
Facebook is pressuring its independent fact-checkers to change their rulings - Lammy
https://www.fastcompany.com/90538655/facebook-is-quietly-pressuring-its-independent-fact-checkers-to-change-their-rulings
======
rndmize
I bet this kind of mess is exactly what Zuck was trying to avoid when he
didn't want to implement free speech restrictions or fact checking, because
there's no solution to be found here - if you don't mark anti climate change
material as false, your fact checkers are worthless and you're kowtowing to
political/moneyed elements that are against it; and if you do, those elements
will declare you biased, claim censorship, and seek political action. Of
course, the other side will eventually seek political action in the first case
as well, so there's no winning.

It's been entertaining to watch him gradually tightening the screws on speech
over the years though, as if this kind of end result was ever in doubt.
Outrage is stronger than principle, and the same thing can be seen on reddit
at smaller scale (in the last decade reddit has banned, more or less in order
- pedo-adjacent, hate, violence, harassment/doxing, gore and illegal commerce
communities). I don't think there's any way for a social media giant to avoid
these kinds of restrictions - communities will spring up around any kind of
material, other people will find them and the news will write about them (with
the amusing side effect that you'll get a Streisand effect if you _don 't_
shut it down due to the increased attention).

Facebook has it worse it seems - they're actively taking money from some of
the groups they're restricting/fact-checking, which is all kinds of messy and
filled with conflicts of interest. It seems the money is winning out, which is
about what I'd expect. It'll be interesting to see how they resolve these
issues in the coming years.

~~~
Lammy
> It's been entertaining to watch him gradually tightening the screws on
> speech over the years though

It's sad to read the Terms of Service and easily count Facebook PR scandals
like rings in a tree-trunk. My "favorite" example is the years-long fights
over breastfeeding photos on individual profiles and in parenting groups:
[https://bc.ctvnews.ca/facebook-policy-on-breastfeeding-
photo...](https://bc.ctvnews.ca/facebook-policy-on-breastfeeding-photos-sucks-
b-c-mom-1.752277)

When a policy gets so specific that it starts talking about times the "child
is latched" my eyes just glaze over and I can only read it like "DEAR WOMAN,
please remember your body is disgusting, you're disgusting for having it, and
it must remain covered aside from these extremely-specific legally-mandated
exceptions. With love, everyone at FB."

~~~
radegast
Id say the problem is with American culture tho. The US has a weird puritan
stance towards nudity. Facebook in this case just panders to the crowd... as
they do to the leftists in regards of censorship. So yeah, no need to be
hysterical and talk about "disgusting bodies".

~~~
Lammy
> So yeah, no need to be hysterical

For the audience: please note that this word is a gendered slur :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria)

------
commoner
Facebook has repeatedly overridden fact-checker evaluations in its two biggest
markets, India and the United States.

Facebook India:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-
poli...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-hate-speech-india-politics-
muslim-hindu-modi-zuckerberg-11597423346)

Facebook in the United States:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sensitive-claims-
bias...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sensitive-claims-bias-
facebook-relaxed-misinformation-rules-conservative-pages-n1236182)

~~~
searchableguy
I tried facebook today. It's garbage.

I only found ads, prostitution services, pages of kids that seemed
inappropriate, rumours, fake news, x minute craft videos with medical
misinformation, make up videos with toxic products, etc on my 15 minutes of
usage.

Live streams of people similar to this:
[https://ibb.co/0yBqf1n](https://ibb.co/0yBqf1n)

Facebook groups are full of living ads. Most pages recommended didn't have any
activity this year.

Everything is turned on by default on the privacy settings page. It includes
facial recognition, content analysis, phone number, birthday information, and
whatever you shared on sign up (everything). That data is available for
everyone else too by default and there is no way to make a profile completely
private or hidden.

~~~
maneesh
You do know that ... fb ads are served based on off site web history and cross
domain activity right?

Because this reminds me of a comment I read by someone saying that Instagram
only showed photos of scantily clad women, followed by noticing his account
mostly followed scantily clad women

~~~
searchableguy
Those weren't ads. I separated them from the rest in my original post. I used
a freshly wiped device with vpn.

All those things are against their policy and some of it is illegal so it
shouldn't be on it with thousands of likes.

> fb ads are served based on off site web history and cross domain activity
> right

Good point. There should be more regulation on this.

~~~
junius_mmxx
It's probably related to the fact you were using a VPN. I.e., most people
would use a vpn when looking for prostitutes and all the other unsavoury
things you saw in your facebook ads.

~~~
klyrs
For a while I was getting tons of ads for asian mail-order brides and porn
featuring almost exclusively asian women. Nothing that I was interested in; I
kept my browser pretty clean so I figured it was just background noise. Never
considered that I was sharing wifi with my neighbors -- a white third
generation canadian and a first generation chinese canadian. When they moved
out and I got my own account with the same internet provider, those ads went
away and I learned a lot more than I ever wanted to know about that guy

~~~
ipnon
This is really an attack vector. Share wifi with them (let's assume this is
easy with social engineering) sign up for fresh facebook and google accounts,
look for any unsavory advertisements, blackmail.

~~~
throw_away
Or the reverse: a prank app where you connect to the target's wifi & then it
goes around browsing unsavory parts of the web and clicking on a bunch of
tasteless ads so as to poison what ads are shown to the victim.

------
Kapura
I would like to reiterate: delete your facebook account. Do not allow yourself
to be party to a clearly corrupt system, when the upside is a messaging app
and a convenient way to share baby photos. Facebook's power is it's ubiquity;
you do not need to make yourself an instrument of that power.

~~~
capableweb
> Facebook's power is it's ubiquity

Exactly. Facebook is much more than just messaging app and sharing photos. If
you're running a restaurant and want to bring people via ads on Instagram and
Facebook, you gotta have a Facebook account. There is tons of other things
where you could survive without a Facebook account, but it makes business
harder.

~~~
rcthompson
I think that comment was talking about individuals, not businesses. Businesses
are on Facebook because people are there.

~~~
capableweb
I'm fairly certain you need to have an individual account with Facebook in
order to setup a business. At least that's what the signup flow makes you
believe, maybe there is some hidden options of skipping that. Just went
through this a couple of weeks ago.

------
ricardo81
I think the uncomfortable truth is that no one wants social media companies to
be the Internet police, and any kind of arbitration they do on the content
posted is going to be counted as negligence or censorship.

Unfortunately the business model of these companies is user-generated content
at scale, which they never could have effectively policed from the beginning.

~~~
LudwigNagasena
> no one wants social media companies to be the Internet police

I wish. Facebook wouldn’t do anything if there was no angry mob to demand such
measures to be implemented.

~~~
linuxftw
There's no angry mob on FB. The people that don't like the fact FB doesn't
censor content left a long time ago.

Everyone that's outraged about FB doesn't use FB. They want to be the arbiter
of what other people see and think. This seems to be highly prevalent for a
certain political ideology.

------
wombatmobile
The blurring of fact and opinion is the inevitable consequence of the decline
of investigative journalism which began in earnest 25 years ago, when the
internet broke the business model that newspapers had relied upon since the
first print ad appeared in 1704.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Not quite. It’s only in the 20th century with the rise of pass production that
every paper had strong advertising income, and thus the need to expand
circulation to a geographically defined group (with ad-reading partisans on
both sides). This is what made them compete with quality differentiated
investigative news content, and that is how you get the news culture in
question.

If anything today’s decline has produced a regression to the earlier days of
the 18th and 19th centuries, where you sold the content itself, reaching for
sensationalism - often overtly political sensationalism, which sells great -
and yellow journalism.

Ad based papers traditionally hated opinion pages because advertisers didn't
really want to be next to controversy. But readers love them. Now that you
once more need to sell to readers more than advertisers, now that you have a
million choices of news instead of maybe two per city, the whole news medium
turns partisan, whether it’s the NYT or Fox.

~~~
liability
Rose-tinted glasses seem to often filter out yellow journalism in discussions
concerning journalistic decline. In the late 19th century yellow journalists
were largely responsible for starting the Spanish-American War. And mainstream
publications were hardly saints in the past either, for instance in the
mid-20th century the NYTimes made themselves an uncritical mouthpiece for
Stalin with denial of the Holodomor
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial_of_the_Holodomor#Walter_Duranty)

It's hard to have a meaningful conversation about the present state of
journalism with such a sanitized inaccurate understanding of the history of
journalism.

From my perspective, modern journalism isn't doing great, but neither does it
seem to be unusually bad. You might say the American press participated in
starting the Iraq War, but in that case they were uncritically parroting what
a US president was telling them, rather than pressuring a president who wanted
peace into declaring war, as the yellow journalists did in the 1890s. Relative
severity of these wars aside, it seems to me that journalism is presently
better now than it was then.

~~~
wombatmobile
“The declining capacity of newsrooms to investigate potential stories not only
renders newspapers less valuable to news consumers, but also results in a
newspaper that is less valuable to its community.”

[https://www.brookings.edu/research/local-journalism-in-
crisi...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/local-journalism-in-crisis-why-
america-must-revive-its-local-newsrooms/)

------
mindfulhack
Bias.

It affects everything.

Science, religion, politics, public policy, company policy, policing, the
judiciary, journalism, and (any)one's decision-making regarding 'facts'.

Not sure how we're going to solve it on a platform like Facebook.

The systems governing over it - government and politics - are not going so
well in the bias department themselves.

As for 'the people', they're just as biased. In fact, that's where it comes
from. The problem is humans, not the technology.

Even though I have low regard for them, sometimes I realise Facebook is doing
the hardest job in the world.

~~~
kingkawn
The presumption that there is a possible unbiased perspective is itself the
most insidious form of bias.

~~~
hleszek
The presumption that there are always multiple perspectives and that they
might be equally valid can be another bias. Especially in the news. Sometimes
one party is clearly right and the other is clearly wrong.

~~~
luckylion
That's very rare though. Usually, the impression is achieved by intentionally
leaving out facts to make the picture look more clear cut. Once you go into
the details, in most cases, clarity goes away and everything gets fuzzy and
grey.

But nobody wants to read "it's complicated, here are some facts so you can
figure out your thoughts on the matter", so we tend to cut away half and paint
the rest in broad strokes to turn that into "This is reality, and here are the
monsters who deny it".

~~~
BrianOnHN
I'd love to hear these "details" that paint conservative-trump supporters and
their quack-anon conspiracies as anything other than monsters.

~~~
luckylion
Incentivizing people not to work leads to people not working.

~~~
BrianOnHN
That's a straw man argument based on your assumption of second or third-order
consequences.

Edit: No politician anywhere ever introduced a bill with the intentions of
"Incentivizing people not to work."

Even "shutting down the economy" has the intention of being able to get back
to 100% sooner and thus maximizing total output/GDP/work over a period longer
than the short-sighted days/weeks immediately ahead.

~~~
luckylion
The point is that pretending "conservatives just hate the poor" is the broad
brush. The moral hazards of vast government social programs are the part that
gets fuzzy and grey: it has great benefits in the moment, keeping people
housed and fed. But it also has great disadvantages: making them lose their
motivation and agency and making them permanently dependent on those programs.

But if you zoom out and leave away the negatives: monsters!

~~~
Falling3
Redlining, voter suppression, consistent attacks on important services (DMV,
USPS, healthcare providers), drug testing for welfare recipients (despite the
fact that these programs cost more than they save), anti-abortion crusades.

There is a long list of evidence for conservative attacks on the poor in the
US, which is in no way limited to programs like where the criticisms you
mentioned apply - although I don't believe those criticisms are made in good
faith to begin with anyway.

~~~
luckylion
It appears that you're not interested in the point I was trying to make, but
just want to fight with somebody about your political convictions. I'm not
that somebody, I don't care about your domestic problems.

I care about the behavior you're showing though, because that unfortunately
isn't contained to the US. "The other side are all monsters" is common, that's
why it's a problem. But you must get over "... but they really _are_ monsters"
to be able to see the problem, I'm afraid.

~~~
Falling3
I responded to the point you tried to make; let's not pretend otherwise.

I have a lot of problems with your analysis. Your original comment argued that
conservative policies towards the poor are out of some concern for the future
unintended consequences. I replied because we have mountains of evidence that
is not the case. You then go on to straw man me with a false dichotomy that
the Right's policies are either done out of some genuine altruism or that
"they're monsters". We can acknowledge the reality of the situation without
resorting to such ridiculous reductionism.

And finally, I'm not looking for a fight about my political convictions. I'm
correcting one more instance or a narrative that has plagued modern political
discussions for decades. Both sides are not the same. And it's either ignorant
or disingenuous to claim otherwise.

~~~
Lammy
> correcting

I believe this is what they are trying to get at. No ill will intended, but it
seems pretty futile to try to "correct" the way another person experiences the
world since any viewpoint a correction comes from is inherently a property of
observation at some place+time+culture. I think earlier societies' greater
homogeneity tricked us all into thinking objective reality is a thing that
exists.

------
squibbles
I see the big issue here as whether people want free speech or not. Technology
continues to greatly amplify what a single person can accomplish. A person can
give their opinion, offer advice, relay misinterpreted or misunderstood
information, or even outright lie. The point is that free speech is just that
-- free and without constraint.

If there are going to be limits to free speech, then who gets to set those
limits and who enforces the limits? Whoever gets to set those limits and
enforce them assumes control over public discussion. I think the point of free
speech usually has been to protect the people from unbridled power.
Unfortunately, excessive free speech makes the signal-to-noise ratio
intolerably low, and free speech itself becomes a weapon used against free
speech.

Adjudicating free speech is a very hard problem when everyone has the ability
to communicate with everyone else. It is not clear that Facebook, even if it
were to prioritize ethics over economics, can address the issue in a manner
satisfactory to all (or even most) stakeholders.

~~~
xg15
A different perspective: If most of the speech is spam, hoaxes and lies, and
if as a recipient, I have no meaninful way to detect those, then what value
does the speech still have?

So if everyone can say whatever they want (which is a good thing), the
recipients must have some tools at their disposal to verify whether someone
should be listened to or not.

> _If there are going to be limits to free speech, then who gets to set those
> limits and who enforces the limits?_

Denying facts that are backed by the overwhelming majority of scientists would
be a good candidate for a limit.

~~~
squibbles
Seeing "facts" and "scientists" in the same sentence makes me uncomfortable.
Science is wonderful for exploration, but not so much for adjudication. For
example, contrast papers published in peer-reviewed journals with the press
releases and news stories that cite those papers.

------
Aeolun
Why are these called _independent_? There’s clearly nothing independent about
it...

~~~
colejohnson66
Cause they’re “independent” contractors

------
travisoneill1
I would just like an app where anybody can say what they want and I can choose
whether or not I see it (FB used to be this). I'm not interested in their
little Ministry of Truth.

~~~
EricE
Or at least an option to turn their commentary off. It’s getting ridiculous on
YouTube too.

Oh, if they want to editorialize on content the should loose their safe harbor
protections too. Fair is fair.

------
Wolfenstein98k
They should never have been in the fact-checking business. They're a platform,
not a publisher - or at least they ask to be regulated that way.

------
egberts1
Make a meme that is 99% accurate and Facebook will plaster a cover over it
once it finds that largely irrelevant error.

------
Ansil849
> The removed labels are among more than half a dozen instances in which
> Facebook managers have interfered with fact-checks in ways that appear at
> odds with the program’s spirit of independence and nonpartisanship. At
> times, its employees have used a broad exemption for opinion content and
> previously undisclosed powers to make editorial decisions in ways that
> favored certain publishers. Content that has been deemed false by its fact-
> checkers has not always been labeled false on Facebook. In some cases,
> Facebook has reevaluated fact-check labels or penalties after fact-checkers
> had acted, often in the wake of political, financial, and PR pressures.

> In one previously unreported label change, for example, Facebook pressured
> fact-checkers to downgrade a label on a video shared by influential
> conservative publisher PragerU from “false” to “partly false.”

So standard question when terrible stories like this are posted: there are
many HN members who work at FB. How do you deal with stories like this and
continuing to work there?

~~~
intended
Because FB is probably one of the few places actually trying to grapple with
the scope of this problem in a manner that makes business/practical sense.

Not at FB.

Content moderation is developing so fast, and with problems so thorny, that
the difference between intuitions of normal people and trust and safety teams
is whiplash causing.

Current moderation practices are perhaps analogous to the ages of proto police
forces. Since there is also no separation of powers, moderation is a cost
center, and comprehension of moderation principles is nascent and disregarded
outside of T&S teams, you have people from sales/strategy/Personal connections
overturning rules/policy.

The speaker at this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J19Xa3-SN1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J19Xa3-SN1M),
has a book on this topic which discusses some of the many problems this field
throws up.

FB is trying to resolve this problem by offloading the problematic thought
policing to the state, in some way or form - white paper sent in the UK is a
case in point.

This is likely the way forward for major firms, it seems unfortunate, but
unless someone reframes the incentives and problems, government sanctioned
censorship is the likely future.

~~~
loopz
Corporations cannot outsource "thought policing" to "the State", as the State
deems social media platforms able to effect elections. A tiny percentage, but
not most, is covered by Law.

Shunning accountability only go so far. Sooner or later it is optimized into a
closed, shrinking circle.

~~~
intended
Well in the UK, that is starting to happen, the online harms paper is out, and
OFCOM will be taking some amount of that work.

Since foreign agencies are able to use platforms to influence elections then
governments are going to take action to protect their processes.

At the same time, from the firm's perspective, they have to be arbiters of
issues that the public has never discussed or dealt with, the political powers
of the polity are involved in it = all of which has to be done at massive
scale, across multiple jurisdictions and laws.

This is an unsolvable problem. Right now they get told of for not removing
conspiracies and for removing conspiracies, all the while being told off for
harming free speech.

Having an outside third party to play referee is just cheaper, so they will
fight and lobby for it in some for or the other.

------
Lammy
Meta: the headline at the top of the article is too long for HN's title field
so I submitted this with the headline in its <title> which is a bit shorter

------
dvh1990
You can be loyal to truth or loyal to profits, never both.

~~~
teddyh
You can’t serve both God and Mammon.

— Matthew 6:24

------
swayson
Uncomfortable times. As these FAANG organisations grow ever more powerful. In
a way these few organisations control majority people's attention, and thereby
influencing behaviour and increasingly knowledge as well. I guess its human
nature, conquest.

~~~
Nasrudith
It is the opposite really - opinions are some of the least controlled they
have ever been as reach is far equalized and means of control at a low. It is
one of the least conquered times.

Hell the idea that they can even 'control the attention' is a fallacy that
assumes they have active knowledge of what their content will do like the New
York Times has an editorial control. It is like the idiot congresspeople who
spent their question time complaining about their negative search results for
their name.

Even the heaviest handed management would fail to exercise the level of
control as an editor of a scientific journal who knows absolutely nothing
about the underlying field.

~~~
swayson
I mean it is of course a complex system and not meant to be interpreted too
simplistically. The gist of my point is, never estimate the power and effect
of marketing, media, bureaucracy, laws, and policies on collective human
behavior.

A few big corporate tech players are increasingly growing in power to
influence/control collective behaviour. Which includes funding internal
departments to lobby to change laws based on some agenda. Those laws control
human behaviour. Those tech organisations also determine the information flow
of: words, symbols, images, effectively culture. There is a reason why
militaries invest money in meme warfare for example, and these organisation
effectively have that power.

