7 ms·

More importantly it should retroactively tell me about what I have read that is shown to be fraudulent. "On September 4th you clicked on link "Hillary Clinton r

More importantly it should retroactively tell me about what I have read that is shown to be fraudulent. "On September 4th you clicked on link "Hillary Clinton runs child porn ring", this article has been fact checked as misleading and the account sharing this has been identified as a fake account operated from Russia". If they do look for fake accounts and misinformation, its not enough to remove the misinformation they have to inform people they have been misinformed.

edent 6y ago
I agree. But there is a "creepy" factor that a social network knows what you click on. I suspect lots of people are unaware of that. Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out? Would that make people more or less likely to use the library?
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out? If what I checked out was fake? Yeah, personally I would like to be told.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Your local library contains many non-fiction books that are filled with inaccurate statements. Librarians are happy to help you with fact checking research but it wouldn't be appropriate for them to label some books as fake. Make up your own mind.
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      I'm imagining a situation where a book was discovered to be an unequivocal lie, in its entirety. Something like the autobiography of Howard Hughes [1], where Hughes eventually said that he had no involvement, and did not know the writer. (This isn't actually the best example, because the book was pulled right before publication, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where it did get published. It came close.) 1: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/50-oh-howard-you-idiot http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/50-oh-howard-you-idio...
      - marcus_holmes 6y ago
        "This is a book full of things that I believe to be true. It therefore belongs in non-fiction" - random nutjob with a blog In real libraries, they only stocked published books, and publishers decided what to publish. So the publishers acted as gatekeepers and fact-checkers (sometimes not so well, as the Howard Hughes example shows), and the library could accept their classification. Now, anyone can write a book and add it to our hypothetical library. If the librarians aren't going to classify the books, then who does? Because someone has got to...
- thwarted 6y ago
  The librarian analogy is a little stretched, but I do expect librarians to properly put fiction books in the fiction section and nonfiction books in the nonfiction section.
  - sshine 6y ago
    Yes, in order to stretch the surveillance analogy properly, the library itself is a living organism and you're inside of its digestive system, and it has eyes on the inside, and you're upset that it's watching you while digesting you.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    In which of those sections do they put the Bible? There’s also plenty of content on social media that isn’t cleanly fiction or non-fiction.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Dewey Decimal category 220 "Religion".
      - quesera 6y ago
        If my elementary school training was correct, that makes the Bible "non-fiction". "Non-fiction has numbers", we were told. I'm not sure Dewey attempts to separate fact from fiction -- just to categorize the author's intent (or assertion). In addition to the Christian Bible, the "non-fiction" section also contains religious texts that refute it. And New Age crystal vibration harmonic ecstasy stuff. And Dianetics. The wide disagreement on "fiction" vs "non-fiction" is probably not a solvable problem. See also: a world map, at any time in recorded history.
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
        As an atheist, putting the Bible in non-fiction makes sense to me because it's a true statement about the beliefs of a certain people. Whatever your religion, few people would consider reading the Bible to be "story time" in the same sense as Harry Potter, A Tale of Two Cities, or even something like The Odyssey. You're either studying the Bible to learn about God, or you're studying it to learn about other people. That's not to say the line isn't murky, but that's true of any human classification system.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Chastising? No. But if there was a service available in which the librarian would tell me when a work I've borrowed has been criticized (or even thoroughly debunked) in some other publication, I'd definitely opt-in to that.
- toyg 6y ago
  It’s just a matter of careful wording. Instead of “you clicked on <bad source>” just say “the source linked was bad”.
  - names_are_hard 6y ago
    Better: we're sorry, we showed you <bad stuff> in your feed. We've determined it's untrue and removed it.
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out? With cars that turn out to be defective, in Germany the authorities can issue mandatory recalls and notices to owners of cars of the recalled model. If I borrowed a book at a library or read a scientific study that has been later proven to be wrong or outright misleading, yes I would like to be notified of that.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    In the library case, I’d prefer that they couldn’t notify me because they didn’t keep a list of what I’d checked out (once I'd returned it).
- alkonaut 6y ago
  > Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out No I wouldn't want anyone chastising me, nor any contact with a human (that can be awkward). But I'd be happy to get an email saying "Please be aware that the book X from the science section that you borrowed earlier has been found to contain inaccurate information and has been moved to our controversial science/science fiction section". Retractoins occur all the time in newspapera but they build on the model that people actually read the newspaper. It doesn't work when people read one article from a social media link. Fact checking and retractions should be updated to work in the age of facebook 1) Respectable media would publish retractions to facebook, saying "Please notify anyone who followed the link to reuters.com/article/123 that the article has been corrected". 2) Fact checks would do the same thing (because this is most important with less respectable media). For this to happen obviously facebook would want to agree to annoy a fraction of their users who don't want to find their favorite links unavailable, littered with warnigs, or followed by messages that they are eating an unhealthy news diet. Hopefully they realize that this is a goal worth pursuing.
  - Nowado 6y ago
    This is something I would like my university to do. Yearly mail of 'Here are updates to course X you took, based on changes in our knowledge'. We really don't have the best relationship with admitting change in our beliefs. Or with keeping records.
    - nradov 6y ago
      Several prominent universities now offer free open courseware. You can just go watch the lectures.
      - Nowado 6y ago
        The difference is reading only differences (which are usually minor and few hours/year from all courses all together) and redoing whole degree every year in one year.
  - retox 6y ago
- chrononaut 6y ago
  Maybe I'm misunderstanding the analogy here but I would expect the library to be fully aware of what books I have checked out. If I don't return a book, they would nag me about it. Why would that be strange or unusual for someone?
- acdha 6y ago
  Is this a librarian chastising you or, on your next visit, telling you that the reference book you’d checked out had been shown to be a work of fiction and recataloged under conspiracy theories? Libraries have plenty of books with inaccuracies and they haven’t contributed to the downfall of popular discourse.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    >Libraries have plenty of books with inaccuracies and they haven’t contributed to the downfall of popular discourse because one has to actively seek out information in a library. Are you aware of any libraries that send out propaganda pamphlets to tens of millions of people? Because that actually has caused the downfall of societies
- tzs 6y ago
  To make the library analogy match how social media works, the book should be one you checked out because the library recommended it to you earlier based on books you had checked out earlier.
throwaways885 6y ago
There's been too many instances of people with edgy opinions banned for being fake, so this could make things worse.
spacebear 6y ago
The response you imagine somebody having to that alert: “oh wow, I’ve been mislead. I should reevaluate some of my thinking” The response somebody actually has: “Twitter is part of the pedophile ring and also they’re watching me.”
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  It's depressing how stupid we (Humans) are...
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >It's depressing how stupid we (Humans) are... While I have often repeated George Carlin's observation[0] that: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." And felt superior, the truth (as it is with most things) is much more nuanced and complex. Firstly, what we term our (singular) "mind" is really the synthesis of multiple, sometimes competing[1] neural systems. In part, our "view" of the world around us isn't the real-time "I sense it and it's so" process we experience. Rather, our brains' multiple systems take in and interpret stimuli (including memories and physical responses sparked by those stimuli) and arrive at a "story" our brain tells us, that we see as "reality." In most cases, the story is close enough to the actual events/stimuli around us, that we do just fine. In many surroundings/situations we often make decisions/judgements which don't engage the higher-level reasoning portions of our brains, but instead rely on systems driven by emotion and responses selected for over millions of years of evolution. An interesting and accessible discussion of this can be found in the recent PBS series Hacking Your Mind[2]. The upshot is that while we aren't necessarily dumb, our neural systems are susceptible to being misled when specific responses (fear is an excellent example) are induced by stimuli (in this case, social media posts) that push us to rely on the emotional/quick response systems in our brains more so than the slower, more reasoned/balanced systems. And that isn't a dumb vs. smart thing. It's taking advantage of responses/processes that have evolved in us and our ancestors over millions of years. Those processes were (and sometimes still are) critical in quickly assessing whether or not a specific situation or individual poses a threat, an opportunity or can safely be ignored. So, no. We aren't stupid, we're just wired to respond in certain ways that marketers and propagandists use to their own advantage. Obviously, this is over simplified (hey, it's a comment on HN, not an academic paper), but I believe it elucidates the nuance/complexity of human interpretation and experience of "reality." I'd welcome those who have actual expertise in this area to chime in with better/more specific information. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43852-think-of-how-stupid-the-average-person-is-and-realize https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43852-think-of-how-stupid-t... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/of-two-minds-when-making/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/of-two-minds-when... [2] https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your-mind/ https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your-mind/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deanclatworthy 6y ago
This is a great idea. I wouldn't go as far as requiring fact-checking of the fake accounts, but just an indication that what you read may have been inaccurate and point out all that you have read.
sigsergv 6y ago
"Hillary Clinton runs child porn ring" — is not a fake data, it's a Russel's teapot, you can't fight it with reason. And marking as a fake is a bad move because it inflates notion of “fake”.
- 101008 6y ago
  Completely honest question, how is that not fake data? Or you think there is a dinstction about fake news and fake data? Would you mind sharing this dinstinction? Thank you!
  - IncRnd 6y ago
    Not the prior poster. The reason it is a Russell Teapot is that the claim is unfalsifiable - it cannot be tested.
    - sigsergv 6y ago
      Yes, they often refer to “facts” that cannot be proved or disproved. You cannot question conspiracy theory because every your claim will be opposed with just created new one. You reason (logically), they think up a new claim. It's pointless process.
      - IncRnd 6y ago
        I see that my explanation to 101008 of a Russell Teapot was downvoted. That's sad for a board that prides itself on people with intellect.
- acdha 6y ago
  This is true in abstract but most of these claims have details which can be tested. You can’t disprove a perfect conspiracy but you can show that the named people don’t exist or weren’t in the place at that time, the “proof” image has incorrect details (e.g. remember the birthers alleging Obama had a birth certificate which mixed the name and seal of different countries and time periods?). If it has enough detail to be tested, you can more justifiably mark it as fake. The vague unfalsifiable stuff is much less satisfying for people to spread.
IncRnd 6y ago
They will probably never expose their decisions to the wide world in that manner. That would incur liability for incorrect decisions by publicizing them.
intended 6y ago
Do it. Don't expect anything significant. Cigarettes have images selected to be revolting or upsetting to keep people away. That is not the reason people stop smoking cigs, or the reason cig consumption is down. Social reasons, huge taxes and a concerted effort to make this unviable for a majority of people, in combination has made the dent it has. And yet, people smoke today.
mistermann 6y ago
> this article has been fact checked as misleading and the account sharing this has been identified as a fake account operated from Russia Something I've always wondered about stories of accounts being portrayed as "from" a certain country, my impression has always been that things like location and ip address data can be spoofed to make it appear that you are in a location other than where you actually are. Does anyone happen to have technical depth in this area? Is it known with high certainty that it is impossible to spoof this information and then make posts from a social media account (Yes/No/Maybe)? (And, how is it known?)

edent 6y ago

I agree. But there is a "creepy" factor that a social network knows what you click on. I suspect lots of people are unaware of that. Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out? Would that make people more or less likely to use the library?

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out? If what I checked out was fake? Yeah, personally I would like to be told.
- nradov 6y ago
  Your local library contains many non-fiction books that are filled with inaccurate statements. Librarians are happy to help you with fact checking research but it wouldn't be appropriate for them to label some books as fake. Make up your own mind.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    I'm imagining a situation where a book was discovered to be an unequivocal lie, in its entirety. Something like the autobiography of Howard Hughes [1], where Hughes eventually said that he had no involvement, and did not know the writer. (This isn't actually the best example, because the book was pulled right before publication, but it's easy to imagine a scenario where it did get published. It came close.) 1: http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/50-oh-howard-you-idiot http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/50-oh-howard-you-idio...
    - marcus_holmes 6y ago
      "This is a book full of things that I believe to be true. It therefore belongs in non-fiction" - random nutjob with a blog In real libraries, they only stocked published books, and publishers decided what to publish. So the publishers acted as gatekeepers and fact-checkers (sometimes not so well, as the Howard Hughes example shows), and the library could accept their classification. Now, anyone can write a book and add it to our hypothetical library. If the librarians aren't going to classify the books, then who does? Because someone has got to...
thwarted 6y ago
The librarian analogy is a little stretched, but I do expect librarians to properly put fiction books in the fiction section and nonfiction books in the nonfiction section.
- sshine 6y ago
  Yes, in order to stretch the surveillance analogy properly, the library itself is a living organism and you're inside of its digestive system, and it has eyes on the inside, and you're upset that it's watching you while digesting you.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  In which of those sections do they put the Bible? There’s also plenty of content on social media that isn’t cleanly fiction or non-fiction.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Dewey Decimal category 220 "Religion".
    - quesera 6y ago
      If my elementary school training was correct, that makes the Bible "non-fiction". "Non-fiction has numbers", we were told. I'm not sure Dewey attempts to separate fact from fiction -- just to categorize the author's intent (or assertion). In addition to the Christian Bible, the "non-fiction" section also contains religious texts that refute it. And New Age crystal vibration harmonic ecstasy stuff. And Dianetics. The wide disagreement on "fiction" vs "non-fiction" is probably not a solvable problem. See also: a world map, at any time in recorded history.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      As an atheist, putting the Bible in non-fiction makes sense to me because it's a true statement about the beliefs of a certain people. Whatever your religion, few people would consider reading the Bible to be "story time" in the same sense as Harry Potter, A Tale of Two Cities, or even something like The Odyssey. You're either studying the Bible to learn about God, or you're studying it to learn about other people. That's not to say the line isn't murky, but that's true of any human classification system.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Chastising? No. But if there was a service available in which the librarian would tell me when a work I've borrowed has been criticized (or even thoroughly debunked) in some other publication, I'd definitely opt-in to that.
toyg 6y ago
It’s just a matter of careful wording. Instead of “you clicked on <bad source>” just say “the source linked was bad”.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  Better: we're sorry, we showed you <bad stuff> in your feed. We've determined it's untrue and removed it.
mschuster91 6y ago
> Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out? With cars that turn out to be defective, in Germany the authorities can issue mandatory recalls and notices to owners of cars of the recalled model. If I borrowed a book at a library or read a scientific study that has been later proven to be wrong or outright misleading, yes I would like to be notified of that.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  In the library case, I’d prefer that they couldn’t notify me because they didn’t keep a list of what I’d checked out (once I'd returned it).
alkonaut 6y ago
> Would you want a librarian chastising you for the books you check out No I wouldn't want anyone chastising me, nor any contact with a human (that can be awkward). But I'd be happy to get an email saying "Please be aware that the book X from the science section that you borrowed earlier has been found to contain inaccurate information and has been moved to our controversial science/science fiction section". Retractoins occur all the time in newspapera but they build on the model that people actually read the newspaper. It doesn't work when people read one article from a social media link. Fact checking and retractions should be updated to work in the age of facebook 1) Respectable media would publish retractions to facebook, saying "Please notify anyone who followed the link to reuters.com/article/123 that the article has been corrected". 2) Fact checks would do the same thing (because this is most important with less respectable media). For this to happen obviously facebook would want to agree to annoy a fraction of their users who don't want to find their favorite links unavailable, littered with warnigs, or followed by messages that they are eating an unhealthy news diet. Hopefully they realize that this is a goal worth pursuing.
- Nowado 6y ago
  This is something I would like my university to do. Yearly mail of 'Here are updates to course X you took, based on changes in our knowledge'. We really don't have the best relationship with admitting change in our beliefs. Or with keeping records.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Several prominent universities now offer free open courseware. You can just go watch the lectures.
    - Nowado 6y ago
      The difference is reading only differences (which are usually minor and few hours/year from all courses all together) and redoing whole degree every year in one year.
- retox 6y ago
chrononaut 6y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the analogy here but I would expect the library to be fully aware of what books I have checked out. If I don't return a book, they would nag me about it. Why would that be strange or unusual for someone?
acdha 6y ago
Is this a librarian chastising you or, on your next visit, telling you that the reference book you’d checked out had been shown to be a work of fiction and recataloged under conspiracy theories? Libraries have plenty of books with inaccuracies and they haven’t contributed to the downfall of popular discourse.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >Libraries have plenty of books with inaccuracies and they haven’t contributed to the downfall of popular discourse because one has to actively seek out information in a library. Are you aware of any libraries that send out propaganda pamphlets to tens of millions of people? Because that actually has caused the downfall of societies
tzs 6y ago
To make the library analogy match how social media works, the book should be one you checked out because the library recommended it to you earlier based on books you had checked out earlier.

throwaways885 6y ago

There's been too many instances of people with edgy opinions banned for being fake, so this could make things worse.

spacebear 6y ago

The response you imagine somebody having to that alert: “oh wow, I’ve been mislead. I should reevaluate some of my thinking” The response somebody actually has: “Twitter is part of the pedophile ring and also they’re watching me.”

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
It's depressing how stupid we (Humans) are...
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >It's depressing how stupid we (Humans) are... While I have often repeated George Carlin's observation[0] that: "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." And felt superior, the truth (as it is with most things) is much more nuanced and complex. Firstly, what we term our (singular) "mind" is really the synthesis of multiple, sometimes competing[1] neural systems. In part, our "view" of the world around us isn't the real-time "I sense it and it's so" process we experience. Rather, our brains' multiple systems take in and interpret stimuli (including memories and physical responses sparked by those stimuli) and arrive at a "story" our brain tells us, that we see as "reality." In most cases, the story is close enough to the actual events/stimuli around us, that we do just fine. In many surroundings/situations we often make decisions/judgements which don't engage the higher-level reasoning portions of our brains, but instead rely on systems driven by emotion and responses selected for over millions of years of evolution. An interesting and accessible discussion of this can be found in the recent PBS series Hacking Your Mind[2]. The upshot is that while we aren't necessarily dumb, our neural systems are susceptible to being misled when specific responses (fear is an excellent example) are induced by stimuli (in this case, social media posts) that push us to rely on the emotional/quick response systems in our brains more so than the slower, more reasoned/balanced systems. And that isn't a dumb vs. smart thing. It's taking advantage of responses/processes that have evolved in us and our ancestors over millions of years. Those processes were (and sometimes still are) critical in quickly assessing whether or not a specific situation or individual poses a threat, an opportunity or can safely be ignored. So, no. We aren't stupid, we're just wired to respond in certain ways that marketers and propagandists use to their own advantage. Obviously, this is over simplified (hey, it's a comment on HN, not an academic paper), but I believe it elucidates the nuance/complexity of human interpretation and experience of "reality." I'd welcome those who have actual expertise in this area to chime in with better/more specific information. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43852-think-of-how-stupid-the-average-person-is-and-realize https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/43852-think-of-how-stupid-t... [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/of-two-minds-when-making/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/of-two-minds-when... [2] https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your-mind/ https://www.pbs.org/show/hacking-your-mind/

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deanclatworthy 6y ago

This is a great idea. I wouldn't go as far as requiring fact-checking of the fake accounts, but just an indication that what you read may have been inaccurate and point out all that you have read.

sigsergv 6y ago

"Hillary Clinton runs child porn ring" — is not a fake data, it's a Russel's teapot, you can't fight it with reason. And marking as a fake is a bad move because it inflates notion of “fake”.

101008 6y ago
Completely honest question, how is that not fake data? Or you think there is a dinstction about fake news and fake data? Would you mind sharing this dinstinction? Thank you!
- IncRnd 6y ago
  Not the prior poster. The reason it is a Russell Teapot is that the claim is unfalsifiable - it cannot be tested.
  - sigsergv 6y ago
    Yes, they often refer to “facts” that cannot be proved or disproved. You cannot question conspiracy theory because every your claim will be opposed with just created new one. You reason (logically), they think up a new claim. It's pointless process.
    - IncRnd 6y ago
      I see that my explanation to 101008 of a Russell Teapot was downvoted. That's sad for a board that prides itself on people with intellect.
acdha 6y ago
This is true in abstract but most of these claims have details which can be tested. You can’t disprove a perfect conspiracy but you can show that the named people don’t exist or weren’t in the place at that time, the “proof” image has incorrect details (e.g. remember the birthers alleging Obama had a birth certificate which mixed the name and seal of different countries and time periods?). If it has enough detail to be tested, you can more justifiably mark it as fake. The vague unfalsifiable stuff is much less satisfying for people to spread.

IncRnd 6y ago

They will probably never expose their decisions to the wide world in that manner. That would incur liability for incorrect decisions by publicizing them.

intended 6y ago

Do it. Don't expect anything significant. Cigarettes have images selected to be revolting or upsetting to keep people away. That is not the reason people stop smoking cigs, or the reason cig consumption is down. Social reasons, huge taxes and a concerted effort to make this unviable for a majority of people, in combination has made the dent it has. And yet, people smoke today.

mistermann 6y ago

> this article has been fact checked as misleading and the account sharing this has been identified as a fake account operated from Russia Something I've always wondered about stories of accounts being portrayed as "from" a certain country, my impression has always been that things like location and ip address data can be spoofed to make it appear that you are in a location other than where you actually are. Does anyone happen to have technical depth in this area? Is it known with high certainty that it is impossible to spoof this information and then make posts from a social media account (Yes/No/Maybe)? (And, how is it known?)