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Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads

151 points by artsandsci 9y ago

cortexio 9y ago
negative news about facebook is now called false news 卐
bluetidepro 9y ago
This is really interesting. I wonder how it will effect Pages that are known for sarcastic/satire type of content on purpose. Pages like The Onion, Hard Times, etc. I feel like there would have to be a lot of work in the fact-checking part of this. At what point will it be too manual of a process, or will the algorithm start to fail on these "grey" areas? Also, it's nice to see Facebook implement a feature solely for the user that could be costing them ad money.
- samstr 9y ago
  Maybe we'll see a 'SATIRE' label for these types of articles in the feed.
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  They played with flagging satirical articles back in 2014: http://mashable.com/2014/08/17/facebook-satire-tag/ http://mashable.com/2014/08/17/facebook-satire-tag/
  - StephenMelon 9y ago
    I see a lot of comments on satire links that clearly demonstrate that large numbers of people can’t always spot satire. That possibly says more about the current cultural and political climate than it does about people’s gullibility though.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      As an example: a sitting Congressman thought The Onion's "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex" was a believable headline. https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/congressman-thought-parody-article-planned-parenthood-real-113439270.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/congressman-though...
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      > current I don't think the current situation is all that different from 2005, when Poe's Law was coined.
    - ctdonath 9y ago
      It's not Facebook's job to spot satire or fakes for people. Users expect a "common carrier" type experience, not news curation.
      - ceejayoz 9y ago
        Facebook has over two billion users. "Users expect" a wide variety of different things, and I suspect if you polled them there'd be plenty who expect Facebook to do some curation, particularly in the "trending topics" sort of area.
- samstave 9y ago
  Don't forget this infamous onion revelation, way before Snowden: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ380SHZvYU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ380SHZvYU
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    Another infamous Onion video in a similar style is "The Power Of Selling Out: Your Customers As Political Capital". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o
    - samstave 9y ago
      "Facebook former head of security now works for the NSA" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/facebooks-former-security-chief-now-works-nsa/314068/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/faceb... Not to mention the cadre of other governmentalistia that work there...
- samfriedman 9y ago
  There was a fairly well-known Facebook page called The Disciples of the New Dawn. They purported to be a cult-like Christian Fundamentalist group, and the page served as a distribution channel for image-macros that seemed designed to get a rise out of people. Things like training children for the militia, eschewing medicine, interpreting pop culture as signs of the end times, etc. The page was also clearly satire, and to lovers of deadpan humor, frequently amusing. I first learned of the page in 2013, and I noticed that Facebook had removed it for Community Guidelines violations some years later. The page appears to be back now, but they now have very clear disclaimers that the content is satirical. http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/facebookdisciples.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/facebookdisciples.asp
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olivermarks 9y ago
I hate the idea of information being filtered through Snopes. Why is a huge global corporation like FB using a dodgy divorced couple to decide who sees what, seems ridiculous to me. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fac... AP has other issues to put it politely.
- fullshark 9y ago
  They've built credibility in the space
- ch4s3 9y ago
  Wait, are you critiquing Snopes based on the personal lives of the people who run it, based on an article about them in a tabloid? Are you trolling?
  - cloakandswagger 9y ago
    If you were applying for a security clearance and the government discovered you had massive amounts of debt and lots of questionable history that's ripe for blackmail, you would likely be denied. That's because those things could be used as leverage against you to make you act immorally. So yes, I'm quite interested in the personal lives of the people running a company about to be ordained as "the objective truth" by Facebook/Google/et al
    - Applejinx 9y ago
      Everybody can be leveraged. It's a matter of how vulnerable or weak the one being leveraged is, who's doing the pressuring, and what the latter stand to benefit by doing it. For that reason, I'm also interested in who's being made the gatekeeper, because I already know who's out there wanting what, and how much capital they have. None of this happens in a vacuum.
    - ch4s3 9y ago
cjslep 9y ago
Yet another effect highlighting the distinction between "free speech" and "equal speech".
lemonycracket 9y ago
I guess Facebook gets to decide what is "False News". This is an egregious example of Doublespeak. All news to an extent is "false" and not necessarily true. We're truly fucked
- ForRealsies 9y ago
  We need to nationalize social media and turn it into a civil right to free speech, along with all the protections that goes with it. As a libertarian I never thought I'd hear myself say that.
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xienze 9y ago
> These aren’t supposed to be stories that are disputed for reasons of opinion or partisanship, but rather outright hoaxes and lies Riiiight...
MichaelGG 9y ago
Hmm will they apply it to all politicians and political parties? Every politician ends up saying false things now and then.
- Cuuugi 9y ago
  Something tells me one political party will be exempt.
  - jackhack 9y ago
    And something tells me that the political party that will benefit may invest heavily in these information-filtering companies (if they are not already), closing the circle.
znpy 9y ago
instant question: which entity decides and how does such entity decide what news is true news ?
- Jerry2 9y ago
  Anything not politically correct and anything that doesn't contribute to manufacturing consent will be labeled as "fake" news. Scary times ahead. It's straight out of 1984.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - graphitezepp 9y ago
    It's spookier than 1984. There was no prediction of "Big Data" and how prevalent addiction to an omnipresent internet would be.
- zorked 9y ago
  The phenomenon we're talking about here isn't one that causes profound ontological and ethical questions. We're talking about simple, obvious bullshit.
  - jdc0589 9y ago
    for now. people are unsettled because this is a classic slippery slope situation, or it has the potential to be anyway.
    - arrrg 9y ago
      Slippery slope arguments are not particularly convincing. You need strong argumentative support to make it plausible and work. Just saying “A may be harmless but will lead to the unintended consequence of B” is just not at all convincing, as are most of the times slippery slope arguments are used. Make no mistake, slippery slopes do actually exist, but that’s not some kind of automatic mechanism that always kicks in. If someone makes a slippery slope argument I want them to show me that those consequences are actually plausible.
adtac 9y ago
So they _can_ identify such pages. This is a really small penalty. Why not just outright suspend such pages for a duration that increases with every offence?
- wolco 9y ago
  Why doesn't facebook come out with there own online wiki and only allow stories based on approved of facts that have been vetted by members of internal fact team. At least we would know what facts they believe and what facts they don't
kumarvvr 9y ago
It is unfortunate that platforms like Facebook have become the beacons of pessimism. I am talking in the context of the usage of social media tools to harm society, rather than help it. For me, FB, TW, etc have become unreliable sources of news. Here, FB is trying to limit ads from pages that share false news, but who will decide that?? 1. FB - Leads to a dangerous slippery slope of putting too much power into a single,private, profit-seeking entity. 2. Users - It alienates sections of society. 3. Other sources - Inherently unreliable. Seemingly, FB getting into the media distribution business itself is troublesome for a society, especially when you have a platform whose algorithms prioritize profit, consequently leading to construction of powerful echo chambers. The trouble with these echo chambers is that they nullify efforts of the society to promote meaningful debate and discussion. Even before the era of FB, the world was struggling with misinformation, lies, subversion of facts, etc. Now we have reached a point where Presidents can lie, often within a span of a few hours, and it's essentially forgotten and things move on. These echo chambers are the primary culprit for this IMV. When efforts to educate constituents is taken head on with echo chambers, the echo chambers inevitably win. Reminds me of the novel where the speaker in a press conference is denouncing country A, and is handed over a note from his aide, and the speaker immediately switched the narrative denouncing country B, all the while the press simply accepts what is told.
- briholt 9y ago
  "Fake news" appears to be "news I don't like" and has no correlation with the accuracy of the content. Conveniently, Facebook seems to agree with many major media outlets about what news they don't like, so they can present their arbitrary definition of "fake" as objective and conveniently no one can break through the bubble to prove otherwise.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Some groups flat out make up news stories to fit some narrative. What else are you going to call that than 'fake news'? 'Candidate X comes out as gay.' 'Secret photos reveal candidate X at KKK lynching.' Are both rather over the top, but also the kind of lies that influence elections.
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thatonechad 9y ago
false news according to "fact checkers" are not 100% accurate and depends on the statement in which they are checking. you can see this by the careful choice of words in which something may be claim to be true or false when all actuality its more complex than that. it is weird why facebook would be getting into the realm of censoring things at all.
- xienze 9y ago
  > it is weird why facebook would be getting into the realm of censoring things at all. Not really. The entire Valley is beside themselves over Trump being elected and Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel partially responsible because Trump and his supporters were able to use the platforms to their advantage. To be outplayed by Republicans through the use of technology was previously thought impossible, so they're going to "fix the glitch" that made such tactics possible.
  - MBCook 9y ago
    Eve if you ignore theoretical bias it may have terrified them to realize that they may have unintentionally had a SERIOUS effect on the ruler of the free world by not only allowing but accidentally promoting obviously fake content. There was plenty of relief content that would have defected the election. The fake stuff may not have actually changed the outcome. But to realize your 'keep up with my friends' business has the power swing elections? That has to be a terrifying prospect.
    - xienze 9y ago
      > Eve if you ignore theoretical bias Real bias, but moving on... > But to realize your 'keep up with my friends' business has the power swing elections? That has to be a terrifying prospect. I really doubt anyone at Facebook, Twitter, or Google would have said "oh my God, what have we done???" if some insidious bit of "fake news" helped Hillary be elected.
      - MBCook 9y ago
jeffdavis 9y ago
There's nothing worse about fake news than many other kinds of bad content -- the only difference is the attention it is getting right now. When fake news passes from the spotlight, and something else takes its place, what will they do then? Even if fake news is a larger business threat to facebook, they can't justify it to the public: "they are allowing horrible thing XYZ, but blocking fake news?!".
gcatalfamo 9y ago
I think it's kinda pointless. By definition, false news generate some kind of shock feeling that urge people to comment and share the link, creating a viral loop of people (a digital angry mob) fueling the false content as real. Blocking it to be advertised might - just might - slow its viral expansion. Is that the best FB can do about this?
- deleted 9y ago
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- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  This seems like something DNS providers would be better suited to handle, assuming its something you would want to stop.
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samstave 9y ago
Uh? What about "fake ads"? What about the billions of page views for spammy bs on all platforms and sites, shouldn't those be taken out?
- jdc0589 9y ago
  good luck with that. those fake ads make Facebook money.
  - samstave 9y ago
    That was my point :-)
menacingly 9y ago
The risk here is not that the system will have bad goals, it's that it's easy for manipulation to redefine the core terms used to classify "bad" content. Even now, we regularly see even clear terms like "correct" or "incorrect" applied by fact-checking websites through a fairly biased lens. This is not a partisan issue, when you start down the road of handing the keys to shaping public thought to a powerful party, you're there when the power changes too. This is no different than being able to tell when someone is bullshitting just as you walk through every day life, and thinking we need to shield the poor naive populace from harmful ideas is borderline stereotypical paternalism. This is all obviously a big deal to old media, who have made an art not out of sharing incorrect truths, but of very selectively sharing truths, to the point that what emerges does not really represent the truth at all. They didn't lie, but they aggressively shaped. Of course democratic access to the pieces they'd rather suppress (on both sides) threatens that model. They'd love us to toss out this particular bath water.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  This is all obviously a big deal to old media, who have made an art not out of sharing incorrect truths, but of very selectively sharing truths, to the point that what emerges does not really represent the truth at all. They didn't lie, but they aggressively shaped. Well and empirically demonstrated in the 80's by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. http://a.co/7VVDGJz http://a.co/7VVDGJz
- quoquoquo 9y ago
  The game has changed. There are people with intolerant and twisted views trying to manipulate the naive herd of sheep who blindly follows whatever people like on Facebook. Knowing the tactics of people behind fake news, it's good that Facebook is responding accordingly to punish and get rid of bad actors on their platform. It's once again showing that we can't have pure anarcho decentralization. It would be a haven for bad actors that goes unpunished. We can absolutely set definition for what is bad and what isn't bad. What is clearly bad is writing fake news about certain group of ethnic group you hate and manipulating others into believing your twisted idiosyncratic views about Jews, Hindus and Moors. edit: there is some heavy downvote brigading going on here. I've alerted the mods.
dotcoma 9y ago
So, is it a way to admit at long last that Pages that don't buy ads won't get any readers?
ctdonath 9y ago
I've followed social media for a long time (starting back when one could actually read every single Usenet post daily). There is a definite life cycle to social media sites. Those reaching the "too big to fail" stage are usually about to. AOL, CompuServe, MySpace, etc were all indominately massive juggernauts reaching to take over the media world - and vanished almost overnight. The sudden influx of editorial censorship in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc is a clue that a large number of legitimate users (who just happen to hold differing expressions of differing views) are facing the option of leaping to another up-and-coming site. Between that, boredom with format limitations, and an otherwise growing sentiment of malaise, I'm seeing the signs that FB etc won't be with us much longer. And no, it's not "different this time". It's the same this time.
- MisterBastahrd 9y ago
  Yeah, no. The reasons that those other systems failed has nothing to do with this particular issue. People will still be able to share their bullshit to like minded people to their hearts' content, which is how the vast majority of information gets shared through facebook. All facebook is saying is that they will not take money from these bullshit mills. The vast majority of people couldn't care less about whether Breitbart gets to advertise on facebook. They aren't going to uproot their presence there to make a political point, either. Most of the people on the site who hold those views are 50+ year olds who want to see photos of their grandchildren. They can still get all the nonsense they want by watching Fox News in the evening, which is their preferred method anyway.
  - ctdonath 9y ago
    Imputing & dismissing a large fraction of your audience, or friends of your audience, as "deplorable" is not a wise marketing move. They may be 50+, they may watch Fox News, but they consider Breitbart a canary in the coalmine, and may prove quick to throw their not-inconsiderable weight behind cheesy non-sequitur upstart quietly years in the making.
    - MisterBastahrd 9y ago
SCHiM 9y ago
I really really doubt that this is going to have any effect at all. Although many are septic of the attribution of "actual cyber attacks", I doubt that that skepticism can be stretched to include the disinformation/fud spread by the West or Russia. That is to say (although it might not be the case now) that these websites/accounts are not dependent on ads for funding or growing their audience. This might cut down on lazy journalism (or churnalism as it's called) but as soon as the free proxies for the disinformation dry up, a couple of 'funded-behind-the-scenes' will take their place. As for stopping the growth of the respective perpetrators audiences, likely also ineffective. There's a bunch of alternative platforms that lend themselves very well to fud spreading, twitter or a google search come to mind. Ultimately people, once converted, want to read and talk about the latest and greatest evil of <target>. No need to take out ads, your friends will want to tell you.
MBCook 9y ago
So you can't buy ads to bring people to your page. How about you can't monetize your page? How about every time you do this you get shut down for X time (hours?) and it doubles every time you reoffend within a short amount of time. One or two free strikes.
sbussard 9y ago
pier25 9y ago
So how does Facebook really know if something is fake? You can't trust user reports. They will say a story is fake when they don't like it. You can't trust some worker in Bangladesh to determine this either just as easily as you can determine if something is NSFW. You still can't trust AI. So how? It hires specialists in each field to determine what is real and what is not?
- jdc0589 9y ago
  This is the real issue. Sure, there's the whole thing about it being a slippery slope to straight up shadow banning or otherwise censoring users deemed as "purveyors of fake news", but that's further down the road. How the hell are they going to measure this?
- YCode 9y ago
  Which is strange, because didn't they just get a lot of flak for having "editors" that they subsequently had to let go?
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    They got a lot of flak for getting rid of the editors, too.
- ksk 9y ago
  If I had to guess, they will probably deploy a human assisted AI that barely works, and rely on public outrage to handle any outliers that turn into a PR problem. It's worked so far for other internet companies.
- cbtacy 9y ago
  Human expertise, in this context often called "subject matter experts"
  - samlevine 9y ago
    Journalists aren't even SMEs in most cases. If they're good, they get enough depth to explain what SMEs are talking about and to understand the difference between a huckster and an expert. And, amazingly enough, the SMEs themselves will disagree on fine points and big issues. There is too much specialized information and knowledge for social media companies to be reliable arbiters of truth for any controversial topic.
659087 9y ago
I predict we're going to see a lot of pages being classified as "fake news distributors" when Mark Zuckerberg's presidential campaign kicks off.
meri_dian 9y ago
Unfortunately we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, we could have completely open and unfiltered platforms which guarantee freedom of expression but at the same time leave our institutions (public and private) vulnerable to malicious influence. On the other hand, we could attempt to build systems whose purpose is to remove fake news, so defending ourselves against a particularly aggressive form of attack on our institutions, but at the same time creating a situation in which that system is given the power to decide what is fake and what is not. Are highly speculative opinion pieces which make accusations far from the main stream fake? What about when a complex event takes place and there are numerous 'takes' on how the event played out. Whose version of the events - whose version of reality reality - does the system use to make judgments on the veracity of news? The situation is complex and we must tread carefully.
- cbtacy 9y ago
  Thank you for understanding this is complicated, it's a relief on this site.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Is it complex? I don't think so at all. Facebook can easily just tag stories they think are false, and give people a button to hide or show such stories (or even show ONLY such stories to make it easier for people to build trust in the system). It would be a kind of spam filter for news stories. Facebook could then stay neutral, could avoid claims of censorship, people who want to only see "true" news could be happy, people who don't trust Facebook's friends to filter their news feed could also be happy, and everyone wins. They aren't doing that because their goal is not to help people detect fake/false news. Their goal is to suppress it entirely. They do this because like quoquoquo above, they believe their userbase contains vast numbers of sheep who are incapable of rational thought. Just tagging things won't be the "solution" to the existence of such people, which is why their tactics are controversial. Are they right about their users? It's a big world. But rather than try to help people spot BS and learn from it, their view appears to be that such people are irredeemable.
  - meri_dian 9y ago
jonathanjaeger 9y ago
I'm an ad buyer on Facebook and sometimes Facebook gets very strict, and they ultimately come to a compromise between ad performance/advertisers and their policies. I know people are scared of 'censorship', but they probably will end up just targeting those crazy conspiratorial pages that clearly share the most bogus stuff to prey on people to later sell bogus products to. You'd be surprised at what's out there..
- Un3qual 9y ago
  SUPER MALE VITALITY!
neuronexmachina 9y ago
Back in November, PC World did some testing with fake FB accounts to see what fake news would be targeted at them. It was pretty eye-opening: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3142412/windows/just-how-partisan-is-facebooks-fake-news-we-tested-it.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3142412/windows/just-how-part... > The Macedonians may still be at it, because our Republican supporter, Todd White, was flooded with partisan posts. Worse, over a little more than two days, we counted 10 such posts in his feed that were fake, most accusing Democrats or their supporters of illegal activity. In all, White was clearly exposed to more spin than his Democratic counterpart, Chris Smith, who saw exactly zero fake news stories.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Sounds like there is an untapped market segment. By the next US election, someone will have figured out what kind of content gets Democrats riled up, and makes a ton selling headlines to the highest bidder.
  - peoplewindow 9y ago
    Er, that's easy. It's done already by large corporate news sources. Just go browse The Guardian or The Independent (both UK outlets) to find a constant series of clickbait stories designed to maximally upset people with Clinton-style views. Random Macedonians can't make money doing it because those advertising dollars are already sucked up by much larger and better known brands. There may also be a structural issue (in the USA). If you lean Democrat you probably trust mainstream US media sources like the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, ABC etc. These sources all very openly pushed Clinton and her policies. If you hear a story that sounds initially dubious, you search Google and you don't find anything to support it, you probably will conclude it's not true. However if you lean Republican and already don't trust these media sources, searching for a story and not finding it will not tell you anything, because you are already expecting those sources to try and suppress information that makes left-leaning causes look bad. So you might find a bunch of YouTube videos or right wing blogs or whatever and conclude that is sufficient. The US media does publish a lot of biased unfactual garbage, including lots of opinion dressed up as fact, but it's usually quite skillfully done and they avoid pushing stories that are trivially false like "Putin issues arrest warrant for George Soros".
0xbear 9y ago
Part of the strategy employed by mainstream media to misinform the public is _selective_ reporting. That is, either the entire event is not reported if it doesn't fit the narrative, or parts that don't fit the narrative are simply omitted or deemphasized. Will FB detect and demonetize that as well?
- MBCook 9y ago
  I'm not sure they can. But if they can cut down on Pizza Gate and 'Bannon runs down liberals in his car for fun' style obvious nonsense, that's an improvement.
- fullshark 9y ago
  No, do you have a suggested way to do this? Seems impossible at FBs scale.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    Then it's just one-sided censorship in favor of narrative peddlers who run major media corporations, and it has nothing to do with suppressing "fake news".
jcwayne 9y ago
This will be a massive time saver for me. It's a real comfort to know that, from now on, all stories on Facebook will be real news. No more reading the articles to spot the BS, just a quick skim of the headlines and I'll be fully informed on the important matters of the day. /s
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >They "trust me". Dumb fucks. -Zuckmeister
msimpson 9y ago
This seems to be the same idea that Google rolled out over YouTube. Demonetize videos that "may not be appropriate for all advertisers." However, the videos which are usually being demonetized are those simply expressing a dissenting opinion. It's going to be interesting what this system classifies as "fake" or "incorrect" news.
gmarx 9y ago
If Facebook had existed in the 1960s, after the Warren commission report, would articles speculating that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy who did not act alone count as fake news?
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alexc05 9y ago
That's a good step, I wonder how that effects pages which host widgets from "Outbrain" and the like. So Salon (for example) has a block of "you might also be interested in" articles scattered around their content. Articles is a pretty charitable term for them I guess but headlines like: "Tiffany Trump's IQ will shock you" "You won't believe what she looks like today" "Plastic surgery nightmares" and so on... does Salon get docked for Outbrain's lack of integrity? Does Salon's "organic shares" get penalized? What about sputnik news or Russia Today (RT.com)? I think it is a great step in the right direction, but they have far more responsibility than just refusing money from them for ads. Bots on the Hamilton 68 dashboard http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ clearly work together to amplify the voices of antidemocratic forces. FB & twitter should (in my opinion) detect and prevent fake-viral root and branch.
sebastianconcpt 9y ago
If anyone selects for you what to listen and what to ignore, then you are allowing forces you do not control to decide on how to nurture your discernment about reality. In mass. Think about that. As noisy as it gets, if we loose freedom of speech we will be gone.
zeep 9y ago
This is like light (or indirect) censoring...
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chrisco255 9y ago
I think this policy is going to be particularly damaging to The Onion.
olivermarks 9y ago
The gofundme to help 'save snopes' https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes There are efforts by David Mikkelson to regain control after Proper Media bought half the company from Mikkelson's ex wife and business partner.

151 points by artsandsci 9y ago

negative news about facebook is now called false news 卐

This is really interesting. I wonder how it will effect Pages that are known for sarcastic/satire type of content on purpose. Pages like The Onion, Hard Times, etc. I feel like there would have to be a lot of work in the fact-checking part of this. At what point will it be too manual of a process, or will the algorithm start to fail on these "grey" areas? Also, it's nice to see Facebook implement a feature solely for the user that could be costing them ad money.

samstr 9y ago
Maybe we'll see a 'SATIRE' label for these types of articles in the feed.
ceejayoz 9y ago
They played with flagging satirical articles back in 2014: http://mashable.com/2014/08/17/facebook-satire-tag/ http://mashable.com/2014/08/17/facebook-satire-tag/
- StephenMelon 9y ago
  I see a lot of comments on satire links that clearly demonstrate that large numbers of people can’t always spot satire. That possibly says more about the current cultural and political climate than it does about people’s gullibility though.
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    As an example: a sitting Congressman thought The Onion's "Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex" was a believable headline. https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/congressman-thought-parody-article-planned-parenthood-real-113439270.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/blogs/sideshow/congressman-though...
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > current I don't think the current situation is all that different from 2005, when Poe's Law was coined.
  - ctdonath 9y ago
    It's not Facebook's job to spot satire or fakes for people. Users expect a "common carrier" type experience, not news curation.
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      Facebook has over two billion users. "Users expect" a wide variety of different things, and I suspect if you polled them there'd be plenty who expect Facebook to do some curation, particularly in the "trending topics" sort of area.
samstave 9y ago
Don't forget this infamous onion revelation, way before Snowden: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ380SHZvYU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ380SHZvYU
- pdkl95 9y ago
  Another infamous Onion video in a similar style is "The Power Of Selling Out: Your Customers As Political Capital". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8c_m6U1f9o
  - samstave 9y ago
    "Facebook former head of security now works for the NSA" https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/facebooks-former-security-chief-now-works-nsa/314068/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/faceb... Not to mention the cadre of other governmentalistia that work there...
samfriedman 9y ago
There was a fairly well-known Facebook page called The Disciples of the New Dawn. They purported to be a cult-like Christian Fundamentalist group, and the page served as a distribution channel for image-macros that seemed designed to get a rise out of people. Things like training children for the militia, eschewing medicine, interpreting pop culture as signs of the end times, etc. The page was also clearly satire, and to lovers of deadpan humor, frequently amusing. I first learned of the page in 2013, and I noticed that Facebook had removed it for Community Guidelines violations some years later. The page appears to be back now, but they now have very clear disclaimers that the content is satirical. http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/facebookdisciples.asp http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/facebookdisciples.asp

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olivermarks 9y ago

I hate the idea of information being filtered through Snopes. Why is a huge global corporation like FB using a dodgy divorced couple to decide who sees what, seems ridiculous to me. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fact-checker-arbitrate-fake-news-accused-defrauding-website-pay-prostitutes-staff-includes-escort-porn-star-Vice-Vixen-domme.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4042194/Facebook-fac... AP has other issues to put it politely.

fullshark 9y ago
They've built credibility in the space
ch4s3 9y ago
Wait, are you critiquing Snopes based on the personal lives of the people who run it, based on an article about them in a tabloid? Are you trolling?
- cloakandswagger 9y ago
  If you were applying for a security clearance and the government discovered you had massive amounts of debt and lots of questionable history that's ripe for blackmail, you would likely be denied. That's because those things could be used as leverage against you to make you act immorally. So yes, I'm quite interested in the personal lives of the people running a company about to be ordained as "the objective truth" by Facebook/Google/et al
  - Applejinx 9y ago
    Everybody can be leveraged. It's a matter of how vulnerable or weak the one being leveraged is, who's doing the pressuring, and what the latter stand to benefit by doing it. For that reason, I'm also interested in who's being made the gatekeeper, because I already know who's out there wanting what, and how much capital they have. None of this happens in a vacuum.
  - ch4s3 9y ago

cjslep 9y ago

Yet another effect highlighting the distinction between "free speech" and "equal speech".

lemonycracket 9y ago

I guess Facebook gets to decide what is "False News". This is an egregious example of Doublespeak. All news to an extent is "false" and not necessarily true. We're truly fucked

ForRealsies 9y ago
We need to nationalize social media and turn it into a civil right to free speech, along with all the protections that goes with it. As a libertarian I never thought I'd hear myself say that.

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xienze 9y ago

> These aren’t supposed to be stories that are disputed for reasons of opinion or partisanship, but rather outright hoaxes and lies Riiiight...

MichaelGG 9y ago

Hmm will they apply it to all politicians and political parties? Every politician ends up saying false things now and then.

Cuuugi 9y ago
Something tells me one political party will be exempt.
- jackhack 9y ago
  And something tells me that the political party that will benefit may invest heavily in these information-filtering companies (if they are not already), closing the circle.

znpy 9y ago

instant question: which entity decides and how does such entity decide what news is true news ?

Jerry2 9y ago
Anything not politically correct and anything that doesn't contribute to manufacturing consent will be labeled as "fake" news. Scary times ahead. It's straight out of 1984.
- deleted 9y ago
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- graphitezepp 9y ago
  It's spookier than 1984. There was no prediction of "Big Data" and how prevalent addiction to an omnipresent internet would be.
zorked 9y ago
The phenomenon we're talking about here isn't one that causes profound ontological and ethical questions. We're talking about simple, obvious bullshit.
- jdc0589 9y ago
  for now. people are unsettled because this is a classic slippery slope situation, or it has the potential to be anyway.
  - arrrg 9y ago
    Slippery slope arguments are not particularly convincing. You need strong argumentative support to make it plausible and work. Just saying “A may be harmless but will lead to the unintended consequence of B” is just not at all convincing, as are most of the times slippery slope arguments are used. Make no mistake, slippery slopes do actually exist, but that’s not some kind of automatic mechanism that always kicks in. If someone makes a slippery slope argument I want them to show me that those consequences are actually plausible.

adtac 9y ago

So they _can_ identify such pages. This is a really small penalty. Why not just outright suspend such pages for a duration that increases with every offence?

wolco 9y ago
Why doesn't facebook come out with there own online wiki and only allow stories based on approved of facts that have been vetted by members of internal fact team. At least we would know what facts they believe and what facts they don't

kumarvvr 9y ago

It is unfortunate that platforms like Facebook have become the beacons of pessimism. I am talking in the context of the usage of social media tools to harm society, rather than help it. For me, FB, TW, etc have become unreliable sources of news. Here, FB is trying to limit ads from pages that share false news, but who will decide that?? 1. FB - Leads to a dangerous slippery slope of putting too much power into a single,private, profit-seeking entity. 2. Users - It alienates sections of society. 3. Other sources - Inherently unreliable. Seemingly, FB getting into the media distribution business itself is troublesome for a society, especially when you have a platform whose algorithms prioritize profit, consequently leading to construction of powerful echo chambers. The trouble with these echo chambers is that they nullify efforts of the society to promote meaningful debate and discussion. Even before the era of FB, the world was struggling with misinformation, lies, subversion of facts, etc. Now we have reached a point where Presidents can lie, often within a span of a few hours, and it's essentially forgotten and things move on. These echo chambers are the primary culprit for this IMV. When efforts to educate constituents is taken head on with echo chambers, the echo chambers inevitably win. Reminds me of the novel where the speaker in a press conference is denouncing country A, and is handed over a note from his aide, and the speaker immediately switched the narrative denouncing country B, all the while the press simply accepts what is told.

briholt 9y ago
"Fake news" appears to be "news I don't like" and has no correlation with the accuracy of the content. Conveniently, Facebook seems to agree with many major media outlets about what news they don't like, so they can present their arbitrary definition of "fake" as objective and conveniently no one can break through the bubble to prove otherwise.
- Retric 9y ago
  Some groups flat out make up news stories to fit some narrative. What else are you going to call that than 'fake news'? 'Candidate X comes out as gay.' 'Secret photos reveal candidate X at KKK lynching.' Are both rather over the top, but also the kind of lies that influence elections.

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thatonechad 9y ago

false news according to "fact checkers" are not 100% accurate and depends on the statement in which they are checking. you can see this by the careful choice of words in which something may be claim to be true or false when all actuality its more complex than that. it is weird why facebook would be getting into the realm of censoring things at all.

xienze 9y ago
> it is weird why facebook would be getting into the realm of censoring things at all. Not really. The entire Valley is beside themselves over Trump being elected and Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel partially responsible because Trump and his supporters were able to use the platforms to their advantage. To be outplayed by Republicans through the use of technology was previously thought impossible, so they're going to "fix the glitch" that made such tactics possible.
- MBCook 9y ago
  Eve if you ignore theoretical bias it may have terrified them to realize that they may have unintentionally had a SERIOUS effect on the ruler of the free world by not only allowing but accidentally promoting obviously fake content. There was plenty of relief content that would have defected the election. The fake stuff may not have actually changed the outcome. But to realize your 'keep up with my friends' business has the power swing elections? That has to be a terrifying prospect.
  - xienze 9y ago
    > Eve if you ignore theoretical bias Real bias, but moving on... > But to realize your 'keep up with my friends' business has the power swing elections? That has to be a terrifying prospect. I really doubt anyone at Facebook, Twitter, or Google would have said "oh my God, what have we done???" if some insidious bit of "fake news" helped Hillary be elected.
    - MBCook 9y ago

jeffdavis 9y ago

There's nothing worse about fake news than many other kinds of bad content -- the only difference is the attention it is getting right now. When fake news passes from the spotlight, and something else takes its place, what will they do then? Even if fake news is a larger business threat to facebook, they can't justify it to the public: "they are allowing horrible thing XYZ, but blocking fake news?!".

gcatalfamo 9y ago

I think it's kinda pointless. By definition, false news generate some kind of shock feeling that urge people to comment and share the link, creating a viral loop of people (a digital angry mob) fueling the false content as real. Blocking it to be advertised might - just might - slow its viral expansion. Is that the best FB can do about this?

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SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
This seems like something DNS providers would be better suited to handle, assuming its something you would want to stop.

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samstave 9y ago

Uh? What about "fake ads"? What about the billions of page views for spammy bs on all platforms and sites, shouldn't those be taken out?

jdc0589 9y ago
good luck with that. those fake ads make Facebook money.
- samstave 9y ago
  That was my point :-)

menacingly 9y ago

The risk here is not that the system will have bad goals, it's that it's easy for manipulation to redefine the core terms used to classify "bad" content. Even now, we regularly see even clear terms like "correct" or "incorrect" applied by fact-checking websites through a fairly biased lens. This is not a partisan issue, when you start down the road of handing the keys to shaping public thought to a powerful party, you're there when the power changes too. This is no different than being able to tell when someone is bullshitting just as you walk through every day life, and thinking we need to shield the poor naive populace from harmful ideas is borderline stereotypical paternalism. This is all obviously a big deal to old media, who have made an art not out of sharing incorrect truths, but of very selectively sharing truths, to the point that what emerges does not really represent the truth at all. They didn't lie, but they aggressively shaped. Of course democratic access to the pieces they'd rather suppress (on both sides) threatens that model. They'd love us to toss out this particular bath water.

stcredzero 9y ago
This is all obviously a big deal to old media, who have made an art not out of sharing incorrect truths, but of very selectively sharing truths, to the point that what emerges does not really represent the truth at all. They didn't lie, but they aggressively shaped. Well and empirically demonstrated in the 80's by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. http://a.co/7VVDGJz http://a.co/7VVDGJz
quoquoquo 9y ago
The game has changed. There are people with intolerant and twisted views trying to manipulate the naive herd of sheep who blindly follows whatever people like on Facebook. Knowing the tactics of people behind fake news, it's good that Facebook is responding accordingly to punish and get rid of bad actors on their platform. It's once again showing that we can't have pure anarcho decentralization. It would be a haven for bad actors that goes unpunished. We can absolutely set definition for what is bad and what isn't bad. What is clearly bad is writing fake news about certain group of ethnic group you hate and manipulating others into believing your twisted idiosyncratic views about Jews, Hindus and Moors. edit: there is some heavy downvote brigading going on here. I've alerted the mods.

dotcoma 9y ago

So, is it a way to admit at long last that Pages that don't buy ads won't get any readers?

ctdonath 9y ago

I've followed social media for a long time (starting back when one could actually read every single Usenet post daily). There is a definite life cycle to social media sites. Those reaching the "too big to fail" stage are usually about to. AOL, CompuServe, MySpace, etc were all indominately massive juggernauts reaching to take over the media world - and vanished almost overnight. The sudden influx of editorial censorship in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc is a clue that a large number of legitimate users (who just happen to hold differing expressions of differing views) are facing the option of leaping to another up-and-coming site. Between that, boredom with format limitations, and an otherwise growing sentiment of malaise, I'm seeing the signs that FB etc won't be with us much longer. And no, it's not "different this time". It's the same this time.

MisterBastahrd 9y ago
Yeah, no. The reasons that those other systems failed has nothing to do with this particular issue. People will still be able to share their bullshit to like minded people to their hearts' content, which is how the vast majority of information gets shared through facebook. All facebook is saying is that they will not take money from these bullshit mills. The vast majority of people couldn't care less about whether Breitbart gets to advertise on facebook. They aren't going to uproot their presence there to make a political point, either. Most of the people on the site who hold those views are 50+ year olds who want to see photos of their grandchildren. They can still get all the nonsense they want by watching Fox News in the evening, which is their preferred method anyway.
- ctdonath 9y ago
  Imputing & dismissing a large fraction of your audience, or friends of your audience, as "deplorable" is not a wise marketing move. They may be 50+, they may watch Fox News, but they consider Breitbart a canary in the coalmine, and may prove quick to throw their not-inconsiderable weight behind cheesy non-sequitur upstart quietly years in the making.
  - MisterBastahrd 9y ago

SCHiM 9y ago

I really really doubt that this is going to have any effect at all. Although many are septic of the attribution of "actual cyber attacks", I doubt that that skepticism can be stretched to include the disinformation/fud spread by the West or Russia. That is to say (although it might not be the case now) that these websites/accounts are not dependent on ads for funding or growing their audience. This might cut down on lazy journalism (or churnalism as it's called) but as soon as the free proxies for the disinformation dry up, a couple of 'funded-behind-the-scenes' will take their place. As for stopping the growth of the respective perpetrators audiences, likely also ineffective. There's a bunch of alternative platforms that lend themselves very well to fud spreading, twitter or a google search come to mind. Ultimately people, once converted, want to read and talk about the latest and greatest evil of <target>. No need to take out ads, your friends will want to tell you.

MBCook 9y ago

So you can't buy ads to bring people to your page. How about you can't monetize your page? How about every time you do this you get shut down for X time (hours?) and it doubles every time you reoffend within a short amount of time. One or two free strikes.

sbussard 9y ago

pier25 9y ago

So how does Facebook really know if something is fake? You can't trust user reports. They will say a story is fake when they don't like it. You can't trust some worker in Bangladesh to determine this either just as easily as you can determine if something is NSFW. You still can't trust AI. So how? It hires specialists in each field to determine what is real and what is not?

jdc0589 9y ago
This is the real issue. Sure, there's the whole thing about it being a slippery slope to straight up shadow banning or otherwise censoring users deemed as "purveyors of fake news", but that's further down the road. How the hell are they going to measure this?
YCode 9y ago
Which is strange, because didn't they just get a lot of flak for having "editors" that they subsequently had to let go?
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  They got a lot of flak for getting rid of the editors, too.
ksk 9y ago
If I had to guess, they will probably deploy a human assisted AI that barely works, and rely on public outrage to handle any outliers that turn into a PR problem. It's worked so far for other internet companies.
cbtacy 9y ago
Human expertise, in this context often called "subject matter experts"
- samlevine 9y ago
  Journalists aren't even SMEs in most cases. If they're good, they get enough depth to explain what SMEs are talking about and to understand the difference between a huckster and an expert. And, amazingly enough, the SMEs themselves will disagree on fine points and big issues. There is too much specialized information and knowledge for social media companies to be reliable arbiters of truth for any controversial topic.

659087 9y ago

I predict we're going to see a lot of pages being classified as "fake news distributors" when Mark Zuckerberg's presidential campaign kicks off.

meri_dian 9y ago

Unfortunately we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, we could have completely open and unfiltered platforms which guarantee freedom of expression but at the same time leave our institutions (public and private) vulnerable to malicious influence. On the other hand, we could attempt to build systems whose purpose is to remove fake news, so defending ourselves against a particularly aggressive form of attack on our institutions, but at the same time creating a situation in which that system is given the power to decide what is fake and what is not. Are highly speculative opinion pieces which make accusations far from the main stream fake? What about when a complex event takes place and there are numerous 'takes' on how the event played out. Whose version of the events - whose version of reality reality - does the system use to make judgments on the veracity of news? The situation is complex and we must tread carefully.

cbtacy 9y ago
Thank you for understanding this is complicated, it's a relief on this site.
peoplewindow 9y ago
Is it complex? I don't think so at all. Facebook can easily just tag stories they think are false, and give people a button to hide or show such stories (or even show ONLY such stories to make it easier for people to build trust in the system). It would be a kind of spam filter for news stories. Facebook could then stay neutral, could avoid claims of censorship, people who want to only see "true" news could be happy, people who don't trust Facebook's friends to filter their news feed could also be happy, and everyone wins. They aren't doing that because their goal is not to help people detect fake/false news. Their goal is to suppress it entirely. They do this because like quoquoquo above, they believe their userbase contains vast numbers of sheep who are incapable of rational thought. Just tagging things won't be the "solution" to the existence of such people, which is why their tactics are controversial. Are they right about their users? It's a big world. But rather than try to help people spot BS and learn from it, their view appears to be that such people are irredeemable.
- meri_dian 9y ago

jonathanjaeger 9y ago

I'm an ad buyer on Facebook and sometimes Facebook gets very strict, and they ultimately come to a compromise between ad performance/advertisers and their policies. I know people are scared of 'censorship', but they probably will end up just targeting those crazy conspiratorial pages that clearly share the most bogus stuff to prey on people to later sell bogus products to. You'd be surprised at what's out there..

Un3qual 9y ago
SUPER MALE VITALITY!

neuronexmachina 9y ago

Back in November, PC World did some testing with fake FB accounts to see what fake news would be targeted at them. It was pretty eye-opening: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3142412/windows/just-how-partisan-is-facebooks-fake-news-we-tested-it.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3142412/windows/just-how-part... > The Macedonians may still be at it, because our Republican supporter, Todd White, was flooded with partisan posts. Worse, over a little more than two days, we counted 10 such posts in his feed that were fake, most accusing Democrats or their supporters of illegal activity. In all, White was clearly exposed to more spin than his Democratic counterpart, Chris Smith, who saw exactly zero fake news stories.

yorwba 9y ago
Sounds like there is an untapped market segment. By the next US election, someone will have figured out what kind of content gets Democrats riled up, and makes a ton selling headlines to the highest bidder.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Er, that's easy. It's done already by large corporate news sources. Just go browse The Guardian or The Independent (both UK outlets) to find a constant series of clickbait stories designed to maximally upset people with Clinton-style views. Random Macedonians can't make money doing it because those advertising dollars are already sucked up by much larger and better known brands. There may also be a structural issue (in the USA). If you lean Democrat you probably trust mainstream US media sources like the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, ABC etc. These sources all very openly pushed Clinton and her policies. If you hear a story that sounds initially dubious, you search Google and you don't find anything to support it, you probably will conclude it's not true. However if you lean Republican and already don't trust these media sources, searching for a story and not finding it will not tell you anything, because you are already expecting those sources to try and suppress information that makes left-leaning causes look bad. So you might find a bunch of YouTube videos or right wing blogs or whatever and conclude that is sufficient. The US media does publish a lot of biased unfactual garbage, including lots of opinion dressed up as fact, but it's usually quite skillfully done and they avoid pushing stories that are trivially false like "Putin issues arrest warrant for George Soros".

0xbear 9y ago

Part of the strategy employed by mainstream media to misinform the public is _selective_ reporting. That is, either the entire event is not reported if it doesn't fit the narrative, or parts that don't fit the narrative are simply omitted or deemphasized. Will FB detect and demonetize that as well?

MBCook 9y ago
I'm not sure they can. But if they can cut down on Pizza Gate and 'Bannon runs down liberals in his car for fun' style obvious nonsense, that's an improvement.
fullshark 9y ago
No, do you have a suggested way to do this? Seems impossible at FBs scale.
- 0xbear 9y ago
  Then it's just one-sided censorship in favor of narrative peddlers who run major media corporations, and it has nothing to do with suppressing "fake news".

jcwayne 9y ago

This will be a massive time saver for me. It's a real comfort to know that, from now on, all stories on Facebook will be real news. No more reading the articles to spot the BS, just a quick skim of the headlines and I'll be fully informed on the important matters of the day. /s

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>They "trust me". Dumb fucks. -Zuckmeister

msimpson 9y ago

This seems to be the same idea that Google rolled out over YouTube. Demonetize videos that "may not be appropriate for all advertisers." However, the videos which are usually being demonetized are those simply expressing a dissenting opinion. It's going to be interesting what this system classifies as "fake" or "incorrect" news.

gmarx 9y ago

If Facebook had existed in the 1960s, after the Warren commission report, would articles speculating that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy who did not act alone count as fake news?

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alexc05 9y ago

That's a good step, I wonder how that effects pages which host widgets from "Outbrain" and the like. So Salon (for example) has a block of "you might also be interested in" articles scattered around their content. Articles is a pretty charitable term for them I guess but headlines like: "Tiffany Trump's IQ will shock you" "You won't believe what she looks like today" "Plastic surgery nightmares" and so on... does Salon get docked for Outbrain's lack of integrity? Does Salon's "organic shares" get penalized? What about sputnik news or Russia Today (RT.com)? I think it is a great step in the right direction, but they have far more responsibility than just refusing money from them for ads. Bots on the Hamilton 68 dashboard http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/ clearly work together to amplify the voices of antidemocratic forces. FB & twitter should (in my opinion) detect and prevent fake-viral root and branch.

sebastianconcpt 9y ago

If anyone selects for you what to listen and what to ignore, then you are allowing forces you do not control to decide on how to nurture your discernment about reality. In mass. Think about that. As noisy as it gets, if we loose freedom of speech we will be gone.

zeep 9y ago

This is like light (or indirect) censoring...

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chrisco255 9y ago

I think this policy is going to be particularly damaging to The Onion.

olivermarks 9y ago

The gofundme to help 'save snopes' https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes There are efforts by David Mikkelson to regain control after Proper Media bought half the company from Mikkelson's ex wife and business partner.