Facebook Will Let You Flag Content As 'False' 225
jfruh writes: If you're tired of seeing fake or misleading news articles posted by your friends to Facebook and then spreading like wildfire, you might be in luck. In a system that's something like Slashdot comment moderation on a grand scale, you'll now be able to flag a story as false. Links that have been flagged this way by many users will appear less frequently in people's newsfeeds, or with a disclaimer attached.
Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
What could possibly go wrong?
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, dont like the political/religious message so flag it false and less people will see it.
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Odds are all political/religious messages are false.
And no, your mileage will NOT vary.
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Same thing happens here.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
So how about when a bunch of religious people flag a story on evolution as false? Sounds like this semi-curating of stories will turn more on Facebook demographics than on objective facts.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, dont like the political/religious message so flag it false and less people will see it.
If they want to go Slashdot mod style, they should offer a dropdown with multiple different 'false' tags.
As in, multiple different statements you can apply to a post, and your friends should be able to see how many friends applied different labels:
(1) Awesome content
(2) Interesting
(3) Very Funny
(4) Agree 100%
(5) Disagree with this
(6) Inaccurate Information
(7) Partisan political bullshit
(8) False and Dangerous
(9) Clickbait
(10) Scam/Bogus offer or contest
(11) Broken link, or cannot view content
(12) Page says you have to 'like' before you can see content (13) Links to malicious software, adware, or security attack
(14) Common Misconception
(15) Suspected Hoax
(16) Definite Scam
(17) Fraud or phishing attempt
Re:Cool features coming (Score:5, Funny)
Excellent! Next up: ranking everyone on Facebook from best to worst!
Obligatory XKCD panel #3: http://xkcd.com/451/ [xkcd.com]
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"Exactly, dont like the political/religious message so flag it false and less people will see it."
People who sell FB accounts just raised their prices.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Insightful)
"The economy was hit hard by the housing crisis"
"Unchecked human industry is negatively impacting the environment"
"Medical expenses are the number 1 cause of bankruptcy in America"
"The US constitution prohibits establishment of religion by congress"
I think all of them are true, but not everyone will agree.
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Ah, see, he didn't say where there was unchecked industry. Ever see or visit industrial cities in China? Their EPA equivalent exists to take bribes for its management, not to stop anything.
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All of them. If you don't like false toss in a political/religious flag. Nothing political or religious belongs on facebook.
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Instead you'll get atheist or "the wrong religion(tm)" posts being flagged as false. Plus, not all political messages are such that "false will probably do". Which of the following political statements should be marked false?
"The economy was hit hard by the housing crisis"
"Unchecked human industry is negatively impacting the environment"
"Medical expenses are the number 1 cause of bankruptcy in America"
"The US constitution prohibits establishment of religion by congress"
I think all of them are true, but not everyone will agree.
They can take that into account.
I'll mark them true which means we probably agree on a lot of things, so if I mark other things false you'll probably agree they're false and FB shouldn't give them much weight.
But if someone else thinks they're false you probably disagree on a lot, so if that other person flags other things false it shouldn't carry much weight as to whether it's shown to you.
I don't know if that's the plan but it would be a nice way to create an information bubble.
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Among the videos I saw were a few gems I independently researched and determined to be blatantly bunk and/or with real information deliberately misrepresented on critical points:
- Anti-e
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Agreed, but then don't confuse faith with the word false. I'm not a religious person, but the lack of tolerance I see here is pathetic. People believe, so let them, as long as they're not trying to push their ideas on you, why do you give a fuck? Sure there are fringe religious wackos out there, and I would agree that they should be shunned. But the same could be said about some atheists I know.
If you can't be tolerant, you're part of the problem.
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To get to "most of the world" you had to lump all of the religions together. I don't see how that stands up logically, unless you are really arguing that if you don't believe in some kind of magic, you are a "self important asshole".
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Re:Cool (Score:4, Informative)
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Like their privacy policy?
Just Give People A "Hate" Button. (Score:2)
Not "like Slashdot" (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot doesn't have a "False" moderation... and it could use one.
Re:Not "like Slashdot" (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly my 1st thought. Maybe not "false" exactly, but I've long wanted to be able to mod comments "-1 incorrect". Of course I also want a "+1 funny AND insightful".
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+1 underrated.
-1 overrated.
Job done.
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When I see overrated applied to a post, I know beyond any reasonable doubt that it was moderated in spite, and not for any valid reason.
??? I use it for "incorrect" because there is no option that fits better. (Yes, it is often used inappropriately.)
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Re:Not "like Slashdot" (Score:4, Interesting)
Giving up mods to reply...
When something has been previously moderated "+1 Informative" but it is factually incorrect, then the previous moderation was wrong and the post is overrated. "-1 Overrated" corrects for the previous moderation in this case. This represents by far most of my use of the moderation.
When something has been previously moderated "+1 Insightful" but it is trite or inaccurate, then the previous moderation was wrong and the post is overrated. "-1 Overrated" corrects for the previous moderation in this case. This is pretty rare as I try to read deep meaning into even the shortest of "Insightful" posts.
I never use "-1 Overrated" for something that was previously rated as "+1 Interesting", as interesting is completely subjective. Nor do I ever use "-1 Overrated" for something that was previously rated as "+1 Funny", though if it's racist or sexist then "-1 Flamebait" might apply.
I rarely if ever use "+1 Underrated" at all, and never use "-1 Overrated" on something that has not previously been moderated up incorrectly.
Re:Not "like Slashdot" (Score:4, Interesting)
You should not get bad karma because you are wrong, the post can still contribute, and the poster get the chance to be corrected. A lot of "facts" really are opinions anyway.
Re:Not "like Slashdot" (Score:5, Funny)
A lot of "facts" really are opinions anyway.
That's your opinion. Mine is different. /toungeincheek
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A lot of "facts" really are opinions anyway.
And that's why it cannot be done. Too many people would apply it to opinions they did not agree with.
Which is unfortunate, because many of the discussions here do deal in cold hard facts. And I disagree about karma, when the discussion is truly fact based, posting a falsehood as fact should absolutely damage one's karma.
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Do you want to give Karma: Insightful. Don't you want to give Karma: Funny.
I did not realize that.
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Slashdot doesn't have a "False" moderation... and it could use one.
Wait, you don't have that option when you moderate? I use it all the time. It works just like overrated & underrated.
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Now nearly any story posting an opinion will get voted false. As there will be people disagreeing with each others facts.
Any articles about religion. Will be marked false from the atheists.
Any articles against religion. Will be marked false from all the religious.
The Right will mark false everything that is left leaning.
The Left will mark false everything that is right leaning.
Now granted it will be much more peaceful without a lot of this stupid bickering as most peoples opinions are worthless in the gra
Re:Not "like Slashdot" (Score:4, Funny)
Any articles about religion. Will be marked false from the atheists.
Any articles against religion. Will be marked false from all the religious.
The Right will mark false everything that is left leaning.
The Left will mark false everything that is right leaning.
This gives a new meaning to "false flag [wikipedia.org]" operations! :-D
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As an atheist, I typically just ignore the religion posts on FB, unless they're by certain friends, who tend to post interesting stuff (i.e. not dogmatic "DIE UNBELIEVER") on the topic. I mean, just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I don't occasionally want to read more on what, for example, the Pope is saying on a topic.
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Talk about hyperbole.
I'd say that most of my Facebook friends are religious, but I have not once seen someone post "DIE UNBELIEVER".
I've never seen Fox News or other right-wing news sites post "DIE UNBELIEVER".
With the exception of some very extremist (i.e. terrorist) sects, most religious people don't say things like "DIE UNBELIEVER". You may not like everything they say and believe, but there is a stark contrast between believing people morally shouldn't do certain things and telling them to die.
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While true, consider the forum. FB is a place for keeping in touch with friends and family not a news outlet.
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I'm not a fan of the false moderation because it's so obvious that it will be rampantly misused. (ie: Jennifer changed her status to "In a committed relationship". Flag: FALSE!)
I like the moderations /. uses. Would be interesting if a similar system could be made for a social site, with moderation points, etc.
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Slashdot doesn't have a "False" moderation... and it could use one.
Not to mention that we don't get to mod stories... and we should.
Subject to the whims of the masses... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Subject to the whims of the masses... (Score:5, Insightful)
That was my immediate reaction as well.
"I don't agree with the political / religious / philosophical point of the article, so I am going to flag it as false, even if I know that it is true."
Just what we needed, yet another tool to promote drama and division among people.
Re:Subject to the whims of the masses... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Subject to the whims of the masses... (Score:4, Informative)
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Your plan falls apart when you have large groups of people who are willing to believe literally anything about some group they don't like and refuse to accept any evidence that they are wrong.
The number of people who believe Obama will bring in Sharia law or has the national guard preparing internment camps is outright staggering.
Not good enough (Score:5, Interesting)
I already do this on Facebook, but I always provide a link to Politifacts or Factcheck or even Snopes. If you don't, you'll just be that guy who says "no" because he's to naive to believe that Obama already has secret death panels that kill millions of Americans each year.
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Snopes are liberal shills, don't you know, and the stories they say are false make a good point.
I know people who believe those things.
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Informative)
Reality has a well known liberal bias after all.
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I know people who believe those things.
Shills? No. In love with their own opinions? Yes. Presenting opinion as fact? Occasionally, they definitely do this. It's not hard to find examples even in the non-political material. Snopes has a reputation as a bastion of fact, but that's not what it is. It's just got more fact than most sites.
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Funnily enough, the people who are dumb enough to say those things will also post links to infowars and prisonplanet now and again. Those sites are just *chock full* of "good points".
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You're laboring under the misapprehension that people who believe Alex Jones, paranoid conspiracy theorist, have anything of value to share. You could not be more wrong, and your focus on my tone is nothing more than concern trolling because you have nothing of substance to say.
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I didn't realize we still tied conspiracy theorist with paranoid anymo
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Remember the quote that anything Fox News says is a lie, even things that were once true automatically become lies if Fox says them?
The same goes double for Alex Jones.
He is the man who after a tornado wrecked a city, blamed it on Obama's weather weapon, saying he sent the tornado in retribution for the state completely (all counties) voting against him.
And that's one of his saner statements.
If he says the sky is blue, you should still check first before believing him.
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What was this "one case" and how did you figure out it really happened? I'm not saying Snopes can't be wrong, but you don't make it easy to check whether you're correct here.
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I already do this on Facebook, but I always provide a link to Politifacts or Factcheck or even Snopes. If you don't, you'll just be that guy who says "no" because he's to naive to believe that Obama already has secret death panels that kill millions of Americans each year.
Wait, you mean that picture of Obama shaking hands with Hitler was fake? Gosh, sure could have fooled me. (Tea Partiers, the pathetic trolls of conservative politics...)
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Wait, you mean that picture of Obama shaking hands with Hitler was fake? Gosh, sure could have fooled me.
It's pretty obvious to spot the fakes. If Obama is not wearing his Islamic clothing, or does't have a connection to Kenya and/or Sharia law, then obviously the picture is a fake.
Jeebus Weeps - don't you people have any common sense??????????
Re:Not good enough (Score:4, Funny)
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I'm so sorry that you've been mislead. That really is a picture of Hitler passing Obama a fake birth certificate.
Brilliant! Here's hoping you get the mod'ing you deserve: +6 funny (& insightful)!
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Wait, if that's fake...then you're telling me no one has ever seen Obama and Hitler in the same room at the same time?! That can only mean one thing! To FaceBook!
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Wait, if that's fake...then you're telling me no one has ever seen Obama and Hitler in the same room at the same time?!
Of course not you dumbass. That picture was clearly taken outside ;-)
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Obligatory XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/250/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Interesting)
There should be a requirement that if you flag a story as false, you have to provide a link to a reputable source refuting it.
Years ago I did this at work when some administrative staff person sent around the chain email warning you not to press a certain sequence of buttons when on your home phone as that would let the bad guys do all sorts of nefarious things. (#90 scam [snopes.com] I was nice about it, only replied to the person who originated the email and pointed them to the Snopes article showing the said information was a hoax.
In return, instead of thanks, I got a blistering email about who I was wasting company time by looking at things on the internet. From that, and other attempts to point out wrong things, I have come to the conclusion that some people would rather be in denial to the truth than admit that they were taken in by a hoax, and get very angry when confronted with their own stupidity.
Re:Not good enough (Score:5, Funny)
My wife's grandmother sends those things out in mass email forwards. And in all caps.
A few months back her computer running Vista was so horribly bogged down with viruses and malware that I formatted it and installed Mint. When she asked what she could do to thank me I said "never, ever, ever, ever, forward me an email." Haven't gotten one since, so well worth the effort I'd say.
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Remember ElfBowling.exe?! It was one of those .exe's that all IT people just love their users executing. Yes this was a really long time ago & we were all having fun with it until that email came that said it was a VIRUS & would CRASH YOUR HARD DRIVE on XMAS DAY! I replied, with links & even the number to the software dev that made the game. Of course they had a message right off about the hoax when you called.
Even after all the proof that the game was harmless I overheard someone warning
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Some don't believe Snopes (Score:2)
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http://starshipearththebigpicture.com/2012/09/21/snopes-busted/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2412865/posts
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No, now they just say snopes is lying and part of the conspiracy.
Even right now, mere days after Fox issued an apology and admitted it was wrong about the Muslim "no go" zones in France, Breitbart is still insisting they exist, and that CNN is lying by not admitting they exist and talking to actual French people in those areas who also say its silly BS.
ahh good for dictatorships (Score:3)
The Cutest Thing Ever? (Score:5, Funny)
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False (Score:2)
I want to report that story as false, there's no way a single company with perhaps final decisions taken by a very small amount of people can change a policy on a whim or at random and that this will affect the content of every damn newspaper, radio station and TV news.
Why (Score:2)
The people on my Facebook who post anything I consider junk, we either have a reasoned discussion about, or I couldn't care less about their updates.
The people who post the "It's such-and-such a day because of this number and this number and it only happens once in a lifetime" (which are almost invariably wrong anyway)... I can't stand that sort of junk anyway.
The religious nuts? I block, or set to ignore so they don't get offended by my blocking and cause me more of a nuisance than they already are.
The vi
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"It's such-and-such a day because of this number and this number and it only happens once in a lifetime"
The most frustrating part about those posts is usually the entire analysis is correct, up until that last throwaway line "it will never happen again." Why do the authors feel the need to include it? In some cases the real answer is it won't occur for another thousand or ten thousand years, but that's not good enough? Of course some of the others (December has five Tuesdays this year) happen about half of all years and are complete junk articles, but I actually find the rarer ones kind of neat, with the exce
I doubt that... (Score:2)
... will stop my tin-foil-hat-wearing friends from going overboard whenever one of their conspiracy-obsessed friends posts a comment about chemtrails or whatever government-is-out-to-get-you theory of the day is making the rounds.
Uhmmm... (Score:5, Funny)
So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
This changes nothing.
Facebook isn't a reliable news source. It was never meant to be a reliable news source and will never be a reliable news source.
Nobody should ever rely on Facebook to provide reliable news in the first place, so making it less reliable and more biased should have no effect on anyone who isn't a complete fucking idiot.
tag, but don't hide! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather that people who would normally see such a hoax article in their feed, always go ahead and see it -- with the disclaimer attached. They're likely to see it elsewhere anyway, why not use the opportunity to inform them that it's likely false? Instead, they get to see a story on Fox, then open their Facebook feed, and see nothing about it ... now not only are they not told it's false, it even looks like a liberal conspiracy to cover-up the truth! So very helpful.
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Adding the note that it may be false will likely make many people believe it's false, whether that's the case or not. People generally follow other people's opinions, or are at least strongly influenced by them.
Even if you're sure something is true but it's tagged as "potentially false" then at the very least it will seed doubts.
All posts? Or just shared stories? (Score:3)
All posts? Or just shared articles?
"Little Bobby was great in the school play!"
Tagged as FALSE: "Little Bobby sucked!"
False Flag (Score:5, Insightful)
stupid idea (Score:2)
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MANY users[who?] detest this and opt for "Most Recent" instead of "Top Stories". It's one of the reasons extensions such as FB Purity [fbpurity.com] and Social Fixer [socialfixer.com] exist.
Right now I do most of my Farcebook interactions through Tinfoil for Facebook [google.com]. There's also a version for Twitter. Having "social" media in its own browser cut off from the rest of your system means you don't have to install "Messenger" to use chat and more importantly, it can't be written t
-1, Pointless (Score:3)
Yeah, I'm sure these will be used with at least the same intellectual rigor and restraint of any internet discussion, and not applied willy nilly to everything people disagree with emotionally or politically.
Posters do not case if they are false (Score:2)
Many people that share political/religious items do not care if they are false. They agree with the premise of the item, the facts are just a nuisance. Please will always think something is false if they disagree with it and accept as fact anything they agree with. This goes across all ideologies and can be seen rampantly everywhere.
When I first got on the internet, early 90s Usenet, I thought this is great and will dispel all of the nut cases with crazy ideas and conspiracy theories. Most Usenet groups tha
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Many people that share political/religious items do not care if they are false.
People dont care but Facebook seemingly cares and wants to get rid of them from news feed.
Maybe its their idea of improving site, may be it is to collect more personal data.
Or may be all those spam posts are making their spy algorithms go nuts.
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I am sure this change helps them to understand underlying bias of individuals who post and who flag as false. I would say helps the spy algorithms or at least presents the opportunity to learn more about the product (users). It gives them easy to evaluate statistics without having to analyze the comments. You can pretty much guess the position of the person who tagged false. They could even have their own fact checkers researching popular items so from the FB perspective you could know the position of the p
Bennett Haselton (Score:2)
finally a way to block Fox News (Score:2)
or all that Tea Party Libertarian crap
The far-right-wing propagandists hate this (Score:2)
another failure (Score:2)
Bah... (Score:2)
This is just another False flag story!
I want my weird tricks and shocking videos! (Score:2)
I want to get rid of my belly fat and I want to learn French.
...laura
One more tool to the ... (Score:2)
"Dear Small Businessman,
Our SEO tools are the best in the industry. We have thousands of robot accounts constantly searching for news articles about your competitors. It will immediately mark them as false before you could say, eh? what?!. No body will hear any good news about your competitors!! You win!!! Just call us at 1-800-SCAM-ART and enroll at our basic 1000 robot service at the low low price of $29.99 a month. We recommend the de-luxe 10,000 robot service at $49.99 as
Anything people don't like is untrue (Score:2)
If one person stands up and says something that the rest don't want to hear they'll just say "liar" and shut him down even if he's completely legit. That is the problem with down voting etc. It is really just a popularity contest.
I get up voted and downvoted on this site pretty much at random. I'll say something that seems like a reach and everyone loves it. I'll say something else that makes some little faction unhappy but is completely f'ing obvious and get downvoted.
Up or down votes have nothing to do wi
Yay. Quicker than Snopes links all the dang time. (Score:2)
I like this. I've been known to post links to Snopes in the comments of a lot of the stuff my friends re-post. Come to think of it, I hardly ever post to Facebook at all, so the Snopes.com links may make up the majority of my posts.
Now for a "dislike" button. :)