
Facebook to ban misinformation on voting in upcoming U.S. elections - crunchiebones
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-election-exclusive/exclusive-facebook-to-ban-misinformation-on-voting-in-upcoming-u-s-elections-idUSKCN1MP2G9
======
spangry
_" On the issue of fake news, Facebook has held off on a total ban, instead
limiting the spread of articles marked as false by vetted fact-checkers.
However, that approach can leave fact-checkers overwhelmed and able to tackle
only the most viral hoaxes."_

Does anyone else find this concerning? Even the smallest bias held by fact-
checkers can dramatically skew things towards one side e.g. only "fact-check"
articles that favour one side.

~~~
cbhl
Trying to overcompensate for bias is how we got into this mess in the first
place. Rather than picking a set of biases and viewpoints and presenting that,
news orgs and silicon valley have decided that $thing_i_agree_with and
$the_opposite_view deserve equal reach/airtime.

~~~
x220
>Rather than picking a set of biases and viewpoints and presenting that, news
orgs and silicon valley have decided that $thing_i_agree_with and
$the_opposite_view deserve equal reach/airtime

No, we do that because a marketplace of subjective ideas is a good thing.

~~~
hug
Except a lot of the "ideas" aren't subjective.

The most obvious case would be climate change. Regularly, climate skeptics are
given the same amount of airtime as climate scientists, despite the fact that
the evidence and opinion is _overwhelmingly_ in support of climate change
being a real problem.

A realistic panel would be 98 climate scientists on one side, and two climate
skeptics on the other.

By giving someone with far less evidence equal airtime and respect, it lends
credence to that point of view despite it being so poorly supported by facts.

This is most definitely not a good thing.

~~~
x220
I had a wonderful chemistry teacher once. Someone asked him what he thought
about climate change, and he gave a fantastic response.

"The atmosphere is a lot like a fish tank full of water. If you put food
coloring in that fish tank, it turns slightly red. The more food coloring you
put in that tank, the more red it gets. If you take a flashlight and try and
shine light through one side of the fishtank and out the other side, the food
coloring blocks some of the light. The more food coloring you put in, the more
light it blocks... and turns to heat. Try it. You'll make the water warmer.

"That water is like our atmosphere. That food coloring is like CO2. And that
flashlight is like our sun."

It's not difficult to convincingly and simply explain the evidence for man-
made climate change. Evenly matched debaters would predictably win and lose if
they were told to argue for or against climate change. The reason why climate
scientists fail to convince TV viewers about climate change is that they are
scientists: they spend more time practicing science than practicing persuading
laypeople in terms that they will understand. Going up against demagogues,
they have zero chance.

The game isn't bad. It works incredibly well most of the time for most of the
problems we have encountered. It doesn't work so well when one side is
incredibly bad at convincing common people and is not willing to change
argument tactics, or when both sides are making completely subjective
arguments.

~~~
mattnewton
I wish it was a matter of outreach, but I I fear people won’t remember your
wonderful analogy unless they identify as a member of your tribe. Instead,
putting skeptics on TV who are a member of their tribe, and who assured them
it is nothing to worry about, allows them to carry on mining coal and driving
their SUVs where they need to go and not updating any of their beliefs. All
those things are expensive and painful for adults, but weren’t problems for
you as a child.

~~~
x220
I heard that story in college. It stuck out because it was pithy and
convincing.

If you think people don't listen to new ideas or change their minds, do you
think people should only be allowed to hear what you think is true, so that
they don't hear wrong ideas to begin with?

~~~
mattnewton
Nope, I’m just disillusioned that everyone is as open as college you to new
ideas and that we can simply go reach the people who don’t want to be reached.

I suspect that the fact that you were taking chemistry in college means you
were already in a very different state to receive new ideas compared with your
average TV news viewer who is currently skeptical of climate change, and that
difference is really important.

I’m not saying let’s throw up our hands, but people like Gore and Billy Nye
are trying outreach, and it isn’t because they are bad at articulating ideas
that this is still a problem.

~~~
masonic

      people like Gore and Billy Nye are trying outreach
    

Which becomes part of the problem. When your role model is a guy who flies
_private jets_ from conference to conference and had a $17,000+ per year
utility bill for his home (and not so much as one solar panel when in office),
it doesn't convey urgency very well.

~~~
mattnewton
No one can pass the purity test for skeptics because it isn’t about that. I’m
convinced it’s about saving face for their tribe. I can’t think of a
spokesperson skeptics would believe. Maybe Donald Trump saying he was wrong
and something needs to be done on National TV would work?

------
x220
I really don't think you should remove information (or even be able to sue
someone, except for defamation) for it being false, because it gives people
the false impression that if information is printed or allowed on Facebook
that it's probably accurate. We need to give everyone the impression that
whatever they read might be false, because it actually might be false. Maybe
that will make people think critically about what they read.

~~~
donatj
This. Assume everything is false until proven otherwise.

~~~
kadendogthing
That is terribly inefficient.

~~~
craftyguy
That is very effective.

~~~
kadendogthing
Not really. There is a whole host of information that you'd never be able to
operate on, mainly because you as a person do not have the time or expertise
to discern what's true and what's not on every subject that comes up.

------
buboard
The upcoming US elections may prove to be a watershed moment for modern
democracies in general. There is a widely held belief in academic cycles that
mass voter manipulation through social media has managed to trump all other
kinds of propaganda, causing people to become electoral zombies. This belief
is based on flimsy evidence and on a mountain of bias. I hope facebook and the
other media do everything by the book and according to the mandates of their
favorite party politics. This will be an easy way to finally dissolve these
mass delusions and make it obvious that societal change is real.

~~~
narrator
Instead of mass voter manipulation of voters through the establishment media?
Nobody would be in a panic at all if Hillary had won.

~~~
philliphaydon
America had to pick between an idiot, a criminal, and a socialist. They
literally had no one to vote for. The country would be upset regardless of who
won.

------
GhostVII
The ban on misinformation is only on information regarding how you can vote,
which seems reasonable since it is something that can be fairly easily fact-
checked - either you can vote over mail, or you can't, there isn't an in-
between. However I think it would be better if they didn't try and limit the
spread of false articles - instead maybe they could put some kind of
disclaimer on the post, saying "Facebook fact-checkers believe this to be
false" or something like that. Then the actual distribution of the content
isn't up to the fact-checkers.

Obviously Facebook can do what they want, they are a private company, but I
think it is best if they treat everyone's opinion/articles equally as much as
possible, so long as they are not violating the content guidelines on the
website.

------
anonytrary
"Ban misinformation"? This is a very slippery slope... Facebook's very own
Babel's Tower.

------
gtirloni
It's great that FB can even try and I'm sure they will improve things somehow.

My concern is apps like WhatsApp which can't peak into conversations.

We're going through elections in Brazil and the amount of fake news I receive
daily from family and friends is shocking . Some days I try to be a fact-
checker to send a message that they should know better but it only creates
anger (and I never take a position , simply show the facts. I'm sure they
catalog me as being a member of whatever other side they hate).

People only want to read/see things that agree with their views to the point
that they are happy to forward pure crap to others.

------
beezischillin
I'm not particularly happy that social media companies are deciding on
tripling down on shady behaviour. They're always heavy-handed and go around
banning, silencing and censoring even unrelated stuff. It's gotten to a point
where people in my circle of friends are moving on to alternatives because
they had enough of dealing with their private communications being
scrutinised, dissected and used as a reason to censor them by very fallible
bots. I understand the challenges and issues involved in this whole kerfuffle
--- but in the end if your users are unhappy and leaving your service, you're
failing on delivering on your promises.

I wish I was smart enough to think up an instant solution to this, but I'm
not. All I know is that there has to be a better way out of this than just a
black and white solution. Society should be able to develop a way to integrate
social media into itself and use it non-destructively.

------
bcoates
Soon you'll see this linked from a Facebook post to prove that you can trust
information posted on Facebook.

After all, if it was false they'd remove it!

------
inetknght
Roads have speed limits. Social media can have link limits.

Sure, you might be able to exceed your limit by posting to something that is
patently or opinionatedly false. But how would you enforce it if a person can
simply say "oops sorry I thought you knew it was a joke" or "I agree with its
opinion"?

Analogy: if a tree falls in the woods, does it make a sound?

If you only violate a speed limit when you're caught and the police write a
ticket, how would you get caught on social media?

~~~
genericone
In order to prevent virality on WeChat, they impose a 100 share limit before
limiting new shares to invites-only and only for people who have a linked
mobile number. What this effectively means is that if WeChat detects a 'viral-
event', anonymity can be squashed and those responsible for causing the viral-
event can be identified and I suppose questioned at a later date on whether
they are anti-government or simply rabble-rousers.

Is this what you mean by wanting to have social media limits? That the
government can step in and say, "Ma'am, you've shared enough, what's going on
here, you're going to need a permit for this discussion" ?

~~~
inetknght
> _Is this what you mean by wanting to have social media limits?_

I wasn't advocating for social media limits. Rather, I was trying to present
one method of limiting and contrast with difficulties of enforcing it.

How, then, can you "ban" misinformation if the person spreading a link doesn't
realize it was incorrect?

How can you prevent that same mechanism from censoring satire? How can you
prevent that same mechanism from censoring honest _opinions_ rather than
facts? How can you prevent that same mechanism from censoring discussions?

~~~
genericone
Ah, I apologize, I attributed semi-advocacy where there was more like
devil's-advocacy, and its too late for me to edit my post.

Maybe you don't ban anything at all? Maybe above an item that meets viral
criteria (or as a click-thru to the post to increase content friction), a
viral-disclaimer is put front and center: "This information has not yet been
verified but our algorithms have detected that many organizations and
individuals have been sharing this".

Don't ban, just discourage via technical means? Like how many companies use
the dark-pattern of making it unbearable, but not impossible, to go through
the process of unsubscribing or cancelling an account. Whenever anomalous
unsourced information appears to be spreading, just increase the consumption
friction. Make viral-response a controls problem. If that sounds like a
typical engineer response, yeah, sorry, not sorry.

You want the viral response to be critically damped, some arbitrary compromise
between stifling information flow and having a situation like in India where
some remote villagers killed traveling strangers for being in the wrong place
at the wrong time during a viral WhatsApp misinformation situation about
child-kidnappings. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-
india-44856910](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44856910)

------
WAthrowaway
They really should just disallow all posting from Nov 1 until after the
elections. It would be much more effective

------
Deimorz
Here's the official Facebook post about it:
[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/voter-suppression-
polic...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/10/voter-suppression-policies/)

------
voidr
Facebook needs to be regulated or the US will become the next China. Once the
other tech companies see that they can censor political views they disagree
with, they will and the US will have what China has without even the state
mandating it.

------
throw2016
Facebook and Twitter are aggressively censoring alternative media and news
sites that cover police brutality, political opinion and corruption. [1]

It's very strange to see these arbitrary and heavy handed actions not
receiving the same outrage as possible censorship by Google in China, when
they are in effect the same thing.

Clamping down on political opinion and activism ie dissent is censorship. The
chinese do it directly without apology, we are using sophistry by using
nebulous ministry of truth terms like 'fakenews', conspiracy and FUD to
achieve the same ends.

[1] [https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/tide-turning-
regulat...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/10/tide-turning-regulating-
facebook-google.html)

------
moogly
Just in time for Zuckerberg's presidential campaign!

------
dev_dull
This is such a slippery slope. Even now snopes hasn’t debunked the “Trump
tower server communicating to Russia”[1] story even though it was simply spam
and is soundly debunked.

And when we learned that or national intelligence agencies wire tapped a duly
elected president? CNN called it fake news (“we’re dumber for having heard
that”).

If we let these “fact checkers” control the narrative we’re sacrificing our
own _ability_ to critically judge things for ourselves. Because we’ll never
see it.

I have zero doubt that “misinformation” is simply — or already — overloaded
with political biases.

1\. [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-
russi...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-server-tied-to-russian-
bank/)

~~~
AlexandrB
> If we let these “fact checkers” control the narrative we’re sacrificing our
> own ability to critically judge things for ourselves.

Give me a break. We sacrificed our ability to critically judge things for
ourselves the second we decided we're ok with algorithmic feeds and timelines.
Adding fact checkers only changes some input variables - the net result is
still that each social media user lives in a thought prison of their own
design.

------
394549
> Months ago, senior Facebook executives briefly debated banning all political
> ads, which produce less than 5 percent of the company’s revenue, sources
> said. The company rejected that because product managers were loath to leave
> advertising dollars on the table...

Gotta remember what's most important. /s

~~~
3minus1
Do you have a problem with political ads on tv? From my perspective we should
have campaign finance laws that regulate political ad spending, but there's
nothing inherently wrong with showing political ads on tv, facebook, or
elsewhere.

~~~
AlexandrB
> ... there's nothing inherently wrong with showing political ads on tv,
> facebook, or elsewhere.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, Facebook is different than television
because ads can be targeted extremely narrowly. This makes them hard to audit
and possible to use ads for things like voter suppression of populations that
are likely to vote a certain way.

Advocating for/against a specific policy or politician is one things.
Attempting to disenfranchise a group of people through misinformation is
another.

------
s73v3r_
This is something that seriously needs to be clamped down on. It is outright
fraud, plain and simple. And since it's being done with the intention of
disenfranchising people, it is extremely evil.

~~~
x220
Fraud requires financial gain. This is just lying. People are allowed to lie
in this way, and you should not believe everything you read, particularly if
it sounds very appealing, gets your emotions fired up, or seems to offer
benefit without requiring any payment or responsibility.

~~~
donarb
A lot of these fake news sites don’t care about the truth. They’re all about
generating clicks to their sites which produce revenue.

~~~
x220
I don't see how that's relevant.

------
sergiotapia
They'll most likely filter out anything conservative.

~~~
dymk
Why do you think that might be?

~~~
hyperdunc
Are you insinuating conservatives are disproportionately creating fake news?

Silicon Valley's left wing bias is well established. There's no way companies
like Facebook can censor impartially.

------
thrower123
I really think they have better things to worry about. Maybe fixing their news
feed so that I don't see the same four pieces of content day after day after
day. With a few hundred contacts on Facebook that aren't unfollowed, I should
be seeing _something_ , but it's not surfacing at all. Even if I turn on
notifications for particular people that I really care about seeing content
from, about half the time I don't see things. Really makes it pointless to
bother with Facebook very much.

