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This just seems like too little, too late. Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. If
by ogre_codes 6y ago
This just seems like too little, too late.
Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources.
If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted.
- newacct583 6y ago> viral content from sketchy sources. Many of those sources are seeded with promoted links, though. It's true that a lot of conspiracy nonsense is genuinely organic, but a LOT of it is not.
- MattGaiser 6y agoA lot of the "viral" content is started with a paid ad though.
- ogre_codes 6y agoA fair amount of misinformation and outright lies comes directly from the mouths of Trump (or other politicians) themselves.
- duckMuppet 6y agoFar more comes from the media itself. Like the "undecided voters" who thought Biden won the debate, but some of whom were interviewed by msnbc months ago and said they were voting got Biden. Or the fact they classify antifa and blm as peaceful protest groups, not hate groups. It's likely people don't particularly care about the truth. Narratives matter more.
- systemvoltage 6y agoA simple way would be to stop all content from propagating beyond few thousand people before a human vetting it.
- jariel 6y agoVetting it would be hard. Most of it is opinion, slander etc. not so much factual. Even the quasi factual content can be spun any which way while remaining within the confines of 'technically correct'.
- amiga 6y agoAt what point does freedom of speech qualify the post?
- exdsq 6y agoFreedom of speech isn’t a right when it comes to a company deciding what can be posted on their site, right? So they could just have a policy where if they don’t know they don’t let it grow viral. Hell, even a limit of 5000 unique views on all posts probably won’t affect many people until the election is over.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm sure they'd like to, but the line between "vetting" and "endorsing" is extremely challenging to draw, and it's not good for anyone if Facebook bans spreading information that they don't as a company endorse.
- ogre_codes 6y agoInformation or Lies? Even Free speech protections in the constitution doesn't protect the right to yell fire in a theater.
- chrisco255 6y agoThat's false. First of all, if there's actually a fire it's fine. Second of all, if the speaker was under the actual belief there was a fire even if there wasn't actually a fire, it's fine. Only if the person yelling fire intended to cause panic would there be a case against the person. And proving this would be difficult in a court of law.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>Information or Lies? There are no absolutes. If you're willing to accept some false-positives, nearly everything can be categorized as a "lie". This is how and why Stephen Colbert coined the term "truthiness".
- nl 6y agoThis is very true. > If they wanted to seriously affect this, they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted. And then you see the complaints (including on HN) about how Facebook is biased. I do note that they have recently banned all QAnon groups and posts, so that's a start.
- ogre_codes 6y ago> And then you see the complaints (including on HN) about how Facebook is biased. They can block lies and disinformation unilaterally, it shouldn't just apply to one political party or the other. "Don't let XXX News lie to you, I Just won the election!" This kind of nonsense shouldn't be tolerated either way. Personally... I think the whole model of "Viral" content is just absolutely broken. The kind of content it encourages is by nature inflammatory and often damaging.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>This kind of nonsense shouldn't be tolerated either way. But it's the crux of the problem. If you're a relatively low-information voter, how else are you supposed to know who won besides the politicians themselves or the media?
- kace91 6y agoYou make an interesting point: what would a social network of limited range look like? Something where you couldn't have more than a set number of connections, things didn't spread more than two nodes in the graph, and resharing wasn't an option. I think it would be ideal to fill in the mainstream need for facebook ( keeping in touch with people)
- bmarquez 6y agoSocial networks could just disable the Share or Retweet button and I think the problem will solve itself. I miss the old Facebook circa 2007 -- no likes and no shares made it a better experience for me.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoAgreed. Facebook and Twitter really ought to have thought about the long history of chain emails, and realized what they were doing when they added an "all my friends have gotta see this!" button.
- pjc50 6y agoI'm old enough to remember "manual retweet", and people still do it on Instagram which has no re-share functionality.
- Zak 6y agoPeople do it less on Instagram than on most social networking platforms though, and that's one of the reasons a greater fraction of the content on Instagram is original. A bit of UI friction has a big influence on user behavior.
- hnracer 6y agoThe problem with vetting is that it's unlikely to be done in an unbiased way. Facebook is a Silicon Valley company with a young staff that leans significantly to the left. As a right-leaning individual this makes me uncomfortable because I know that staff aren't going to separate their politics from decision making surrounding vetting/choosing who gets to do the vetting. Here's a concrete example: Facebook staff, being left-leaning, do not view the "fine people hoax" as misinformation - their echo chamber wouldn't even bring it to their attention as something that could be misinformation, even though it is. The only solution would be for a politically balanced workforce to be making these decisions, ideally a satellite office in a purple state/city with quotas for political leaning, set up only for the purposes of vetting. If we lived in a less polarized society, this wouldn't be an issue. Would you feel comfortable if oil and gas workers who lean 80-90 percent Republican are "vetting" the information you're seeing (or are choosing who gets to do the vetting)? As Naval says, you have a good system if you can hand the keys over to your opposition and things don't go wrong.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoI'm curious what you consider the "hoax" in "very fine people hoax". Do you disagree with this analysis (linked below) which claims that the "only very fine non-white-nationalist people" Trump were either (a) at a different activity from the one Trump claimed they were doing, or (b) people who weren't there but Trump thought were there. That analysis puts Trump at best misinformed or confused, if not supportive of the white-nationalists https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine-people-charlottesville-who-were-they-2/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine...
- hnracer 6y agoBecause about ten seconds later in the same speech he says he unequivocally condemns white supremacists. But the media (and the democrats in their advertising) cuts off that part of the speech, leaving a false impression in people's minds. This alone is evidence that he wasn't calling white supremacists fine people. Further, it was a large protest over a statue with thousands of people over a whole day, do you think there isn't one single non white supremact there protesting to keep it up? There's no evidence that Trump was referring to the tiki torch rally when he said fine people. He made the speech after the large protest and the terrorist attack, where by the law of large numbers there is inevitably going to be non-white supremacists attending to show support merely for the statue/history.
- hogFeast 6y agoYes, it is so simple. News should only come from approved sources. Once the veracity has been checked by a Facebook employee, it is then empirically true or false. I don't know why people in the 21st century cannot understand that all statements are true or false, and that we can place authority for determining truth with companies with known, trusted political allegiances. For example, I have read a lot about healthcare-for-all not being free. The clue is in the name: "free" healthcare. I can't believe that misinformation, probably spread by insurance companies, has been allowed to spread. Facebook should put a stop to this.
- IanDrake 6y agoRight. These harmful memes are rotting the minds of young voters. We need to have Facebook eliminate them. Later when people send them via email, we'll need Google, Microsoft, and Apple make sure our email is vetted by their censors. Then we'll need snail mail censors, and speech censors. It's like people on HN can't even step back and really think about what they're saying.
- teddyh 6y agoSarcasm lacking a “/s” sarcasm tag is risky. On deeply divided issues, where both sides demonize the other and is willing to think the worst of anyone at a drop of a hat, unmarked sarcasm is in effect asking to be knocked down.
- hogFeast 6y agoYour assumption is that I care about some random person on the internet thinking "the worst". The point is to highlight that people on here actually have this attitude, and it isn't sarcasm. How many politicians are saying Facebook should be censoring other people (unsurprisingly: always their opponents)? How many people say social media is the problem? How many people say the "other side's" news is fake news and ignore the fake news they believe in? It isn't possible to have an actual opinion (I have offered them on here, and that gets downvoted too).
- pjc50 6y agoThis reminds me of the California/Australia wildfires. They're the result of a whole cascade of problems, from global warming to the details of under-supported local firefighting infrastructure, but those at the top aren't interested in any of those until they start to feel the heat approach them. I think the possibility of election "chaos" is starting to look real; you've already had this year "armed protestors occupy State building", "crowdfunded anti-protestor gunman", huge ongoing demonstrations, voter rights lawsuits, and chaos in the mail system on which mail-in ballots depend. This is going to make the whole Bush vs Gore hanging chad debacle look like a gentlemanly dispute from a vanished age. Those at the top of Facebook won't mind a clean victory for either side. They don't even mind a one-off clearing of the streets with live ammunition. What they will mind is ongoing violent struggle for the legitimacy of the state. (absolutely not a given, but definitely a risk. Much like the President catching the virus that's dangerous to unfit people over 65.)
- TheAdamAndChe 6y agoI think the risk of protracted conflict is actually really high. Trump has repeatedly implied that he would not accept the results of the election, and has laid groundwork to say that the election was rigged and illegitimate. Hillary Clinton has publicly stated that in no way should Biden concede the election, and Harris last night in the debates implied that they would fight if needed. All this during an extremely severe economic crash leaving millions of people unemployed, with each side blaming the other for the downturn. There have already been violent protests for months. When Trump's "poll watchers" end up in conflicts, I think that's when we'll see things escalate quickly. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and everyone else seems to be doing their best to control the narrative in an attempt to prevent this escalation, but it really seems like it's too late. There seems to be institutional momentum behind these forces at this point.
- Bhilai 6y agoNot sure why you are being downvoted. Things you mention have been reported by NYT pretty clearly.
- grep_name 6y ago
- ponker 6y agoThe problem that the Internet has exposed is that the average person is too susceptible to lies to be a useful contributor to republic-style electoral governance.
- tim333 6y agoOr just a button for 'this is fake news' or some such. Once say 10 people click that they stop it spreading. Bit like the flagging system on HN.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoI think that will just reinforce filter bubbles. Anything from the "other side" (where "other" is relative to the initial reach of whoever posted it) is just gonna flop.
- itsoktocry 6y ago>Or just a button for 'this is fake news' or some such. Once say 10 people click that they stop it spreading. Bit like the flagging system on HN. We are now in year 5, the second election cycle, and you think the solution is as easy as adding a flagging system?
- Closi 6y agoIt would be a start, I kept finding videos of how to make ‘Covid killing’ hand sanitizer on YouTube with incorrect dilution and there was no option to flag it as spreading dangerously false information in the review process. The questions were just “is it hateful?” And “is it illegal” with no option for “demonstrably false and offering dangerous advice”.
- dgellow 6y agoThat would be just way too easy to game.
- paganel 6y ago> Once say 10 people click that they stop it spreading. What will actually happen is that 10 people who do not share your political or societal views will flag that news item irrespective of its true or false status, and we're back to step one. That's why FB tried that "internal commissions of truth"-thingie (or whatever it's called), but obviously that cannot scale and, also obviously, they also have their own biases.
- paganel 6y ago> they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted. Mainstream media outlets like the NYTimes or the Washington Post have become too one-sided (I think that if Trump were to say a common-sense thing like "the Earth is round" they'd certainly find something to argue about, like "it's not actually round, round! it's an ellipsoid! Trump is lying!"), at this point applying your (in other contexts) perfectly reasonable suggestion will only alienate half of the electorate.
- pjc50 6y agoThe non-roundness of the Earth is a constant headache to cartographers, but the place which mandates errors is of course China: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat... (I believe they mostly end up being horizontal rather than vertical)
- cm2187 6y agoVetted by who? Based on the political opinions of some manager somewhere in California?
- bbrree66 6y agoThis is the real question :) Of course it will be by some far left leaning person. Zuckerberg said they have content moderation and consult with many many groups and the interviewer asked for ONE example of a conservative group they consult with, he had no answer.
- GavinMcG 6y agoNot intended to derail this, but could someone point to/recommend conservative groups who a) have denounced white supremacy, and b) are reasonably data- or analytically-driven?
- sawjet 6y agoDo you automatically presume any conservative group is white supremacists by default?
- mindslight 6y agoGiven the way Trump has captured the following of the conservative community, despite being a radical populist and having few policy accomplishments besides inflaming racial tensions, yes. It's reasonable starting assumption about any group that continues to express support for Trump. I'm not a fan of identity politics, I generally try to ignore race, and I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. But at this point it's awfully hard to not conclude that Trump is a race baiting bigot. My final straw was the FUD about Kamala Harris's birth certificate. Apparently "birth certificate" really is just a simplistic dog whistle for pointing out that someone is Black. I'm a libertarian and think that both parties screw the People similarly, but after four years of this destructive ignorant bullshit enough is enough. It's time to take our country back.
- bognition 6y agoYep but the way Facebook ads work is you can temporarily promote specific content to help it go viral more quickly.
- rsynnott 6y ago> they would prevent posts from spreading to tens of thousands/ millions of people without being vetted. But _the precious engagement_! Viral nonsense is, unfortunately, effectively Facebook's business model, so they're unlikely to do much about it.
- lettergram 6y ago> Much of the problems I see aren't advertising in the traditional sense, but viral content from sketchy sources. Define a credible source? We know for a fact all the major news outlets edit photos, often don’t use their own reporters, write sensational articles (actively stretching facts). No, I don’t think we can say what is a “sketchy” source. Unless we start wanting Facebook to moderate truth (or just accept the current propaganda machines as truth). These statements remind me of school. I used to be told not to use Wikipedia and do all my searches in Altavista or Ask Jeeves. I was told this for years, even after Google came out. I think it’s short sighted to try and suppress. Instead we should teach or add a warning (at best) saying “unverified”.
- Nursie 6y ago> We know for a fact all the major news outlets edit photos, often don’t use their own reporters, write sensational articles (actively stretching facts). We can't, perhaps, for a definition that captures all sketchy sources, but we can come up with a reasonable definition that encapsulates some of them. > I think it’s short sighted to try and suppress. Why? Suppressing the mass, unencumbered spread of vexatious lies as "news" would seem to be beneficial to all.
- mc32 6y agoThis can’t be stressed enough. It used to be footage or images were verified or were from a photo or video journalist on the ground. Now they use recycled footage and images either through laziness, incompetence or maliciousness to drive a narrative. This is from “reputable” networks. And not to lessen the complaint about excessive use of force by police, but very often the context preceding a confrontation is deliberately omitted to reframe an interaction with a suspect. This reframing has damaging consequences in many affected areas of concern.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> It used to be footage or images were verified or were from a photo or video journalist on the ground. Now they use recycled footage and images either through laziness, incompetence or maliciousness to drive a narrative. The use of undisclosed recycled footage to accompany news coverage is older than television. Its not a new phenomenon. (What's recent is the degree to which media critics have the ability to detect, identify the source of, and, through alternatives to the media that are doing it in the first place, publicize findings about such misleading use of imagery. You are experiencing it being harder to get away with, and mistaking that for it being a new thing that it is happening.)
- pootyblowfish 6y agoI think the 'too little too late' you mean is the American education system. If things like critical thinking, personal finance, ethics, philosophy were emphasized in K-12 you think it would play out this way. Heck Facebook might not even exist now, but sheep need their shepherds supposedly.