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Facebook's model is social rent seeking. Fake news helps this by keeping people involved and by increasing time spent on the site/app. Efforts to curtail fake n

Facebook's model is social rent seeking. Fake news helps this by keeping people involved and by increasing time spent on the site/app. Efforts to curtail fake news are lip service only. Seeing a disputed tag will make a user do what exactly? They will likely seek out more confirming opinions from their own "trusted" networks of friends, sites, and bloggers and their own already echoing facebook feed. I don't know this for sure but if I were doing a study I'd assign very low probability to the null hypothesis.

josefresco 9y ago
Agreed. I believe Facebook understands the true problem, but simply can't address it without major changes to structure and philosophy. So they do things like this- to appease lawmakers just enough to avoid scrutiny.
- threeseed 9y ago
  The problem isn't specific to Facebook. It's politics in general around the world but mostly in the US where the internet and the rise of confirmation bias has increased polarisation. The only solution is to teach people to be more flexible in their beliefs and increase their willingness to compromise. And this is not something Facebook alone can do.
Cozumel 9y ago
>Seeing a disputed tag will make a user do what exactly? A few years ago I added tags on my site, when people posted a satire link it'd say 'this is satire', fake news was the same etc there were 7 categories altogether covering hundreds of sites and links (satire site, potentially fake, malware, objectionable content, disreputable source, fake story, click bait). I thought it was a fantastic idea because people would spend literally hours arguing over satire pieces (American site) but it backfired spectacularly. I got accused of 'censorship' and 'who are you to say what's true or not', so I just dropped the idea. I still think it was great but end users hate that stuff, for some of them the entire reason they're on these sites is just to post and argue about that stuff. So Facebook could never win doing the same, it just alienates their customer base.
- sukilot 9y ago
  perhaps you changed your site to accommodate a few vocal complaints, alienate your core audience of sensible people.
threeseed 9y ago
You are missing the point. People who are heavily in a particular camp where never the target of the fake news. They are integral parts of its distribution but the target has always been swing voters and those who needed a push to get out to vote. Likewise the purpose of the disputed tags are to give those who are susceptible to influence or not up to date on the news an easy way for them to cut through the noise and get to the truth.

josefresco 9y ago

Agreed. I believe Facebook understands the true problem, but simply can't address it without major changes to structure and philosophy. So they do things like this- to appease lawmakers just enough to avoid scrutiny.

threeseed 9y ago
The problem isn't specific to Facebook. It's politics in general around the world but mostly in the US where the internet and the rise of confirmation bias has increased polarisation. The only solution is to teach people to be more flexible in their beliefs and increase their willingness to compromise. And this is not something Facebook alone can do.

Cozumel 9y ago

>Seeing a disputed tag will make a user do what exactly? A few years ago I added tags on my site, when people posted a satire link it'd say 'this is satire', fake news was the same etc there were 7 categories altogether covering hundreds of sites and links (satire site, potentially fake, malware, objectionable content, disreputable source, fake story, click bait). I thought it was a fantastic idea because people would spend literally hours arguing over satire pieces (American site) but it backfired spectacularly. I got accused of 'censorship' and 'who are you to say what's true or not', so I just dropped the idea. I still think it was great but end users hate that stuff, for some of them the entire reason they're on these sites is just to post and argue about that stuff. So Facebook could never win doing the same, it just alienates their customer base.

sukilot 9y ago
perhaps you changed your site to accommodate a few vocal complaints, alienate your core audience of sensible people.

threeseed 9y ago

You are missing the point. People who are heavily in a particular camp where never the target of the fake news. They are integral parts of its distribution but the target has always been swing voters and those who needed a push to get out to vote. Likewise the purpose of the disputed tags are to give those who are susceptible to influence or not up to date on the news an easy way for them to cut through the noise and get to the truth.