
Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors - M_Grey
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/10/12/facebook-has-repeatedly-trended-fake-news-since-firing-its-human-editors/?tid=sm_fb
======
vinhboy
Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's
homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the
content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda
sites.

And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have
opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a
completely fictional headline created by right-wing websites. Something along
the lines of "Obama lets immigrants across border to kill white people"...

I think tech culture's misguided desire to treat everyone "equally" creates a
huge imbalance. You can't put the NYTimes in the same category as Breitbart.
Just as you wouldn't compare it to "National Enquirer".

Edit: To keep my reply on topic, I am adding this thought: I think Facebook
knew this would happen and that is why they had humans curated the trending
list. I don't think they deserved the negative backlash, although I understand
the slippery slope it creates.

~~~
seertaak
Here's Glenn Greenwald, who can hardly be accused of being right-wing or a
Trump supporter, on media bias:

    
    
        The U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, 
        and preventing him from being elected president. I don’t have an actual problem 
        with that because I share the premises on which it is based about why he poses 
        such extreme dangers. But that doesn’t mean that as a journalist, or even just 
        as a citizen, that I am willing to go along with any claim, no matter how fact-free, 
        no matter how irrational, no matter how dangerous it could be, in order to bring 
        Trump down.
    

Although he doesn't name them, it seems to me he's likely referring to the
vary news outlets you would consider beyond reproach (say, NYT or WaPo). Does
this perhaps make you reconsider your position?

EDIT: formatting.

~~~
cmdrfred
This is extremely obvious if you are non-partisan. Right now, there are huge
issues about Clinton just released by wikileaks[0] she said that she has a
"public position" and a "private position" to placate a room full of bankers
(Read: Hey guys I won't really do any of that Bernie Sanders stuff, I'm just
saying it for votes)

CNN's top story: Trump said "grab her in the pussy" in 2005

[0][http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/top-10-hilla...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/top-10-hillary-
clinton-scandals-exposed-wikileaks/)

~~~
soundwave106
One of the Wikileaks "scandals" in this article is that Hillary Clinton
advocates "a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders".

Scandal? Come on, that's not a scandal, that a policy position. Personally, I
agree with free trade in general, so I'm not scandalized by this "revelation"
one bit.

~~~
cmdrfred
>Scandal? Come on, that's not a scandal, that a policy position.

That is pretty clearly an endorsement for TPP (other leaks make this
connection more obvious[0]). Hillary says she is not in favor of it, this
seems to directly contradict that statement. Saying one thing behind closed
doors and another in front of the voting public is a scandal to me.

[0][http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/leaked-
email...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/12/leaked-emails-
clinton-defending-tpp-late-june-2015/)

~~~
soundwave106
It is well known that Hillary Clinton was defending TPP as late as last year
(and the "hemispheric common market" comment comes from 2013 --
[http://fortune.com/2016/10/11/clinton-
wikileaks/](http://fortune.com/2016/10/11/clinton-wikileaks/)).

It is also well known that Hillary Clinton has sort-of kind-of changed her
position in response to the Bernie Sanders left pull.

Yes, in my personal opinion it's probably not a strong pull, and Sanders
voters who feel strongly against free trade / TPP / etc. are justified in
feeling suspicious. But a speech from 2013 when she was openly promoting it
doesn't exactly tell too much.

~~~
cmdrfred
>But a speech from 2013 when she was openly promoting it doesn't exactly tell
too much.

What about emails from last year? Consider that with the 'private position'
and 'pubic position' comment and you are a fool if you think she will do
anything she claims.

------
mjfl
You're going to have to break the Turing Test before you get good automated
content curation. There will always be error.

People are worried about bias. I'm skeptical that humans have the ability to
be politically unbiased on an individual level. Many modern political issues
do not have a middle ground - take abortion, you are either for choice, or you
believe it is infanticide. So let's stop pretending to be unbiased.
Information aggregators should have their members clearly spell out their
positions on popular issues in their bios (an openness that should be a part
of the responsibility of being an information aggregator) and there should be
"block designed" hiring around these issues to maximize political diversity
and reduce bias _in aggregate_. Otherwise network effects are just going to
cluster people with similar opinions around each other.

Just a thought.

~~~
FullMtlAlcoholc
>Many modern political issues do not have a middle ground - take abortion, you
are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide. So let's stop
pretending to be unbiased.

You're falling into the trap of American politics by making every issue a
binary choice. For instance, I find the abortion debate to be such a non-issue
and if someone asks me what my stance is, I respond by saying I haven't done
enough research or soul-searching to form a coherent, rational position on
this issue.

And I probably will not ever get around to doing this research. I'm ok not
having a position on certain issues. I wish this was more acceptable. Instead,
the US political duopoly and it's first to the post voting encouraged big tent
parties who more or less have to agree on most issues. I'm going to paraphrase
Rumsfeld's brilliant turn of phrase here, there are known unknowns, and
there's power in accepting that.

~~~
lucio
You should note that you have the luxury to even consider the issue of
abortion because you've already been born.

~~~
leohutson
They are also lucky their parents met, so your point is?

~~~
hueving
Tends to be a less inflammatory 'pro life' way of saying, "it's easy to be
undecided when the decision isn't about you being murdered." Or something
provocative along those lines.

------
MistahKoala
Today's news presented to me by Facebook includes Putin prepping for a Third
World War by having diplomats' families return home.

My understanding of it is that he made some pronouncement that their kids are
best off returning to Russia for a good, traditional nationalistic education -
which has somehow warped into something more apocalyptic. Certainly, Facebook
didn't originate that interpretation, but it's helping to propagate a story
that's only being reported by tabloid outlets; there is no other facet of the
rumour being presented by more measured and reasonable outlets.

~~~
boona
There's a lot more back story. [Here is a
video]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqD8lIdIMRo))
of Putin explaining that we're essentially on the brink of a major world war,
and that the average citizen in the western world is oblivious to it. (Or just
look up "Putin's warning" and pick your outlet.) Couple that with Hillary's
insane anti-Russian position and things could get ugly really quickly.

~~~
int_19h
Would you rather pay the Danegeld and let Russia run amok invading its
neighbors?

------
return0
I don't understand why facebook repeatedly tries (and fails) to become a news
source. They can make more money by being the world's watering hole, there is
no need (and not much money imo) for going after the role of newspapers/tv.
Given that their offering is exclusively popularity-driven, the quality of
their news offering will always be less-than, or equal-to a very bad tabloid.
If they are looking for political power, they already have it by controlling
communication channels.

~~~
happyslobro
I think their long term plan is to literally take over the entire internet, by
replacing every feature of every successful category of website. The free
Facebook-net for India and Africa, this Facebook for enterprise thing, the
embedded games, video... I fully expect to see Facebook for schools soon,
followed by diplomas and then degrees granted by a Facebook online university.

Maybe they will even try to roll out a voting app some day? It could start as
a polling app, and then slowly take over the voting booths in areas where they
can buy the necessary permissions. Those governments that grant them control
over their elections would celebrate increased voter turnout, and accept a
massive campaign contribution (in "premium" Facebook ads) for being the party
that opened the door. Jesus, now that I think about it, we could actually end
up with a real technocracy in a generation or two, run by... Facebook. That is
really, really scary. Brawndo.

~~~
Samis2001
I don't think such a system would be a technocracy - it would seem to be more
along the lines of a Corporatocracy
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatocracy))

~~~
happyslobro
I guess. But the political moderators in the corporatocracy would all get laid
off once they finished training the AIs. Then it would count as a technocracy.

------
smokeyj
I'm becoming increasingly skeptical that anyone on the internet is an actual
human being. Especially so if this entity decides what I'm reading and why. I
want to see the source to ranking algorithms, input sources and moderation
activity. Not that I don't trust the Zuck.

~~~
josu
Nice try, bot!

~~~
ionwake
In all seriousness we probably already have AI companies subtlety testing
their software on these boards =]

~~~
jansenv
I can all but guarantee there are AI comments and voting rings active here.

------
aaron695
I don't get it?

Are they trending stories or not?

Why would they not include them even if they were fake, they are still
trending?

Should FB lie to us?

~~~
ManlyBread
The question is why FB is trying to be a news source - that's nowhere near the
expected purpose of this site. No one registers on FB just to read news.

------
solvedit
I know I might be shooting myself in the foot here by posting this.

I got so annoyed by Facebook's banal trending news suggestions that I wrote a
script to flag every trending news item as offensive (on the premise that it
is the flag most likely to have lasting effect). I never see trending news on
Facebook anymore after running that for a while.

------
orik
Working as intended; trending is trending.

~~~
ommunist
very good point! Indeed, if fake news are trending, they should be on
Trending. Its a feature, not a bug.

------
hugh4life
I hate trends. They're inherently manipulative regardless of whether the
topics are selected by a human editor or an algorithm.

------
DasIch
The real lesson here is that the industry is still really bad at AI. We're
good enough at it to build useful tools for tasks where failure isn't too big
of a problem but once it is, you want a human filter.

------
emjenny
There's a peculiar detail in this story.

It refers to "the 'Association of American Physicians and Surgeons' — a
discredited libertarian medical organization."

1\. First, why the quotes around the name of the organization? Is this not its
actual name? 2\. Discredited? By whom? Isn't "discredited" an objective
judgement -- and thus, one the author should support with a rationale? 3\.
Further, it's odd that of all the examples mentioned, the AAPS is the only one
not linked to. Why? The release must be online, if Facebook linked to it.

Curious.

~~~
andygates
Because they promote objective untruth: HIV doesn't cause AIDS, abortions
cause breast cancer, vaccines cause autism, and so on. They're a low-quality
organisation who use a fancy name to impress the impressionable.

------
the_watcher
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed this, although what tipped me off was a
trending story about the Warriors wanting to trade Andre Iguodala for Iman
Shumpert, which was based on a blog post by a Cleveland high schooler (for
those who don't follow basketball, it's a completely ludicrous idea).

------
leepowers
What is the error rate of fake news over verified (real) news? A 5% margin of
error could be acceptable. A 50% error rate would indicate a serious problem.

> As part of a larger audit of Facebook’s Trending topics, the Intersect
> logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the
> workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five
> trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly
> inaccurate.

Yes, but out of how many Trending stories in total? Eight fake stories over a
three week period seems like an acceptable rate of error.

Trending stories are popular stories. A fake story has an element of satire.
These stories could be popular because of the satire (and the subsequent
humor). Trending does not imply veracity.

~~~
dredmorbius
This raises the really interesting point that _news doesn 't have a post
mortem process._ It would be a very interesting experiment to, say, revisit a
sampling of top stories at some interval (say 3-6 months) and compare the
_reported_ facts ( _and omissions_ ) with the actual reality.

From such elements as "did names and places get accurately reported?" to "was
the underlying narrative correct?". Quotes and attributions might be a
particular element. Predictions (particularly in financial reporting) as well.

This needn't be every article, but some weighted sample based on a story's
placement, impact, subsequent references, etc.

~~~
ptaipale
> _This raises the really interesting point that news doesn 't have a post
> mortem process._

Great idea, and what higher education should be doing for research. Generally
there's no process.

But personal experience is that whenever I have been involved in a situation
about which news has been made, the outcome has always been that the reporting
is somewhat sloppy, inaccurate, and agenda-driven.

This is with so-called reputable journalism; "fake news" is then even worse.

So, even if I do a non-professional post-mortem on my own, I see that the news
was not completely healthy. And pointing this out to journalists generally
makes them just angry. Even if you are completely polite, they block you on
Twitter, etc. If you comment a news article in reputable newspapers' web sites
to correct errors with good sources, it's not unusual that the comment is
moderated away.

~~~
dredmorbius
I need to think myself on just what metrics ought be used. I find, for
example, looking at fact-checking efforts, that the focus is often at too fine
a level of detail. That by focusing minutely on facts, the big-picture
accuracy (narrative) is often lost.

The question of how to deal with _missing narrative or omitted detail_ is also
huge. There are efforts underway in that regard, usually in the legal field.
The Innocence Project would be an example.

I can think of a great deal of follow-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion which have
turned up since, and in particular numerous instances of people caught
blatently lying.

The public though seems mostly to move on. I feel that's a mistake.

------
Kiro
The media hunt against Facebook backfires and Hacker News is very much part of
the problem.

------
gregpardo
I think it's an experiment. A lot of people actually use facebook as their
sole source of news... Especially the younger generation. This is quite scary
because Facebook's algorithms are actually acting as a filter on top of
already existing media filters. Before you know it the chain will be so deep
it will be hard to know where anything came from.

Another problem is similar to the reddit problem. Both the AI and your
customization can create an atmosphere where you literally get served only
opinions you want to hear. I actually think a more random algorithm would be
more beneficial than what's trending.

------
nkrisc
Maybe Facebook's human-curated news content had a political slant because much
of the fake news out there has the opposite political slant. Perhaps an
unintended consequence?

Or perhaps it's just that the fake news that is shared on Facebook has a
particular slant, thus removing that content gave the appearance of a
preference for a different political slant on the part of the curators.

------
ikeboy
Why can't they just filter on the domain level and throw out fake domains
entirely?

------
dreamdu5t
I don't want AI _or_ humans deciding what I read. I want to choose what I
read. I would like to just turn off "trending" whatever the fuck altogether.
Give me back the Facebook that was just content from my friends...

------
ybrah
I have the entire div blocked because I'm terrified of cherry picked news

------
amykhar
It's a sad indicator really. The fact that it's trending means a lot of people
were posting it. It's hard to tell how many actually BELIEVE it, but I'm
guessing it's the majority.

------
raverbashing
Nothing surprising from a company that notoriously fumbles removal of content
(minor nudity gets removed while violence, abuse, fake pages and graphical
gore (not in a journalistic sense) remains)

------
kordless
Humans are meant to program things. Life is meant to measure and judge.
Software isn't very good at that yet because we've yet to figure out why we're
good at it.

------
InclinedPlane
It was never very good to start with, when the whole thing turned to garbage
when they fired the curation team I took that opportunity to block the element
using ublock.

------
mtgx
So this is a lot like what Google experienced for a long time. Its algorithms
would get manipulated.

However, would you prefer Google to _handpick_ (let's forget about the volume
of manual labor for now) which sites get to be at the top? Or would you rather
just keep improving those algorithms?

I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser
extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections.

~~~
tdkl
> I think Facebook is in the same situation. Facebook, Google, and to a lesser
> extent, Twitter, have a lot of power to influence elections.

And they will if their future power relies on the specific candidate, which is
ironically also lobbied (paid) by them.

I don't want to sound like a hippy in the 1960's, but if there ever was a need
for the "fuck the corporations" slogans, it's now.

------
PunchTornado
still better than having some people filter the news according to their
political views.

------
therealbobsmoot
Seems like a good fit given that people are maintaining fake friendships and
fake amazing lives on their timelines. [edit] yes I am bitter from past
experience.

------
partycoder
Fake news that people happen to be sharing at that moment. Fake it or not that
is what people is interested in and what is trending.

------
disposablezero
The next billion dollar startup will be a self-reprogramming, employee-less AI
company which can self-produce memetic lolcat videos and celebtity gossip. >.<
Unfortunately it all comes crashing down when the Twitter bot becomes obsessed
with Godwin's law tropes (never happened before) and starts a political action
committee (PAC) to advance it's self-directed agenda... not much different
from the human world. Instead of firing as in human employees, the PR
supervision process will say the Twitbot was "retrained from scratch"
(reformatted) and instructed to ignore some taboo topics. ;)

In other news, humans now have even fewer jobs to do... all those idle people
without jobs (ie, truck/taxi drivers, pilots, ship captains, BS office jobs)
are completely, harmless, disorganized and bear absolutely no ill will against
the vast majority of new wealth trickling upwards at an accelerating rate,
into fewer hands.

~~~
lucio
You posted it as ironic, but after reading your idea there are 5 teams
feverishly working on it. :) By the way, how does lolcat-aio-matic.com sounds
to you?

------
return0
Fake news are better than biased news.

~~~
andygates
In what way? Explain and justify, please.

~~~
return0
Fake news are easier to detect. Bias is always subtle and insidious.

~~~
andygates
And yet we see the general readers swallowing fake news as if it were truth,
and even retorting that they don't care if it's fake, it's the kind of thing
those people would do.

This is out of the scope of news and into the scope of propaganda, and it does
matter.

~~~
return0
They are very rarely "actual fake news", but usually untruths presented in a
way that is impossible to falsify. At least to my experience. Perhaps you
could cite a news item that survives but is proved to not have happeend.

------
troorl
The Washingtonpost has repeatedly published fake news since forever.

------
popmystack
Yeah, all because people wanted to scream "bias." Sadly the community here
seemed apt to agree with it, but I definitely have my opinions on that. Quoted
from a previous thread:

>Did the standard for their sources remain relatively constant regardless of
the material being discussed? There isn't a clear answer here, but that
doesn't make it defacto censorship of one set of particular political
opinions. The sources that were discussed aren't credible in any meaningful
form. The fact that they happen to be largely conservative seems like a
problem conservatives should address instead of calling it censorship.

But ironically, for posting that, I was meant with censorship.

People in aggregate are terrible at curation. You really do need editors for a
reason. But Facebook should have been extremely blunt about the situation
before. The fact that its curators let through more "liberal" sources than
conservative ones, doesn't necessarily mean they're biased. It really could
just be that conservative sources are far more likely to not be at a high
enough standard to be posted -- which seems to be the case given the examples
in the article.

~~~
jwatte
You know what they say: Facts have a well known liberal bias!

~~~
jsmith0295
I think that may be true, but only because what is widely considered and
presented as fact by the most mainstream sources of information actually have
a significant center left bias. I think it's generally missed because people
confuse bias as having to do with having a more extreme political position,
when you can actually be biased in favor of any part of the political spectrum
including the center.

~~~
ascagnel_
As someone with a left-leaning bias, I agree with your assessment, if only in
the sense that the loudest and most powerful voices in the most reputable
newsrooms tend to also have (implicit) left-leaning biases. I would love for
their to be a conservative equivalent (this was the reason for the founding of
Fox News pre-Ailes: get a bunch of conservatives in the newsroom and have them
do their jobs to the best of their ability, following an implicit rather than
explicit bias).

Does any equivalent exist today (eg trying to report as an outlet run by
conservatives instead of a conservative outlet)?

