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Facebook does need to police its platforms. Fake news and the mob mentality will destroy not only Facebook but also the world. And that is a very tall order.

by sjg007 8y ago

Facebook does need to police its platforms. Fake news and the mob mentality will destroy not only Facebook but also the world. And that is a very tall order. Oddly enough this may not actually be possible. I think they could put in some global filters to reduce virality/contagion as well as automated bot/troll detection.

wu-ikkyu 8y ago
They won't admit it but internet mobs, viral click bait, and bots are all good for FB's stock price. They all increase engagement and active user counts. Saying they should fix their "problems" by doing more policing is like saying a government which has robbed/oppressed it's people into poverty and desperation should solve their problems with more policing. It's an appeal to authority and ignores the root problem.
makomk 8y ago
I think that anyone who thinks that this is fixable doesn't understand how bad or difficult the misinformation problem is. For example, remember that time no less a person than the White House Press Secretary tweeted a video which had been doctored by selectively speeding parts up to make it look more violent? There was a really viral, popular video on Twitter which vividly demonstrated this by overlaying that version on the original and got 10.4 million views. The proof video was doctored, and not subtly either - the original video is 6 or 7 frames behind the overlaid video from the very start and remains that way the whole way through. When watching it at normal speed the faintness of the overlay made this almost invisible except during fast motion, giving the illusion that the overlaid video was sped up during those parts, but if you look at it in freeze-frame mode the very first frame gives the game away. No-one noticed. Every right-thinking, smart, social media savvy person now thinks that they caught an evil attempt to deceive the world with faked video, when in reality they'd been conned by some really simple video trickery - and nothing will ever change this. (This is also why the expert AP got to look at it frame by frame couldn't point to any part of the video that had been sped up. There wasn't any since he got the initial frame alignment right. I've compared the two for myself.) Oh, and even the White House Press Secretary seems to have now been convinced that the video was sped up despite the fact that it wasn't.

by sjg007 8y ago

wu-ikkyu 8y ago

They won't admit it but internet mobs, viral click bait, and bots are all good for FB's stock price. They all increase engagement and active user counts. Saying they should fix their "problems" by doing more policing is like saying a government which has robbed/oppressed it's people into poverty and desperation should solve their problems with more policing. It's an appeal to authority and ignores the root problem.

makomk 8y ago

I think that anyone who thinks that this is fixable doesn't understand how bad or difficult the misinformation problem is. For example, remember that time no less a person than the White House Press Secretary tweeted a video which had been doctored by selectively speeding parts up to make it look more violent? There was a really viral, popular video on Twitter which vividly demonstrated this by overlaying that version on the original and got 10.4 million views. The proof video was doctored, and not subtly either - the original video is 6 or 7 frames behind the overlaid video from the very start and remains that way the whole way through. When watching it at normal speed the faintness of the overlay made this almost invisible except during fast motion, giving the illusion that the overlaid video was sped up during those parts, but if you look at it in freeze-frame mode the very first frame gives the game away. No-one noticed. Every right-thinking, smart, social media savvy person now thinks that they caught an evil attempt to deceive the world with faked video, when in reality they'd been conned by some really simple video trickery - and nothing will ever change this. (This is also why the expert AP got to look at it frame by frame couldn't point to any part of the video that had been sped up. There wasn't any since he got the initial frame alignment right. I've compared the two for myself.) Oh, and even the White House Press Secretary seems to have now been convinced that the video was sped up despite the fact that it wasn't.