7 ms·

Facebook Counsel says: Our authenticity policy is the cornerstone of how we prevent abuse on our platform, and was the basis of our internal investigation and

by sova 9y ago

Facebook Counsel says: Our authenticity policy is the cornerstone of how we prevent abuse on our platform, and was the basis of our internal investigation and what we found. From the beginning, we have always believed that Facebook is a place for authentic dialogue, and that the best way to ensure authenticity is to require people to use the names they are known by. Fake accounts undermine this objective, and are closely related to the creation and spread of inauthentic communication such as spam—as well as used to carry out disinformation campaigns like the one associated with the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian company located in St. Petersburg. Authenticity Policy went partially out the window when non-.edu addresses were able to register, and eventually completely out the window when new account registration was opened to everyone. Not really sure how big F can claim they have any sort of Authenticity Standards for user accounts. It seems to me that they encourage people to make multiple accounts, throwaways, business only accounts, pages for celebrities, pretty much everything but using your real name is encouraged at this point. They [Facebook AND Twitter] also count "impressions" as the number of times something appeared on screen, which is laughably inaccurate for how "impressed" some piece of news or media became on someone's psyche. Still no mention of a veracity metric or any sort of Bullshit-o-meter by neither Facebook, Twitter, nor Google. Then, Finally, I got to Clinn Watts' testimony, and this human is a saint: I propose "nutrition labels" for information outlets, a rating icon for news producing outlets displayed next to their news links in social media feeds and search engines. The icon would provide users an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion. The opt-out rating system would not infringe freedom of speech or freedom of press, but would inform users as to the veracity of content and its disposition. Clinn Watts, friend of veracity, thank you for this timely and appropriate suggestion. I pray the big players take heed to your idea.

QAPereo 9y ago
>Then, Finally, I got to Clinn Watts' testimony, and this human is a saint: I propose "nutrition labels" for information outlets, a rating icon for news producing outlets displayed next to their news links in social media feeds and search engines. The icon would provide users an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion. The opt-out rating system would not infringe freedom of speech or freedom of press, but would inform users as to the veracity of content and its disposition. Then the only challenge is to invent some cross between the biohazard and radiation hazard symbols, and just plaster it on 99% of the net.
- sova 9y ago
  Ideally the icon shows a realtime value or reasonably up-to-date value of Ratio of Fact:Fiction, Ratio of Reporting:Opinion. If you saw a piece of news from YCorp and their Fact-to-Fiction ratio was 9:1 you may say, "okay, that sounds likely." If their Fact-to-fiction is 1:18 However, you might just remember to laugh instead of resharing potentially hazardous messages. To me "icon" can also mean values/numbers/measure and not just "this is healthy and green, this is toxic and glowing"
  - sjeohp 9y ago
    > potentially hazardous messages THOUGHTCRIME ALERT Must protect fragile minds from dangerous messages...
- dangerlibrary 9y ago
  This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. This place is a message and part of a system of messages. Pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    The WIPP?! I love it... a desolate plain of windblown sand, gathering around the base of massive, repulsive obsidian and concrete pillars. Then again, maybe we just go with, "There be dragons."
Xeoncross 9y ago
`nutrition labels` are already kind of subjective as we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. Having a "truth vs fiction" rating next to news sites isn't as easy as you think. Sure, some things are easy to qualify - but when it comes to wars, motivations, scandals - many common stories will always be left with two equally disputed sides of the story. This means the site that supports the governments verdict will when the vote.
- sova 9y ago
  This is not an easy task, but it seems like one the Tech Giants would be able to tackle with their brainpower, resource, intelligence, outreach, and general sense of impending doom (read as "morality"). Or would it be best to focus more on emoji.
  - fleitz 9y ago
    I assure you that outside, people are still mostly normal. I have visited this land, and spoken to its inhabitants, most everyone is pretty chill and friendly.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Nutrion labels - would you consider them harmful? I see them as a net positive.
- kbenson 9y ago
  > we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. As long as we can, and do, revise the labels, that's exactly what we want. Not only would trying to determine the absolute best things to put on the label be time consuming and take forever to accomplish, we would still find more stuff to change later. Perfect is definitely the enemy of good in this case.
- cwkoss 9y ago
  Some of the fact checking websites are just blatant partisan punditry disguised as 'fact-checking'. (Verrit is worst offender: labeling something as 'True' if someone said something verbatim, even if it is not a factual assertion). Even the ones with decent records often display bias, ex. when someone they like says something where the thesis is correct but a supporting fact is incorrect, they'll mark it as "mostly true". But when someone they don't like does the same, they'll mark it as "mostly false".
sjeohp 9y ago
> The icon would provide users an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion. Yes, we should always trust powerful institutions to tell us what the truth is...
- jonny_eh 9y ago
  I agree, sans-sarcasm. It's better than the alternative, which is allowing Russian disinformation to determine facts.
  - sjeohp 9y ago
    Absolutely. Such institutions have never abused such power in the past and surely never will. They would never use fear to manipulate public discourse for example.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      Absolutely right! We should definitely shut down all Department of Education educational minimums as well! Those are just used to control the populace anyway. And the FDA? That's just a way to control what we put in our bodies! The SEC and financial regulations? When's the last time they helped anyone? ... That was sarcasm, in case someone is experiencing a Poe moment. In all these cases, the rules and regulations help some more than others, and may even be abused to help those with connections. That doesn't mean the institutions do not impart a net benefit to the country, and in many cases many orders of magnitude more than the problems they cause (in my opinion, at least). A n agency with clear and transparent rules as to how to score institutions and what is considered true and what is considered false could do some real good. It could also be abused, but I don't think the idea should be immediately discounted before we explore how it might work a bit more in depth.
  - factsaresacred 9y ago
    > It's better than the alternative, which is allowing Russian disinformation to determine facts. No it's not better. "Russian disinformation" is a bullshit term to describe overblown and mostly ineffective tactics used by just about all governments. Disinformation clogs the web. From WaPo to NYT to Salon to [insert media outlet here]. The very same bozos who sold you the Iraq war. The dumbness of American discourse is almost too much to bear. Your shining city upon a hill apparently can't handle $100,000 worth of targeted ads. It's embarrassing.
rgbrenner 9y ago
And who determines what's fact and fiction? Is it the news agency? So they just have to say "We 100% believe aliens live on the dark side of the moon" and it gets counted as fact? Or is it the government? And anything the government doesn't like is fake news.. and everything they do like is fact? I think this is much more difficult than you're assuming. Impossible really.
- sova 9y ago
  Independent fact checking firms exist, I don't think it is a stretch to distill their info into an easily comprehended badge icon. Google, according to their Counsel, is already giving anti terror groups flagging software.
  - goialoq 9y ago
    Which independent fact-checking firms do you trust?
    - sova 9y ago
      Currently just Snopes
  - rgbrenner 9y ago
    So you propose Tampa Bay Times Politifact, and The Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org become arbiters of truth? Have you actually read many of their articles? A lot of it depends on judgement calls of the person doing the fact checking. Leeway is given or taken by the fact checker.. and that amount varies by who is doing the checking. (And you can’t eliminate this because human language is so flexible that it will always require a judgement call to be made in all but the most blatant lies.) There are plenty of examples.. here's one: Politifact rates this as mostly true: Bernie Sanders says 'real unemployment' rate for African American youth is 51 percent http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/13/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-real-unemployment-rate-african/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... Politifact rates this as mostly false: Trump misleadingly puts black youth unemployment rate at 59 percent http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/donald-trump/trump-misleadingly-puts-black-youth-unemployment-r/ http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do... The rate is nowhere near that high according to the BLS: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm If politifact can't call out Bernie's 51%, like they did for Trump.. why would they get this trusted position you seem to think they are qualified for? Politifact is run by human beings. Their judgement shouldn't be substituted for the judgement of others. You can't outsource critical thinking.
ruytlm 9y ago
Nutrition labels treat the symptom, not the cause. IMO the root cause is a neglected and underfunded education system, that does not adequately prepare people for the levels of psychological manipulation the will experience in the form of marketing. Sure, a nutrition label might help, but it's kind of passing the buck - "We don't need to fix our education system, people just need to be able to count to five so they know how many truth stars this article has, then they can make up their own mind!"
- sova 9y ago
  Think of grandma, man. Make life easy for grandma.
  - silverbax88 9y ago
    I get what you are saying, but remember that the big, evil, powerful people in the world who are manipulating this system are mostly grandparents or old enough to be grandparents. I'm pretty sure it's not specific to age, but cognitive education.
- bllguo 9y ago
  Yes.. even if you figure out a perpetually unbiased system to do the fact-checking and labeling, uneducated people will still be manipulated into distrusting the labels. Fact checking organizations already exist and people still think Fox is a beacon of truth.
- btilly 9y ago
  A major target of a lot of these efforts are white men over 40. If your prescription is a better education system, it will take years before it starts making a difference.
- kbenson 9y ago
  It's not at an article level, it's at an institution level. If an institution is known to publish misleading article with half-truths or non-truths, a rating which indicates that (and links to a list with examples) would be beneficial. Institutions that want to be seen as credible will strive to be accurate and fix any mistakes. There are definitely problems with this, but the idea that we just need to fix our education system seems like just as much of a cop-out to me. The problem is hard, it plays into human cultural and cognitive pitfalls, and affects smart, well educated people too. It's not just a matter of education.
eplanit 9y ago
"an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion" Assessed by who? the Ministry of Information? No thanks.
- paulddraper 9y ago
  War is peace. Freedom is slavery.
markcerqueira 9y ago
> Also count "impressions" as the number of times something appeared on screen. I was under the impression that this was the standard, widely used definition of an impression which you are correct differs from the normal definition of impression.

by sova 9y ago

QAPereo 9y ago

>Then, Finally, I got to Clinn Watts' testimony, and this human is a saint: I propose "nutrition labels" for information outlets, a rating icon for news producing outlets displayed next to their news links in social media feeds and search engines. The icon would provide users an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion. The opt-out rating system would not infringe freedom of speech or freedom of press, but would inform users as to the veracity of content and its disposition. Then the only challenge is to invent some cross between the biohazard and radiation hazard symbols, and just plaster it on 99% of the net.

sova 9y ago
Ideally the icon shows a realtime value or reasonably up-to-date value of Ratio of Fact:Fiction, Ratio of Reporting:Opinion. If you saw a piece of news from YCorp and their Fact-to-Fiction ratio was 9:1 you may say, "okay, that sounds likely." If their Fact-to-fiction is 1:18 However, you might just remember to laugh instead of resharing potentially hazardous messages. To me "icon" can also mean values/numbers/measure and not just "this is healthy and green, this is toxic and glowing"
- sjeohp 9y ago
  > potentially hazardous messages THOUGHTCRIME ALERT Must protect fragile minds from dangerous messages...
dangerlibrary 9y ago
This place is not a place of honor. No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. Nothing valued is here. This place is a message and part of a system of messages. Pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  The WIPP?! I love it... a desolate plain of windblown sand, gathering around the base of massive, repulsive obsidian and concrete pillars. Then again, maybe we just go with, "There be dragons."

Xeoncross 9y ago

`nutrition labels` are already kind of subjective as we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. Having a "truth vs fiction" rating next to news sites isn't as easy as you think. Sure, some things are easy to qualify - but when it comes to wars, motivations, scandals - many common stories will always be left with two equally disputed sides of the story. This means the site that supports the governments verdict will when the vote.

sova 9y ago
This is not an easy task, but it seems like one the Tech Giants would be able to tackle with their brainpower, resource, intelligence, outreach, and general sense of impending doom (read as "morality"). Or would it be best to focus more on emoji.
- fleitz 9y ago
  I assure you that outside, people are still mostly normal. I have visited this land, and spoken to its inhabitants, most everyone is pretty chill and friendly.
r00fus 9y ago
Nutrion labels - would you consider them harmful? I see them as a net positive.
kbenson 9y ago
> we keep finding out just what information is actually most important to our health and revising the labels. As long as we can, and do, revise the labels, that's exactly what we want. Not only would trying to determine the absolute best things to put on the label be time consuming and take forever to accomplish, we would still find more stuff to change later. Perfect is definitely the enemy of good in this case.
cwkoss 9y ago
Some of the fact checking websites are just blatant partisan punditry disguised as 'fact-checking'. (Verrit is worst offender: labeling something as 'True' if someone said something verbatim, even if it is not a factual assertion). Even the ones with decent records often display bias, ex. when someone they like says something where the thesis is correct but a supporting fact is incorrect, they'll mark it as "mostly true". But when someone they don't like does the same, they'll mark it as "mostly false".

sjeohp 9y ago

> The icon would provide users an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion. Yes, we should always trust powerful institutions to tell us what the truth is...

jonny_eh 9y ago
I agree, sans-sarcasm. It's better than the alternative, which is allowing Russian disinformation to determine facts.
- sjeohp 9y ago
  Absolutely. Such institutions have never abused such power in the past and surely never will. They would never use fear to manipulate public discourse for example.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    Absolutely right! We should definitely shut down all Department of Education educational minimums as well! Those are just used to control the populace anyway. And the FDA? That's just a way to control what we put in our bodies! The SEC and financial regulations? When's the last time they helped anyone? ... That was sarcasm, in case someone is experiencing a Poe moment. In all these cases, the rules and regulations help some more than others, and may even be abused to help those with connections. That doesn't mean the institutions do not impart a net benefit to the country, and in many cases many orders of magnitude more than the problems they cause (in my opinion, at least). A n agency with clear and transparent rules as to how to score institutions and what is considered true and what is considered false could do some real good. It could also be abused, but I don't think the idea should be immediately discounted before we explore how it might work a bit more in depth.
- factsaresacred 9y ago
  > It's better than the alternative, which is allowing Russian disinformation to determine facts. No it's not better. "Russian disinformation" is a bullshit term to describe overblown and mostly ineffective tactics used by just about all governments. Disinformation clogs the web. From WaPo to NYT to Salon to [insert media outlet here]. The very same bozos who sold you the Iraq war. The dumbness of American discourse is almost too much to bear. Your shining city upon a hill apparently can't handle $100,000 worth of targeted ads. It's embarrassing.

rgbrenner 9y ago

And who determines what's fact and fiction? Is it the news agency? So they just have to say "We 100% believe aliens live on the dark side of the moon" and it gets counted as fact? Or is it the government? And anything the government doesn't like is fake news.. and everything they do like is fact? I think this is much more difficult than you're assuming. Impossible really.

sova 9y ago
Independent fact checking firms exist, I don't think it is a stretch to distill their info into an easily comprehended badge icon. Google, according to their Counsel, is already giving anti terror groups flagging software.
- goialoq 9y ago
  Which independent fact-checking firms do you trust?
  - sova 9y ago
    Currently just Snopes
- rgbrenner 9y ago
  So you propose Tampa Bay Times Politifact, and The Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org become arbiters of truth? Have you actually read many of their articles? A lot of it depends on judgement calls of the person doing the fact checking. Leeway is given or taken by the fact checker.. and that amount varies by who is doing the checking. (And you can’t eliminate this because human language is so flexible that it will always require a judgement call to be made in all but the most blatant lies.) There are plenty of examples.. here's one: Politifact rates this as mostly true: Bernie Sanders says 'real unemployment' rate for African American youth is 51 percent http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/13/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-real-unemployment-rate-african/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... Politifact rates this as mostly false: Trump misleadingly puts black youth unemployment rate at 59 percent http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/donald-trump/trump-misleadingly-puts-black-youth-unemployment-r/ http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do... The rate is nowhere near that high according to the BLS: https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpsee_e16.htm If politifact can't call out Bernie's 51%, like they did for Trump.. why would they get this trusted position you seem to think they are qualified for? Politifact is run by human beings. Their judgement shouldn't be substituted for the judgement of others. You can't outsource critical thinking.

ruytlm 9y ago

Nutrition labels treat the symptom, not the cause. IMO the root cause is a neglected and underfunded education system, that does not adequately prepare people for the levels of psychological manipulation the will experience in the form of marketing. Sure, a nutrition label might help, but it's kind of passing the buck - "We don't need to fix our education system, people just need to be able to count to five so they know how many truth stars this article has, then they can make up their own mind!"

sova 9y ago
Think of grandma, man. Make life easy for grandma.
- silverbax88 9y ago
  I get what you are saying, but remember that the big, evil, powerful people in the world who are manipulating this system are mostly grandparents or old enough to be grandparents. I'm pretty sure it's not specific to age, but cognitive education.
bllguo 9y ago
Yes.. even if you figure out a perpetually unbiased system to do the fact-checking and labeling, uneducated people will still be manipulated into distrusting the labels. Fact checking organizations already exist and people still think Fox is a beacon of truth.
btilly 9y ago
A major target of a lot of these efforts are white men over 40. If your prescription is a better education system, it will take years before it starts making a difference.
kbenson 9y ago
It's not at an article level, it's at an institution level. If an institution is known to publish misleading article with half-truths or non-truths, a rating which indicates that (and links to a list with examples) would be beneficial. Institutions that want to be seen as credible will strive to be accurate and fix any mistakes. There are definitely problems with this, but the idea that we just need to fix our education system seems like just as much of a cop-out to me. The problem is hard, it plays into human cultural and cognitive pitfalls, and affects smart, well educated people too. It's not just a matter of education.

eplanit 9y ago

"an assessment of the news outlet's ratio of fact versus fiction and reporting versus opinion" Assessed by who? the Ministry of Information? No thanks.

paulddraper 9y ago
War is peace. Freedom is slavery.

markcerqueira 9y ago

> Also count "impressions" as the number of times something appeared on screen. I was under the impression that this was the standard, widely used definition of an impression which you are correct differs from the normal definition of impression.