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posted by
n1
on Saturday November 19 2016, @11:52PM
from the so-when-does-real-news-become-fake-news dept.
from the so-when-does-real-news-become-fake-news dept.
Earlier this week Google announced that its advertising tools will soon be closed to websites that promote fake news, a policy that could cut off revenue streams for publications that peddle hoaxes on platforms like Facebook.
The Verge reports:
The decision comes at a critical time for the tech industry, whose key players have come under fire for not taking neccesary steps to prevent fake news from proliferating across the web during the 2016 US election. It's thought that, given the viral aspects of fake news, social networks and search engines were gamed by partisan bad actors intending to influence the outcome of the race.
What constitutes 'fake' news?
Who decides what is 'fake'?
Who is a 'partisan bad actor'?
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It's not reality that's important, but how you perceive things.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:31AM
I have no doubt a system like this can and will be abused. I'll start out by saying that. And for those of you who are responding just by saying, "Oh, who gets to determine bias?" or whatever -- believe me, when I first started reading about this stuff, that was my first reaction too.
But since we've been getting headline after headline on this stuff in the past couple weeks, I started trying to really look into it. Going out and seeing actual examples of ACTUAL *fake* news. No, not Fox News or MSNBC. No, not things like Breitbart or some other overtly partisan source of news, which may sometimes play a little "loose" with facts.
No -- I'm talking about news that is literally, undeniably FALSE, referring to events that never happened, where the author is clearly aware of this fact. And I'm not talking about something that requires opinionated "fact-checking" -- did this many people REALLY show up to the rally, or is this estimate a bit off or whatever.... no, not that kind of somewhat ambiguous stuff.
I'm talking about a report that says, "Man in city X does Y, Z happens" and there's no man in X who did Y, and Z never happened to any person who ever did Y. A specific fact is asserted that is known to be false -- not exaggerated or a "matter of opinion" -- simply MADE UP and FABRICATED.
There are various reasons people have done this. Some people are clearly partisan hacks, spreading false propaganda. But there are plenty of others who are comedians or satirists, doing stuff like "The Onion," only not as well-known. They want to make money off of their parodies and fake stories, and some of them (in political areas) even have hoped to embarrass the other side by getting them to pass along fake news and then having it exposed. Regardless, there are many, many reports of such parodies or hoaxes passed around as factual "news" in social media. And some authors of fake news clearly just "do it for the lulz."
Whatever their motivation, there are PLENTY of "news" stories out there which are NOT just "slanted" or "biased" or manipulated to fit some political ideology. They are LITERAL FABRICATIONS.
We can certainly have lots of debates over the problems with a system to ferret out "fake news" and we can express concern over attempts to censor political speech. But let's all take a step back and realize there actually is a "line" somewhere here, where stories are actually "fake" according to any rational definition, but nevertheless get passed around as if they were legitimate.
That is a concern. I don't know if the Google or Facebook or whatever method is going to be a good way to address it, but pretending this is ONLY about people who dislike Fox News or whatever is either ill-informed about how many "hoaxes" are out there or is being a bit disingenuous.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:56PM
You're not wrong, but:
(a) So what? People have been telling lies as long as there have been people.
(b) Where do you draw the line? We have fiction - every novel ever written is a lie. We have parody sites, like The Onion, that are happy to sucker people into taking them seriously. We have April Fools' Jokes [youtube.com]. Where are you going to draw the line on "fake news", and who are you going to empower to draw it?
The US ideal of freedom of speech should hold; it's too important to relinquish, just to save a few people from being confused...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:40PM
Cue the rightists jumping all over themselves to scream that Google and Facebook are private companies and aren't bound by the constitution, so they can do whatever they want.
...Curious why they haven't yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @06:10PM
Actually this time they're silent on that regard because "freedom of speech"!! It is amusing, I wish I could pull up the comments whee constitutional worries were blown off by "its a private company, don't like it? Go somewhere else!"
All because they think it is some attempt to dethrone their guy or come down on conservatives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:36PM
Actually, I see this argument more from leftist when a company is doing something to promote their narrative, and more resignation from the right that the market will eventually correct itself.
But yes, they are private companies, and they can do as they wish.
And people are free to complain about it (event though news of such will never get reported now) and take their business elsewhere.
But now we have a clear indication that google and Facebook are in the business of yellow journalism, and I'm happy to watch it all burn.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday November 21 2016, @12:28AM
(b) Where do you draw the line? We have fiction - every novel ever written is a lie. We have parody sites, like The Onion, that are happy to sucker people into taking them seriously. We have April Fools' Jokes. Where are you going to draw the line on "fake news", and who are you going to empower to draw it?
The US ideal of freedom of speech should hold; it's too important to relinquish, just to save a few people from being confused...
I don't claim to have a practical solution. And I certainly AM NOT ADVOCATING for actual suppression of speech. But I could, for example, think it reasonable if a site that aims at deliberate parody actually displays with some sort of "parody" tag somewhere, or a work of actual fiction is somehow flagged as such.
I'm not in favor of censorship, but I am in favor of education and information. If there's a potential way to inform people of the status of certain fictional or parody sites in a straightforward way (while not censoring them), I'd be all for it. I don't know if there's a practical way to do it... but that's one sort of thing I might be in favor of.