
As India Votes, False Posts and Hate Speech Flummox Facebook - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/technology/india-elections-facebook.html
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product50
The real issue with Indian elections is with the fake news being spread via
Whatsapp which is multiple times more popular vs. Facebook. Because Whatsapp
is e2e encrypted, there is literally anything FB can do with it. Whatsapp is
so many times more dangerous vs. Facebook as no one can do anything about all
the hate/fake news that spreads via it. =

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darkpuma
If you can't stop the spread of fake news, then you need to become better at
spreading real news.

Easier said than done, I know.

Edit: When it comes to improving distribution of and access to real news,
there is a lot of low hanging fruit. Consider for instance the unfortunate
state of affairs where most fake news is free, but a lot of real news is
hidden behind paywalls. I understand that journalists have mortgages like the
rest of us, they can't do it for free, but the social value of real news is
sufficiently high we should be highly motivated to find alternatives to pay
walls.

~~~
intended
1) You obviously haven’t seen Indian real news. It’s on the verge of giving
fake news a run for its money.

2) this idea that more speech is the antidote, needs to end.

3) it’s the era of __content __. If there’s better content out there, that
content wins.

4) content has no inherent truth value or perhaps any value other than
entertainment value for some subset of the population.

BBC news is free. Fake news is free, engaging, and customized to touch thing
that trigger me, and come from sources that I trust. They match my prior
assumptions and other content I have in my head.

News will lose, and has been ever since - the news cycle Did it in.

Frankly I think the internet creates an information loop that’s too fast for
human societies to reflect.

~~~
darkpuma
> _" 2) this idea that more speech is the antidote, needs to end."_

Just as you are hopelessly to stop the distribution of fake news, you cannot
make people like me stop pointing this out.

The problem of fake news is not limited to India, and the existence of free
sources of real news, such as the BBC, is not sufficient. We need more sources
of free news, written from a wide variety of perspectives from a wide variety
of organizations, spread over a wide variety of mediums. The BBC is not always
the first to break a story, nor does it always have the best presentation of a
story. Sometimes an organization like the NYTs does it faster and better, but
the distribution of that story is limited by the paywall. Tearing down
paywalls and diversifying distribution channels is the only realistic way of
combating fake news. Anything else is a pipe dream.

~~~
jobigoud
The set of possible false news is infinitely bigger than the set of real news.

~~~
darkpuma
All the more reason to remove barriers to access of real news.

~~~
intended
This worsens the problem by assuming that lack of “news” is the problem.

Historically news media was already in trouble because of the news cycle. News
had to bleed to get advertising to survive.

Underlying that was the limited short term attention span of our species.

As long as there is only limited mental space for ideas, a fierce competition
must exist to take up that space.

And to win, ideas that engage our hindbrain win. Sex sells, if it bleeds it
leads. Tribalism.

This was the case before the internet.

The internet through this into over drive.

Now we can’t even keep up.

More content? People are already saturated.

There are hundreds of Indian news channels.

But there’s only a few _formats_.

A few talking heads yelling about the same issues and pandering to emotions.

A model learnt around the world.

—————-

Don’t think that There’s things such as real news - sadly today it’s just
“content.”

Look at what happens when day - ravish Kumar, makes a great show.

He loses. Because Arnab Goswami with his theatrics and fake screaming is more
enaging.

Facts don’t win hearts and advertising time.

Most people don’t read articles before responding on social media. They read
headlines.

Discussing news is discussing a battle already lost.

And if this sounds bleak - It’s actually hard to encapsulate how truly
hopeless the current scenario seems to be.

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umeshunni
Does The NY Times publish a Facebook bashing article every day?

~~~
na85
That's their prerogative, but I'm okay with major media outlets trying to wake
people up to the fact that Facebook is a danger to society.

~~~
Mirioron
Imagine if Facebook or some other platform did that to news outlets they
didn't like. I think people would be quite concerned.

~~~
smt88
And they should be concerned if FB did it because FB is not a journalism
company. Journalism is our most important check on govt and corporate power,
and they certainly should be checking FB's astonishing amount of power on a
daily basis.

If FB did the same to journalists, it certainly would be disturbing, because
FB's customers are not its readers and it has no editorial firewall. Anything
it says is hopelessly self-interested.

~~~
papermill
Independent journalism maybe. But corporate journalism isn't a check on
government or corporate power. The NYTimes doesn't check power, it represents
power. It is power.

I think it is time people stop pretending news companies are any different
from any other media companies. The NYTimes was created by one of the
wealthiest bankers for christ's sakes.

~~~
smt88
So they haven't broken any major stories about govt or corporate corruption in
the last few years? They haven't published the accounts of whistleblowers?

Just the fact that they've been criticizing Facebook since before most of
these scandals broke is proof that they're a check.

They're not perfect or without an agenda, but no human organization is. But
they do make money and earn prestige from muckraking, so they do it. FB earns
money from harming us in unnoticeable doses.

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qwerty456127
False claims, hate speech and clearly manipulative rhetorics in political
posts that can affect elections should probably be treated like terrorism in
every country (I used to be a free speech absolutist but now I see it doesn't
work, a significant portion of people fail to distinguish nonsensical
propaganda themselves). But the only way I see to implement this an unbiased
way without ruling regimes punishing people for truth they don't like is to
delegate the job of detecting such posts to a neutral international body of
experts, e.g. a department within UN.

