5 ms·

Facebook changes algorithm to boost original reporting

64 points by jbegley 6y ago

tumetab1 6y ago
It seems these days opaque machine learning models means transparency. I would prefer they would say that they're down grading their preference for user engagement, and time on platform, for what the trained model says it's original reporting.
r721 6y ago
>In conjunction with those changes, Facebook will also begin to down-rank news in its algorithm that doesn't have bylines, or present information about the company's editorial staff on the publishers' website. Will they down-rank The Economist, I wonder? :)
- mc32 6y ago
  I imagine they can whitelist known trustworthy entities that follow some modicum of rules.
caiobegotti 6y ago
This is a critical bit that won't address the problem worldwide: For now, the tech giant is focusing on stories in English. It hopes to expand to other languages in the future.
- chillacy 6y ago
  It's pretty typical for companies to start with English and expand from there. Siri had a similar arc, now it supports 20ish and continues to grow.
zitterbewegung 6y ago
Well this is the next logical step for AdTech. Since all of the newspapers and other media outlets have been disrupted by the rest of the AdTech industry the next step would be to allow for people to create content on the platform and then you keep your moat.
rmrk 6y ago
"it will use artificial intelligence to analyze groups of articles on a particular story topic and identify the ones most often cited as the original source." and "Facebook will also begin to down-rank news in its algorithm that doesn't have bylines, or present information about the company's editorial staff on the publishers' website." Okay those are the new requirements for content mills and fake propaganda outlets. How long before they adapt? Actually vetting reporters, reportage and news outlets is really hard for a team of smart humans editors to do. Even the premiere organizations like the NYT and Washington Post with their armies of editors has failed at this from time to time. Algorithms are not ready for this task yet.
- chillacy 6y ago
  > Google said last year that it adjusted its algorithms and the guidelines used by the people that rate its search results to elevate original reporting. Have we seen these adaptations yet? It's been half a year since Google announced their intentions too.
- mgraczyk 6y ago
  The ranking algorithm does not do the vetting. The algorithm just chooses how to weight the vetting outcome to rank the content.
- ksk 6y ago
  Fair point, but its likely very hard if not impossible to create AI algorithms for automatic/guided content curation/classification without deploying them in a real-world use-case.
  - rmrk 6y ago
    For me this is the crux of the issue with The Platforms giving rise to "fake news". We as a society have decided that rampant mis-information and propaganda is only worth solving if we can automate it. If we actually have to pay real people real money to fix it on an ongoing basis, that's just too expensive. Sure there are problems having Humans doing this work too, but they are still way ahead of AI in this problem space. How long do we wait for automated solutions while these problems impose real costs to society?
mgraczyk 6y ago
This is the actual press release. Shame on axios for not linking to it. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/prioritizing-original-news-reporting-on-facebook/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/prioritizing-original-news...
- djohnston 6y ago
  is this irony?

64 points by jbegley 6y ago

It seems these days opaque machine learning models means transparency. I would prefer they would say that they're down grading their preference for user engagement, and time on platform, for what the trained model says it's original reporting.

r721 6y ago

>In conjunction with those changes, Facebook will also begin to down-rank news in its algorithm that doesn't have bylines, or present information about the company's editorial staff on the publishers' website. Will they down-rank The Economist, I wonder? :)

mc32 6y ago
I imagine they can whitelist known trustworthy entities that follow some modicum of rules.

caiobegotti 6y ago

This is a critical bit that won't address the problem worldwide: For now, the tech giant is focusing on stories in English. It hopes to expand to other languages in the future.

chillacy 6y ago
It's pretty typical for companies to start with English and expand from there. Siri had a similar arc, now it supports 20ish and continues to grow.

zitterbewegung 6y ago

Well this is the next logical step for AdTech. Since all of the newspapers and other media outlets have been disrupted by the rest of the AdTech industry the next step would be to allow for people to create content on the platform and then you keep your moat.

rmrk 6y ago

"it will use artificial intelligence to analyze groups of articles on a particular story topic and identify the ones most often cited as the original source." and "Facebook will also begin to down-rank news in its algorithm that doesn't have bylines, or present information about the company's editorial staff on the publishers' website." Okay those are the new requirements for content mills and fake propaganda outlets. How long before they adapt? Actually vetting reporters, reportage and news outlets is really hard for a team of smart humans editors to do. Even the premiere organizations like the NYT and Washington Post with their armies of editors has failed at this from time to time. Algorithms are not ready for this task yet.

chillacy 6y ago
> Google said last year that it adjusted its algorithms and the guidelines used by the people that rate its search results to elevate original reporting. Have we seen these adaptations yet? It's been half a year since Google announced their intentions too.
mgraczyk 6y ago
The ranking algorithm does not do the vetting. The algorithm just chooses how to weight the vetting outcome to rank the content.
ksk 6y ago
Fair point, but its likely very hard if not impossible to create AI algorithms for automatic/guided content curation/classification without deploying them in a real-world use-case.
- rmrk 6y ago
  For me this is the crux of the issue with The Platforms giving rise to "fake news". We as a society have decided that rampant mis-information and propaganda is only worth solving if we can automate it. If we actually have to pay real people real money to fix it on an ongoing basis, that's just too expensive. Sure there are problems having Humans doing this work too, but they are still way ahead of AI in this problem space. How long do we wait for automated solutions while these problems impose real costs to society?

mgraczyk 6y ago

This is the actual press release. Shame on axios for not linking to it. https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/prioritizing-original-news-reporting-on-facebook/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/prioritizing-original-news...

djohnston 6y ago
is this irony?