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[marrec]

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/facebook-gets-real-fighting-fake-news/?mbid=social_twitter

After coming under heavy public criticism for not taking full responsibility for how it may have affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, Facebook has finally laid out how it plans to crack down on fake news. The social network’s corrective updates are starting to roll out right now, and while they won’t solve the problem overnight, they’re an important first step.

What is their plan to do this?

Facebook’s strategy combines crowdsourcing similar to how Facebook polices mature content, reliance on third-party fact checkers, and financial disincentives for fake news hucksters. Each aspect of the rollout has its strengths, but also invites a few questions.

In large part, as the article explains, they are going to be combating fake news by allowing users to mark an article as fake. Once it's marked, full time facebook employees will look at the domain the article originates from to determine if the domain is a legitimate source. If the article comes from a clearly spoofed website (FoxNews123.au is used as an example) it will be flagged as Fake. These employees aren't looking at the content of the article, just the domains they're being shared from.

Further, articles can be sent to a 3rd party team of fact-checkers from sites like Politifact and Snopes to verify the content. If the content is deemed false, the 3rd party sites will return an article correcting or debunking the information. That article will be shown along with a message to the person sharing the original fake news, something like "This article has been shown by 3rd Part Fact-Checkers to contain false information" along with a link to the Fact-Checkers content.

The other part of their plan is to reduce ad-dollars... but I'm not quite sold on their methods there.

All these updates are a worthy step forward in addressing the scourge of fake news, which presents a real threat to our democracy even as the companies that spread this disinformation make a killing in ad dollars. Facebook has long asserted that as a platform, a mere middleman to these low-life companies, it doesn’t directly carry any responsibility for the actions of abusers of its reach. Today, Facebook is stepping up to the issues in earnest. Whether its actions will lead to the kinds of impactful changes that are currently needed remains to be seen.

Too little too late?

Mark me as Fake if old.

 

[whyamihere]

Yeah, but did you know that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring and Trump was endorsed by the Pope?

 

[Burt]

Just in time

 

[entremet]

Better late than never I guess lmao

 

[The_White_Rose]

Should have been implemented since day 1 of Facebook's existence.

 

[SwiftDeath]

Honestly don't believe them. Will have to see serious change enacted by these new policies to give them any benefit of the doubt.

They directly benefit monetarily from all the fake news so killing fake news en masse seems unlikely

 

[Jeels]

Man when we are talking about a few thousand votes in three states I wish Facebook would have done this sooner...

 

[Pai Pai Master]

Should have been implemented since day 1 of Facebook's existence.

Facebook wasn't really intended for the purpose of walling yourself off in your own little social circle bubble and consuming news and entertainment catered directly to you when it first came into being.

But yes, they should have had steps in place well in advance of when it became this epidemic-like problem.

 

[The Jackdog]

im really interested in just seeing it in action. like what it looks like.

im doubting its rolle dout much yet, but anyone have anything on their feed flagged fake yet?

 

[cress2000]

Better late than never. Your move, Twitter. (assuming Facebook is actually going to do something)

 

[Nazgul_Hunter]

I don't agree that it should've been there from day 1, but it is funny that this was derided as close to impossible by Facebook shortly after the election.

 

[marrec]

Honestly don't believe them. Will have to see serious change enacted by these new policies to give them any benefit of the doubt.

They directly benefit monetarily from all the fake news so killing fake news en masse seems unlikely

It seems like they're mostly going to be treating Fake News like they have been treating Mature Content. I.E. actual human beings reviewing things marked as Fake and sorting them from there.

This, of course, will lead to people gaming the system. Large groups of people can share generated articles and mark them as fake at a rate that will flood their actual human beings system.

 

[cackhyena]

Good job getting right on this.

 

[Barzul]

Good all this tech companies have way more power than they realize. They can have more sway than shit like Fox News which have obvious slants. They first need to realize what their goals are and how they want to get to them. Why should they have to be apolitical in this current environment when everything else isn't?

There's a reason California is the biggest economy, most influential state in the union and that all these companies congregate there, it's not because of Republicans. Middle America isn't going to dump Facebook, they use it too much.

This is a good first step, I'd love to see them go even further.

 

[The Jackdog]

It seems like they're mostly going to be treating Fake News like they have been treating Mature Content. I.E. actual human beings reviewing things marked as Fake and sorting them from there.

This, of course, will lead to people gaming the system. Large groups of people can share generated articles and mark them as fake at a rate that will flood their actual human beings system.

the_donald does love to "meme things into reality"

 

[FyreWulff]

Facebook wasn't really intended for the purpose of walling yourself off in your own little social circle bubble and consuming news and entertainment catered directly to you when it first came into being.

But yes, they should have had steps in place well in advance of when it became this epidemic-like problem.

Sadly this guy called it back in 2011 with this TedX talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles

 

[marrec]

im really interested in just seeing it in action. like what it looks like.

im doubting its rolle dout much yet, but anyone have anything on their feed flagged fake yet?

I can't flag anything on my feed yet, but nobody has shared anything from obviously fake news sites recently.

 

[FunkyMunkey]

Too little too late. The amount of people delving into and believing and propagating blatantly false (or at least I thought obvious) news baffles me and does more to hurt my opinion of the US public than anything else in my lifetime. Most of us are morons and get a president tailored for that

 

[Not]

It's going to be hilarious watching all the dingbats try to smack a fake label on all the New York Times and Al-Jazeera articles they don't like

 

[Barzul]

Too little too late. The amount of people delving into and believing and propagating blatantly false (or at least I thought obvious) news baffles me and does more to hurt my opinion of the US public than anything else in my lifetime. Most of us are morons and get a president tailored for that

Don't think it is. Unless they ditch the platforms (unlikely), they can be made to see the light. Stuff like that story where a kid supposedly died in Santa's arm, st first glance it seemed true. But snopes called it out as false. If crazy stories are disputed quickly enough, it's harder to propagate. Especially if Facebook themselves are the ones saying it's false.

 

[StickSoldier]

This will change everything!

Hopefully it'll at least slow down ridiculous things like #pizzagate spreading to people that don't look into these websites and/or do their research on topics.

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

read the title as Fox News

 

[painey]

Hopefully you can report more than just linked sites.. I'm sick of seeing this 5 times a day in my feeds

 

[marrec]

Hopefully you can report more than just linked sites.. I'm sick of seeing this 5 times a day in my feeds

From what the article says, you'll be able to make any post as "Fake" and then the process begins. It doesn't say explicitly that it has to be anything else.

 

[Horns]

This is years too late.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

Does facebook have a "News" tab somewhere? If so should only allow legit news sources.

Fake news sucks. Fake news claiming to be satire when its real goal is to misinform sucks. But I'd like to also see better user tools to help people filter news sources. In the end it's up to users to fact check their shit and use reliable sources. Facebook can't do this for everyone. People gotta take responsibility. Cause people posting fake shit is not going away.

 

[God Dayumm]

Yeah, but did you know that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring and Trump was endorsed by the Pope?

And Russia rigged the election

 

[Brawly Likes to Brawl]

Sadly this guy called it back in 2011 with this TedX talk.

https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles

I remember my English professor having us watch this Talk before assigning us our research papers. There were some people who knew that something shitty was on the horizon but nobody else cared.

 

[sixteen-bit]

lmao

https://www.instagram.com/p/BOCoqsdAOlF/

 

[RPGCrazied]

Little late no? Could have used this during the election.

 

[excelsiorlef]

Does facebook have a "News" tab somewhere? If so should only allow legit news sources.

Fake news sucks. Fake news claiming to be satire when its real goal is to misinform sucks. But I'd like to also see better user tools to help people filter news sources. In the end it's up to users to fact check their shit and use reliable sources. Facebook can't do this for everyone. People gotta take responsibility. Cause people posting fake shit is not going away.

They do, it used to be human curated now it's done via computers after Cons whined, guess what started showing up every day? Breitbart.

 

[radios shipping overview]

This is going to result in so much spite-flagging of stories that folks just don't agree with or don't want to acknowledge. Hopefully they have a whitelist set up for reputable sites, because nobody needs to have their time wasted with that. Unless they plan on double-checking WaPo and NYT's own editors.

 

[studyguy]

From another site honestly it sounds like they're still not taking responsibility in full despite knowing full well what they caused. They can't be the arbiters of truth apparently because doing the very minimum of due diligence to make sure absolutely fake news doesn't trend on their platform is too much.

"We believe in giving people a voice and that we cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves, so we're approaching this problem carefully,” Mosseri wrote. “We've focused our efforts on the worst of the worst, on the clear hoaxes spread by spammers for their own gain, and on engaging both our community and third party organizations."

 

[jackal27]

Just in time

Exactly what I thought.

 

[Lombax]

good on them for at least getting to it now, but at this point I personally don't care. Facebook has quickly become irrelevant in my day to day. Sick of managing friends, sick of listening to people yell into the echo chamber, sick of people posting articles thinking they are doing something impactful.

 

[Lambtron]

Not a moment too soon.

 

[Brian Griffin]

Should also track how often users are right/wrong when reporting fake news and weight them higher or lower in their algorithms. This would combat click farms and the army of shitbags and trolls that will flock to legit news and flag it as fake because that don't like it.

 

[Alcoremortis]

I don't wanna brag, but I had an opportunity about a month ago to speak in person to a Facebook advertising exec and suggested exactly this. And she really liked the idea.

Now, I don't know if they were already planning this when I brought it up, but I'm just gonna pretend like I inspired this move.

 

[WetWaffle]

Too fucking late, now we have a manchild as president for 8 years

 

[marrec]

The problem with any forward facing "fix" like this is the same problem as always.

We are collectively still trying to figure out how to deal with the resulting mess. It seems to me that part of the problem is that we are using the internet to address the problems of the internet. Bad actors can therefore hijack or duplicate the mechanisms of quality control and subvert them.

We're trying to use the internet to fix the internet when we've been shown time and time again that people are very good at breaking the internet.

 

[SnakeXs]

Assuming this happens, how long before a some pro-Trump/alt right/MAGA social media network pops up?

 

[Lord Frieza]

It is too late, but at least it's being done. And, you know, in fairness to FB and Zuckerberg, I really don't think anyone quite realized how big and influential fake news was until this election cycle. I knew it was a problem, sure, but not nearly on the scale that it is.

 

[chrisPjelly]

Yeah, but did you know that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring and Trump was endorsed by the Pope?

I literally cashed out a lady that was pushing this onto another customer (who clearly didn't give a shit and was just trying to be polite). I live in CANADA for fuck sake. Who the fuck is spreading this bullshit

 

[adj_noun]

Yeah, but did you know that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring and Trump was endorsed by the Pope?

LIKE

SHARE

FORWARD TO EXTENDED FAMILY

 

[marrec]

It is too late, but at least it's being done. And, you know, in fairness to FB and Zuckerberg, I really don't think anyone quite realized how big and influential fake news was until this election cycle. I knew it was a problem, sure, but not nearly on the scale that it is.

The thing is, Facebook is constantly doing little experiments on users to see how little changes affect their behavior and it seems rather implausible to me that they didn't have a research team in place for YEARS now to understand the ins and outs of fake news on their site.

I think they knew full and well how impactful it could be but tried to quarantine it rather than remove it.

 

[Skux]

This will be about as successful as Facebook's previous efforts to label Onion-style parody sites as satire.

 

[Randolph Freelander]

I want to see if it flags all the junk my conservative Facebook friends were sharing over the past forever.

I fully expect their entire walls to be flagged as false.

 

[Dabanton]

All that will happen now is people will say that the news is being called fake as it's too near the truth.

People sit in their news bubbles and rarely care or want to actually find out the truth.

 

[yanipheonu]

Yeah its good for all humanity that they start cracking down on this. Frankly, there should be laws specifically to hinder fake news. Not that I expect Donald "I love Breitbart" Trump to do anything.

"meme things into reality"

to be fair, what else is "the truth" than a big meme we hope corresponds with reality?

 

[SolarPowered]

They're like a corporate version of slowpoke.

congrats