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When you are interviewing the entity that can throttle visits to your articles, it's a bit more complicated than that. Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" l

When you are interviewing the entity that can throttle visits to your articles, it's a bit more complicated than that. Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook.

teej 9y ago
> Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook. Citation needed.
- olewhalehunter 9y ago
  https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to-infowars-com/ https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to...
  - ArtDev 9y ago
    The gold standard of fake news. As fake as it gets.
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      They are also one of the only big news organizations that regularly criticizes Facebook, so I guess the answer to the original question of why more people don't criticize Facebook is that the only demographic that are interested in that kind of thing are conspiracy theorists.
      - objclxt 9y ago
        > They are also one of the only big news organizations Infowars is to legitimate news organizations as Mackeeper is to virus scanners.
      - nafizh 9y ago
        "big news organizations" - usually I don't do this on hacker news. But, LOL.
      - henrikschroder 9y ago
        Infowars isn't a news organization, Alex Jones is a self-professed performance artist, and the performance pieces he publishes are created solely to incite outrage in a certain demographic, not to spread actual facts.
    - arianvanp 9y ago
      Perhaps. But using it in a discussion about fake news is good. I don't want to live in a world where info wars gets censored just because I despise the guy. I want to live in a world where Internet is used to its full potential where I can easily find sources to articles and weed out the fake news myself... Perhaps the solution is technical. Tweak page rank to not only consider hyperlinks but also their credibility (by means of Web of trust). Buy it is probably also a social problem. We need to educate our children how to read an digest news. And how to think critically. Censoring The Independent, breitbart and info wars isn't gonna help us. Just fuel the problem. Instead, we need to find a way to reward credibility. We need to fix journalism or it will die soon.
  - icebraining 9y ago
    That articles doesn't even make the claim you're making (that Facebook is blocking articles that criticize them), let alone provide evidence of that.
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      I didn't claim that, what I claimed was that coincidentally, the same sites that criticize Facebook were also being labeled as fake news.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        But it's not "coincidentally", they are criticizing Facebook because they were knocked down, and after they were knocked down.
        olewhalehunter 9y ago
        Infowars and Alex Jones regularly criticized organizations such as Google and Facebook that collect massive amounts of information capital from people well before the elections and the fake news headlines.
        icebraining 9y ago
        And you expected us to know that? I certainly wouldn't have assumed it, considering the three "share on Facebook" buttons on that page, plus the fact that the article author linked to his FB page at the end. In any case, Infowars is just one site, and the article only claimed they blocked three mere links.
  - nebabyte 9y ago
    ...The conflict of interest is apparent even in the URL you linked, but in case that doesn't do it for you: > The social networking giant recently launched a new feature in which users could flag content as “spam” or “fake news” – a system that allows huge numbers of organized users to flag content simply because they disagree with it or it offends them They cite this, then go on to make the completely unsubstantiated claim that that's somehow 'proof' of FB censoring them - and with such obvious slipshod "reporting" I honestly don't see what the problem is with FB blocking them as a "news" source and relegating them to being an opinion blog.
    - olewhalehunter 9y ago
      You make it sound as if facebook didn't know exactly who the kinds of sites that would end up being flagged would turn out to be, and the only claim that I made was that, coincidentally, they also happen to be sites that criticize Facebook.
      - ubernostrum 9y ago
        As far as I can tell there's equal opportunity for abuse; flagging systems have been used to shut down accounts of of people on all parts of the political spectrum, since there's always a large enough mob of people incensed at someone else's views and willing to click whatever button they've been told will silence that person.

teej 9y ago

> Coincidentally, many of the "fake news" links they knocked down were sites that also criticized Facebook. Citation needed.

olewhalehunter 9y ago
https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to-infowars-com/ https://www.infowars.com/proof-facebook-is-blocking-links-to...
- ArtDev 9y ago
  The gold standard of fake news. As fake as it gets.
  - olewhalehunter 9y ago
    They are also one of the only big news organizations that regularly criticizes Facebook, so I guess the answer to the original question of why more people don't criticize Facebook is that the only demographic that are interested in that kind of thing are conspiracy theorists.
    - objclxt 9y ago
      > They are also one of the only big news organizations Infowars is to legitimate news organizations as Mackeeper is to virus scanners.
    - nafizh 9y ago
      "big news organizations" - usually I don't do this on hacker news. But, LOL.
    - henrikschroder 9y ago
      Infowars isn't a news organization, Alex Jones is a self-professed performance artist, and the performance pieces he publishes are created solely to incite outrage in a certain demographic, not to spread actual facts.
  - arianvanp 9y ago
    Perhaps. But using it in a discussion about fake news is good. I don't want to live in a world where info wars gets censored just because I despise the guy. I want to live in a world where Internet is used to its full potential where I can easily find sources to articles and weed out the fake news myself... Perhaps the solution is technical. Tweak page rank to not only consider hyperlinks but also their credibility (by means of Web of trust). Buy it is probably also a social problem. We need to educate our children how to read an digest news. And how to think critically. Censoring The Independent, breitbart and info wars isn't gonna help us. Just fuel the problem. Instead, we need to find a way to reward credibility. We need to fix journalism or it will die soon.
- icebraining 9y ago
  That articles doesn't even make the claim you're making (that Facebook is blocking articles that criticize them), let alone provide evidence of that.
  - olewhalehunter 9y ago
    I didn't claim that, what I claimed was that coincidentally, the same sites that criticize Facebook were also being labeled as fake news.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      But it's not "coincidentally", they are criticizing Facebook because they were knocked down, and after they were knocked down.
      - olewhalehunter 9y ago
        Infowars and Alex Jones regularly criticized organizations such as Google and Facebook that collect massive amounts of information capital from people well before the elections and the fake news headlines.
        icebraining 9y ago
        And you expected us to know that? I certainly wouldn't have assumed it, considering the three "share on Facebook" buttons on that page, plus the fact that the article author linked to his FB page at the end. In any case, Infowars is just one site, and the article only claimed they blocked three mere links.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  ...The conflict of interest is apparent even in the URL you linked, but in case that doesn't do it for you: > The social networking giant recently launched a new feature in which users could flag content as “spam” or “fake news” – a system that allows huge numbers of organized users to flag content simply because they disagree with it or it offends them They cite this, then go on to make the completely unsubstantiated claim that that's somehow 'proof' of FB censoring them - and with such obvious slipshod "reporting" I honestly don't see what the problem is with FB blocking them as a "news" source and relegating them to being an opinion blog.
  - olewhalehunter 9y ago
    You make it sound as if facebook didn't know exactly who the kinds of sites that would end up being flagged would turn out to be, and the only claim that I made was that, coincidentally, they also happen to be sites that criticize Facebook.
    - ubernostrum 9y ago
      As far as I can tell there's equal opportunity for abuse; flagging systems have been used to shut down accounts of of people on all parts of the political spectrum, since there's always a large enough mob of people incensed at someone else's views and willing to click whatever button they've been told will silence that person.