
Facebook Bans Fake News Sites from Using Its Advertising Network - kawera
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-bans-fake-news-sites-from-using-its-advertising-network-1479175778
======
untog
Facebook apparently already had a fix ready for fake news, but didn't
implement it because it disproportionately affected right-wing news sites, and
they were afraid of backlash:

[http://www.gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-
was...](http://www.gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was-undercut-
by-fear-1788808204)

This got me thinking. I'm center-leftish, but I'd like to think open minded.
To me, the results FB saw are correct - from Birtherism, Obama being a Muslim,
Sandy Hook trutherism, all the way to Democrats using the voting records of
dead people to swing the election, the false conspiracy pedalling news stories
I've seen have been overwhelmingly on the right. (note that I am not saying
all right-wing people believe these things, just that most of the people who
do are right-wing)

But am I wrong? I'm constantly aware that Facebook puts me in a filter bubble.
Does anyone have any good examples of left-leaning fake, conspiratorial news
stories in the last few years?

~~~
geowwy
> Does anyone have any good examples of left-leaning fake, conspiratorial news
> stories in the last few years?

The theory that Putin hacked the Democrats to get Donald Trump elected.

There's zero proof that Russia is behind the leaks, but Dems still peddle this
myth. Hillary Clinton even went as far as threatening Russia with military
intervention over the emails. And there's still zero proof Russia had anything
to do with it.

~~~
untog
There isn't conclusive evidence, but from what I've read, the hack to
Podesta's email used a Bitly account known to be associated with Russian
intelligence:

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-
john...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john-podesta-
and-colin-powells-gmail-accounts)

Like I said, not conclusive, but I wonder what definite evidence you're likely
to have with intelligence agencies. Point taken, though.

~~~
fareesh
I agree, this is definitely not conclusive proof that the source used by
Wikileaks is the same source. It's probably important to note that his
password was something like "p@ssword".

------
vinhboy
I find it odd that a lot people think discerning between real and fake news is
hard, or has some sort of insurmountable "gray area" filled with slippery
slopes.

We've done it for pornography, and it has worked really well. I don't get
bombarded with pornography on the internet anymore. Why can't we apply the
same logic to fake news?

And no one thinks banning certain type of advertising from pornography sites
as censorship. It still exists, it's still growing, and you can find it
easily. Same applies here I think.

~~~
karmelapple
Pornography is socially unacceptable.

Fake news is socially acceptable, if it agrees with your (and many of you
friends') viewpoint.

I have had a numerous friends and family of all levels of education genuinely
share things that is clearly misleading, if not fake, to my eyes at first
glance. There could be multiple reasons: some people simply _want_ the story
to be true, others simply trust a place that has a website and a mostly-shady
look.

We need major change and guidance to help people separate lies from the
truth... as long as people still want the truth, which is not entirely clear
to me right now.

~~~
ec109685
Fake news is absolutely not socially acceptable if it agrees with your own
viewpoint.

Google does a pretty good job of detecting scam website these days by looking
at site reputation and detecting link farms. Hopefully Facebook will do the
same.

~~~
karmelapple
Fake news absolutely is acceptable. For the posts involving fake news on your
Facebook, have you seen more people agreeing with the story - or at least
liking it - or more people fact-checking it and getting a like on the fact-
check link?

I have always seen more likes on the story itself than on any fact-checking
correction follow-up comment.

~~~
ec109685
We are agreeeing. I meant "socially, as in what a proper member of Society
should do". Don't steal things from others and don't spread fake news, among
other morals we should hold dear.

------
piotrjurkiewicz
All of you are complaining about fake news, but what about omitted news?

What's the point in having a news source which presents only/mostly true news,
the same time ignoring huge amount of those ones which do not fit their
political line?

This will result in people having a false image of an overall situation,
exactly the same as fake news will.

Moreover, I think news omitting is the root cause of fake news problem. People
see certain events happen around them. They know these events are true because
they see them with their own eyes. But they do not see reports on these events
in mass media. The same time alternative and partisan media report these
events, people see them on their FB timelines. So they redirect their trust
towards these media and FB. If this schema repeats for years, they can trust
these media so much that they can accept fake and unbelievable stories (which
are also naturally more likely to appear in partisan media). And refuting
these stories by mass media makes them even more sound in their eyes,
especially if they once saw these media refuting stories which were real.

And this applies to both sides.

~~~
wmf
OTOH the media also loves to report non-newsworthy events, making them appear
to be more common than they are. We now return you to our developing "missing
white woman" story...

------
forgingahead
The problem is that so-called "real" news is itself full of subjectivity, bias
and hyperbole. So continues the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching from last
week.

~~~
ec109685
How is that _the_ problem? Can you cite some examples?

~~~
fareesh
There are multiple reporters who colluded with the Clinton campaign to push a
specific narrative during the election. In one example, Glenn Thrush went so
far as to call himself a hack in one of the emails to her campaign chairman,
which he ended with "Please don't tell anyone I did this".

Granted there's a difference between bias and a completely fabricated article
about something that did not happen, but presenting half the story is also
problematic, as is coordinating with the people who the story is being written
about.

Unfortunately, if one were to entertain the idea of banning Politico, it would
be considered an affront to the idea of freedom of the press.

By agreeing to allow biased coverage to profit from advertising, Facebook is
essentially saying that you can do this as long as you don't get caught. By
the same yardstick, several right leaning media companies are guilty of the
same sin, but the fact that we have proof in this case suggests that this is a
standard practice in the industry, which reveals that honest reporting may
only exist upto a particular point.

Source: [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-
emails/emailid/12681](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/12681)

~~~
ec109685
Hack language aside, wasn't he asking if the article had an falsehoods in it?

How do you expect reporters to have access to "sources inside the X campaign"
without making an effort to build relationships and trust?

------
dvhh
would that be the end of the onion
[http://www.theonion.com/](http://www.theonion.com/) ?

And what is defined as fake news ? These developments will prove really
interesting.

~~~
Houshalter
I love the onion, but it's deeply disturbing how many people believe their
articles are real. There is a small niche online of screenshots of people
falling for them:
[http://literallyunbelievable.org/](http://literallyunbelievable.org/)

~~~
tscs37
I admit that I once fell for an article from the German-based equivalent of
the Onion.

I had a good laugh when I checked the domain though.

------
gscott
Please ban the Huffington Post while you are at it.

~~~
basch
before salon?

~~~
gscott
You are right. Some samples from the Salon webpage:

“The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval
Office”: Republicans warn of Trump presidency

Donald Trump has killed American Exceptionalism: Why his election was the
deathblow for our great national myth

White flight from reality: Inside the racist panic that fueled Donald Trump's
victory

Has the American “experiment” run its course? The empire of chaos has
overtaken America.

Please Google/Facebook add this to the list to remove as well.

~~~
basch
The misogyny apocalypse: Turns out being white and male counts for more than
intelligence, grace or decency

[http://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-misogyny-apocalypse-
turn...](http://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-misogyny-apocalypse-turns-out-
being-white-and-male-counts-for-more-than-intelligence-grace-or-decency/)

------
planetjones
I don't think it would be so hard for FB to partner up with snipes.com and
provide some kind of check which flags news stories as potentially fake and
offer the user the chance to click through to snopes in order to read more
about it. With simple text matching and maybe extracting text from some of the
images this shouldn't be too difficult. I know FB already have a tool, but I
am not sure how it's implemented.

~~~
xiaoma
snipes.com -> snopes.com

------
qwrusz
While debating what is a "fake news" site. _Maybe it 's also time to revisit
the debate what is a "news" site..._

Organizations that do original journalism and news reporting seem to be
struggling financially. Meanwhile, many popular sites now considered
legitimate "news sites" don't do much original journalism of their own and
instead they are mainly just curating or aggregating news from those original
news sites.

(I'm not talking about sites like HN or reddit, I'm referring to large popular
sites with "articles" where they're rewriting/spinning/summarizing news
stories found elsewhere, then linking somewhere in their "article" to the
original news site, lastly they add the most sensationalist clickbait headline
they can come up with!)

News curation/aggregation sites offer a service people want, they are usually
free to read, and copyright law cases have determined what they are doing is
legal.

Facebook and Google clearly have a huge amount of power here. I support them
taking action against fake news sites (I do look forward reading details what
that means and how they do this).

But it's not just FBerg and Googy at fault here, part of the reason things
have gotten this bad is the slippery slope where "real" newspapers, news-
agencies and other organizations that have trained journalists doing original
news reporting have let themselves be overrun by sites using their work
without appropriate compensation or recognition. They have also fallen behind
on the tech skills needed to deliver news on the noisy interwebs, and they
have not pushed to revisit copyright laws that aren't working for anyone as
intended.

------
olivermarks
who is going to rubber stamp 'news' as 'real'?

~~~
venomsnake
The Ministry of Truth

~~~
wattt
Exactly this. Worst possible outcome. It is solving the problem with more of
the same the problem.

------
gremlinsinc
What's considered 'fake news' though.. I mean you could argue
breitbart/huffington post which are both very biased are fake... yet they do
have some honest articles in there- - but many REAL news services were calling
it w/ major odds for Hillary even if they had data that pointed otherwise...
MSM also did not report pro-Bernie news that might have led to him beating
Clinton, and Trump in the end...

Since we've removed the rule that requires news to show the opposing view
point on every piece of news -- it's pretty much all op-ed anymore...

------
Tempest1981
Fake news is a natural extension of sticking to news sources that reaffirm our
beliefs.

We tend to live in our own information universes. Broadening our views is
uncomfortable.

------
yosito
Interesting development and a move in the right direction.

------
JacobJans
The next step is to ban them from the platform. Any Facebook Page that
continually posts fake news should be given a warning, and then booted if the
practice continues. Just as Google has quality guidelines for websites, there
should also be quality guidelines for Facebook Pages. To do otherwise is to
open up Facebook's users to abuse.

------
_audakel
When fb starts getting into the business of censorship, it's time there
monopoly is investigated.

~~~
wmf
That's why if they're smart they won't block "fake news" but will add some
kind of disclaimer.

------
venomsnake
The cure is worse than the illness. The left went out of its way to take every
word Trump said literally. In the most damning way, to produce outrage.

Are the 3000 thousand opinion pieces assuming that that Megyn blood was coming
from her vagina and not her eyes, because it suited them more also fake news?

You cannot abstract talking to the other side. You cannot abstract discussion
- and I mean real discussion, not demonstrating intellectual superiority

