
Facebook says Pages that regularly share false news won’t be able to buy ads - artsandsci
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/28/facebook-fake-news-ads/
======
menacingly
The risk here is not that the system will have bad goals, it's that it's easy
for manipulation to redefine the core terms used to classify "bad" content.
Even now, we regularly see even clear terms like "correct" or "incorrect"
applied by fact-checking websites through a fairly biased lens.

This is not a partisan issue, when you start down the road of handing the keys
to shaping public thought to a powerful party, you're there when the power
changes too.

This is no different than being able to tell when someone is bullshitting just
as you walk through every day life, and thinking we need to shield the poor
naive populace from harmful ideas is borderline stereotypical paternalism.

This is all obviously a big deal to old media, who have made an art not out of
sharing incorrect truths, but of very selectively sharing truths, to the point
that what emerges does not really represent the truth at all. They didn't lie,
but they aggressively shaped. Of course democratic access to the pieces they'd
rather suppress (on both sides) threatens that model. They'd love us to toss
out this particular bath water.

~~~
quoquoquo
The game has changed. There are people with intolerant and twisted views
trying to manipulate the naive herd of sheep who blindly follows whatever
people like on Facebook.

Knowing the tactics of people behind fake news, it's good that Facebook is
responding accordingly to punish and get rid of bad actors on their platform.

It's once again showing that we can't have pure anarcho decentralization. It
would be a haven for bad actors that goes unpunished.

We can absolutely set definition for what is bad and what isn't bad. What is
clearly bad is writing fake news about certain group of ethnic group you hate
and manipulating others into believing your twisted idiosyncratic views about
Jews, Hindus and Moors.

edit: there is some heavy downvote brigading going on here. I've alerted the
mods.

~~~
wooter
sad to me that people are so quick to dismiss the principles of free speech on
the basis that "the game has changed" after thousands of years of human
history proving it hasn't.

(inb4 1st amendment is only for the gov - that is a selective truth. the
principles of free speech exist outside of government.)

~~~
MBCook
> ...after thousands of years of human history proving it hasn't.

People couldn't manipulate millions of others as easily. You couldn't even
REACH millions of people easily. And you had to be an actual authority figure
to be given that power (perhaps a corrupt practice but still).

The communications landscape is quite different from 2000, remarkably
different from 1980, extremely different from 1960, a world away from 1920,
and bares very little resemblance to 1820.

How do things in the 1500s and 1600s say that thins aren't different?

You said thousands of years, how do the lessons of 2000 BC show us things
haven't changed?

~~~
wooter
so how did Hitler rise? How did freedom of speech treat the West at the time?
How did the opposite help Europe?

~~~
MBCook
That was less than 100 years ago, after the invention of radio and newsreels;
I'm not shire how it proves the point of unfettered free speech either.

I'd love to see examples of unfettered free speech from the 1600s or much MUCH
easier.

~~~
wooter
Ancient Athenians adored freedom of speech. Naming a warship after the very
concept.

399BC - Socrates speaks to jury at his trial: 'If you offered to let me off
this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind... I should say to
you, "Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you."'

1516 - The Education of a Christian Prince by Erasmus. 'In a free state,
tongues too should be free.'

In the 1600s, Galileo was executed for mere speech.

~~~
DrScump
Galileo was _executed_?

~~~
wooter
Oops, sorry. Hoouse arrest for life and all texts burned. Here are a few
executions & persecutions for speech: [https://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-
persecuted-scientists/](https://www.wired.com/2012/06/famous-persecuted-
scientists/)

------
kumarvvr
It is unfortunate that platforms like Facebook have become the beacons of
pessimism. I am talking in the context of the usage of social media tools to
harm society, rather than help it.

For me, FB, TW, etc have become unreliable sources of news.

Here, FB is trying to limit ads from pages that share false news, but who will
decide that??

1\. FB - Leads to a dangerous slippery slope of putting too much power into a
single,private, profit-seeking entity.

2\. Users - It alienates sections of society.

3\. Other sources - Inherently unreliable.

Seemingly, FB getting into the media distribution business itself is
troublesome for a society, especially when you have a platform whose
algorithms prioritize profit, consequently leading to construction of powerful
echo chambers.

The trouble with these echo chambers is that they nullify efforts of the
society to promote meaningful debate and discussion.

Even before the era of FB, the world was struggling with misinformation, lies,
subversion of facts, etc. Now we have reached a point where Presidents can
lie, often within a span of a few hours, and it's essentially forgotten and
things move on. These echo chambers are the primary culprit for this IMV. When
efforts to educate constituents is taken head on with echo chambers, the echo
chambers inevitably win.

Reminds me of the novel where the speaker in a press conference is denouncing
country A, and is handed over a note from his aide, and the speaker
immediately switched the narrative denouncing country B, all the while the
press simply accepts what is told.

~~~
briholt
"Fake news" appears to be "news I don't like" and has no correlation with the
accuracy of the content. Conveniently, Facebook seems to agree with many major
media outlets about what news they don't like, so they can present their
arbitrary definition of "fake" as objective and conveniently no one can break
through the bubble to prove otherwise.

~~~
Retric
Some groups flat out make up news stories to fit some narrative. What else are
you going to call that than 'fake news'?

'Candidate X comes out as gay.' 'Secret photos reveal candidate X at KKK
lynching.' Are both rather over the top, but also the kind of lies that
influence elections.

~~~
menacingly
If you don't like that, you're going to hate the physical realm, where anyone
can make any claim and you're left with nothing but your wits to discern the
truth

~~~
ebola1717
This misunderstands the way technology, social media in particular, have
exacerbated problems with misinformation. No one is claiming the media was
perfect before. Obviously hoaxes and false rumors have always been a thing.
But social media has made disinformation _scalable_.

~~~
chrisco255
For as long as I can remember, National Enquirer and other magazines like that
adorned the racks of every grocery store and book store I've ever been to.
Yellow journalism was coined as a term over 100 years ago. There's nothing new
about "fake news". And it has been scalable since the invention of the
printing press.

~~~
sqeaky
No one believed bat boy and even the plausible stuff in those was never the
subject of design making. The National Enquirer is as much News as the Onion
is.

The tragedy now is that there are sites that aren't neatly packaged as
entirely false but are. The Internet has empowered people like Alex Jones and
other people spouting pure falsehoods.

------
pier25
So how does Facebook _really_ know if something is fake?

You can't trust user reports. They will say a story is fake when they don't
like it.

You can't trust some worker in Bangladesh to determine this either just as
easily as you can determine if something is NSFW.

You still can't trust AI.

So how? It hires specialists in each field to determine what is real and what
is not?

~~~
whack
_" The company has already been working with outside fact-checkers like Snopes
and the AP to flag inaccurate news stories. (These aren’t supposed to be
stories that are disputed for reasons of opinion or partisanship, but rather
outright hoaxes and lies.) It also says that when a story is marked as
disputed, the link can can no longer be promoted through Facebook ads."_

If Snopes/AP tells me something is false, I'm perfectly willing to give them
the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps this will change in the coming decade, but
for now, this seems like a perfectly reasonable heuristic.

~~~
marknutter
Honestly, the fact that you think snopes is unbiased is pretty shocking to me,
and gives me little hope that Facebook would ever be able to properly
determine what is "fake news".

------
bluetidepro
This is really interesting. I wonder how it will effect Pages that are known
for sarcastic/satire type of content on purpose. Pages like The Onion, Hard
Times, etc. I feel like there would have to be a lot of work in the fact-
checking part of this. At what point will it be too manual of a process, or
will the algorithm start to fail on these "grey" areas?

Also, it's nice to see Facebook implement a feature solely for the user that
could be costing them ad money.

~~~
ceejayoz
They played with flagging satirical articles back in 2014:
[http://mashable.com/2014/08/17/facebook-satire-
tag/](http://mashable.com/2014/08/17/facebook-satire-tag/)

~~~
StephenMelon
I see a lot of comments on satire links that clearly demonstrate that large
numbers of people can’t always spot satire. That possibly says more about the
current cultural and political climate than it does about people’s gullibility
though.

~~~
ctdonath
It's not Facebook's job to spot satire or fakes for people. Users expect a
"common carrier" type experience, not news curation.

~~~
ceejayoz
Facebook has over two billion users. "Users expect" a wide variety of
different things, and I suspect if you polled them there'd be plenty who
expect Facebook to do some curation, particularly in the "trending topics"
sort of area.

------
neuronexmachina
Back in November, PC World did some testing with fake FB accounts to see what
fake news would be targeted at them. It was pretty eye-opening:
[http://www.pcworld.com/article/3142412/windows/just-how-
part...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/3142412/windows/just-how-partisan-is-
facebooks-fake-news-we-tested-it.html)

> The Macedonians may still be at it, because our Republican supporter, Todd
> White, was flooded with partisan posts. Worse, over a little more than two
> days, we counted 10 such posts in his feed that were fake, most accusing
> Democrats or their supporters of illegal activity. In all, White was clearly
> exposed to more spin than his Democratic counterpart, Chris Smith, who saw
> exactly zero fake news stories.

~~~
yorwba
Sounds like there is an untapped market segment. By the next US election,
someone will have figured out what kind of content gets Democrats riled up,
and makes a ton selling headlines to the highest bidder.

~~~
peoplewindow
Er, that's easy. It's done already by large corporate news sources. Just go
browse The Guardian or The Independent (both UK outlets) to find a constant
series of clickbait stories designed to maximally upset people with Clinton-
style views. Random Macedonians can't make money doing it because those
advertising dollars are already sucked up by much larger and better known
brands.

There may also be a structural issue (in the USA). If you lean Democrat you
probably trust mainstream US media sources like the NYT, Washington Post, CNN,
ABC etc. These sources all very openly pushed Clinton and her policies. If you
hear a story that sounds initially dubious, you search Google and you don't
find anything to support it, you probably will conclude it's not true.

However if you lean Republican and already don't trust these media sources,
searching for a story and not finding it will not tell you anything, because
you are already expecting those sources to try and suppress information that
makes left-leaning causes look bad. So you might find a bunch of YouTube
videos or right wing blogs or whatever and conclude that is sufficient.

The US media does publish a lot of biased unfactual garbage, including lots of
opinion dressed up as fact, but it's usually quite skillfully done and they
avoid pushing stories that are trivially false like "Putin issues arrest
warrant for George Soros".

~~~
marknutter
Having swung right in recent years, I'm now dealing with this very problem. It
takes a ton of effort to get the full picture on a given story. The more
controversial it is, the more google's search results will be dominated by
rags like Vox, Slate, and HuffPo.

------
meri_dian
Unfortunately we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand,
we could have completely open and unfiltered platforms which guarantee freedom
of expression but at the same time leave our institutions (public and private)
vulnerable to malicious influence.

On the other hand, we could attempt to build systems whose purpose is to
remove fake news, so defending ourselves against a particularly aggressive
form of attack on our institutions, but at the same time creating a situation
in which that system is given the power to decide what is fake and what is
not.

Are highly speculative opinion pieces which make accusations far from the main
stream fake? What about when a complex event takes place and there are
numerous 'takes' on how the event played out. Whose version of the events -
whose version of reality reality - does the system use to make judgments on
the veracity of news?

The situation is complex and we must tread carefully.

~~~
peoplewindow
Is it complex? I don't think so at all.

Facebook can easily just tag stories they think are false, and give people a
button to hide or show such stories (or even show ONLY such stories to make it
easier for people to build trust in the system). It would be a kind of spam
filter for news stories.

Facebook could then stay neutral, could avoid claims of censorship, people who
want to only see "true" news could be happy, people who don't trust Facebook's
friends to filter their news feed could also be happy, and everyone wins.

They aren't doing that because their goal is not to help people detect
fake/false news. Their goal is to suppress it entirely. They do this because
like quoquoquo above, they believe their userbase contains vast numbers of
sheep who are incapable of rational thought. Just tagging things won't be the
"solution" to the existence of such people, which is why their tactics are
controversial.

Are they right about their users? It's a big world. But rather than try to
help people spot BS and learn from it, their view appears to be that such
people are irredeemable.

~~~
Applejinx
They're correct. People cannot spot BS and learn from it, including you and I.
We'll put much effort into mastering a certain area of reality and truth, and
find other horizons clouding over by the day: we cannot, as humans, reality-
check everything we're confronted with, because it's too much. We're not
shepherds or subsistence farmers anymore, with a world tightly constrained and
comprehensible. Our world expanded, leaving us behind.

I'm tempted to call this an iron law and suggest it's why we've never spotted
alien intelligence in the so-vast universe. Perhaps intelligent species
inevitably turn to expanding communication, and drown in it very quickly—their
efforts turned to zero-sum gains, eventually triggering their destruction one
way or another.

~~~
sqeaky
We live in a single objective reality. There are ways to get at the truth.

Some of those ways are even easy. Can the claims be tested, sometimes this can
shortcut you strait to the truth. Knowing how to check sources gets you one
step closer. Knowing how to assess the quality of sources, helps. Knowing how
to understand the original source material is crucial. Checking that a
multitude of sources agree. Determining if the sources are trustworthy (in the
web of trust sense). In the case of claims about the natural world being able
to duplicate experiments is the ultimate source of truth. There is more but
much of this can be done with just a few web searches.

Many Millions of people don't or can't do any this. How many times have we
fixed someone's else's computer with just a google search?

Now for the part where I get downvoted. I blame religion. If you do even the
most basic checking into most religions they start seeming off. The sources
are often unverifiable books. They make claims about the natural world that
don't line up with evidence if they are even testable, worse they often
contradict themselves. They often have a long history of actively covering up
the truth of reality as best they can. What chances does a mind have at
navigating a potentially nuanced modern political landscape when its critical
faculties have been dulled to the point of accepting as literal truth some or
all of the stories about virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, denial of
evolution, implausible claims of the earth's age and many other manners of
objective non-true things. Religion damages critical thinking. Demagogues and
autocrats have always like reduced critical thinking.

~~~
marknutter
What makes you so certain we live in a world of objective reality?

------
alexc05
That's a good step, I wonder how that effects pages which host widgets from
"Outbrain" and the like. So Salon (for example) has a block of "you might also
be interested in" articles scattered around their content.

Articles is a pretty charitable term for them I guess but headlines like:

"Tiffany Trump's IQ will shock you" "You won't believe what she looks like
today" "Plastic surgery nightmares"

and so on... does Salon get docked for Outbrain's lack of integrity? Does
Salon's "organic shares" get penalized? What about sputnik news or Russia
Today (RT.com)?

I think it is a great step in the right direction, but they have far more
responsibility than just refusing money from them for ads.

Bots on the Hamilton 68 dashboard
[http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/](http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/)
clearly work together to amplify the voices of antidemocratic forces. FB &
twitter should (in my opinion) detect and prevent fake-viral root and branch.

------
jcwayne
This will be a massive time saver for me. It's a real comfort to know that,
from now on, all stories on Facebook will be real news. No more reading the
articles to spot the BS, just a quick skim of the headlines and I'll be fully
informed on the important matters of the day. /s

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>They "trust me". Dumb fucks.

-Zuckmeister

------
ctdonath
I've followed social media for a long time (starting back when one could
actually read every single Usenet post daily).

There is a definite life cycle to social media sites. Those reaching the "too
big to fail" stage are usually about to. AOL, CompuServe, MySpace, etc were
all indominately massive juggernauts reaching to take over the media world -
and vanished almost overnight. The sudden influx of editorial censorship in
Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc is a clue that a large number of legitimate
users (who just happen to hold differing expressions of differing views) are
facing the option of leaping to another up-and-coming site. Between that,
boredom with format limitations, and an otherwise growing sentiment of
malaise, I'm seeing the signs that FB etc won't be with us much longer.

And no, it's not "different this time". It's the same this time.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Yeah, no. The reasons that those other systems failed has nothing to do with
this particular issue. People will still be able to share their bullshit to
like minded people to their hearts' content, which is how the vast majority of
information gets shared through facebook. All facebook is saying is that they
will not take money from these bullshit mills.

The vast majority of people couldn't care less about whether Breitbart gets to
advertise on facebook. They aren't going to uproot their presence there to
make a political point, either. Most of the people on the site who hold those
views are 50+ year olds who want to see photos of their grandchildren. They
can still get all the nonsense they want by watching Fox News in the evening,
which is their preferred method anyway.

~~~
ctdonath
Imputing & dismissing a large fraction of your audience, or friends of your
audience, as "deplorable" is not a wise marketing move. They may be 50+, they
may watch Fox News, but they consider Breitbart a canary in the coalmine, and
may prove quick to throw their not-inconsiderable weight behind cheesy non-
sequitur upstart quietly years in the making.

~~~
MisterBastahrd
Again: grandparents aren't going to abandon a website en masse, a website they
use primarily to view photos of their families, just because they certain ads
are not being shown.

Not stories. Not shared posts. Ads. They will still get all the ads they want
to their hearts content from right-wing sources should those companies buy ad
space, it just won't be from knowingly bullshit sources.

Breitbart? No. Rebel Media? No.

WSJ? Yes. The Hill? Yes.

It's not difficult to understand, and it isn't going to change anyone but a
handful of nutball's facebook habits. There's no alternative platform in this
space that isn't app-first, which eliminates it from consideration for
generations that are and will continue to be desktop-first.

------
MichaelGG
Hmm will they apply it to all politicians and political parties? Every
politician ends up saying false things now and then.

~~~
Cuuugi
Something tells me one political party will be exempt.

~~~
jackhack
And something tells me that the political party that will benefit may invest
heavily in these information-filtering companies (if they are not already),
closing the circle.

------
jonathanjaeger
I'm an ad buyer on Facebook and sometimes Facebook gets very strict, and they
ultimately come to a compromise between ad performance/advertisers and their
policies.

I know people are scared of 'censorship', but they probably will end up just
targeting those crazy conspiratorial pages that clearly share the most bogus
stuff to prey on people to later sell bogus products to. You'd be surprised at
what's out there..

------
jeffdavis
There's nothing worse about fake news than many other kinds of bad content --
the only difference is the attention it is getting right now.

When fake news passes from the spotlight, and something else takes its place,
what will they do then?

Even if fake news is a larger business threat to facebook, they can't justify
it to the public: "they are allowing horrible thing XYZ, but blocking fake
news?!".

------
samstave
Uh? What about "fake ads"?

What about the billions of page views for spammy bs on all platforms and
sites, shouldn't those be taken out?

~~~
jdc0589
good luck with that. those fake ads make Facebook money.

~~~
samstave
That was my point :-)

------
gcatalfamo
I think it's kinda pointless. By definition, false news generate some kind of
shock feeling that urge people to comment and share the link, creating a viral
loop of people (a digital angry mob) fueling the false content as real.

Blocking it to be advertised might - just might - slow its viral expansion. Is
that the best FB can do about this?

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
This seems like something DNS providers would be better suited to handle,
assuming its something you would want to stop.

------
0xbear
Part of the strategy employed by mainstream media to misinform the public is
_selective_ reporting. That is, either the entire event is not reported if it
doesn't fit the narrative, or parts that don't fit the narrative are simply
omitted or deemphasized. Will FB detect and demonetize that as well?

~~~
fullshark
No, do you have a suggested way to do this? Seems impossible at FBs scale.

~~~
0xbear
Then it's just one-sided censorship in favor of narrative peddlers who run
major media corporations, and it has nothing to do with suppressing "fake
news".

------
dotcoma
So, is it a way to admit at long last that Pages that don't buy ads won't get
any readers?

------
thatonechad
false news according to "fact checkers" are not 100% accurate and depends on
the statement in which they are checking. you can see this by the careful
choice of words in which something may be claim to be true or false when all
actuality its more complex than that. it is weird why facebook would be
getting into the realm of censoring things at all.

~~~
xienze
> it is weird why facebook would be getting into the realm of censoring things
> at all.

Not really. The entire Valley is beside themselves over Trump being elected
and Twitter, Facebook, etc. feel partially responsible because Trump and his
supporters were able to use the platforms to their advantage. To be outplayed
by Republicans through the use of technology was previously thought
impossible, so they're going to "fix the glitch" that made such tactics
possible.

~~~
MBCook
Eve if you ignore theoretical bias it may have terrified them to realize that
they may have unintentionally had a SERIOUS effect on the ruler of the free
world by not only allowing but accidentally promoting obviously fake content.

There was plenty of relief content that would have defected the election. The
fake stuff may not have actually changed the outcome.

But to realize your 'keep up with my friends' business has the power swing
elections? That has to be a terrifying prospect.

~~~
xienze
> Eve if you ignore theoretical bias

Real bias, but moving on...

> But to realize your 'keep up with my friends' business has the power swing
> elections? That has to be a terrifying prospect.

I really doubt anyone at Facebook, Twitter, or Google would have said "oh my
God, what have we done???" if some insidious bit of "fake news" helped Hillary
be elected.

~~~
MBCook
> Real bias, but moving on...

I wasn't trying to talk to these specific cases, but I would agree the valley
leans left.

> I really doubt anyone at Facebook, Twitter, or Google would have said "oh my
> God, what have we done???" if some insidious bit of "fake news" helped
> Hillary be elected.

Really? If my choice got elected because of my site I would be happy I didn't
lose but I would be TERRIFIED that I had so much accidental power. What if I'm
not a good steward? What if I accidentally misuse it? What if someone else
takes over and REALLY misuses it?

I think (hope?) people would understand the power involved and not want to
mess with to much.

------
gmarx
If Facebook had existed in the 1960s, after the Warren commission report,
would articles speculating that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy who did not act
alone count as fake news?

------
znpy
instant question: which entity decides and how does such entity decide what
news is true news ?

~~~
Jerry2
Anything not politically correct and anything that doesn't contribute to
manufacturing consent will be labeled as "fake" news.

Scary times ahead. It's straight out of 1984.

~~~
graphitezepp
It's spookier than 1984. There was no prediction of "Big Data" and how
prevalent addiction to an omnipresent internet would be.

------
SCHiM
I really really doubt that this is going to have any effect at all. Although
many are septic of the attribution of "actual cyber attacks", I doubt that
that skepticism can be stretched to include the disinformation/fud spread by
the West or Russia.

That is to say (although it might not be the case _now_ ) that these
websites/accounts are not dependent on ads for funding or growing their
audience. This might cut down on lazy journalism (or churnalism as it's
called) but as soon as the free proxies for the disinformation dry up, a
couple of 'funded-behind-the-scenes' will take their place.

As for stopping the growth of the respective perpetrators audiences, likely
also ineffective. There's a bunch of alternative platforms that lend
themselves very well to fud spreading, twitter or a google search come to
mind. Ultimately people, once converted, _want_ to read and talk about the
latest and greatest evil of <target>. No need to take out ads, your friends
will want to tell you.

------
MBCook
So you can't buy ads to bring people to your page.

How about you can't monetize your page? How about every time you do this you
get shut down for X time (hours?) and it doubles every time you reoffend
within a short amount of time. One or two free strikes.

------
adtac
So they _can_ identify such pages. This is a really small penalty. Why not
just outright suspend such pages for a duration that increases with every
offence?

~~~
wolco
Why doesn't facebook come out with there own online wiki and only allow
stories based on approved of facts that have been vetted by members of
internal fact team.

At least we would know what facts they believe and what facts they don't

------
msimpson
This seems to be the same idea that Google rolled out over YouTube. Demonetize
videos that "may not be appropriate for all advertisers." However, the videos
which are usually being demonetized are those simply expressing a dissenting
opinion. It's going to be interesting what this system classifies as "fake" or
"incorrect" news.

------
olivermarks
The gofundme to help 'save snopes'
[https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes](https://www.gofundme.com/savesnopes)

There are efforts by David Mikkelson to regain control after Proper Media
bought half the company from Mikkelson's ex wife and business partner.

------
cjslep
Yet another effect highlighting the distinction between "free speech" and
"equal speech".

------
sebastianconcpt
If anyone selects for you what to listen and what to ignore, then you are
allowing forces you do not control to decide on how to nurture your
discernment about reality. In mass. Think about that. As noisy as it gets, if
we loose freedom of speech we _will_ be gone.

------
chrisco255
I think this policy is going to be particularly damaging to The Onion.

------
zeep
This is like light (or indirect) censoring...

------
659087
I predict we're going to see a lot of pages being classified as "fake news
distributors" when Mark Zuckerberg's presidential campaign kicks off.

