
News Feed FYI: Addressing Hoaxes and Fake News - envy2
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/12/news-feed-fyi-addressing-hoaxes-and-fake-news/
======
r2dnb
Remember :

\- It all started with Facebook being accused of manipulating the timeline to
remove conservative stories during the campaign

\- At the time, their PR was along the lines of : we will fire the staff and
replace it with an "objective" algorithm

\- Shortly before the end of the campaign, the Fake News narrative started to
be tested under various forms ("conspiracy theories are going mainstream",
"damaging rumors" etc...)

\- Post election the Fake News narrative started to be really pushed by
politics

\- At the same time, FB started to announce actions to fight the so called
"Fake News Problem".

\- And these day, hearing FB and mainstream media, the rethoric is as
shameless as "We need to clean the news".

Having been caught doing some very troubling things, FB answer is to double
down with what would be called censorship if it was being done in China.

Shutting down opinions, based on the opinions expressed can remind certain
patterns of a not so old history. I find it shocking that people accept this
development so quietly. Everybody seems to be ok with that. It seems like
citizens are no longer awake and fighting for the bill of rights, seriously
folks how can something like this possibly happen in this country ? Are you
realizing what is happening here ?

In 2016, the average citizen thinks he is a good citizen and is all proud by
being "politically correct" for a number of small things (often ridiculous and
preventing him from maturing his own opinions) but everybody is comfortable
with movements such as "Cleaning the news" being organized in plain sight.
That's how you know something is fucked up. This is a shame.

~~~
morgante
First of all, you have the chronology right but the causation wrong. After
conservative pressure to stop editorially reviewing news, fake news has
increasingly trended. Since the election, people have realized how untenable
this is and so Facebook is looking for a solution.

This has nothing to do with the bill of rights. Facebook is not the
government, government is not requiring fake news to be censored, and the fact
checkers are independent organizations.

You don't have an inalienable right to spread whatever political lie you want
to millions of people. Facebook is this era's nightly news and, just like the
nightly news, they have a right to avoid sharing crazy conspiracy theories and
outright lies.

~~~
r2dnb
>Facebook is this era's nightly news and, just like the nightly news, they
have a right to avoid sharing crazy conspiracy theories and outright lies.

I have no problem with that. I have a problem with them choosing what I can
share with my friends, and more generally what people can share with each
other. "Sorry it's fake news so we limited the reach".

The problem is that they are not open. My only problem is opacity. HN is
transparent, Breitbart is transparent. You know their opinions, you know their
agenda. But this is not the case with FB which pretends to be neutral, and
this is the issue.

>This has nothing to do with the bill of rights. Facebook is not the
government, government is not requiring fake news to be censored, and the fact
checkers are independent organizations.

Do you remember the anti-trust suits against Microsoft ? You can't pretend
that a company having the influence FB has is just a corporation like another.
When you have this size, you have added responsibility / expectations since
your actions directly impact a significant part/aspect of the country.

Moreover they coordinate with politics, so this has everything to do with the
Bill of Rights at this point. The citizen should at least pay attention to
what is happening.

~~~
morgante
> I have no problem with that. I have a problem with them choosing what I can
> share with my friends, and more generally what people can share with each
> other.

They're not policing what you share with your friends, just what you can do on
their platform. They are under no obligation to provide infinite reach for
whatever drivel you want to share.

If you're sitting in a bar sharing racist anecdotes with your friends, that
bar has the right to kick you out if they feel like. It's their bar.

If you don't like what Facebook's policies, go share somewhere else. There's
even an alt-right social network you'll fit right in on.

> The problem is that they are not open. My only problem is opacity.

They're completely open about it. They've posted multiple stories about how
they're addressing this, will provide links to third-party analysis for any
flagged stories, and list the criteria for third-party fact-checking. [0]

> Moreover they coordinate with politics, so this has everything to do with
> the Bill of Rights at this point.

No, it does not. The Bill of Rights restrains what the government can do, it
has nothing to do with what individual corporations can do.

Do you also think Smith & Wesson should be required to provide free guns,
since the right to bear arms is in the constitution?

[0] [http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-
principles/](http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/)

~~~
legostormtroopr
> If you're sitting in a bar sharing racist anecdotes with your friends, that
> bar has the right to kick you out if they feel like.

Except for a lot of people there is no other bar. Your friends are in that
bar, the bar has used their position to close other bars. And the only other
bar still open is 20 miles away in a basement.

> If you don't like what Facebook's policies, go share somewhere else. There's
> even an alt-right social network you'll fit right in on.

The media is pushing the line "Alt-right == Nazi", so you are calling someone
a Nazi because they have issues with Facebook controlling what their users
see. After Facebook has already admitted to large scale manipulation of their
users emotions[0].

[0]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-
users-emotions-news-feeds)

~~~
morgante
There are tons of other bars. What exactly has Facebook done to close other
bars?

Twitter is still around and very popular. So is Reddit. Heck, there's even a
social network built just for people like you:
[https://gab.ai/](https://gab.ai/)

------
gfodor
ok, so now the obvious question becomes, who fact checks the fact checkers?

i don't blame facebook, but the people that have been asking for this i guess
are about to get what they deserve: more consolidation of the power of
persuasion of the masses into the hands of facebook. want to instantly
discredit a story? just UPDATE stories SET disputed = t WHERE ID = ?

~~~
basch
Why cant facebook just go after blogspam clickbait in general? If a story is a
copy of a copy, have the algorithm favor the original instead of the blogspam.
If a local news agency copies an AP/Reuters story word for word, have the
software suggest replacing the replica with the original. Treat local news
duplicates the same as any wordpress+adsense blog. If journalists are adding
commentary thats a different story (albeit most commentary is a needless act
of faux value addition anyway) but mashable et all are just embedding
ingur/youtube content with a catchy headline and the letters h/t appended to
the end. This is a continuation of what ebaumsworld did since foreverago.
Deaggregate the aggregating middlemen.

Ripping the embed out of the blogspam, and turning it into a direct link, is
trivial. If the only content on a page is a youtube video covered in a hundred
ads, just return me the youtube video. Flag websites as blogspam, and more
agressivly return just the content they "stole." Make it hard to get off that
shitlist. Id rather facebook make a little money deconstructing the web, than
whomever spun up wordpress and paid for a bad theme being rewarded for
polluting it. Facebook has an opportunity to add through reduction; to add
value by finding signal in noise, leaving noise on the cutting room floor.
Deduplication should be something incredibly easy to do algorithmically,
compared to fact checking. (Hell facebook is already half way there with
trending, anthough it too often lumps semi-unrelated events.) Google News and
Techmeme do a great job of it. Techmeme eloquently spells out the solution
[http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-
revealed](http://news.techmeme.com/111031/techmeme-revealed)

Too many different ideas are getting conflated here. Clean up the spam/dupe
mess FIRST, and sifting the sensationalized salon/dailycaller hyperbole from
the blatant false news becomes easier (because we then arent are drowning in
nearly identical but different copies of articles.)

~~~
itsdrewmiller
Maybe follow the link and evaluate the ad:content ratio or just the raw number
of different ad services on the page. Seems like the collateral damage to such
an approach would largely improve the overall web experience.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
If the ads load quickly, from few domains, and work well in mobile, you can
assume it is not a legit news site.

------
danso
> _We’ve found that a lot of fake news is financially motivated. Spammers make
> money by masquerading as well-known news organizations, and posting hoaxes
> that get people to visit to their sites, which are often mostly ads. So
> we’re doing several things to reduce the financial incentives. On the buying
> side we’ve eliminated the ability to spoof domains, which will reduce the
> prevalence of sites that pretend to be real publications._

What do they mean "the ability to spoof domains"? Was that a technical issue?
Or do they mean they're blacklisting sites such as
[http://abcnews.com.co/](http://abcnews.com.co/), progenitor of such hoaxes as
El Chapo escaping from prison (again) [0]

Given how easy it is to fool people with ambiguous characters/names,
blacklisting URLs that aren't all ASCII might be a good precaution too.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABCnews.com.co)

~~~
sigmar
I saw people share fake articles from that site on facebook. It is a big
problem because non-technical people do not know that abcnews.com.co is a
subdomain of com.co, not a subdomain of abcnews.com.

~~~
dabockster
> non-technical people do not know that abcnews.com.co is a subdomain of
> com.co, not a subdomain of abcnews.com

This is a huge issue. A lot of HN always seems to forget that there are a lot
of users out there who are not as gifted with technology as we are. (Case in
point, my mother just learned what HTTPS meant last week through an NBC
Nightly News segment.)

Unfortunately, it seems to be largely generational in nature.

------
lhnz
I wonder if this will be as sketchy as politifact? I hope it won't be, but I
reckon it might be. (What I mean is: extremely uncharitable readings of things
that they don't like, but overly charitable readings of anything that they
like.)

~~~
throwanem
Politifact is one of the organizations on the approved list [1], and the
closest thing I can find on that list to an organization anyone not on the
left is likely to regard as politically neutral is the Associated Press. So
I'm not really seeing what Facebook expects this to help.

[1] [http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-
principles/](http://www.poynter.org/fact-checkers-code-of-principles/)

~~~
pg314
Maybe stop the spread of nonsense like 'pope endorses Trump' or pizzagate?

~~~
basch
would these measures end up blocking something like a modest proposal

~~~
_dark_matter_
A Modest Proposal is not, and never was, "News". It is opinion.

~~~
jwtadvice
Most news is (unfortunately) nothing more than opinion. Either the opinion of
"an unnamed official", the opinion of a contributor, the opinion of a sponsor,
or the opinion of an editor.

Take the recent opinions of anonymous officials that Russia's objective in
leaking DNC corruption was to get Trump elected. That's being reported on as
news and fact, with the opinion aspect of it turned down to obscurity.

------
seanca
Facebook seems to be stumbling down the same page that Twitter did here in
terms of attempting to regulate some content, by means that they themselves
determines to be un-biased and in the best interests of users... which hasn't
quite worked out so well for Twitter.

If everything is fine and unmoderated, there is no bias. If some things are
flagged, not allowed, etc, I don't care how much a 3rd party is trusted. It's
still humans picking and choosing one piece of content over another, and there
are inherent biases involved there.

~~~
mozumder
Unmoderation = infinite spam.

~~~
jwtadvice
Spam platform = infinite spam.

Facebook makes its money from spam, as do the news.

Because they've lost credibility there's this new huge reach to label things
as condoned or not. That's not going to solve the ultimate problem, which is
that the information industry has become a platform where the highest spam
bidder wins dissemination on the platform, rather than what spam is shared by
people.

This is just one more step in the centralization of control of social media.
There's still going to be plenty of spam, it just has to pay the gatekeeper
(Facebook) or otherwise be on its good side.

~~~
seanca
Exactly. What someone else might call spam, Facebook might call "great news."

If having free speech produces "infinite spam", then that's a byproduct worth
the benefits of not being limited on what ideas are ok to say and what ideas
are not.

------
alva
Still think this is a horrible move for a variety of reasons but I have one
big question.

Where can I access the reasons and organisation who have disputed the link?

Without this information, this is even more terrible than I had previously
thought it would be. If we cannot see who disputed the link and why, this is
massive potential for abuse.

edit: Apparently the reason is given in a link

~~~
morgante
> If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get
> flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article
> explaining why.

You will be able to click through to read the full analysis of why a story is
false.

~~~
alva
Ah bugger my bad, missed that. I hope the analysis also identifies the
organisation/s who provided it.

~~~
morgante
Presumably it'll be a link to the article on that organization's website.

~~~
alva
I really hope that each disputed link is given a comprehensive response and
not a cookie cutter response.

I think a template response is probably the most likely outcome, especially
considering the number of articles that are going to be checked by these
organisations. Do they really have the resources available to give a bespoke
response?

I think there is danger if these organisations are allowed to submit template
responses.

------
jwtadvice
The ultimate issue here is that these information providers need to train
their users to be gullible, as this is their business and partnership model.

These platforms only function because advertisements and political messaging
have to be seen, and are seen, as credible and native to the content being
traded by the people using the platform.

Users are trained to uncritically believe the things that show up on their
feed, because if they were trained to be skeptical they would the platform
would go bankrupt.

Similarly, news media requires readers to have full faith - almost ideological
allegiance - in what they are reporting, while at the same time they need an
uncritical readership so that they can promote political and consumer
advertisements, sponsored and 'earned' content promotion and opinion pieces as
though they were fact.

The entire industry functions on the basis of gullible and uncritical
readership, media allegiance and sponsored content.

The industry has fallen to extremely low credibility ratings, and a series of
nonsense and unpredictive and obvious reporting out of the 'most credible'
parts of the industry have left a vacuum whereby readers do not know what to
believe, and so accept whatever is most convenient and most readily available.

The solution is to create a credible news media industry, with no sponsored or
partner content, no PR, no government propaganda, and where the readers (and
skimmers) are the customers who pay for the information. The industry should
compete to provide context and reliable information, and readership should be
encouraged to be skeptical of the information presented to them at all times.

Maintaining the current mispractice of the poorly functioning industry and
adding protectionist measures, gatekeeping and sponsored fact-checkers is not
going to solve the problem.

"I'll tell them what to think" is not a solution to "these people are
gullible."

~~~
carrier_lost
"uncritical readership"

I'm guessing you've never worked for a news organization.

~~~
jwtadvice
I freelanced.

To be clear by 'uncritical' I mean 'gullible' \- as in 'uncritical thinking'.

------
tjr
_Once a story is flagged, it can’t be made into an ad and promoted, either._

After a single flag from a single user?

~~~
saurik
> We’ll use the reports from our community, along with other signals, to send
> stories to these organizations. If the fact checking organizations identify
> a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to
> the corresponding article explaining why. Stories that have been disputed
> may also appear lower in News Feed. It will still be possible to share these
> stories, but you will see a warning that the story has been disputed as you
> share. _Once a story is flagged, it can’t be made into an ad and promoted,
> either._

So, "flagged" means "determined to be fake by a fact checking organization
contracted by Facebook that disputes the article".

~~~
tjr
Yep, just caught that myself. Sorry, it was two large screenshots up and I
missed it. :-) Thanks!

------
losteverything
I kind of wish they took no action. It is inevitable fb will be the "war of
the worlds" or National Enquirer wrt "news" doing nothing gets them there
quicker.

Fb is unparalled in sharing photos and personal information to friend. News?
Not.

------
throw2016
Nothing can help an ignorant or illiterate population. If that is your premise
the next logical step is censorship and this is censorship.

How does the arrogant assumption of ignorant readers so weak willed they can
be 'led ashtray' by 'fake news' even take hold? Do people really believe that
'other people' believe everything they read?

The ridiculous idea that people are naive is a fabricated construction
designed to empower some while 'infantalising' the rest and is inherently
anti-democratic.

Ordinary scepticism and not believing everything you read or hear is a basic
human skill.

This fake news scare and blame 'Putin' for everything wrong in the world is so
illiterate, juvenile and insulting to basic human intelligence and reflects
something dangerously wrong in our media, politics and the tech community.

------
jscheel
The sad thing is, most people who share fake news will just claim that
Facebook is now part of the Soros-Clinton conspiracy to support the MSM and
hide the truth from the public. I like that they have a specific set of
guidelines for determining the veracity of a news story, and I'm sure this
will go a long way towards removing the financial incentive, but I'm guessing
it won't sway many minds.

------
gedy
How about a setting to block all link shares if this is supposedly such a huge
threat?

------
tomquin
Expecting corporate media to sanitize itself might be a new proof of
Einstein's rule of insanity. The only short term solution to rampant
widespread disinformation in the MSM is a healthy and sustained level of
cynicism. Its time the media was truly disrupted and dispatched to the bottom
of the see.

------
nostromo
The timing of this makes it seem politically motivated. I've seen plenty of
fake news on my liberal feed. Things like 9/11 conspiracy theories, anti-
vaccination stories, stories about the dangers of genetically modified foods,
etc.

~~~
eridius
Fake news was a massive problem this election cycle, and it really highlighted
Facebook's large influence and their inability to actually do anything about
it. So yes, Facebook dealing with fake news here is a reaction to what
happened during the election, but that's not a bad thing. Fake news turns out
to be a serious problem and it needs to be fixed, regardless of your political
leanings.

Edit: Why am I being downvoted for this? If you disagree with me, please
explain why.

~~~
dtjbfh
There's no evidence that "fake news" is actually a serious problem, other than
getting a lot of likes on Facebook. Seems to me "fake news" is an agenda-
driven narrative by the mainstream media to salvage their waning reputation
and discredit alternative media. For instance:
[https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-
disgrace...](https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-
disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-
shady-group/)

~~~
trashtoss
Yeah maybe, even the pope said fake news isn't real.

------
intrasight
I just disable the FB news feed

------
halpiamaquark
The kosher fact checkers list includes the biased and opinion-based Politifact
and Snopes.

~~~
st3v3r
They aren't. You'll have to provide evidence for your claim.

~~~
halpiamaquark
Let's see some statistical analysis that the fact checkers FB claims are
disinterested arbiters of fact aren't in fact pushing an agenda before we go
along with censorship maybe.

~~~
st3v3r
I'm not willing to call it censorship, and you still haven't provided evidence
for your claim that two routinely considered reputable fact checkers aren't.

