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Facebook on its Fake News Problem: 'There's So Much More We Need To Do' (theverge.com) 284

In the aftermath of election, news outlets are counting Facebook as one of the major reasons that drove Trump to victory. NYMag, for instance, had an essay Wednesday titled "Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook", in which it has documented several instances where lies were peddled as fact on Facebook's watch. The social juggernaut, which has over 1.6 billion people checking the website every month, has been spotted running fake stories on its platform numerous times over the past few months, something that President Barack Obama remarked about recently. This is critical because over 60 percent people in the United States consume their news on social media. When asked if Facebook had anything to say about its influence in Trump's victory, the company said:We take misinformation on Facebook very seriously. We value authentic communication, and hear consistently from those who use Facebook that they prefer not to see misinformation. In Newsfeed we use various signals based on community feedback to determine which posts are likely to contain inaccurate information, and reduce their distribution. In Trending we look at a variety of signals to help make sure the topics being shown are reflective of real-world events, and take additional steps to prevent false or misleading content from appearing. Despite these efforts we understand there's so much more we need to do, and that is why it's important that we keep improving our ability to detect misinformation. We're committed to continuing to work on this issue and improve the experiences on our platform.
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Facebook on its Fake News Problem: 'There's So Much More We Need To Do'

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  • Don't use Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lgw ( 121541 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @01:49PM (#53259383) Journal

    I have a simple and 100% effective strategy for avoiding fake news on Facebook. I think it's a fairly common strategy for Slashdotters.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Agree.

      Also it wouldn't hurt to have much greater emphasis on critical thinking skills in public education. That's hard to do though, because some people really hate it and seem to have a deficiency there, and many parents hate it when their kids start asking really trenchant questions about their religious beliefs.

    • by NatasRevol ( 731260 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @01:56PM (#53259469) Journal

      Well, until Facebook goes back to less than 1 billion monthly users, your idea sucks for not impacting American politics.

      • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @02:24PM (#53259745) Journal

        Well, until Facebook goes back to less than 1 billion monthly users, your idea sucks for not impacting American politics.

        It's not just Facebook.

        US elections were very different before TV. When voter made a decision based on mostly written information and the candidates actual policy positions, plus maybe seeing a candidate once address a crowd, elections weren't about sound bites and hot takes. But the Nixon-Kennedy debate [history.com] marked the beginning of a new era.

        This way the same sort of "state change in voting", 56 years later. Trump was a master at getting free press in a world of 24-hour news coverage and social media and one-liners and tweets. Even less information being looked at than the TV era. Trump demonstrated that "any press is good press" as he rode the wave of "talking heads just can't stop talking about how bad he is" to victory. That's the new era - 140-character attention spans.

        The content hasn't mattered much for 56 years, and matters less now. People aren't persuaded by "fake news", they've already decided based on the world around them, and grab any quote that looks good to defend that position. Clearly the media had very little actual influence this election. I doubt social media did either - people decide first, based on the real world ("it's the economy, stupid"), then talk about it on social media.

    • You beat me to it.
      FB is a wasteland of contrived "keeping up with the joneses", people trying to make their lives look larger-than-life, weirdo political rants, cat pictures, endless posts about nothing or anything, and most importantly, almost nothing of any substantive value.
      Actually, no, the worst part about FB is the time wasted scrolling through it...
      • FB is a wasteland of contrived "keeping up with the joneses", people trying to make their lives look larger-than-life, weirdo political rants, cat pictures, endless posts about nothing or anything, and most importantly, almost nothing of any substantive value.

        That's not caused by Facebook - that's caused by you having shit taste in friends. My feed is almost exactly the opposite. (Well, modulo the cat pictures but I have a lot of cat people among my friends.)

    • by gnick ( 1211984 )

      I think it's a fairly common strategy for Slashdotters.

      I doubt that's true. My guess is that the abstainers are just a very vocal minority. Like how people without TV love periodically announcing that they don't have TV and those of us that haven't cut the cable just keep our yaps shut.

  • WE FAILED!! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CajunArson ( 465943 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @01:51PM (#53259415) Journal

    Commit Sepuku in your hoodie Zuckerberg.

    The platform that you built to limit the flow of information to the population and as a way to make advertising revenue for yourself and Hillary backfired on you.

    Incidentally, Trump's expenditures per vote were about half of Hillary's.
    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09... [cnbc.com]

    That's a story that Slashdot doesn't want to cover since they still want to paint this as Trump "buying" the election.

    • Re:WE FAILED!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bfpierce ( 4312717 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @03:02PM (#53260049)

      Wait, there's stories on slashdot saying Trump 'bought' the election? Did I miss something, or did you just post false tin foil hat bullshit in an article about false fucking news stories.

    • Incidentally, Trump's expenditures per vote were about half of Hillary's. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09... [cnbc.com]

      That's a story that Slashdot doesn't want to cover since they still want to paint this as Trump "buying" the election.

      Trump didn't have to spend as much: he got free media coverage.

      If you want your story to make the frontpage of /., you are welcome to submit it. There are enough Republicans here to promote it if they find it newsworthy for the /.ers. And if it doesn't make it to the front page, you don't have to turn it into a conspiracy theory, there is a much simpler explanation: sometimes /. is still "News for nerds".

      • Two days of nonstop "Trump is evil and he's going to kill us all" stories makes me think that maybe it is going to take /. a while to settle down.

  • This is a problem with any social media or news aggregation site that allows for unchecked echo chambers. It's an issue for people of all politics and will crop up anywhere someone can consume media and news unchecked. "Fixing" this on Facebook will only push it elsewhere. Can we fix human nature? Should we?
  • Great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Orgasmatron ( 8103 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @01:57PM (#53259475)

    Congratulations to Facebook for stepping up against the spreaders of fake news and kicking CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, BBC and Fox off their platform! Oh, and all of the polling organizations that got everything 100% wrong for the last 18 months. Very happy to see them go too.

    Enjoy your CSPAN and Breitbart News, facebook users.

  • The old saying "don't believe everything you hear/read/see" hasn't changed even in today's age of social media. If you don't fact check or correlate your sources and go around regurgitating everything you hear/read/see, you will get a collective consciousness not even remotely based in reality. This is a PEBKAC error not a Facebook problem.
  • by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @02:00PM (#53259519)
    If Facebook were to censor these stories, people who fall for them would assume Facebook was controlled by the "liberal media" and go elsewhere for their news. It would not keep the stories from spreading virally.

    Also, I like the implication that Trump won due to FUD but the Democratic FUD is of no concern--like the incredibly stupid story posted right here about Trump's server secretly communicating with a Russian bank [slashdot.org].

    It was so obviously a non-story [snopes.com]... but read through the comments here and you'll see how eager people were to lap it up. (I linked Snopes as it contains a variety of credible sources debunking the article).
    • by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @02:17PM (#53259675)

      Also, I like the implication that Trump won due to FUD but the Democratic FUD is of no concern

      Yes. My own FB feed is curated a bit by my un-follows and follows, and no doubt skews a bit towards the conservative/libertarian bent - though I am FB friends with at least as many dyed-in-the-wool liberals who post to FB (or memegurgitate) about as often as they breathe. So while I saw no small number of silly re-posts and likes/shares of breathless fake/shallow news meant to draw in clicks from conservative types, I saw FAR more FUD-ish content from liberals trying to actually shame/change minds through the use of preposterously overblown fear mongering and outright lies.

      So, yes: fake news on FB is a problem, or at least a significant annoyance. But the notion that somehow this is limited to stuff from and aimed at right-leaning people in some proportion that, compared to its lefty counterparts, cost Hillary Clinton the election... I call bullshit. The biggest purveyors and apparent consumers of that crap that I saw were outspoken Clinton supporters. So even if I'm wrong by a lot and the amount of it was roughly equal, that DOES NOT explain away the DNC/Clinton-Machine's huge loss. This is just another example of liberals - especially in the media - refusing to look in the mirror and understand that they're not nearly as clever and persuasive as they think they are, and that a whole lot of other people were just sick to death of the condescension, the holier-than-thou presumption of a Clinton coronation, and the deploying of finger-wagging celebrities telling people how to think.

      And for those who are mystified that yelling at their non-racist, non-homophic, non-misogynistic friends about how racist, homophobic, and misogynistic they are didn't somehow make them vote for Hillary or feel apologetic following the election: maybe it's time to rethink what you were sure would get people to see things your way.

      • by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @02:50PM (#53259975) Journal

        And for those who are mystified that yelling at their non-racist, non-homophic, non-misogynistic friends about how racist, homophobic, and misogynistic they are didn't somehow make them vote for Hillary or feel apologetic following the election: maybe it's time to rethink what you were sure would get people to see things your way.

        I so close to voting for Hillary. If only someone had called Trump Hitler just two or three hundred more times I would have been right there.

        • by sinij ( 911942 )

          I so close to voting for Hillary. If only someone had called Trump Hitler just two or three hundred more times I would have been right there.

          To turn this on you, clearly electoral system isn't rigged. That is, if Clinton could rig the elections, do you have any doubt that she would? So if we were demonstrably wrong with this, what else you are not getting?

          • by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @03:46PM (#53260421) Journal

            The system is rigged. We read the DNC leaks. They rigged the primary against Bernie, the debates are rigged, the news coverage is propaganda, this article is about how clearly the problem is they haven't rigged social media enough for the establishment. Oh and the congressional districts are gerrymandered by the Republicans. This is also a form of rigging.

            If you're just talking about voting machines and such, there's analysis going into that right now, so we'll see. There are certain precincts of PA and Ohio where it looks like they were flipping votes, but they didn't do it enough to effect the outcome. Nobody cares much about this kind of stuff after your team wins though.

            I would also not be shocked if some of the more blatantly fraudulent plans were stopped because of the spotlight O'Keefe and Trump shined on it. Foval and Creamer were smoked out and knew they were being watched, so that took out their men on the ground who would have actually been doing the dirty work.

            Beating the rigged system doesn't mean the system isn't rigged.

            • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @06:37PM (#53261459)

              Oh and the congressional districts are gerrymandered by the Republicans. This is also a form of rigging.

              I used to care about this back in the 1980s. Only back then it was the Democrats who gerrymandered the districts in their favor to control the House for 40 years [wikipedia.org]. I admit a slight political bias (I tend to vote conservative). But it was mostly the principle of the thing - gerrymandering is bad regardless of your political beliefs since it manipulates that essential link between voter and representative.

              In the 1990 election in California, a fix for this came up as a ballot initiative [ballotpedia.org]. It simply required a 2/3 majority vote of the legislature for redrawn districts to be approved, thus preventing a 50%+1 majority from leveraging their slim advantage into a bigger one in future elections. I helped spread the word about it, the problem it tried to solve, why it was good for everyone. I was delighted that once I explained the problem and how this fixed it, even diehard liberals grudgingly agreed it was the right thing to do and said they would vote for it. Early polls showed it passing.

              That's when two groups I had up til then respected (if not always agreed with) stepped in. A bunch of environmental groups led by the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women realized Prop 118, regardless of how fair it was, would reduce the number of legislators sympathetic to their cause in both the State and Federal government. They flooded TV and radio with ads telling people it was bad and to vote against it, without even explaining what it was or how it was bad. It ended up losing by a 2:1 margin.

              The Republicans took the time to figure out how to undo the Democrat gerrymandering. First they worked on winning the governorships so they could veto the gerrymandered redistricting. That usually kicked the matter into the courts, who usually took it upon themselves to redraw the districts (since the had to be redrawn to reflect population shifts, and the legislature/governor were deadlocked). Which allowed more Republicans (or rather, the correct number of Republicans) to win office as state legislators. Which gave them more control over future redistricting. Which combined with the governorship allowed them to eventually gerrymander things in their favor.

              I suppose I should still be concerned about this on principle. But the whole thing scarred my young, optimistic self and my belief that people are inherently good and fair, and will make the right decision if they're properly informed. I tried to help fix gerrymandering for all people, only to see my hard work shot down by unrpincipled groups who were only interested in their own benefit regardless of how unfair it was. Screw them. The shoe's on the other foot now. They made their bed. They can lie in it. If another ballot initiative comes up which makes gerrymandering harder, yeah I'll vote for it. But I'm not going to put additional effort into helping people out of a gerrymandered hole they put themselves into.

      • by sinij ( 911942 )
        As a fellow libertarian-leaning individual, you are doing intellectual disservice to yourself by intentionally creating echo chamber of like-minded people. Thing is, we are not likely to object to mutual agreed views. So there isn't true marketplace for ideas when you central-plan demand.

        100% of Sinijs agreed with the above post as the only valid opinion on this subject.
      • But, but, muh vast right wing conspiracy!

    • It's a very human tendency very much on display during this US election. Their candidate is a monster whose every eyebrow twitch displays a lack of ethics or even basic humanity. My candidate gets a free pass for even the most outrageous behavior.
  • we don't have to care, we're Facebook said company liason, Ernestine
  • Why did the GOP (allegedly) out-propaganda the Democrats?

    It's not realistic to police that much material before a heated election, being it's a periodic event. You don't want excess staff sitting between elections. That's not economical for Facebook et al.

    There were probably more "intense" Trump supporters than intense H supports, and that's why the Trump trolls won. H did not "inspire" the way Trump did. Her supporters were more anti-Trump than pro-H and thus were not motivated to troll hard.

    The convention

    • Why did the GOP (allegedly) out-propaganda the Democrats?

      It's not realistic to police that much material before a heated election, being it's a periodic event. You don't want excess staff sitting between elections. That's not economical for Facebook et al.

      There were probably more "intense" Trump supporters than intense H supports, and that's why the Trump trolls won. H did not "inspire" the way Trump did. Her supporters were more anti-Trump than pro-H and thus were not motivated to troll hard.

      My feed contained many more intense Hillary supporters than Trump supporters, but the volume of fake news from the pro-Trumpers dwarfed that from the pro-Hillary camp.

      I don't think the difference is intensity, it's integrity, and it's starts at the top. The GOP has spent the last 8 years disavowing a health care plan they came up with. Their movement has been consumed by hair-brained conspiracy theories about birthers and UN proposition 21 and all sorts of nonsense, and the leaders either let them spread un

  • Can it be done fairly and with so much transparency that folks wouldn't confuse it with censorship? It's worth trying.
    • by sinij ( 911942 )

      Can it be done fairly and with so much transparency that folks wouldn't confuse it with censorship? It's worth trying.

      Strongly disagree. Such system has to fail open, instead due to intrinsic properties it will fail closed, resulting in censorship.
      To put it other way, FB hiring a bunch of "fact checkers" in SV will result in censorship.

  • This is critical because over 60 percent people in the United States consume their news on social media.

    I reckon I could sell the Brooklyn Bridge about [takes off shoes] 180 million times.

  • And I'm just as sure that a rather large number, at least in the USA, like things just fine with the lies. I grew up in a small town in a red state and I have some friends from school days on Facebook They are almost all die hard Republicans. It is unreal the kind of crap they keep sharing with fake news that supports their political beliefs. I don't see any desire from these folks to get accurate information. In fact, with one person when people have tried to point her to Snopes, she now counters bac
  • Facebook just owns the website; the content on it is supplied by and judged by users.

    If you want to discourage fake news then suggest they add a "Verifications" line similar to the "Comments" section for verified true stories, and
    where people can contribute corroborating sources Or sources showing the story false.

    And limit how large a picture, or how large a thumbnail or headline text can show in peoples' news feed, until positive Verifications accrue.

    The lament is equivalent to arguing that chain-l

  • That means that the social contract is on the individuals as well as Facebook to vet the information.

    Our own lack stupidity or laziness allowed for this to happen.

  • by WolfgangVL ( 3494585 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @03:07PM (#53260089)

    How about people stop being fucking morons and look a little closer at "the news". We used to absolutely LOVE disgracing our media when they spread bad info. Now we have opinion news, click-bait, and citizen journalists.

    You won't believe how Batboy's all grown up love affair with Janet Jackson ended....
    Orange clown runs for office and has THIS to say......
    See HRC's hot new underwear...

    Pointing out bad stories on social media gets you involved in whatever TOXIC topic it relates to, earns you name-calling, and general ass-hole-ry on response for all your "friends" to see. Those of us that know better just left. People really seem enjoy the dumb-shit-echo-chamber we left behind.
    (the irony of post right?)

    And now what, we are somehow surprised or something? This is exactly what we wanted. It's not on fb to censor bad news, its on us to not be fucking morons.

    Is this REALLY not obvious?

  • How much 'real' trump news there was on facebook from Hillary supporters. Is facebook some exclusive bastion of conservatives?
  • This is awful. Facebook must be shut down and Zuckerberg deported, jailed or executed. CNN and the major news networks should be in charge of lying to the American people, not Facebook.
  • So what if FB has 1.6B users.... there's only 191M US users who are sharing 21% LESS information. Year over year (2015-2016) there's an 8% DECLINE in time spent in FB per user. If you can't tell true from false or buy into pseudo-science, that's not a face book problem.
    What it isn't - a Trump victory explanation.
  • by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Thursday November 10, 2016 @05:31PM (#53261053)

    There were various other stories doing the rounds. I don't have FB for personal use but I am working on software that curates feeds for businesses. Depending on your particular group of friends there were false H stories and false T stories, Trump did everything from rape a 13yo to being a secret Hillary shill, being in secret societies and cahoots with foreign governments and businesses etc.

    The Clinton campaign came up with the Russians being behind Wikileaks and pretty much any activity in firewall logs (it was China during the Obama/Romney election cycle) as well as the various "things Trump said really means this", the females he supposedly molested etc

    The media controlled this election cycle and lost... too bad for them.

  • Trump did NOT win because of facebook.

    Trump won because enough people were more than willing to believe even the most absurd stories they read on facebook or everywhere.

    That only starts at "Hillary performing satanic rituals" and this is not where it ended. even if less than 1000 people believed that (or believed it enough to change their vote) it has to be multiplied with the amazing number of fake stories, that are clearly recognizable as fake. Heck even satire was taken at face value by more than 1000 p

  • I don't think that they should work on the fake news problem for political stories. What I think they need to do for political stories is break down the echo chamber. If they can detect that certain stories are political in nature, stop silo-ing off people to only see what they will like. If someone is following politics, make them see stories from both sides.

    Any fake news, that's seen by people outside of the echo chamber should get called out. Which hopefully will prevent it from spreading. Or if it does

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