
Facebook will now ask users to rank news organizations they trust - dantillberg
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/01/19/facebook-will-now-ask-its-users-to-rank-news-organizations-they-trust/
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dragonwriter
> We decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly
> trusted would be most objective

If the goal is to determine what people _trust_ , sure. [0]

If the goal is to determine what is _trustworthy_ , no.

You can't really fight fake news with the first, since obviously a successful
propaganda outlet will be trusted.

[0] Well, if user accounts mapped 1:1 to people, which Facebook liked to
pretend they do but, well, they don't, in part as a mechanism to game FB
algorithms, and this just adds another incentive to that.

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unclebucknasty
So, ask the users (who are obviously already victimized by fake news) to
choose which fake news outlets aren't fake.

That should go well.

The problem is that there is an objective, measurable truth, so the most
accurate outlets can be objectively quantified. If honesty/accuracy is really
what they're after, then the only option is to measure and favor the best
outlets.

But, it seems that they are more interested in not upsetting their users than
in dealing in truth, which is really reinforcing the very problem: that non-
facts are given truth-status as long as they make enough people feel good.

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makecheck
There are a lot of problems with this.

First, the obvious answer is one Facebook itself would never come up with,
which is: STOP USING FACEBOOK so much!

You can never get most people to help rank anyway. The results are going to be
skewed for lots of reasons, starting with whatever subset bothers to vote,
whatever subset of people even have accounts or bothered to log in, etc. And
that subset can be further biased by things like who has the most time on
their hands, who is being paid, who set up 100 bot accounts, etc. This
couldn’t possibly produce a sensible result except completely by chance.

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mancerayder
Sort of like how people vote up or down comments based on how much they agree
or disagree? The masses will vote down the news sources with opposing
opinions, and vote up the news sources that already support their opinions.
Only a minority of people seek integrity of truth, and even then you can never
expect a fully unprejudiced outlook.

It smells absurd to me.

(Repeating my comment from the other thread)

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rsbartram
What will start fake users from leaving fake ranks? FB has no business being
in the news business. FB provides gossip and entertainment.

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vinchuco
> FB provides gossip and entertainment

other users, not FB

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craftyguy
FB provides a platform for gossip and entertainment

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vinchuco
that's being optimistic

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juststeve
i don't think this fixes anything.

