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Mozilla, the developer of the Firefox web browser and other open source projects, has announced its Mozilla Information Trust Initiative. This initiative involves Mozilla "developing products, research, and communities to battle information pollution and so-called 'fake news' online."
Although the announcement from Mozilla claims that the "spread of misinformation violates nearly every tenet of the Mozilla Manifesto", this initiative does raise some concerning questions. Should a web browser vendor be actively patrolling content on the web? Is such patrolling of content harmful to a truly open web? Is this merely the first step toward web browsers censoring or controlling the dissemination of information available on the web? Would the resources expended on this initiative be better spent improving the performance and efficiency of Firefox?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:29AM (8 children)
Not sure this is completely related, but I've often thought it would be interesting to build a bayesian classifier into a browser plugin that lets me select objectionable text and mark it as offensive, then the plugin would learn over time and gray out such text. What each user chooses as offensive would differ widely, but for me I'd like to gray out crap/hateful comments so I can spend more time on thoughtful comments. Obviously this could lead to a sort of "filter bubble" if not used properly, so it would be important not to consider well thought out alternative points of view as objectionable. Just to help filter out the web's gutter content.
As far as detecting what is true and what isn't, I'm not sure that's a solvable problem. Even relying on crowd sourcing will lead to floods of people with an agenda thwarting the ideas of others. Machines aren't smart enough to know what's true/false, either (despite claims to the contrary, I have yet to be convinced that they can).
A good start would be holding journalists to a higher standard with their investigations and fact verification.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:39AM (5 children)
Filter bubble? You mean echo chamber right? Where you seldom is heard a discouraging word, and your screen is all cloudy each day.
The best filter you can find is a skeptical mind. Train that to spot bullshit and it serves you for the rest of your life.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @03:52PM (4 children)
You're right, but my mind is not helped by reading any post that ever contains racial slurs, and I'm sure I could come up with some other phrases that are 99.9% accurate about the commenter being a bigoted piece of crap. You can call it an echo chamber if you want, but the upshot is that I'll only read opinions from people who aren't a human wasteland. If anything I might be friendlier to other opinions if I don't see them constantly paired with hate and bigotry.
As long as I can control the filters I would appreciate such tech.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday August 12 2017, @04:45PM (3 children)
Says the guy posting AC so that the hate he spews never sticks to him....
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:10PM
Different AC here. The name "frojack" on a comment is just as meaningless to me as the name "Anonymous Coward" is. As far as I'm concerned, they're effectively the same. I don't care what you said in the past. It's what you're saying now that matters. And it's making you look like a fool!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:13PM (1 child)
Lol, you call my post hateful? You're a moron, there is a real insult. Since you're such a conservative blow hard all the time I presume you're reacting as if I would only censor conservatives. Not true at all, there are plenty of hateful bigoted liberals who have zero clue they are what they hate, and those would get filtered out just the same.
As for posting AC, gimme a break. I switched to AC so I could get a better clue about what my comments are actually worth. No username politics, no assumed agenda.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 13 2017, @12:11PM
Not having a name tag confuses authoritarians, they don't know whether you're a friend or a foe. To them the author is the message.
http://theauthoritarians.org/ [theauthoritarians.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @01:43AM (1 child)
If you limit your exposure to information like that, well, you might as well just not bother reading anything at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:19AM
Some Soylentils have already taken this step. You can tell 'cause their writing and spelling and grammaring ain't too hot.