Facebook is Rating Users Based On Their 'Trustworthiness' (engadget.com) 320
Facebook has begun to assign its users a reputation score, predicting their trustworthiness on a scale from zero to 1. From a report: Facebook hasn't been shy about rating the trustworthiness of news outlets, but it's now applying that thinking to users as well. The company's Tessa Lyons has revealed to the Washington Post that it's starting to assign users reputation scores on a zero-to-one scale. The system is meant to help Facebook's fight against fake news by flagging people who routinely make false claims against news outlets, whether it's due to an ideological disagreement or a personal grudge. This isn't the only way Facebook gauges credibility, according to Lyons -- it's just one of thousands of behavior markers Facebook is using. The problem: much of how this works is a mystery. Facebook wouldn't say exactly how it calculates scores, who gets these scores and how other factors contributed to a person's trustworthiness.
Truth is not truth... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Truthful fact can be used to deceive and non truthful information can be used to enlighten.
The trustworthiness of the information lies in the intention.
I can take facts and put them out of context or giving them odd weights to them with the intent to deceive people.
I could tell a parable not based on actual events to express a point, not for them to believe the actuality of the parable, but the abstract point it was meant to portrait.
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Trustworthiness is simply someone else who is aligned with your views.
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No. Some facts and theories are testable by the scientific community using scientific method.
Some are demonstrable by scientific tests simple enough for anyone (with sufficient resources) to reproduce.
Correspondence (of propositions and theories and terms) or not to measurable aspects of physical reality is a testable thing. Enlightened humans discovered that about 400 years ago.
Maybe you didn't get the memo.
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If you never learned and understood what value the scientific method can have, you probably won't consider it to be of much importance.
Although if you learn and understand "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone" you may thing that discrediting the messenger is a very valid method.
Re:Truth is not truth... (Score:5, Insightful)
sure, but how many of those facts are 'interesting'.
For instance. Let's just suppose one could prove beyond any reasonable doubt that withing 500 years the greenhouse effect would destroy the earth and make in uninhabitable by mankind.
( let's ignore the difficulty of proving that for the sake of the demonstration.)
You will notice what has NOT been proved.
a) that there is anything we SHOULD do about
b) that there is anything we CAN do about
why, because material science can't prove or disprove a moral proposition.
So while science can prove useful facts like. IF you do this ,you have a high likelihood of accomplishing that.
It is entirely useless when it comes to the first part of the preposition. That is to say 'should you do the IF'.
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"because material science can't prove or disprove a moral proposition."
Just for the sake of fun argument: One could posit an overarching moral principle which is possibly able to be scientifically and mathematically investigated, and a somewhat objective assessment of ranking of moral states might be based on that:
Here's one candidate general moral principle:
TLDR: Maximize quality complex-life-years summed over some spacetime region (set of situations).
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As long as you accept that my universal moral principle is a valid generalization of most if not all other common moral principles.
The problem is that I do not accept your "universal moral principle". It is certainly NOT a valid generalization of Judaeo-Christian moral principles. Your "universal moral principle" values the individual not at all. Judaeo-Christian moral principles assert that the individual is infinitely valuable. Your principle accepts the call of the group to sacrifice an individual for the good of the group. Judaeo-Christian principles call for an individual to sacrifice themselves for the good of another individ
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I'm saying:
We do agree that moral principles evolved as memes, don't we? If not, I can't talk with you much, since we are on different planets of worldview and discourse. The most likely evolved moral principles are ones which serve to promote human welfare, individual and collective, by governing behaviour, and notably social behaviour.
Conflict between intelligent agent organisms is detrimental to their survival probability, since it uses up some of the energy they acquire and could put to productive purpo
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clap ... clap ... clap ... clap ... masterful ... truly you have rendered bullshit of the highest pungent order. Very droll.
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Scientific method and scientific community process may not be that well practiced on average, but at least its "in the game" of rational and empirical inquiry and knowledge formation.
It's much better than the alternatives such as "appeal to authority", "what he said", "it's trending", and "it is written (by some spice-fueled mystic monks in all likelihood)".
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We're not rushing! This problem was scientifically known at least back in the 1970s and well-known and well-confirmed by the 1980s.
The deniers and blockers have been effectively preventing effective action since then. We are WAAAAAAAAYYY late.
Give your head a shake.
We have not even started to make physically effective progress on the key metrics of this problem.
Rushing? Don't make me laugh.
And BTW desalination or whatever works on PV or wind power too (duh). You're pulling out a tired and recycled canard as
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And the whole function of science is to identify aspects of reality that you can use a principled, methodical approach to getting closer more and more corresponding-to-reality descriptions, and then apply that approach. It has worked remarkably well. You are probably alive because of it (scientific medicine) and probably most things you do every day depend heavily on processes derived from it.
Yes, people can bullshit in self-serving ways very proficiently, but scientifically developed police bodycams and ro
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I can trust someone who I disagree with. I can also not trust people who I do agree with.
There are many people who I would disagree with on their beliefs and idea, they may try to convince me to follow their logic. But this could be a person who I trust, and they are not trying to mislead me but in their minds correct me in my misguided ways. Outside of the topic that we disagree I would trust them to try to do the right thing.
Compared to say a Used Car sales man who will agree with whatever I wan't is a
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You don't realize that it has always been like that. But don't take my word for it, take Max Planck's:
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
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Remember that "faith" is belief in something despite the preponderance of evidence to the contrary.
Bullshit. Faith is belief in something where there's a lack of evidence, usually because acting as if it were true has worked well for a long time. Faith is often based on evidence, but it's evidence about what beliefs make people happy or successful, not the scientific method.
The scientific method less than 500 years old, after all, but humans have been optimizing their behavior for far, far longer.
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So, paraphrasing you, faith is making yourself (pretend) to believe something, or trying real hard to get others to believe something that is pretty much certainly not true, because it's operationally useful.
Well, at least you admit that that's what it's all about. At least you know (what's really going on there) which is that convenience trumps truth, for a lot of people.
That's why somethings are called "inconvenient truth"s.
Get used to mystery (Score:4, Insightful)
"The problem: much of how this works is a mystery"
AI algorithms and knowledge-bases/trained models are already too complicated in their function for most people to understand. And they will get even more obscure and indirect in future versions, most likely.
Just as you don't know how I reached a decision or assessment, you won't be able to know how an AI reached a decision or assessment. We are just going to have to get used to that.
The chances are very high that the AI way of assessing will be more objective and principled, going forward, than most individuals' way of assessing.
If you like, to make people less suspicious, perhaps a convention of publishing the code and data in the assessment system (anonymized when references personal data) might be established. But how will this help? A few experts would be able to check it and vouch for its reasoning integrity, but nobody seems to believe experts these days since many of them seem "bought" anyway.
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Granted, a lot of work still has to go into making AI model and infer better. No doubt.
If anything, I'm insulting the "average" level of human reasoning and judgement these days, as evidenced by the general level of discourse; saying that that is not a very high bar to get over for the tech. Sad but probably true.
As the algorithms get better, and closer to self-learning strong AI, it will become harder to bias them maliciously.
Because awareness of external agents with purposes (including purposes in communi
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Well pretty much any tool (e.g. hammer, shovel, pen, twitter, google) can be both constructive and used as a weapon.
I think it will be realized how easily manipulable and abusable overly simplistic versions of AI are.
Hopefully this leads to several things:
1) Treatment of results of this kind of stuff with skepticism.
2) A convention of transparency, where the AI models and code are open source and inspectable by all. Each side can hire its experts to debate the merits of the input data, the training method,
Zuckerbook == China? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Remember when people, psychologists, media, government bodies, and so on all over the west were saying that if you don't have a "facebook or social media account" you're a psychopath, rapist, murderer in training, terrorist-wannabe and so on? Yeah...not so crazy now for saying fuck you to it.
Re:Zuckerbook == China? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The stories are here on /. if you really want to read them. There were plenty of them back a few years ago, and I seem to remember them being trendy 2010? 2011? or around there too. Back when governments, and various people believed that facebook and so on would be the wave of the future and everything will be tied to it.
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news[1] site with commenting[2]
not 'social[2] media[1]'.
Yeah, commenting isn't social and the news isn't media. I'm not so sure I believe you on that.
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It's not just semantically true. It functions in much the same way as news articles shared on Facebook.
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And I suppose next you're going to say that a masquerade ball isn't a social event either. This argument is far older than you are, and I think it was lost that long ago too.
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Re:Zuckerbook == China? (Score:5, Insightful)
Facebook is an opt-in service not mandated by anyone or anything. Don't want to use it, then don't. The only time you "need" Facebook is if you're dealing with public relations, and even then, you're not using Facebook for socialising but for promoting.
A Chinese citizen does not have the same freedoms. Facebook and China are not comparable in any way.
I think the idea that this is going to happen is laughable, but it's worth pointing out that if the Facebook trustworthiness score were to be used like the Chinese "Social Credit" score, it wouldn't be necessary to force people to use it. All that would be required is for various entities to begin relying on the score to make decisions about whether or not to trust someone. In such a world, someone who refuses to use Facebook would be distrusted by anyone who relies on the trust score. If you wanted to be trusted, you'd need to participate, much the way that if you want to be able to borrow money to buy a house you generally need to build a history of borrowing and repayment on smaller loans first.
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I get this mental image of an entire industry growing around trying to game this "Trustworthiness" index, just like the Search Engine Optimization and Credit repair leaches. I wonder if the index will automatically reindex itself when information moves from "False-news" to "Real-Facts"?
These Social Media Providers are just bound and determined to exert Editorial Control over postings and forfet their safe-harbor in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act!
No it's not (Score:5, Informative)
Facebook is an opt-in service
No it's not. We've known for years that Spybook has profiles on individuals who have never signed up.
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Yay, we're getting Sesame Credits in America! (Score:5, Funny)
Now I can be secretly tracked and blacklisted by glorious capitalists instead of dirty communists.
I feel so much better.
Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
+1 Insightful (Score:2)
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Re:Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
The stock market? That is about the only thing that can make a difference.
Yup, if there's one thing we can depend on as a moral compass, it's the actions of large corporations. /s
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Obviously, the market regulates the actions of large corporations, not the other way around.
And it does help, a lot, when not corrupted by bailouts. Corporations dominated by short-sighted greed and lack of concern for customers will fail in the market, making things better. Unless they're "too big to fail", of course.
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Re:Facebook (Score:5, Informative)
Their customers. The same people who rate the trustworthiness of any company. And since you may not know this, Facebook's customers are the people who buy targeted advertising and pay for your data, like Cambridge Analytica.
Facebook's users are not their customers. They are just voluntary donors of their personal information and eyeballs. They have no business relationship with Facebook.
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Good comment, and if I ever got a mod point to give you, then I would. However, I don't think your description of the financial model is accurate. While Facebook is deriving some revenue from advertising, I don't think the ad revenue is important. The important metric is market cap as driven by stock price. The Zuck suffers from the delusion that the insanely inflated stock price of Facebook shares can keep growing forever. After all, stock price is just a matter of opinion.
I said a bit more on the solution
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In 2017, Facebook took in $40 BILLION in revenue. Of that, $39.9 BILLION was from digital advertising. So, yeah, I would say $39.9 BILLION is pretty important.
Facebook stock price today is almost exactly the same as it was 1 year ago today.
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Facebook has a market cap over $500 billion. If there were NO expenses, that $40 billion in advertising revenue looks relatively small. I think I know what's wrong with this picture, but what's your explanation or hypothesis?
I'm trying to figure out the source of your handle... I'm remembering a funny comic on the Web about 15 years back. Any connection?
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The story behind my nickname is in my Slashdot bio. But the short version is it's a childhood nickname (I was an altar boy, so "Pope") I had growing up in Chicago's Little Italy.
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My point is that they're a business. Their customers love them. Who cares what "the public" thinks of their trustworthiness as long as they keep forking over their private lives for resale?
The idea that Facebook has some special duty "to the public" flies in the face of every conservative principle about corporate existence and the law. I guess I'm just trying to encourage those hypocrites to expose themselves now publi
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The idea that Facebook has some special duty "to the public" flies in the face of every conservative principle about corporate existence and the law.
Are you confusing anarchists with conservatives again? Anarchists are the ones in the black hoods. They're color coded for your convenience.
Every conservative I know believes that utilities have a special duty to the public. Most believe that abuse of monopoly power is bad. The question is: how important is access to social media? Has it effectively become a utility? I'm not convinced yet, but the argument seems reasonable.
I do, however, believe that Facebook can either be exercising editorial discret
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And every conservative I know would say that you've got a long way to go if you want to successfully assert that Facebook is a "utility".
Words have meaning, lgw. They may not be the ones you want them to have, but it doesn't mean that you can just start naming things arbitrarily according to your political agenda.
If an ISP is not a "utility" (which you have asserted in the past), then certainly Facebook cannot be one.
If Facebook rates us, how can we rate Facebook? (Score:2)
Glad to see that you got a mod point, though you could have done much more than reveal a tiny bit of insight. In Facebook's case, of course they can't stand the thought of letting us rate THEIR reputation--but they don't actually care because they are only concerned with one metric: Market Cap. On that foundation, there are several secondary metrics, of which time is the most important one. The more human time wasted on Facebook, the bigger the market cap. I think wasted time is bad, but Facebook INSISTS th
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43% sucks. What percentage of people on the left support restrictions on "hate speech"?
It's good for the POTUS to call out lies as he sees them, but that's different from shutting down news outlets. The answer to bad speech is more speech.
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https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/ne... [ipsos.com]
Some of the limits of public support for freedom of the press are made stark with a quarter of Americans (26%) saying they agree "the president should have the authority to close news outlets engaged in bad behavior," including a plurality of Republicans (43%)
Conservatives vs Liberals (Score:3, Informative)
I've noticed that when commenting on friends' posts or public posts from political parties, messages supporting conservative parties or criticising Islam or immigration tend to be filtered out, whereas liberal comments or support are in the 'top filtered' section.
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Yeah, it's getting so you can't even call for a simple race war any more! What is the world coming to.
Just think! When you point out that people who believe cutting off the clitoris of little girls and sanction it under islam it's some bad shit. Or try to point out that muslims have argued that because islam accepts rape against non-believers, it's okay to do it too. You're igniting a race war! Boy, those are just the type of comments we need to restrict, that absolutely won't make those "far right crazies look right when we censor this."
Just think even harder, at the delusion that you believe a religion
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Fascists usually wear masks and their defining characteristic is destruction of property and public beatings? This is apparently some new meaning of the word fascist I hadn't previously been aware of.
But by all means please go back to demonizing a small portion of your political opponents as sub-human creatures who are evil to the core and the real cause of society's woes. It makes your accusations of fascism highly ironic and entertaining!
Whuffie? (Score:2)
I think it just might work. (Score:2, Insightful)
Facebook is basically trying to define truth by using user input. Obviously this can be manipulated but I think by adding their own input to week out untrustworthy users, they just might be able to pull it off. There are a lot of variables that can be factored in to deem someone trustworthy but many factors can also be gamed. However, with additional input on who is a bad actor then it also discredits the users that trusted that user.
Russia is definitely going to fuck with this system but I don't think i
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I wish I could share some of your optimism, but maybe I'm just jealous because what the Zuck has decided to implement is so much weaker than the EPR (Earned Public Reputation) that I've been advocating for a while now. In my fantasy, you should be able to see the data and even contest negative accusations. Also, I think any system involving REAL human beings has to be multidimensional.
I actually went over to Facebook to see if I could detect any trace of this system, but I couldn't. So let my go wild and sp
yeah, that's a great idea (Score:2)
Since facebook is so neutral and trustworthy itself, we'll just have it rate everybody (well, everybody that they allow to remain there at all).
What could possibly go wrong?
I know how this works (Score:3, Insightful)
Mention Infowars (even in jest) - rep score 0 forever until the end of you or Facebook.
Post link to Huffington Post article - A++++ GOLD STAR WOULD ALLOW TO POST AGAIN.
I posted just one political comment on Facebook once, expressing a desire that those on the left and right should talk to each other and not shut people out - so I'm pretty sure my trust score is like -5 out of 0-1.
Re:I know how this works (Score:4, Insightful)
I know you're joking, but even basing it on posting a link is a bad move. I may post a link to an article that is 100% wrong because I want to comment on how wrong it is.
Re:I know how this works (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why would a George Will article be on YouTube?
It's a video. Of George Will talking about baseball. You know, on YouTube. Where they have videos. Unless you're looking for one that features someone like George Will, in which case it's pretty well hidden and flagged as dangerous. Because, you know, he doesn't obey and speak only in leftist terms, as YouTube now prefers.
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I wrote the same thing about two years ago and got comments "when the other side is racist there can be no discussion with them." Those people hate nothing more than someone appealing to balance and reason.
But maybe they are right, likely no one is really neutral in these mindwars, even if they fancy themselves to be.
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Yeah, my post was just after the presidential election and got similar dubious responses. I figured people would do what they would do, and it was pointless trying to repair a bridge that so many others were furiously trying to burn down so I never did a political post again. Until some distant day when sanity returns I'll just buy shares in popcorn and sigh with a bit of sadness seeing people drift further away from each other that should be able to work things out.
But maybe they are right, likely no one
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I know plenty of democrats who behave that way but very few of us who are actually on the left.
The problem from our point of view is the right (democrats) and the far right (republicans) dominating all conversation, controlling all major media, and keeping out rivals to themselves despite most of the country really not being either of those. They refuse to talk policy and only want to argue with one another about trivia (Russia, Hilary's emails, etc.) instead of anything that matters while the country is su
Who doesn't? (Score:2)
Seriously, who takes any kind of random internet user flagging/rating and uses it raw like it's gospel? Unless you're reviewing each and every report that comes in I'd start evaluating if this user has flagged something before and whether it's been valid or the user has been crying wolf. And if I don't have any direct data points well I'll check correlations with other users I do got data on. Of course that's not enough or you'll have people flag bad videos that they uploaded to build credibility then hit o
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I don't know whether I should trust this comment or not because it only has a score of +1 with no moderation history at the time of my post.
Help me decide how to think about this comment, Slashdot!
China is there (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
How long before businesses check your facebook "trustworthy rating" before you can get a loan, rent a home or even get a job.
So, speculate! (Score:2)
This user's browser somehow doesn't load the ads. Score modifier: -0.20.
User's post once mentioned the banned word "kodi." Score modifier: -0.15.
User never posts anything: -0.10.
User only logs in once per week: -0.10.
User's face tagged by at least two other users with scores of 0.60 or higher, and photo is sufficient to be hashed for database: +0.10.
Background checks? (Score:2)
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Black Mirror and 1984 all in one (Score:2, Insightful)
This is LITERALLY a "Black Mirror" episode on netflix, where people's entire self-worth is garnered by their social media score. This is big gov't censorship at it's worst (albiet Facebook is "sort of" a private company). Add that to the fact Facebook is incredibly biased towards the left, censors conservatives and actual truth at all turns, this is literally the end of free speech and the beginning of the "1984" book/movie. As another poster pointed out, link, post or like anything to do with InfoWars or
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Thank you for some of the most egregious bullshit I've read today. My cousin has never let a right wing lie pass unpublished on his Facebook page, yet he has never once been sanctioned in any way. He was even putting up links to Alex Jones' website while Jones was suspended by Facebook without any repercussions.
So troll your whiny conservative nonsense somewhere else.
Testing should never be transparent (Score:2)
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Works For Me (Score:2)
Burn baby burn!
Burying the lede... (Score:2)
> it's just one of thousands of behavior markers Facebook is using
Seriously? There are *thousands* of behavior markers that Facebook tracks, and we're only talking about one of them?
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as apposed to... (Score:2, Funny)
You have that backwards (Score:2)
As apposed to Slashdot, where your Karma is calculated by mod points assigned by bots pretending to by humans.
Actually it's more humans acting as bots, by running tons of alt-accounts to farm moderation points...
No self-respecting bot maker cares enough about Slashdot to build bots for it. :-)
At least Slashdot has meta-moderation as well to provide another layer of correction.
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I don't mod often, but when I do, I meta-mod
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I don't meta-mod often, but when I do, it's by commenting.
I like infinite loops in my code, too.
Re:as (o)pposed to... (Score:2)
"Nebulous", "opaque" (Score:2)
The linked story [engadget.com] says, "As nebulous as the rating system is
Washington Post story: Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to 1 [washingtonpost.com]. Quote from that story: "... Facebook has given people more options, some users began falsely reporting items as untrue, a new twist on information warfare [washingtonpost.com]..."
Another quote: "But how these new credibilit
Is Facebook on the way down in popularity? (Score:2)
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Not if they don't share your score with you.
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Legally they're obliged to share not only their score, but also how they calculated it and how they use it in decisions regarding you.
UK Data Protection Act 2018 is a wonderful little thing.
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If you believe that score is included, then something like Google's PageRank would be the same. Google would effectively be forced to tell you how to game their system by telling you why you're not ranked higher. That would be big news, but I haven't heard a thing like it.
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If Google pageranked individuals, yes it would.
Personal data and data about a website are treated differently under the law.
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Even if a web site is your own personal blog? How is that different than a social media page?
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The point of coming up with a score is to use it internally as a factor in ranking items on someone's news feed. Nobody actually needs to see the score except Facebook when testing and troubleshooting.
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Nobody has rights like that in the US.
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> One of the MOST profound lessons I ever got was from a Philosophy professor: QUESTION EVERTHING... especially the motives for this lunacy!
*sigh*
You messed up the joke:
--
Who knew that in 2018 we'd watch:
* Mainstream Media (MSM) "news" for comedy, and
* Late-night talk shows for the actual news?
Reputation - not a new thing (Score:2)
Reputation always existed. HOW you do the ratings system matters - you put a # on it and make it centralized and how you calculate it are the BIG factors. Relative ranking by different people is more realistic. People with your biases also like/hate ____... Truth may be concrete but people's opinions, IQ, ignorance are all relative. Rating somebody who's 100% honest but believes in GOD as less trustworthy because when it comes metaphysics they are irrationally think gay people bring natural disasters...
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WE SHOULD HAVE SOME KIND OF CREDIBILITY RATING SYSTEM. It's a necessity.
If you are a Foxtard...
Arbitrarily dismissing people because they get news from an outlet you don't like*? How do you think such an emotional (ie, illogical) response would affect your own Social Credit Rating?
* I don't care for Fox either, but even a blind sow finds a truffle now and again; you should be questioning the data, not the source.
It's a necessity. Credit ratings for example.
Credit ratings are absolutely NOT a necessity, and in fact Americans in general were far more prosperous before they were invented.
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And 1984 shouldn't be an instruction manual.