Facebook Is Clamping Down On Fake News, Partners With Fact Checkers To Flag Stories (slate.com) 415
After weeks of criticism over its role in spreading fake news during and after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, Facebook said today it is taking concrete steps to halt the sharing of hoaxes on its platform. From a report on Slate: The company announced on Thursday several new features designed to identify, flag, and slow the spread of false news stories on its platform, including a partnership with third-party fact-checkers such as Snopes and PolitiFact. It is also taking steps to prevent spammers and publishers from profiting from fake news. The new features are relatively cautious and somewhat experimental, which means they may not immediately have the intended effects. But they signal a new direction for a company that has been extremely reticent to take on any editorial oversight of the content posted on its platform. And they are likely to evolve over time as the company tests and refines them. First, it's trying to make it easier for users to report fake news stories. The drop-down menu at the top right of each post in your feed will now include an explicit option to report it as a "fake news story," after which you'll be prompted to choose among multiple options, which include notifying Facebook and messaging the person who shared it.
basically doing the same as china? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just with different rules about what needs to be banned?
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Insightful)
And once again, Facebook is a private organization, and has the right to remove any content they want to. Don't like it, go use some other social networking platform.
Of course, that does mean the fake news purveyors are likely to start losing the large audience they had relied on, but is that such a bad thing? There's always Breitbart and Stormfront!
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we should just have the FCC classify them as a common carrier, and then not allow them to favor any particular communication over another that happens to be transmitted across their network.
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HAHA good luck getting the FCC do anything beyond frequency management with the new administration.
Re: basically doing the same as china? (Score:2)
Actually that should be about all that the FCC should be allowed to do. My proposal was kind of tongue in cheek. But hey, if we're going to have net neutrality, lets have net neutrality.
Re: basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Insightful)
At least AOL wasn't trying to pass Snopes and Polifact off as being unbiased.
What could you possibly have against them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst no fact-checking service is perfect. ... why is having them annotate what is 99.9% likely to be fake news worse than freely allowing bullshit to pervert democracy?
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Fake news?
"Sniper fire in Bosnia"
"Vast Right wing conspiracy" (monica)
"I did not send or receive any classified emails"
But somehow, we're supposed to believe IT WAS THE RUSSIANS!!!!!!
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Whilst no fact-checking service is perfect. ...
These words triggered thought...
I was wondering what a "fact checking" service would be. Just some person wandering around looking at something that may be important to know about and then digging in to see if it is real?
Isn't that exactly what a fucking a journalist is supposed to be?
Perhaps I am missing something here but why should this "fact checking service" be any more reliable than the journalists that are already lying to us?
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Stop pretending this is about liberals wanting to censor all dissenting opinions. It's about fake news.
And if factcheckers call your beliefs BS, it's because they are.
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Re: basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Informative)
At least AOL wasn't trying to pass Snopes and Polifact off as being unbiased.
In my experience, they are not biased.
I used Snopes primarily to defend Bush Jr during most of his two terms. And I've used it again to defend Obama during his.
IMO that makes them unbiased sources. Take some time to look at them. They both have archives so you can look back at both Republicans and Democrats. More recently you'll find they defend Trump on several claims. If someone is spreading something about him that is inaccurate, I want to know. I strive to be as objective in my assessment as possible and both of these sources have served me well.
The fact that you make the claim these sources are biased without making any reference to any examples puts your claim in doubt. Therefore, I have to assume that you are biased. I've come across others who have made the same claim and, for some reason, they are always Trump supporters. And in light of what I just pointed out above, that's puzzling. When Trump is being defended by each of those sources, why would a Trump supporter claim they are biased. If anything one might assume they are biased in favor of Trump.
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So what you're saying is that we need fact checkers who are not biased towards facts?
No, just fact checkers that don't slant their decisions about what, when, and how to fact check in ways that support their operators' own agenda. Or, you can use your own critical thinking skills, check multiple adversarial sources, and be done with it.
Re: basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure they'd be amenable to mixing in conservatiive-leaning fact-checking operations as well. Know of any?
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Don't like it, go use some other social networking platform.
That's the digital life equivalent of "let them eat pie". If your friends are all on that platform, you can't say no.
Your argument also works for china: if you don't like living in china because of its oppression, just move!
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I'm unaware of anyone saying they are...
Shut up and bake the damn cake! Oh... or does being able to say no only apply to online cake makers?
There does come in an interesting philosophical question: Companies like Facebook today have a degree of power over communication never imagined by the founders who prevented only the government (in most cases) from infringing upon free speech.
If we were to kidnap a number
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The founders also never imagined cheap semi-automatic rifles or .50 caliber sniper rifles being in the hands of civilians.
But I agree with you that the Constitution needs to be a living document that takes into consideration changing times.
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Given the writing of the time and purpose of the second amendment... I'm pretty sure they'd be ok with them in civilian hands.
Except I didn't say that.
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But the founders made it very clear that the unalienable rights were protected from violation by the government. Facebook is not the government, can not be construed to be the government and their business is their property.
You can post whatever you want on the In
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Every corporation exists today because it is protected by the government. Without the protection from personal liability granted by the government, they wouldn't exist.
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What's funnier is how the left is all about liberalism until they're not. Suddenly it's only ok to say what they want you to say and have the opinions they want you to have. Anything else is a crime against humanity.
Really? So, if the cake baker doesn't want to write "Happy wedding day, John and Jake" because he's anti gay marriage, that's a-ok with you? Somehow I doubt it.
Gab.ai is looking good (Score:5, Insightful)
And once again, Facebook is a private organization, and has the right to remove any content they want to. Don't like it, go use some other social networking platform.
Of course, that does mean the fake news purveyors are likely to start losing the large audience they had relied on, but is that such a bad thing? There's always Breitbart and Stormfront!
On that note, a Twitter replacement called Gab.ai [gab.ai] has sprung up that claims to enforce free speech.
It's currently in beta so signups are put on a waiting list, but I managed to get in pretty quick (the wait was less than a week). It's not as sophisticated as Twitter is *currently*, but I really like the free speech aspect of it.
Speech they don't tolerate [gab.ai] are things that are patently illegal in the US, plus doxing: Illegal pornography, threats and terrorism, and private information.
If you're bothered by someone, you can set a personal filter to remove their posts from your feed. If you're bothered by certain words, you can set another filter to remove posts with those words.
Beyond that, they claim that they will make no restrictions on free speech.
In the 2 months since it started it's become reasonably popular [alexa.com]. According to Alexa rankings, it's currently about the same as Slashdot (after 2 months!).
ATM gab seems to be under-represented by the left. People are mostly civil, and...
wonder of wonders... the humour channel is actually funny.
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Have you read Twitter's rules? They are identical. Only stuff that is illegal in the US is banned. They stick to those rules too.
Do these guys offer anything new? Or do you just like them because, as you say, it's a right wing echo chamber?
Re:Gab.ai is looking good (Score:5, Informative)
Look up Brandenburg v. Ohio. Twitter's rules match US law.
All your comment about openly conservative people on Twitter does is discredit you.
Re:Gab.ai is looking good (Score:4, Insightful)
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And that's why the alt-right is so spooked about Twitter and Facebook beginning to reign in the fake news. They could never create a social networking site that anyone other than they and their fellow travelers in space and time would want to frequent. They need the large distribution network that sites like Twitter and Facebook represent. By the same token, Twitter and Facebook face a crisis of legitimacy of their own if they allow themselves to become a swamp of far-right goons. I've seen even some succes
Re: basically doing the same as china? (Score:4, Insightful)
Therein lies the biggest problem with current US free speech legislation. When a bunch of private entities like Google and Facebook hold a near-monopoly on the flow of information, who gives two shits about whether the goverment can censor you? It's the near-monopoly private entities I am most concerned about.
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Don't mistake "no one wants to hear your bullshit" for monopoly. There are plenty of sites where you can post pretty much anything, like 8chan, Voat, Stormfront, Breitbart comments etc. It's not a monopoly because they aren't as popular as Google and Facebook, it's just that most people don't want to read to that kind stuff and don't want to be trolled.
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're saying that a privately-run website should be required to allow you to post, rather than you simply finding some other private website to publish your posts? Come on, mate. It's one thing to demand a telco not censor your phone calls, quite another to demand that a private answering service at the other end of a phone number propagate your messages to all their mailboxes.
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This like complaining "the newspapers won't publish my letters to the editor", and demanding the government force the newspapers to publish your letter. It's an absurd demand. Start your own newspaper if you think your unpopular view needs an airing. The liberty to say what you want does not infer the limitation on someone else's liberty so that they have to publish or listen to what you have to say. If your views are so beyond the norm that the only way you can get anyone to listen is by demanding the stat
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no difference. Facebook is a soapbox owner, and as a soapbox owner, it has the right to determine who gets to stand on the soapbox. Your right, as it were, is to use some other soapbox. The First Amendment protects Facebook as much as it protects you.
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Because it's the easiest way for alt-right Nazis to disseminate fake news.
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fake news lie "hands up, don't shoot" that got people killed?
Fake news like the Duke lacrosse team rape story? (Or Rolling Stone beclowning themselves, if you prefer.)
Fake news like Rathergate?
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yea I see no possible way this could be abused...
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even read the article? They're not blocking anything. They're making a "disputed" icon that appears next to the story, and a confirmation popup if you want to share it. You can still post and see whatever nonsense you want. Moon landing fake? Earth flat? Pearl Harbor false flag? Share your heart out.
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The US government has a duty to allow for free speech.
Private and public businesses don't.
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They don't have a duty, but you should expect it. Otherwise you're a peasant and the revolution was pointless.
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Or you could stop using facebook... but I guess thats just too difficult.
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem for the Alt-right and similar-minded groups outside the US is that services like Facebook and Twitter have very wide distribution, which means their fake news stories can go viral very quickly, for maximum effect. If they're stuck on 4chan, Breitbart and whatever other Internet sewers they usually frequent, about the only thing they're going to be doing is hate-mongering circle jerks. If Facebook is no longer available for them to invent stories about Democrat pedophilia rings, then they're fucked. Thus they protest this a great deal.
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And if Facebook isn't living up to your expectations, you can stop using it. If Facebook thinks their users will benefit from this fact checking, they'll implement it. If users don't like it, they can complain and hope that Facebook relents or they can flee Facebook and go elsewhere. Nobody's forcing you to stay on Facebook.
For comparison, you are "forced" to accept the US government by virtue of remaining a citizen of the United States of America. You can't simply say "I'm switching to an alternative gove
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Once FB statrs censoring "news", they are opening themselves up for legal liability for anything they let by.
Because it's hard to argue "it's not our fault! It was one of our customers that posted that libelous comment about ***whomever***!" when you're making it your business to censor anything and everything that might get some pol upset.
Safe Harbor provision?? Doesn't apply once you start censoring things. Yeah, this'll work so well. For the lawyers, at least. It'll get them LOTS of new business..
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Only among idiots.
Re:basically doing the same as china? (Score:4, Interesting)
Rules are very simple.
I, Big Media, pay you, Big Internet, to flag stories from my competitors in small/indy media as "fake news". You happily oblige, and now your massive audience is automatically redirected via algorithms to my content, and most importantly ads. In effect, Facebook, etc in addition to hosting ads, is now selling wholesaling user eyeballs.
The fact that I, Big Media, may also be pushing agenda about PedoPizzas or Russian super-hackers on behalf of Big Business or Big Government is entirely secondary the the basic economics underlying this "partnership".
The mainstream media has had a terrible year. The dialed propaganda up to eleven and went full on hysterical in an effort to get Hillary Clinton elected, and regardless of your opinion on that candidacy, most of us at least recognize that the MSM should probably not have gone to such lengths as sacrificing its own reputation and credibility for Clinton, or Trump, or indeed anything. That's because most of us, on an abstract level, value the concept of an independent Fourth Estate, speaking truth to power and hopefully the rest of us as well. So we're naturally not too pleased to see traditional public institutions very publicly melting down into wide-eyed tin-foil wearers at the first mention of Russian mind controller, or that disgusting frog, or whatever other absurdest nonsense they've focused on today instead of, oh, public policy, or the deficit, or the economy, or well anything that we used to affectionately refer to as news.
So we turn away. We stop watching. We go somewhere else.
And they Panic.
I thought I had seen it all from the Media this year, really. I genuinely felt that after the election, they'd finally learn a lesson, dial it back, and get back to reporting. Or move in that direction. I couldn't have been more wrong. "Fake news". CNN and the NYT want to talk about "Fake News" now? Is this another Russian plot? Or a Trump fascist takeover? A gambit to get Hillary into the White House? No dear reader, no. This is simply far more base, and simple economics.
Before their (paying) audience implodes -- and it is imploding; the NYT didn't send a mass non-mea-culpa mea-cupla to its entire subscribership without seeing those numbers plummet into the red -- before the readers and viewers migrate on mass to RT, or Info-wars, or (god help us) PBS, Something Must Be Done. A clean up? Better reporting? More, how to put it dignity into the profession? No, too much effort. Just schmooze and/or bribe Google, Facebook, Amazon et al to Lock, Cauterize, Stabilize by any technological means necessary. And all with the blessing of a nervous government and its ever growing, ever more expensive public-private state surveillance partnerships.
This could be worrying of course. But based on past results, future performance is less likely to resemble Orwell' 1984 as it is Gilliam's Brazil, and of course bankruptcy and government bailout long before that. And there will be a Bailout, mark my words on that. Incompetent as they perform, scorned as they are, laughable as they have become, no modern Government yet dares to step into the Undiscovered Country of a Media-less public landscape. So they will bailout, they will refinance, they will shovel yet more millions from the public Exchequer into the pension funds and golden parachutes of their latest Palace Courtier, down on his luck. I mean it's either that, either that or..... use the Rulebook!.
Facebook committing corporate suicide (Score:2, Interesting)
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We'll just slap common carrier status on them, and then they won't have a say.
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Who is this "we"?
Re: Facebook committing corporate suicide (Score:2)
By we, I mean the FCC and all the people who think net neutrality is great.
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Re:Facebook committing corporate suicide (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's a good start. I'm not aware of any "not so fake news" that Politifact and Snopes "do not like".
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There is nothing in this that says that they are getting rid of all fake news, just the fake news (and not so fake news) that Politifact and Snopes do not like.
Precisely. The reason that fake news has shot up is that the credibility of the MSM has gone down. Like the current obsession over whether it was Russia that handed over the election to Trump. Never mind that Russian agents would have had to physically have been in a lot of polling places in WI, MI and PA to do what was alleged, since few of those voting machines were directly online.
Facebook can use what they like, but given that there are enough people who don't believe in the integrity of Politifact
Re:Facebook committing corporate suicide (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the worst kind if post-truth bullshit. There is no "personal truth", just because you don't like the facts doesn't mean you can simply pick some that better suit you.
Obviously no one is perfect, but Snopes and PolitiFact do a more than adequate job of basic fact checking. The kind of stuff that would have prevented some idiot going to a pizza restaurant with an automatic rifle. The kind of easily debunked bullshit that the far right lives for.
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Re:Facebook committing corporate suicide (Score:5, Interesting)
Warning labels aren't censorship.
If you don't want a warning label don't create fake made up shit.
Re:Facebook committing corporate suicide (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
Did you actually think I was a liberal and would be triggered by that?
Re:It is The Fatal Flaw of The Left (Score:5, Insightful)
Concocting stories of pizzeria pedophile rings is not "other serious opinions". It's deliberately fabricated fake news.
Re:It is The Fatal Flaw of The Left (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't think "Dewey Defeats Truman" is in quite the same league as "Comet Ping Pong Pizza Democrat Child-trafficking HQ".
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I dunno. Like so many other things in politics, it looks like the used statistical probability. I was curious and found:
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Basically you have superdelegates. If 51% of them said they'd vote 100% without a doubt that they're voting for HamSandwich, then we all basically know its going to happen, but its still not safe to call the race, since 1% is a very tiny margin of error. A few delegates for HamSandwich could have a heart-attack and now you're only at 49% of 100% voters. So
Libel law? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Facebook labels some small time news site as "fake news" would there be a case to be made for defamation if the stories in question were actually factual? For example What about "facts" that are in dispute? Did the Russians hack the DNC or was it an internal leaker who handed the stuff to Wikileaks? One could write an article siting very reputable sources on both sides of that story so which side of that story would be "fake news"
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Facebook is just a social media site where people could say whatever they wanted (soon to change). If idiots think it is a news site let them, that's the same type of morons who think the tabloid trash rags with alien abductions in them are news.
snopes vetting stories, hilarious. sometimes they do ok, sometimes they don't.
Even news sites run fake news, happens here on slashdot all the time. Latest hilarious one was 7-x stellerator story claiming it was "working" and would solve our energy needs. Sorry k
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If they're in dispute they are not, in fact, 'facts'.
They're opinion or educated guesses, they can be labeled as such. Maybe this will help the journalists wait until they actually know something before putting trash on the internet.
Hah, who am I kidding.
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HAH! He said journalists actually know something!. Hilarious!
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Well what you're giving is a correlation. The debate is about the causation.
It's a fact that there's a correlation, so good job reading a graph.
"Fact Checkers" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Fact Checkers" (Score:5, Informative)
No I don't think Donald Rumsfeld works for Snopes.
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That's a lie.
One more step towards 1984 (Score:4, Insightful)
Fake news or, in other words, a narrative not supported by the State.
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The tin foil is strong with this one.
Probably too little, too late (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Snopes got fooled on something that was a parody which it didn't understand and labeled a hoax. I don't remember exactly w
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I hope that you are not correct. That's not a future I want to see. I also realize that is a future we are very likely to see. Sooner than later.
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I have come to the sad conclusion that in the USA at least we're living in a "post-fact, post-truth" world where it no longer matters if anything is truthful or accurate if enough people believe it.
Like, "Hillary's gonna win and Trump has no chance," or do you mean like "Bernie lost fair and square"?
Too many people I know just don't care anymore about whether anything is accurate if it matches up with their political beliefs or attacks those they disagree with.
Like the anti-Trump protesters in San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego, who were assaulting innocent people passing by Trump rallies?
Wait until a war gets started on a tweet that is a lie.
Like, "Assad and Russia are butchering civilians and we need to do something to protect them" kind of Tweets?
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I have come to the sad conclusion that in the USA at least we're living in a "post-fact, post-truth" world where it no longer matters if anything is truthful or accurate if enough people believe it.
We have always been in a 'post-fact' world. [youtube.com]
Re:Probably too little, too late (Score:5, Interesting)
I have come to the sad conclusion that in the USA at least we're living in a "post-fact, post-truth" world where it no longer matters if anything is truthful or accurate if enough people believe it. Too many people I know just don't care anymore about whether anything is accurate if it matches up with their political beliefs or attacks those they disagree with.
I think somewhere along the line sociopolitical positions (which, IMHO, in the broad center are neither good nor bad, true nor false) began to get pushed using selectively chosen "facts" to make the advocated policy seem as if it, too, was factual in nature. It was a kind of rhetorical persuasion, almost like sales techniques -- "Everybody knows that that less housework makes a wife happy, and the Vacuum2000 really reduces housework. If you won't buy one, ask yourself why you want an unhappy wife."
Anyway, I think this began to highlight a conceptual difference between truth and facts. I would argue that nearly every thing that is *true* is made up of a constellation of related facts. Cherry-picking facts allows you to manufacture a truth, but when that truth diverges significantly from reality it causes a cognitive dissonance, and people generally tend to side with the truth most closely aligned with their perceived reality.
I think this has led us to the point where people ignore facts -- too often they're not used to try to accurately describe a perceived truth, but to create a truth.
I think globalism is probably a great example. Lots of people using facts to advocate for it as embodying the ideal outcome, yet for millions of people, despite the facts that seem to support it, see their life undermined by globalism -- jobs moved away, problems with immigrants, and so on. Do you believe the facts or the truth around you?
(And I'm not meaning to take a position on globalism. I'm sure the benefits of trade are great, but they're poorly distributed. Cultural diversity is nice, in a Disney Epcot way, but I think humans generally do poorly when they hold divergent views on many topics, and the results are usually ugly at best or grinding warfare at worst).
Bad news (Score:3)
This is bad news as these fact checkers have proven to be just as biased as any other news souce such sa MSNBC or Fox News. They are fake authorities to decide what is true and what is not. This will lead to ever more tighter group think in the left leaning segments of the society while the right leaning segments will get alienated even further by what they call "mainstream media" institutions. It only takes one false positive identification of "fake news" to discredit this as cencorship by any right leaning person. (And trust me, the bias is there, so the false positive is something that will annoy right leaning people, not left leaning.)
In short: Don't do it. Please. Instead try to work it so that people get exposed to other points of views.
If I may point out (Score:5, Insightful)
that our issues with factual discourse have little to do with the quality of the news and everything to do with the ability to synthesize information into emotional & cognitive context.
That is to say, it doesn't matter if you tell someone who is pro-war that their country is murdering children. This hypothetical individual is effectively immune from this fact through a combination of propaganda and cognitive biases. It doesn't matter that in all other circumstances this hypothetical individual screams, "Won't someone think about the children", you will not be able to break through to them. At least not directly.
What we are seeing in the US. What we have been experiencing for about 30 years now, is a confluence of certain philosophical positions coming together. In the last couple of days I had it pointed out to me something that should have been far more obvious. There are a lot of my fellow citizens that live by the Just World Hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis/ [wikipedia.org]. Combine this with our friend the Prosperity Gospel, and I think you can contextualize so much of the past year.
Given this, we cannot attack the problem directly. Because the problem isn't fake news. The problem is an inability to connect one's actions to the world at large. And I feel that this disconnection is due to a massive amount of wishful thinking. The wishful thought that everything will work itself out. The wishful thought that you get what you deserve. The wishful thought that your one vote doesn't make a difference.
To get around this, we need people to understand that the world doesn't just exist in their household, their neighborhood, or just their town. That we are acting and operating on a global level these days. The world is simultaneously larger and smaller than it has been ever before. It does matter if you choose to get a fuel-efficient three or four cylinder car vs the monstrous SUV because within your lifetime people will be displaced because of that choice. How fast that happens depends on what you choose. You are a part of that chain, whether or not you want to be. And it is up to you to stay current with how you impact things. Even in the smallest, out of the way place in the middle of no-where. This choice makes a difference. And each day, going forward has to be a learn-unlearn-relearn process.
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Except bias (Score:2, Insightful)
1) any system allowing people to flag things as false news will be bias driven. "Oh, it says X is a liar, that's not true, so (flag)"!
2) Snopes? http://dailycaller.com/2016/06... [dailycaller.com]
Re:Except bias (Score:4, Insightful)
1.) Dailycaller (lmao)
I'd be much more interested if it was an article about how snopes did a poor job of fact checking. Instead it's a big ol cry fest about how she's a liberal. Read: I don't give a shit if the job is getting done correctly.
Finally (Score:3)
Finally maybe we will start to see the decline of Facebook.
I see no way how this could be abused.
So, Democrats willl label non-Democrats "fake" (Score:3, Insightful)
Snopes? Politifact? Facebook? .... REALLY? ..... these are all Democrat-aligned entities staffed primarily by Democrats/Socialists whose political contributions and editorials are all favorable to Democrats, so much so that about a year ago Facebook realized that they, as a corporation, were having trouble even communicating with conservatives. Even now, Google is trying to hire people who know some Republicans/Conserrvatives/Libertarians because they have few contacts with such people and need to figure out how to relate to them with Democrats out of power in DC starting in late January.
The people who were all cuddly with Team Hillary, and eagerly parroted all the fake news her campaign and supporters shoveled..... the people who spent the past year providing fake polls showing Trump could not win, and fake news about how "open" Hillary was while she never held a single actual press conference through an entire presidential cycle, and fake news about the greatness of the economy and employment (as Obama became the first US President in history to never manage to create a single quarter of growth of at least 3% and pushed the labor participation rate down to levels only matched by Jimmy Carter in the 1970s) .... THOSE HYPER-DISHONEST and HYPER-PARTISAN freaks are going to censor your news?????????
They are just doubling-down n their Democrat activism. They are going to become unabashed propagandists who will make the communications of the 3rd Reich look amateurish. Anything that is critical of Democrats or of these Democrat-aligned internet entities will be labelled "fake news" and their users will be encouraged to ignore any of this contrary communication. This is a continuation of the 8-year long Obama rants against Fox News and the left-wing meme that the only news outlet not kissing Obama's posterior was "Faux News" and is unprecedented in our history (previous presidents complained about their coverage, but they did not label particular news outlets as "fake" from the white house podium).
CNN (Score:2, Troll)
I've been busy flagging the specious content-free claims on my feed, and it's working. I'm no longer seeing many CNN or Snopes links on my feed.
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I've found most of the "alt-right" fake news sites all seem to have the same click-bait adds, so I click the adds and if the throw a pop-up I report them to my anti-virus as mallware sites; most of the are listed on Facebook with the "Sponsored Site" tag so I'm suspicious that reporting them to Facebook would be futile.
Conservatives and Fact Checking (Score:3)
If there is one thing I've noticed down through the years, it is that Conservatives(and especially alt-right/tea party types) really don't like fact checking.
They will use any number of rhetorical ploys, misdirection, hyperbole, etc to "blur" and obfuscate the facts.
In my experience I have noticed that as soon as the word "fact" gets brought up in a conversation, whether on or offline, conservatives start to squirm and almost universally have an instant gut reaction of disdain. They equate "facts" as something that those liberal elite scientist/academia types use to rationally take apart their ill conceived FB memes. This is strange to me, because I would assume that someone with a very passionate opinion about something would want things fact checked and corroborated.
Now this behavior is not universal with conservatives, as I know a guy who is a conservative, is very bright, and we are actually friends, though we disagree on politics. When we are around each other we calmly discuss our differences regarding politics, but it never gets heated or personal. He is all about facts and following an empirical method, etc;
Another Example:
I have a co-worker who has a degree in meteorology, and worked at a climate center at a major university. He is also a conservative Republican that would agree with most statements and opinions put out by Republicans, especially on social issues. One day at work we were discussing the weather as we always do, how it is warmer now than it was 10 or 20 years ago(the discussion was purely anecdotal, we weren't pulling up NOAA data). Someone then asked "what do you think about climate change? Is it real? Is it caused by people?" His answer didn't surprise me, because I know how smart this guy is. He said "climate change is completely backed up by the facts and the scientific evidence, and yes, it is very likely that the carbon put into the atmosphere is the cause". Then he went on to couch all that he had said in apolitical back-peddling sort of self-editing, so as not to offend those in earshot who are of the anti-fact mindset(which I found very humorous!)
Keep in mind this is just an example, but one that shows that not all conservatives are anti-fact, or anti-empirical-method or anti-corroboration.
Just most of them.
Re:Conservatives and Fact Checking (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are a great many conservatives who are not fact-free lunatics and morons, but the tribalism that is taking over politics in the Westerns world means that they, like their counterparts on the left who might hold some fiscally conservative views, have to sublimate that to retain their membership in the club.
People choose their facts (Score:3)
Wasted effort.
I recently stumbled on this article from 2014 [vox.com] that really nails the source of our recent issues and explains why even if all of our news perfectly matched the facts we'd still have the same disagreements. Just get past your reactions to the title and read the contents.
Humans are poor reasoners. We can talk ourselves into any position, often looking at the same facts as those with an opposite position and especially when identifying with a group that holds positions.
The only way past the bias is education directed toward how to think as opposed to what are the facts. That will never happen because all sides of the system thrive on this human vulnerability.
Just stop calling it "NEWS" (Score:3)
Facebook has no news. Just BS and trivia posted by members to keep themselves amused and acquire some sort of brownie points from their friends who keep themselves amused by posting BS and trivia.
Facebook needs to realize that they have no role in disseminating news. Their users are not reporters, not even "iReporters" or whatnot. They are just you and me (well, not ME, smart enough not to have Facebook...) giving our opinions and our filtered, inaccurate interpretation of whatever real new sources we may still pay attention to, along with made-up BS and links to made-up BS.
And the occasional accidental link to real news. I suppose for the benefit of those that refuse to pay any attention to real news any more, and prefer to have it filtered and summarized by their so-called friends (all thousands of them!)
Snopes and Politifact? (Score:3)
So, essentially arms of the Democratic news machine are being used to determine "fake news".
Never mind that BOTH organizations have been cause in their OWN fake news scandals, and in alarming displays of partisanship.
Yeah. Fuck that noise.
Re: (Score:2)
This is why we need a decentralized social networking system where no one controls your speech.
Good thing you came here to post that. No chance it would get modded down ;-)
Re:Who watches the watcher? (Score:4, Informative)
While it is acknowledge they do tend to have a liberal slant, this is not fully correct:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
FactCheck noted that Barbara Mikkelson was a Canadian citizen (and thus unable to vote in US elections) and David Mikkelson was an independent who was once registered as a Republican.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
How does your, so-called, fact checking make what he said incorrect?
Being registered a Republican doesn't make one automatically conservative. He may have registered Republican for a local election to block a candidate he felt was too conservative. Likewise there were plenty of "blue dog" Democrats that were considered too conservative by others in the Democrat party that got expunged.
Barbara Mikkelson's eligibility to vote in the US is irrelevant to her political leanings as well.
More to the point - this
Re: (Score:3)
I smell a "No True Scotsman" fallacy bubbling to the surface here...
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Re:"Fact" Checkers (Score:4, Interesting)
Forbes has a pretty good article [forbes.com] covering Politifact's issues related to their truthiness judging.
In 2008, Politifact rated as True Obama's claim that if you like your plan you can keep it. The Forbes article notes that the author of that truth-o-meter article didn't check with any health-care skeptics.
In 2009, Politifact changed their rating for the claim to 1/2 true.
In 2013, Politifact labeled it the "lie of the year."
Politifact's 2008 rating was "widely repeated by pro-Obama reporters and pundits, and had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election."
So, was Politifact's wrong analysis of Obama's 2008 claims "fake news?"
Were they lying or just being too lazy.
When they judge Trump's claim that Obama was the founder of ISIS [politifact.com] in the literal sense but don't rate Hillary's comment [businessinsider.com] that Trump is a recruiting sergeant for ISIS at all, either literally or metaphorically, then yes, I'll claim that Politifact is lying or at least intentionally distorting the truth.
Facebook absolutely has the right to determine what gets posted on their site and people have the right to use their product or not. The government on the other hand has no business promoting censorship of anything, including fake news. Fake news isn't new [wikipedia.org] and people have a personal responsibility to explore the "truthiness" of what they read, hear and see.
Re: (Score:2)
By "black supremacist" you mean an African-American who is concerned they are far more likely to be unarmed and yet still shot to death by a police officer than a white American. Yes, quite horrible that them there colored folk are gettin' all uppety.
Re:Snopes is One of Their "Fact Checkers" ?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
By "black supremacist" you mean an African-American who is concerned they are far more likely to be unarmed and yet still shot to death by a police officer than a white American.
I'd give him the benefit of the doubt and say he means the actual black supremacists, and not whatever strawman you're thinking of. Or are you under the impression that only white people are capable of being racists?