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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).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @08:37AM (4 children)
Your dismissal of Russian actions as mere partisanship betrays your ignorance. The Russians spy on the U.S., prod and interfere where they can, and are controlled by a dictator who will be running for a fourth Presidential term (and hanging onto power longer than FDR during WW2). The contacts that Russians have had with the Trump campaign and family are suspicious and do stink. Hillary Clinton was an unfortunate choice for the Democrats, annointed in advance and carrying baggage that led to her downfall against what should have been a uniquely easy opponent to beat. But that doesn't mean that you should plug your ears and scream "NAHAHHHHHAHAHH" whenever Russians are mentioned.
The AC's point isn't even really about Russians. It's about Facebook's attempt to use flawed and fake user input to fix a problem caused by flawed or fake users. Garbage in, garbage out (and one way or another, you know about "garbage out").
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday January 22 2018, @05:44PM
It's a given that countries will attempt to influence the elections of other countries. At least Russia is not engaging in American style "regime change" against the US. Secondly, the entire RussiaRussiaRussia narrative is based solely on taking the word of the former generals, the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA -- about the most untrustworthy lot of inveterate liars that ever existed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday January 22 2018, @07:15PM (2 children)
In this case, they had a fairly strong motivation to do so: Hillary Clinton was among those who arranged to put multiple US-allied armies a short distance from Russia's borders. This idea that Putin, assuming he or his government were involved in whatever happened (which, despite numerous claims from pro-Democratic news sources has never actually been proven), would be doing so because he's evil or something had good reason to be concerned about a Clinton presidency. However, if that reasoning holds as to Russian motivations for doing anything in the US election, that also means that he has little reason to provide any kind of backing for Trump now that Clinton is no longer a threat.
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. In your example of FDR, he remained president for as long as he did because he was immensely popular according to both the election results and the rudimentary opinion polling of the time. Putin and his party is by all appearances is quite popular in Russia, although not without opposition.
Yes, they do. They should be investigated. The public evidence also has not as of yet, as the Democrats and associated media outlets repeatedly claimed, added up to "Clinton lost because Russia hacked the election".
I do expect bots and fake users to attempt to game this system. Which is one of many reasons why I don't consider Facebook, or any other single organization, to be an arbiter of truth.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 22 2018, @07:56PM (1 child)
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?
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]
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]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday January 22 2018, @10:29PM
Duh -- it's when superdelegates choose who wins. /sarc
Best cartoon on the subject: https://imgur.com/YYgUm8W [imgur.com]