9 ms·

The obvious problem is that the dissemination of news these days is determined by how many arbitrary or ignorant individuals have clicked "like" or "upvote" on

The obvious problem is that the dissemination of news these days is determined by how many arbitrary or ignorant individuals have clicked "like" or "upvote" on whatever social network they're using. It doesn't need to be true, it just needs to be shocking, and people will promote it. This is only fixed by good moderation, with prominent (and powerful) "flag" buttons like Hacker News has. Hacker News and Reddit don't suffer from nearly as much fake news, because moderation teams tend to do a good job of weeding out garbage, and have an easier time with the prominent report buttons. Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation.

intended 9y ago
And will never have good moderation because once you pass through the initial stages of set-up; good moderation is good editorial ability. And that costs manpower, which would obliterate the business model of Facebook or other social media platforms.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > And that costs manpower, which would obliterate the business model of Facebook This presents a clear legislative solution. Extend libel liability to social media platforms. Defamation law is well established. Extending it to platforms forces them to moderate, keeps things de-centralised and adds a scaling limit to boot.
  - CM30 9y ago
    I think that'd probably hurt large internet forums and other non/minimal profit communities more than anything. I mean, Facebook wouldn't like being liable, but they do at least have the money to fight any claims and to theoretically pay staff if forced to. A site that's a fair bit smaller but still popular enough to have trouble moderating things would be utterly screwed.
    - pavel_lishin 9y ago
      Forget large internet forums; what am I supposed to do when someone alleges that my small forum with five active members gets hit by this? It would be a death knell for any new venture that doesn't have several million dollars in funding for legal defenses alone.
aphextron 9y ago
>Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation. Sure they do. They just have zero incentive to remove fake news content. It makes them money, brings in users, everyone is happy! What could be wrong? What's good for Facebook is good for the world!
- fragsworth 9y ago
  Oh, you're right. I forgot that they moderate things that are illegal in nature. But it's still the bare minimum.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    You sound like you want them to do more moderation? It amazes me that we've reached the point where there are commenters on Hacker News arguing in favour of online censorship.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      We can’t all be ideologically motivated to the point of societal suicide.
      - jstanley 9y ago
        Censoring content you disagree with is societal suicide.
        aphextron 9y ago
        >Censoring content you disagree with is societal suicide. There's a big difference between censoring truths you don't agree with, and just moderating verifiable outright lies. The problem is that most people are decent human beings, and find it impossible to believe that someone would write something on the internet that is just a completely fabricated lie. Fake news hucksters take advantage of this psychological "hack" and exploit it, which should not be allowed to happen.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
DravidoAryan 9y ago
Indan here. Just want to say majority of these fake news come from Whatsapp forwards that spreads like wildfire amongst Indians and not Facebook.Check out the subreddit r/theunkillnetwork that covers many of such forwards.
damnyou 9y ago
The problem in India is WhatsApp, which cannot have moderation because it is end-to-end encrypted.
- DravidoAryan 9y ago
  Another problem is that many of us seldom correct or inform them in fear due to not wanting to antagonize them.
yakitori 9y ago
> Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation. Do you prefer moderated fake news?
mc32 9y ago
I used to be n flicker and many communities had pretty good moderation --there was also a flagging mechanism. It worked pretty well. It seems the issue is scalability. The bigger a group gets, the more unwieldy they become. Small ones also get ignored. Yet, for all the good, there was also the specter of in-crowds and echo chambers. That is also manifested in Reddit. Still, I think group-centered moderation is key. If a group is "censoring" you, go create your own group with its own rules. They might also put a limit on group size and auto-split at a given threshold.
tmd83 9y ago
I would assume facebook and such social network would love fake news, puffed up news since they are more likely to be sensational, raise controversy, get people talking/sharing. A win win for them. Who cares if it's right/wrong, truth/false. More clicks mean more money.
biztos 9y ago
I really like HN, but I don't find the "flag" link all that obvious (nor a button). It's front and center for the top of the comment thread, but there is no obvious way to "flag" a comment in a thread other than to click on... the "age" link first, in order to load the view with that comment at the top. If I wanted to spread disinformation that's where I'd do it; I doubt many people would take that extra step unless it was super obvious and offensive to them. Meanwhile everyone else has bought it. I think the relative resilience of HN to FN comes from the technical nature of the audience (high expectation of evidence on most topics) and its irrelevance to political manipulations. It seems to me that

intended 9y ago

And will never have good moderation because once you pass through the initial stages of set-up; good moderation is good editorial ability. And that costs manpower, which would obliterate the business model of Facebook or other social media platforms.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> And that costs manpower, which would obliterate the business model of Facebook This presents a clear legislative solution. Extend libel liability to social media platforms. Defamation law is well established. Extending it to platforms forces them to moderate, keeps things de-centralised and adds a scaling limit to boot.
- CM30 9y ago
  I think that'd probably hurt large internet forums and other non/minimal profit communities more than anything. I mean, Facebook wouldn't like being liable, but they do at least have the money to fight any claims and to theoretically pay staff if forced to. A site that's a fair bit smaller but still popular enough to have trouble moderating things would be utterly screwed.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    Forget large internet forums; what am I supposed to do when someone alleges that my small forum with five active members gets hit by this? It would be a death knell for any new venture that doesn't have several million dollars in funding for legal defenses alone.

aphextron 9y ago

>Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation. Sure they do. They just have zero incentive to remove fake news content. It makes them money, brings in users, everyone is happy! What could be wrong? What's good for Facebook is good for the world!

fragsworth 9y ago
Oh, you're right. I forgot that they moderate things that are illegal in nature. But it's still the bare minimum.
- jstanley 9y ago
  You sound like you want them to do more moderation? It amazes me that we've reached the point where there are commenters on Hacker News arguing in favour of online censorship.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    We can’t all be ideologically motivated to the point of societal suicide.
    - jstanley 9y ago
      Censoring content you disagree with is societal suicide.
      - aphextron 9y ago
        >Censoring content you disagree with is societal suicide. There's a big difference between censoring truths you don't agree with, and just moderating verifiable outright lies. The problem is that most people are decent human beings, and find it impossible to believe that someone would write something on the internet that is just a completely fabricated lie. Fake news hucksters take advantage of this psychological "hack" and exploit it, which should not be allowed to happen.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

DravidoAryan 9y ago

Indan here. Just want to say majority of these fake news come from Whatsapp forwards that spreads like wildfire amongst Indians and not Facebook.Check out the subreddit r/theunkillnetwork that covers many of such forwards.

damnyou 9y ago

The problem in India is WhatsApp, which cannot have moderation because it is end-to-end encrypted.

DravidoAryan 9y ago
Another problem is that many of us seldom correct or inform them in fear due to not wanting to antagonize them.

yakitori 9y ago

> Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation. Do you prefer moderated fake news?

mc32 9y ago

I used to be n flicker and many communities had pretty good moderation --there was also a flagging mechanism. It worked pretty well. It seems the issue is scalability. The bigger a group gets, the more unwieldy they become. Small ones also get ignored. Yet, for all the good, there was also the specter of in-crowds and echo chambers. That is also manifested in Reddit. Still, I think group-centered moderation is key. If a group is "censoring" you, go create your own group with its own rules. They might also put a limit on group size and auto-split at a given threshold.

tmd83 9y ago

I would assume facebook and such social network would love fake news, puffed up news since they are more likely to be sensational, raise controversy, get people talking/sharing. A win win for them. Who cares if it's right/wrong, truth/false. More clicks mean more money.

biztos 9y ago

I really like HN, but I don't find the "flag" link all that obvious (nor a button). It's front and center for the top of the comment thread, but there is no obvious way to "flag" a comment in a thread other than to click on... the "age" link first, in order to load the view with that comment at the top. If I wanted to spread disinformation that's where I'd do it; I doubt many people would take that extra step unless it was super obvious and offensive to them. Meanwhile everyone else has bought it. I think the relative resilience of HN to FN comes from the technical nature of the audience (high expectation of evidence on most topics) and its irrelevance to political manipulations. It seems to me that