9 ms·

Facebook Threatens Satire Site Over CNN Story That Snopes Rated 'False'

76 points by sharkweek 9y ago

danielvf 9y ago
Facebook was threatening putative actions against the satire site domain on the basis of the "False" Snopes rating, and Facebook was reducing the reach of the satire article in question and showing warning popups before users could click to the article. So it was more than just a marking. As of a few minutes ago, a Facebook spooksperson said "This was a mistake and should not have been rated false in our system. It’s since been corrected and won’t count against the domain in any way"
iamcasen 9y ago
To be fair, I would not be surprised if people used this satire as evidence for their hatred of CNN. Perhaps even missing the fact it was satire at all. There's a reason /r/nottheonion exists...
- danielvf 9y ago
  The headline was: "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication". Hard to miss.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - tehwebguy 9y ago
    For you and me sure. Check out Literally Unbelievable, social posts reacting to satire stories as if they are real. Seems like a lot of people fall for this stuff! http://literallyunbelievable.org http://literallyunbelievable.org
    - cjcfjrf 9y ago
      About your reply to my removed comment- I think you missed my sarcasm and the edit. I am 100% for privacy and 101% for solving the root problem if you didn't get the hint. Won't mention here lest I get banned
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    People are dumb.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      Yeah, there are people who believe a lot of weird stuff. For instance, a small but significant group believes that fictional television shows are real, even ones with non-human characters (Sesame Street puppets, or cartoons, say). Many actors have stories about meeting people who don't understand the difference between the actor and the character the actor plays. It happens all the time. Nonetheless, we don't usually have "fact checkers" explaining to us that Kermit the Frog doesn't exist, nor do we generally have Facebook threatening a site because they've posted one of those popular "Kermit the Frog drinking tea" memes, and the "fact checkers" have pointed out that Kermit isn't a real frog, and that even real frogs generally don't drink tea.
    - ibejoeb 9y ago
      I'd pay to be in a room of people who think that news is a tangible item that can be placed in a laundry machine. This whole situation is ludicrous. The shill at snopes who wrote and published that is beyond the outer limit. I can believe that it was a mistake at Facebook, but it's got a lot of agenda looks to it.
  - _rpd 9y ago
    Snopes addressing this like a serious story is surreal.
  - iamcasen 9y ago
    You'd think so, but the last couple of years have truly astonished me in terms of what I thought was common sense. I am willing to bet a significant percentage of our population is truly incapable of critical thought, and not equipped to deal with the information age.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
Snopes, SPLC, and their ilk and become less credible institutions, and more an arm of the culture wars every day.
- mikeash 9y ago
  Pointing out that satire is, in fact, not a correct recounting of events makes them less credible?
  - norikki 9y ago
    >what you say Facebook did: "Pointing out satire" >what facebook actualy said: "Repeat offenses will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertise removed" So facebook censors conservatives for the 10,000th time this year, and you poo poo it because its just "pointing out satire". It's pretty undeniable at this point that there is a culture war going on, and you have picked a side.
  - jdminhbg 9y ago
    Yes? Treating obvious satire as worthy of correction makes you look clueless. The linked Snopes fact-check says that some readers took the idea that CNN literally puts "news" in an industrial washing machine, which I find... difficult to believe.
    - marshray 9y ago
      If there's one thing we've learned in the last two years it's that what's obviously silly to anyone with broad sources of information and critical thinking skills may be considered plausible by a shocking number of people. I would prefer that Snopes error on the side of stating the obvious.
      - Turing_Machine 9y ago
        I would prefer that people stop taking the word of Snopes about anything. They have zero qualifications, credentials, or expertise to pass judgment on any of the subjects they opine upon. It's a real mystery how they managed to get so many people to consider them infallible. "Snopes said (whatever)" has exactly as much credibility as "Some random guy said (whatever)", i.e., none whatsoever. Edit: in response to some of the comments below, there's a lengthy discussion of some of the problems with Snopes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#2024e828227f https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...
smsm42 9y ago
It would be side-splittingly hilarious if it wasn't so terrifying, given how much ad income for many sites depends on portals like Facebook. And how idiotic and knee-jerk driven decision making seems to be at these sites. From the most recent fiasco with Google banning substring "gun" in their Google Shopping searches, to Snopes "fact-checking" obvious satire, I am starting to think that we are to get bots to pass Turning test not by bots getting progressively smarter but by human behavior getting progressively dumber and bot-like. I don't know who wrote that Snopes article, but if it were a bot, I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised.
ajarmst 9y ago
Clearly the best current candidate for a 'Theory of Everything' is Poe's Law.
russelluresti 9y ago
The solution to this is pretty simple - Facebook should work with the sites it uses as fact-checkers to have a new marking of "Satire". Just having values of "True" and "False" aren't good enough if you're trying to use those sites as tools against fake news.
- stareatgoats 9y ago
  It's hard to believe that they didn't already have something like that in place. Perhaps they didn't, or perhaps it was a bug, or perhaps the human reviewer clicked the wrong button, after reviewing 324 similar notices that morning .. we will probably never know.
- jsgo 9y ago
  Depends on the relationship of Snopes and Facebook. If Snopes is being actively used by Facebook in some sort of joint venture for this purpose, yes, I agree there needs to be something (perhaps a new flag_item: true/false field for Facebook to actually act against). If Facebook is just scraping Snopes and looking for the true or false distinction, well, the onus is on Facebook. Tangentially, I wonder if this is why there was the hostile takeover thing going on with Snopes a while back (not sure if that has been resolved or not). Since "fake news" is all the rage, I bet Snopes has bumped up in usage either as a fact checker or as an API for things of this nature. So the takeover was probably done in the hopes that an acquisition from one of the networks came and they could cash out.
- smsm42 9y ago
  If we already have "may contain peanuts" written on a package of peanuts, sure, why not.
Spoom 9y ago
I think it's pretty clear that this was a software oversight, and as soon as a human got involved, the situation was resolved.
- _rpd 9y ago
  Perhaps someone at Snopes was seeing if they had the power to get a site flagged by Facebook, even for clear satire. Not so much 'artificial stupidity' again, but 'gaming artificial stupidity for fun and profit'.

76 points by sharkweek 9y ago

Facebook was threatening putative actions against the satire site domain on the basis of the "False" Snopes rating, and Facebook was reducing the reach of the satire article in question and showing warning popups before users could click to the article. So it was more than just a marking. As of a few minutes ago, a Facebook spooksperson said "This was a mistake and should not have been rated false in our system. It’s since been corrected and won’t count against the domain in any way"

iamcasen 9y ago

To be fair, I would not be surprised if people used this satire as evidence for their hatred of CNN. Perhaps even missing the fact it was satire at all. There's a reason /r/nottheonion exists...

danielvf 9y ago
The headline was: "CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication". Hard to miss.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tehwebguy 9y ago
  For you and me sure. Check out Literally Unbelievable, social posts reacting to satire stories as if they are real. Seems like a lot of people fall for this stuff! http://literallyunbelievable.org http://literallyunbelievable.org
  - cjcfjrf 9y ago
    About your reply to my removed comment- I think you missed my sarcasm and the edit. I am 100% for privacy and 101% for solving the root problem if you didn't get the hint. Won't mention here lest I get banned
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  People are dumb.
  - Turing_Machine 9y ago
    Yeah, there are people who believe a lot of weird stuff. For instance, a small but significant group believes that fictional television shows are real, even ones with non-human characters (Sesame Street puppets, or cartoons, say). Many actors have stories about meeting people who don't understand the difference between the actor and the character the actor plays. It happens all the time. Nonetheless, we don't usually have "fact checkers" explaining to us that Kermit the Frog doesn't exist, nor do we generally have Facebook threatening a site because they've posted one of those popular "Kermit the Frog drinking tea" memes, and the "fact checkers" have pointed out that Kermit isn't a real frog, and that even real frogs generally don't drink tea.
  - ibejoeb 9y ago
    I'd pay to be in a room of people who think that news is a tangible item that can be placed in a laundry machine. This whole situation is ludicrous. The shill at snopes who wrote and published that is beyond the outer limit. I can believe that it was a mistake at Facebook, but it's got a lot of agenda looks to it.
- _rpd 9y ago
  Snopes addressing this like a serious story is surreal.
- iamcasen 9y ago
  You'd think so, but the last couple of years have truly astonished me in terms of what I thought was common sense. I am willing to bet a significant percentage of our population is truly incapable of critical thought, and not equipped to deal with the information age.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

GCU-Empiricist 9y ago

Snopes, SPLC, and their ilk and become less credible institutions, and more an arm of the culture wars every day.

mikeash 9y ago
Pointing out that satire is, in fact, not a correct recounting of events makes them less credible?
- norikki 9y ago
  >what you say Facebook did: "Pointing out satire" >what facebook actualy said: "Repeat offenses will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertise removed" So facebook censors conservatives for the 10,000th time this year, and you poo poo it because its just "pointing out satire". It's pretty undeniable at this point that there is a culture war going on, and you have picked a side.
- jdminhbg 9y ago
  Yes? Treating obvious satire as worthy of correction makes you look clueless. The linked Snopes fact-check says that some readers took the idea that CNN literally puts "news" in an industrial washing machine, which I find... difficult to believe.
  - marshray 9y ago
    If there's one thing we've learned in the last two years it's that what's obviously silly to anyone with broad sources of information and critical thinking skills may be considered plausible by a shocking number of people. I would prefer that Snopes error on the side of stating the obvious.
    - Turing_Machine 9y ago
      I would prefer that people stop taking the word of Snopes about anything. They have zero qualifications, credentials, or expertise to pass judgment on any of the subjects they opine upon. It's a real mystery how they managed to get so many people to consider them infallible. "Snopes said (whatever)" has exactly as much credibility as "Some random guy said (whatever)", i.e., none whatsoever. Edit: in response to some of the comments below, there's a lengthy discussion of some of the problems with Snopes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#2024e828227f https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...

smsm42 9y ago

It would be side-splittingly hilarious if it wasn't so terrifying, given how much ad income for many sites depends on portals like Facebook. And how idiotic and knee-jerk driven decision making seems to be at these sites. From the most recent fiasco with Google banning substring "gun" in their Google Shopping searches, to Snopes "fact-checking" obvious satire, I am starting to think that we are to get bots to pass Turning test not by bots getting progressively smarter but by human behavior getting progressively dumber and bot-like. I don't know who wrote that Snopes article, but if it were a bot, I wouldn't be even a little bit surprised.

ajarmst 9y ago

Clearly the best current candidate for a 'Theory of Everything' is Poe's Law.

russelluresti 9y ago

The solution to this is pretty simple - Facebook should work with the sites it uses as fact-checkers to have a new marking of "Satire". Just having values of "True" and "False" aren't good enough if you're trying to use those sites as tools against fake news.

stareatgoats 9y ago
It's hard to believe that they didn't already have something like that in place. Perhaps they didn't, or perhaps it was a bug, or perhaps the human reviewer clicked the wrong button, after reviewing 324 similar notices that morning .. we will probably never know.
jsgo 9y ago
Depends on the relationship of Snopes and Facebook. If Snopes is being actively used by Facebook in some sort of joint venture for this purpose, yes, I agree there needs to be something (perhaps a new flag_item: true/false field for Facebook to actually act against). If Facebook is just scraping Snopes and looking for the true or false distinction, well, the onus is on Facebook. Tangentially, I wonder if this is why there was the hostile takeover thing going on with Snopes a while back (not sure if that has been resolved or not). Since "fake news" is all the rage, I bet Snopes has bumped up in usage either as a fact checker or as an API for things of this nature. So the takeover was probably done in the hopes that an acquisition from one of the networks came and they could cash out.
smsm42 9y ago
If we already have "may contain peanuts" written on a package of peanuts, sure, why not.

Spoom 9y ago

I think it's pretty clear that this was a software oversight, and as soon as a human got involved, the situation was resolved.

_rpd 9y ago
Perhaps someone at Snopes was seeing if they had the power to get a site flagged by Facebook, even for clear satire. Not so much 'artificial stupidity' again, but 'gaming artificial stupidity for fun and profit'.