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Yeah; I don't doubt that there's a lot of value in the collection of data they built, but it's hard to judge the value of "95%" accuracy without comparison to a
by dantillberg 9y ago
Yeah; I don't doubt that there's a lot of value in the collection of data they built, but it's hard to judge the value of "95%" accuracy without comparison to a baseline like `is_fake = !whitelist.includes(article_domain)`. That whitelist is basically how our brains work currently, and my own (biased, perhaps) accuracy rate is something close to 100%.
A "true fake news detector" would use only the text of the article -- without the URL. And so I agree that this article is kind of like fake news of the "misleading" variety. :)
- eropple 9y agoWhy would reputational analysis of sources not be part of analyzing news trustworthiness?
- wu-ikkyu 9y agoJust because someone is wrong most of the time doesn't mean they're wrong all the time. It's ad hominem
- eropple 9y agoOK. And? Is the point to be perfect, or is the point to be useful? False fakes--and a wisely designed system would probably say "probably fake" in the first place, not outright "fake"--are less damaging than false truths overall.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago>False fakes--and a wisely designed system would probably say "probably fake" in the first place, not outright "fake"--are less damaging than false truths overall. That depends on what your goal is: to discover groundbreaking truths (which are almost always considered taboo/false at first) in order to improve society, or merely attempt to cover up apparent falsehoods as damage control. In the latter case, such a system would be highly prone to enforcing the prexisting biases and prejudices of its developers onto the users, making it much more difficult for them to discover truths that the developers are ignorant of.