supermarket checkout stand "The Pope is a space alien!" stories.

PierreRochard 10y ago
And then there's everything in between. That's where the actual debate is. Was "WMDs in Iraq!" fake news in 2002, 2003, or 2004?
- Consultant32452 10y ago
  Watching this has helped me, at least somewhat, decipher what is said in the media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmoXze-Higc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmoXze-Higc Of course, it doesn't help for outright lies like WMDs in Iraq.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    Though your broader point holds, they did in fact find WMDs in Iraq, but it wasn't really big news (or especially serious weapons) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Post-war_discoveries_and_incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destr...
    - PierreRochard 10y ago
      Wow! This is interesting. I thought the "WMDs in Iraq" was fake news, turns out the "no WMDs in Iraq" is fake news! So much fake news, hard to sort everything out.
      - deleted 10y ago

yellow_viper 10y ago

They're doing this because people were calling on tougher penalties and an independent watchdog for social media. They don't want oversight so they pay extra for moderation.

tmaly 10y ago

We are all human and we bring with us all sorts of biases. I was listening to a podcast on my commute today, and the person mentioned a book called Think Twice that was about decision making. How we make decisions with these different biases. I think I even remember a great post on HN about all the most popular biases. I guess what I am getting at is its no at all clear cut how someone's post will be judged given all the baggage each one of us carries with us.

autotune 10y ago
This might be interesting as well for a free way to access a list of biases we can fall in to: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Joeri 10y ago

What is "neutral"? Neutral as in halfway between political extremes, even if that does a disservice to the truth? Or neutral as in only reporting fact-checked stories, even if they're incredibly biased to one side? There is obviously false, and then there is everything else. I guess the best facebook can do is weed out the obviously false. If they do that, it is a guarantee that they will get attacked for being biased, because with the shifting of the political winds usually one party or the other spreads more misinformation.

rustynails 10y ago
Neural to me means stop favouring one special interest group over everybody else. When the NYT was seeking to hire a gender editor (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/jobs/nyt-gender-editor.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/jobs/nyt-gender-edi...) and said "women ruled the Olympics", "men used to dominate", etc. were they impartial? Was there any need for such divisiveness? What did they hope to gain? The special interest groups will move into Facebook. They will shut down anything they don't like and allow everything (no matter how intolerant) that aligns with their political agenda. Use "domestic violence" as an example by searching that term at Google. Almost all publications ignore worldwide government stats that show huge numbers of female perpetrators. Almost all media outlets say domestic violence is something only males do and only females are victims of, in spite of overwhelming evidence this is false. That's an example of non neutrality by a special interest group. It's lead to a starvation of funding and support for one sex. It's lead to animosity. Do you think Facebook will be impartial in their moderation? The special interest groups will apply extreme pressure and the result will be extreme views.

diogenescynic 10y ago

Neutrality is a mirage. Journalism can and should be fair without trying to appear 'balanced' or neutral. For example, there aren't really two sides to climate change when 99% of scientists and experts agree. It's really only the news who tries to position issues as if they are competing arguments like sports teams. This seems like it's had a negative impact over all by giving a false equivalency, for politically motivated reasons, to issues that are by and large not contestable or debatable.

killjoywashere 10y ago
I think the networks way over-adopted the spirit of the FCC's Fairness doctrine (1) and the equal time rule (2). It's so easy to build controversy and call if "fair and balanced", which drives up ratings while suppressing the evolution of any meaningful progress in any of the affected areas. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-time_rule
- diogenescynic 10y ago
  I think a lot of it has to do with CNN and cable news presenting politics as sport. Jon Stewart's take down of Crossfire is still relevant and if anything, CNN doubled down on what Jon was criticizing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
nonbel 10y ago
>"there aren't really two sides to climate change when 99% of scientists and experts agree" So what exactly is this one side that 99% of experts agree upon?
- vkou 10y ago
  That it's happening, that we're causing it, and that if we don't change something, we are fucked. The only disagreements are on extent to which we will be fucked - will we see hundreds of millions of climate refugees, or billions.

adekok 10y ago

> I wonder if they will push some politic agenda or if they will manage to stay neutral. I don't. They will, of course, push a particular agenda. In the worst possible way. As we've seen with Twitter and other organizations, the ToS don't matter. Or at least, don't matter for the right people. The "bad people" get punished even if they don't violate the ToS. The "good people" don't get punished even if they do violate the ToS. I'd be OK with even egregious ToS, if they were applied evenly. But as we've seen too often, they're not. Whatever agenda FB and friends are peddling, it's hidden in the guise of "safety", and "fairness", and "community standards".

golergka 10y ago
That's because the real incentive FB and Twitter have is not to avoid PR fallout - and one side of american political spectrum has an upper hand in that battle.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  For the demographic FB cares about, yes they lean left (which is what I am assuming you are getting at, and I agree with you that most of the time it's safe to just do left leaning PR). But Target openly supported bathroom access rights (left leaning) and have been met with a huge backlash from many right leaning markets which has materially impacted their bottom line with defections to Walmart and ecommerce. It's not automatic who you need to PR for.
  - golergka 10y ago
    Why the hell don't we just adopt individual bathroom stalls? This whole debate is so stupid I can't get behind any of the sides.
    - theseatoms 10y ago
      Cost, probably.

ljk 10y ago

maybe related to the rumor? https://qz.com/882475/facebook-fb-ceo-mark-zuckberg-hires-david-plouffe-and-ken-mehlman-to-the-chan-zuckerberg-initiative/ https://qz.com/882475/facebook-fb-ceo-mark-zuckberg-hires-da... https://www.wired.com/2017/01/zucks-sure-acting-like-someone-might-run-president/ https://www.wired.com/2017/01/zucks-sure-acting-like-someone...

notatoad 10y ago
All that speculation seems kind of weird to me. Zuck is already president of facebook (pop. 2bn), why would he want to be president of America (pop. 300m)? As the article you linked to says, the Chan-Zuckerberg initiative is the sort of thing retired presidents do - he's not angling to become a world leader, he already is one.
- rocqua 10y ago
  If you want the world to be a certain way, president of the USA does a lot for letting you make that happen. If you want america to be a certain way, that holds even more strongly. How 'murica moves forward will depend heavily on the political parties stances. Being able to move (I'm guessing) the democrats will have a massive effect on politics. Not being beholden to a share price also really helps.

olavk 10y ago

Moderation is political, it is unavoidable. There is no such thing as neutral.

rustynails 10y ago
Somebody needs to watch the watchers. Accepting that politically motivated interests will manipulate is not acceptable.

dotnetisnotdead 10y ago

They will definitely push their own agenda, because that's the agenda of most of their market. We democrats tend to stick to tech pretty hard, and we buy things. Billy joe bob will post his pro-trump rants on Facebook all day, but will still go to a walk in store to buy things. Of course I'm generalizing and oversimplifying it, but the leadership at FB is strongly left leaning, and they know how to cater to their audience, keep them happy and make money from them. The issue is of course branding everything that might help the right "fake news". Sure, there's a lot of it (from both sides really) but the idea that they have the power to shape people's opinions in a political direction, and are willing to do it is dangerous for all of us.