
FiB – A Facebook newsfeed accuracy verification Chrome extension - astdb
https://devpost.com/software/fib
======
jwtadvice
I'm curious how they handle the challenge they specified:

"Another challenge was building an AI that knows the difference between a fact
and an opinion so that we do not flag opinions as false, since only facts can
be false."

In news media that is typically considered credible, opinions are very often
presented as fact, often marked with "an unnamed official said" or "our
anonymous source told us."

Much of the news regarding the outside world is gathered at the State
Department Press Briefings, where the Press Secretary will him/herself admit
that what's being communicated at the stand is the opinion of the US
government, after it goes through an interagency research, vetting, and
message coordination phases.

Very often these coordinated opinions are then presented as fact at CNN, the
New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others.

Of course, this relationship led Americans to think that Saddam Housein had
something to do with 9/11 and justified the invasion of Iraq, led the media to
report on Mass Surveillance with the opinion label "Bulk Collection", led to
inaccurate coverage of Bahrain, Kosovo, Benghazi, Jessica Lynch, etc.
President Obama's National Security Advisor publicly bragged about the ability
of coordination within the interagency to create an echo chamber in the US
press.

I don't think there is an algorithm that can tell the difference between fact
an opinion, unless somehow that algorithm is an automated investigative
reporter.

It seems insurmountable at this stage of technology to try to separate US
government propaganda or propaganda from interest groups from facts.

~~~
edblarney
"an unnamed official said" or "our anonymous source told us."

'Sources' are an important part of journalism, and they are controlled.

If anyone from a respected news entity quotes such a source, then it's almost
surely true.

Now - that source may be simply presenting an opinion - and not a fact -
nevertheless, it's almost assuredly true.

A journo that 'makes up' sources would be fired and black-balled, and also,
there is editorial oversight on that.

CNN, NYT, Fox - they don't go around inventing sources.

Now - applying 'spin' or 'narrative' or 'too much opinion' \- yes, this is
indeed a problem. And they can do it by selectively quoting Twitter or 'some
source'.

But the 'source' itself is not a fabrication.

~~~
CodeWriter23
A source making a statement does not mean the statement is true. It only means
the source made the statement. Sources have been known to lie when it is to
their benefit, example, "I did not have sex with that woman".

~~~
edblarney
"A source making a statement does not mean the statement is true."

I didn't mean to imply that it was - I meant to imply that the journos will
credibly pass on what the anon sources say, and credibly pass in their status.

So - if NYT says 'a source within the white house said ABC' \- then you can be
almost assure that 'a source within the white house said that'.

I agree - it doesn't mean that the statement itself is factual - but it is
only presented as 'what someone said' \- not as a fact.

The 'bias' in reporting is not from the statements themselves - but the topics
they chose to engage, the people they speak to, the selection of the quotes,
the context etc..

Credible news outlets don't just lie and make stuff up. They do other things,
but not that.

~~~
CodeWriter23
Sorry, I can be quite literal at times. It comes from decades of reading
engineering specs.

I do however view "selection" as an act omission. And I believe in the context
of presenting information citizens have a common interest in, omission is a
lie.

A key selection in the coverage of the election was to avoid disclosing the
relative sizes of the crowds at the campaign rallies of the respective
candidates. Accurate information may have spurred some of the 46% of people
who didn't vote to go to the polls. I'm strictly independent, but I believe
more people voting is always better.

I also believe a lot of bias comes in with the analysis of facts or
statements, which can lead to omission of important perspectives. And I do
believe often times, these perspectives are shaped by the needs of the
network's advertisers.

~~~
edblarney
"And I believe in the context of presenting information citizens have a common
interest in, omission is a lie."

It's basically impossible not to contextualize, and to provide information
selectively.

That's the inherent and systematic problem with managing information.

They have no choice but to do it.

So there are a lot of 'editorial rules' and 'best practices' in the trade to
try to ensure fairness. It doesn't always work, and it's not always applied.

------
alva
"Fake news" is a shitty meme that needs to stop.

If the media truly suggests they be accountable for what they peddle, they
will be in for a big surprise.

We are witnessing a mortally wounded animal frantically flailing in a primal,
desperate bid to hold onto life.

~~~
edblarney
No, there is a very big difference between professional journos who sometimes
have bias - and completely fake news.

'Fake news' sites reports information that is completely fabricated and non-
factual.

'News sites' \- by and large - are pretty good. Most stories on CNN and Fox
are not biased. Go ahead to their web-sites - it's mostly boring stuff.

Some of their headlines, and their choice of words etc. is arguably biased,
but it's difficult to pin down.

To fail to differentiate between 'lies' and 'facts presented in a certain way'
is wrong.

You don't have to 'fully trust' the MSM, but if you are open minded enough and
pull from enough sources, then you'll do ok.

The 'fake news sites' are run by kids in Macedonia trying to get clicks and
it's a total fabrication.

~~~
norikki
[http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/06/25/exp-presidential-
can...](http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/06/25/exp-presidential-candidate-
donald-trump-immigration-intv-erin.cnn)

"Trump doubles down on calling Mexicans rapists". Trump did not call Mexicans
rapists. That is an outright lie which is as much fake news as this hackathon
project. It's not bias, it's not selective reporting, it's fake news that
we're expected to believe as our only source of truth because sometimes people
share Macedonian clickbait on their facebook.

A lie is deliberately making someone believe something that you know is false.
When George W. Bush made everyone think Iraq had nukes, that was a lie. You
can't say it wasn't lying because it was merely 'tricking people into
believing something false.' That is literally the definition of lying.

~~~
edblarney
Here are Trump's words:

"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not
sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of
problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs.
They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."

Trump is absolutely 'calling Mexicans rapists'.

This is undeniable.

Now - you can argue that the way CNN presents it lacks context, because Trump
could be referring to 'Mexican migrants to the USA as rapists' \- and not
'Mexicans in general' \- or even more specifically 'some of them as rapists'
\- and not all of them.

But this would be a little absurd - it would be like saying:

"Canadians that visit America are rapists"

... and then trying to imply that you meant to say 'some Canadians who come to
America are rapists' \- which theoretically is probably be true, but the
implication is basically absurd.

CNN may not provide the right context for this fact - but it is a fact. Trump
called Mexicans rapists.

~~~
cookiecaper
Look, Trump is not a lawyer. Linguistic semantics are not his forte, and he
doesn't have a committee of operatives review his every word for semantic
accuracy and soundbite-proof-ness. That's how you end up sounding like a
robot, like Romney and Clinton. Trump, like most adult humans, expects the
listener to glean the relevant information and tense from the context of the
discussion (or at least, he _wants_ us to believe he expects this).

For example, when Trump says "they're sending", we know he knows that Mexico
isn't _literally_ sending these people. They don't pick them up and bus over
the border so that they'll become America's problem. Illegal immigrants run
the border primarily because the wages in America are so much better than the
wages in Mexico, not because someone "sent" them over, except in the
metaphorical sense where the country either cannot or does not provide the
desired standard of living for its residents, and thus they "send" them away
to a place that can and/or does.

Your quote is selectively edited. What is the VERY NEXT sentence after your
quote cuts off? "And some, I assume, are good people." How can Trump say
they're ALL rapists and then literally in the next sentence say "And some are
good people"?

Pretend like you're talking to someone you respect about his position on
immigration. Are you going to listen to him say this and take his verbatim
statement as his literal meaning, especially when he offers a direct
contradiction of that verbatim statement less than one second later? No,
you'll do what normal people do, and bridge the gap. You'll know he doesn't
think that EVERY Mexican is a rapist. You'll know he _meant_ that a
disproportionate quantity of illegal immigrant are criminals of all sorts,
including thieves and rapists. You are free to disagree with this all you
want, but it's not worth the time to speak to someone who insists on taking
the least-charitable possible interpretation. If Trump spoke a bit more
quickly and these soundbites were harder to extract, this whole trick would've
collapsed a long time ago.

This is really the crux of the matter. Those who are disposed to hate Trump
take the crudest possible interpretation, say the surrounding context is
irrelevant because it's just trying to throw some ambiguity into the mix so he
can pull people off the scent. Those who are disposed to like Trump take the
most moderate possible interpretation and look for contextual cues that can
exonerate him from the literal meaning, which are available in abundance,
because Trump is just a normal guy with an imprecise way of speaking ... ...
right?

"Objectivity" is a foreign concept to the human decision apparatus. Humans
base decisions almost entirely on the credibility they attribute to the
relevant carriers/advocates.

That's why intense hostility is not really justified by either side. The
election was really a question of "Which candidate do you feel is more
deserving of the benefit of the doubt?", since taken at face value, both
candidates were embarrassingly unqualified.

Clinton's campaign strategy was straight up fear-mongering. Legalistically
parsing the words of a non-lawyer, stripping context and meaning wherever
possible, and using these soundbites to try to frighten minorities into
believing that Trump hated them. The American people were not fooled by that
strategy, but there are many confused and disgruntled people left in the dust
by HRC's divisive methodology. It is now incumbent upon Hillary Clinton to
come out and admit that the fears she's planted in the hearts of religious and
ethnic minorities are unfounded and were manufactured as a failed political
strategy to scare people out of voting for the person they believed could
bring them economic prosperity.

~~~
edblarney
"Trump is not a lawyer. Linguistic semantics are not his forte,"

Your arguments are not going to fly given the position that he is running for.

The man was running for the President of the United States of America - to
speak for all Americans, wherein his words carry incredible meaning.

"And some, I assume, are good people."

No. This 'qualification' does not make the statement any less racist.

"Black people are stupid mongrels and criminals - but I assume that some of
them are good people" <\--- That's _extremely_ bigoted. This is basically hate
speech.

I'm astonished that people could possibly try to defend this particular
statement.

 _He called Mexicans coming to America rapists_.

Full Stop.

You guys are using a lot of gymnastics to try to defend what is a point-blank,
obvious-as-the-sky-is-blue racist, bigoted and terrible statement.

 _Words matter_.

If you can't stop yourself from calling an entire nation of people 'racists'
\- if it requires explaining or context - then you should not be running for
PUSA.

I don't Trump is actually racist, likely he was just spinning up the bigot
vote - but there is no defence of his statements.

Whatever Trump does - even if he does well as PUSA - his legacy will be pretty
stained by some comments he made during the campaign.

~~~
bluecalm
It sounds like you are really set on this point. Maybe try considering that to
a lot of intelligent people (like me (not US citizen), like my
immigrant/minority family (who also happen to have education from top US
universities) who voted for Trump, like millions of others who voted for him
of various backgrounds, education, ethnicity and political views you sound
like you are either incredibly ignorant or dumb on purpose.

I am not saying this lightly, to me people who hold the most morally repugnant
positions rarely sound dumb on purpose. I think they are wrong, I think they
are not emphatic, sometimes straight up evil but they rarely sound just
completely brainwashed. You do though. I rarely see something as wrong and
arrogant on HN and I read the comments every day. You are just not getting it
at all. Read the comments of people who replied to you and try to understand
why his comment is not about all Mexicans. I realize that I sound to you as
arrogant ignorant person lecturing you on reading comprehension but I am doing
you a favor. You will lose a lot of contacts and opportunities if you continue
to argue this way without even seeing where the other side is coming from.

~~~
edblarney
Donald J Trump: "Mexicans coming to America are rapists"

Random Person: "That's pretty much racist"

Trump Supporter: "You're an idiot, ignoramus, shut up stupid, you didn't
understand what he meant, he's not a lawyer - why should he have to worry
about specific words"

"I am not saying this lightly" \- you want to 'lose contacts and friends'?

Go into your office tommorow and repeat Trump's statement. In full - for
context if you want.

You will lose your job immediately, and probably a few friends and
acquaintances.

It doesn't matter that you voted for Trump, what your ethnicity or education
is - that's besides the point.

What I care about is that some people clearly do not seem to understand what
point-blank bigotry is when it's right in our faces.

This is not 'leftists overreach' or 'left wing bias' or 'social progressive
oppression' \- it's just bigotry on the part of Trump.

It's just a very obviously racist statement, something someone in any public
office or that has any public position should never ever say. Stop defending
it.

~~~
cookiecaper
>Donald J Trump: "Mexicans coming to America are rapists" >Random Person:
"That's pretty much racist" >Trump Supporter: "You're an idiot, ignoramus,
shut up stupid, you didn't understand what he meant, he's not a lawyer - why
should he have to worry about specific words"

That's not how this exchange with Trump supporters has gone. I believe it's
been reasonably polite, despite some rather inflammatory rhetoric from the
non-Trump side.

------
x1798DE
I don't totally understand who would use this sort of thing. The people who
would bother to install an extension that detects fake news and would even
know to do so would already be able to identify news as fake much more easily
than a few lines of python and a chrome extension.

I thought the problem of "fake news" was that people were forwarding it around
like it's real, but no one in that chain is going to bother using anything
like this, so it's not like this is a firebreak. And if you use something like
this to block fake news stories and then install it on your parents' computers
when you go in for tech support, they're probably going to call you and say,
"Hey, how come I can't see your Uncle Stan's posts on facebook when I use that
new chrome browser you installed?" (As an aside, if my kids ever installed any
sort of content blocker on my computer, I would write them out of my will.)

~~~
heisenbit
There are two problems with fake news.

\- One is fake news outlets. Astro turfing the internet. It became a lot
easier to set up new sites. And there is a big funding machine behind it (yes,
Google, looking at you). The key challenge is that fake news is so much more
clickable. It is constructed to be alarming. It stands out in our mostly
balanced reality. The currency on the internet is attention. It got self
sustaining - people were making money of it.

\- One is social news. Viral forwarding. Facebook may think they are not a
publisher but they build a big publishing machine ready to be taken over by
the biggest bully in town. Building nukes and leaving them laying around is
not responsible (yes, FB, Twitter, looking at you). There is now power with
zero accountability. A feast for any bully.

Systems with almost infinite amplification are bound to blow up. We need
feedback mechanisms that effectively push back. Drop fake news from search.
Inform recipients that got fake news that it was fake. Decrease ability to
forward fake news. Decrease ability to spread fake news by persistent
multipliers. Promote properly vetted but more boring/slower stories.

Trump did not only get more attention in the MSM he also was able to use the
digital airwaves in a way that drowned out any more balanced messages. His
team and fans were able to use a huge lever.

~~~
x1798DE
My question was really who does _this extension_ help. This sort of extension
would be useful only for people who are unlikely to install it, because anyone
who is aware of the phenomenon of entirely fabricated news stories can
probably spot them easily. This extension seems to be aimed only at people who
wouldn't know to install it in the first place or people who wouldn't want it
because they enjoy the fake news for whatever reason.

------
lorenzop
I went through the code and it doesn't look like it does anything as
described, only checks images. I'm afraid this is fake news. Good effort,
though.

~~~
stablemap
It seems like most of the work is in backend/imageverify.py and the standard
of truth there is whether an address has a high enough MyWOT score.

~~~
lorenzop
yeah it's hard to claim that it assesses "the truth". I am doing a research
project in this exact field and we believe this to be a semi-hard AI problem
with very little chance of being approximable.

------
mooman219
Contrary to the wording of the report, the fake news detector isn't a neural
net or an AI. The term is a bit overused, so it's not really worth it to be up
in arms about the terminology. The tool is really just a weighted measure of a
couple of online services that track website metadata. It would be interesting
to use this to train a model with in order to flag potential fake news in the
future if they decide to continue with the concept.

As it stands now though, it's not special in it's construction, but it's nice
to see something on the more practical end emerge from a Hackathon.

------
civilian
Man this code sucks. `detectAdultContent()` returns True if there is no adult
content. And I'm not sure what adult content has to do with truth?

[https://github.com/anantdgoel/HackPrincetonF16/blob/1f5e7bb4...](https://github.com/anantdgoel/HackPrincetonF16/blob/1f5e7bb4412e494ba8b9e057066578374a23b9f0/backend/imageverify.py#L30)

They also have imports inside of functions :-/

~~~
econnors
They admit in the article that they picked up javascript over the weekend. I
credit them for open sourcing it rather than waiting until it's perfect code,
which would result in it never being released.

------
pmorici
People talk about fake news as if it is a phenomenon of the Facebook /
Internet age but traditional media outlets have been caught peddling outright
false and fabricated stories to varying degrees. Heck half the reason we went
to war in Iraq was because of the questionable reporting on "weapons of mass
destruction" from the NYT. Then there was the fake document incident that
forced Dan Rather to resign, the fabricated story that forced Brian Williams
to step down. You could probably name many many more if you wanted to make an
exhaustive list.

~~~
coredog64
Haven Monahan was unavailable for comment.

------
huangc10
I'm a bit tired of this "fake news" fad. We, the consumers of the content,
need to decide for ourselves if the news is real or fake. Use your common
sense and check the damn facts.

If we need someone/something to help us determine if the news is real or fake,
then we are truly lost.

The problem is fundamentally with education. Students need to learn from a
young age to fact check and insert correct bibliography.

Fake news did not win the election for Trump. We, ourselves and our lack of
common sense, did.

~~~
mhalle
The cases where it is straightforward to determine "fact" or "truth" aren't
the ones that really worry me (although it remains shocking to me that clear,
easily debunked falsehoods bounced around this US election cycle in a most
dispiriting way). The danger lies in statements that cannot be directly
verified or reasoned about.

In the most extreme example, "the big lie" is a powerful propaganda tool
specifically because big lies overwhelm our ability to distinguish truth from
fiction. We can more effectively gauge small lies through our everyday
experience, but we find big lies delivered with confidence to be impossible to
reconcile. Rather than reject the lie, we also question whether such a lie
could be told. In this way, we can begin to believe the lie rather than accept
the reality of lying.

The big lie is particularly effective in cases where we cannot verify or
refute a statement from first principles or from our own life experiences. If
verification of a statement requires trust of another authority, a
sufficiently egregious and persistent lie can overwhelm that authority by
seeding doubt and distrust about the authority itself. Education can be
rendered irrelevant if we can be convinced to question what we've learned.

I don't know if a relatively simple approach to detecting "fake news" like the
submission uses will prove useful or sufficient. But technology clearly has a
role in helping us verify facts, correctly attribute statements, and weigh
opinions.

------
zachlatta
Gah, I hate how applying heuristics is now considered "AI". Neat project
though.

~~~
rtpg
It's always been AI. Pretty much any decision-making toolset can be classified
as artificial intelligence.

Unless, of course, you subscribe to the "AI technique is no longer AI when it
becomes real" school of thought

~~~
vonklaus
hahah reminds me of the adage, Artificial Intelligence is 10 years away...and
always will be.

------
ZenoArrow
We need to fight against the 'fake news' crackdown that's emerged after the
recent US election.

Think about it for a second, who is getting to decide which stories are fake
and which stories are real? Do the groups doing this content filtering have
their own pro-corporate agendas to push? If we don't start exposing their
biases in determining what 'fake news' is we'll end up giving those in power a
means to silence dissent.

I'm all for fact checking and verification, but it needs to be managed by the
people, not by corporate or government interests.

------
idw
If you're interested in this problem, there's a roadmap for automated
factchecking from UK factcheckers Full Fact here (I work there):
[https://fullfact.org/automated](https://fullfact.org/automated), which has
just got some funding from Google. The roadmap includes a summary of a lot of
the work in this area and a breakdown of what many of the challenges are.

It's not going to be solved in a 36 hour hackathon, but it's good to see what
they came up with.

------
ddxv
To anyone else interested in working on this, I have a number of ideas for how
an extension like this might work. I have some experience with NLP and would
love to find someone else interested in this project. My goal is a tool that
would help journalists and crazy aunts and uncles alike judge the truthiness
of facts.

~~~
jquip
Hallo, Yes I'm super interested!

~~~
jquip
There is a News Bias Verification Working Group here for all who want to take
this discussion further:
[https://discord.gg/jrWc2Rc](https://discord.gg/jrWc2Rc)

------
icanhackit
What do you think about integrating an interpretive overlay at the browser
level, supported by Microsoft, Apple, Google and Mozilla out of the box? When
Joe Average reads a Facebook post, NYT, Fox News etc any statement like "a
source said X" at the browser level we have an annotation that says "an
unverifiable source" or when an event or person is referenced there's a direct
link to information about it/them? We need to integrate an interpreter so that
it's available to everyone and applies to any source of information.

------
nicowiko
this is actually an important field that is today missing when we see the
amount of data we need to digest. How to categorize internet data that emerge
on internet. This is a big challenge. In real world you trust the source then
the information that goes from the source. If you dont have enough information
on the source then you look for trusted source advise on this source, or on
this info. System being built step by step. However a source can be
compromised. This trusted source can be challenged anytime by the system by
adequate collegial vote of trusted sources. There is no false or true fact
without source. Someone has to see it at first stance.

------
phren0logy
Who watches the watchmen?

~~~
ahartman00
I think we all should. It's watchmen all the way down :)

------
caffeineblet
I had a similar idea but mine was just using a predefined list. I just added
the domains to /etc/hosts and forwarded to a more pleasant site.

------
lohankin
Does posting fake results of fake polls constitute a fake news? If yes, what
kind of AI is needed to distinguish it from the real one?

------
reagan83
As someone who helped mentor this team from the FB-side over the weekend, I'm
consistently impressed with the traction they have been able to get. Kudos to
you all for a job well done and open sourcing your work.

------
alextooter
I don't think they can build a fake news detector, who has the rights to
decide which is fact/fake? Do you trust the main stream media? Trust what they
said?

------
chvid
Is this not really simple to make?

Pro Clinton: ok

Pro Trump: fake news site

~~~
chvid
Let me put this in a different way: how much of the variance in the data set
is explained by this simple criteria?

~~~
lohankin
This simple criteria above perfectly explains how mainstream media came up
with 90% probability of Clinton's win. Otherwise please provide your own
explanation.

------
yarou
My reality is better than yours. My truth is more objective than yours. My
morals are superior to yours.

That's all this is.

------
vonklaus
I don't use facebook. Most MSM is bullshit so i don't understand what "fake
news" even means. Can someone please provide a few links for reference? Are we
talking about the extremely outlandish things like:

 _Obama just ordered a covert strike force to start taking peoples guns_

Or are we talking about factually inaccurate reporting?

~~~
camtarn
I'm not sure whether you're a fan of the Huffington Post or not, but this
seems like a nice list of examples of what people are up in arms about. Yes,
it's the egregiously fake stuff, not media spin/bias.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-fake-news-
stori...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-fake-news-stories-
zuckerberg_us_5829f34ee4b0c4b63b0da2ea)

Of course, if you don't trust HuffPo, you could always theorize that they
fabricated those ;)

