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posted by martyb on Monday January 22 2018, @06:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the quis-custodiet-ipsos-custodes dept.

Facebook to Prioritize 'Trustworthy' News Sources

Facebook Inc will begin to prioritize "trustworthy" news outlets on its stream of social media posts as it works to combat "sensationalism" and "misinformation," Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday.

The company, which has more than 2 billion monthly users, said it will use surveys to determine rankings on how trustworthy news outlets are.

Zuckerberg outlined the shakeup in a post on Facebook, saying that starting next week the News Feed, the company's centerpiece product, would prioritize "high quality news" over less trusted sources.

"There's too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today," Zuckerberg wrote.

"Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don't specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them," he wrote.

At the same time, Zuckerberg said the amount of news overall on Facebook would shrink to roughly 4 percent of the content on the News Feed from 5 percent currently.

Source: Reuters

The new Facebook echochamber where users decide what is trustworthy

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2018/01/trusted-sources/

Facebook is going to let its user rate what is a trustworthy news source. Could be great (One would think they assume the pure number of people will try and do a good and honest job), or it will undoubtedly enforce the echo chamber / bubble mentality (where people think that their news source are all trustworthy and the opposing sources are all fake news) or it will end hilariously (like when Microsoft let the public train its AI chatbot Tay and it went all Hitler on them in record time).


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @07:56PM (1 child)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday January 22 2018, @07:56PM (#626204) Journal

    You appear to be unfamiliar with the meaning of the term "dictator". Dictators, by definition, don't run for re-election, because there is nothing resembling a real election in a dictatorship.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakh_presidential_election,_2015 [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_North_Korea [wikipedia.org]

    What are real elections?

    Putin and his party is by all appearances is quite popular in Russia, although not without opposition.

    It's impossible to know Putin's true popularity because the Russian elections are compromised in a variety of ways. If they find that they need to fake the vote counts, they'll do that. Token candidates and parties are used to provide the illusion of opposition to Putin and United Russia. Threatening candidates such as Alexei Navalny are denied the ability to participate. Putin has nearly absolute influence over the media in Russia, with the most important being television media. Great attention has been paid to Putin's image since fairly early in his career (he wasn't always seen as a shirtless bear wrestler).

    How the Media Became One of Putin’s Most Powerful Weapons [theatlantic.com]

    But there’s also a bloodless, modern approach: apply pressure, and wait. Pass laws that constrict the space available for independent media. Set legal traps, citing anti-terrorist legislation. Send the tax police to carry out endless inspections of a recalcitrant broadcaster or their business associates, denying that political views have anything to do with the investigation. Don’t kill them, just maim them. Try to squeeze them into irrelevance.

    And then you do have mysterious deaths of political opponents [wikipedia.org] and journalists [wikipedia.org]. Instead of sending special forces, they can direct criminal gangs to do it.

    To an extent, Putin did earn his popularity. Tough on oligarchs/the West to restore Russian pride. Tough on terrorism (manufactured? [wikipedia.org]) and neighbors within the Russia sphere of influence. Supports anti-LGBT legislation.

    Removing rights [wikipedia.org], cracking down on one set of billionaires while enriching another, controlling the majority of the press, slowly restricting Internet freedoms [soylentnews.org] even further, possibly manufacturing terrorist attacks, going to war with neighboring countries to boost popularity, jailing or killing journalists and political opponents. It's a subtle kind of dictatorship, but it is one.

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday January 22 2018, @10:29PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Monday January 22 2018, @10:29PM (#626285) Journal

    What are real elections?

    Duh -- it's when superdelegates choose who wins. /sarc

    Best cartoon on the subject: https://imgur.com/YYgUm8W [imgur.com]