Facebook to Let Users Rank Credibility of News

Megalith

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In its latest effort to solve fake news, Facebook is implementing a system in which users will be asked to complete surveys to determine the quality of news postings. This means that the social network’s own members may have nobody to blame but themselves for low-quality content. Publishers already hate the idea, as this “crowdsourcing of opinions” could lead to manipulation.

Facebook said news would be prioritized according to the new ranking system starting Monday, before expanding globally. Some Facebook users have already been asked to rank the trustworthiness of news sites which appear on the social network. In one survey, people were asked if they recognized a number of websites and then asked, ““How much do you trust each of these domains?”
 
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Don't think for a second that you a Facebook "User" aren't the Customer.
 
Facebook is so irrelevant now. I keep hearing more and more people around me talk about their stories of leaving Facebook.
 
This is a dumb solution. What's to prevent the same nations that are creating the fake news from having thousands of users say their fake news is legit? For that matter, why would anyone think the FB readers can tell, given that the russian propaganda fooled people just over a year ago. It's pretty easy to grade pubs as legit or not. NYT is legit. WSJ legit. AZ Republic Legit. Dallas Morning News Legit. The Bipartisan Report and Info Wars? Not so much

The Reality is the Left will pitch a fit if they say Bipartisan Report is fake (and presumably block it) and conservatives will do the same if they block Info Wars (and I'm just picking 2 mostly fake news sites off the top of my head...there are plenty of others on the left and right whose names escape me).
 
So, they are trying to establish an authority of truth. Similar to all of these news outlets that claim "an expert in the field of xyz said" bla bla bla so it must be true. Just another attempt to gain control over popular opinion.

The amount of effort they are putting towards this garbage is ridiculous. Don't trust anybody who does this shit. They aren't concerned with you knowing the real truth - they want you to hear their ideas as facts.
 
I'd have to disagree with you on some of those choices.
You lose all credibility when you say the NYT is legit.
The only credibility he loses is with people that believe Trump. Is the NYT perfect? No, but they are a credible paper. Anyone that equates them with the Breitbarts and Info Wars of the world is being very dishonest. Pizzagate anyone? The NYT makes mistakes sometimes, but they try to fit their stories to the facts. Compare that to something like project Veritas, which decides the outcome of the story before it's written and hunts for facts to back up their positions. Along the way, they deliberately distort their reporting. Are we forgetting how the Washington Post just busted them using proper journalistic practices?

Yeah, crowd sourcing the trustworthiness of news sources. How could that possibly go wrong? Seriously, this isn't that hard. Evaluate sources the same way every college writing class teaches (track record of the publisher, reputation/professional profile of the author, quality of the citations, etc.). The only hard part is that you might have to hire humans to do it and it could eat into the revenue you receive from dishonest people with an agenda. Heck, make it even easier. Make news stories on Facebook carry the name of the owner of the news site and their location. That should weed out the American sounding publications that are actually from Macedonia.

This whole thing just shows the danger of confirmation bias. Just because you want to believe something doesn't mean it's true. It's terrifying how technology has amplified our little echo chambers. We should all make a point of reading/listening/speaking to someone that disagrees with us on a regular basis.
 
This is just another attempt at Facebook to try and be relivent as a news source provider without wanting to get someone to actually fact check their news. First it was "get a computer to make sure it's real" now it's "that doesn't work, let's just have our users figure it out for us."

News flash : Facebook is not where anyone should get their news from. It's great for sharing personal news like what happened to aunt milly yesterday but real-world news is not it's designed purpose and it doesn't do it well. Either hire people to actually check news before it's posted or stop this nonsense.
 
Seeing how you know what fake news is, I suspect you've read your fair share also. :cool:
no, he's right. if your instant reaction to anything is to blame one of the two front-facing political football teams, then you're the problem, not some bogeyman.

again, because this bears repeating, because you numbnuts never listen: if you think the answer is as simple as "liberals", YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

look at you dolts. the topic is about FACEBOOK. F A C E B O O K, not "trump this" or "NYT" that or "lbiiiirerallllllslssss". but anything, just ANYTHING, to start in with THAT mindless moron dickslap again, right? AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN until...nope, until NOTHING you liberal/conservative prick! AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

oh, you think THAT'S annoying? get a sense of perspective, i think EVERY SUBJECT turning into "druuurrpmgpmffggfgfff" or "HNNNNJCKKCK LIBURLS THPFPPBBBPT" is annoying!
 
no, he's right. if your instant reaction to anything is to blame one of the two front-facing political football teams, then you're the problem, not some bogeyman.

again, because this bears repeating, because you numbnuts never listen: if you think the answer is as simple as "liberals", YOU ARE THE PROBLEM.

look at you dolts. the topic is about FACEBOOK. F A C E B O O K, not "trump this" or "NYT" that or "lbiiiirerallllllslssss". but anything, just ANYTHING, to start in with THAT mindless moron dickslap again, right? AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN. AGAIN. AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN until...nope, until NOTHING you liberal/conservative prick! AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

oh, you think THAT'S annoying? get a sense of perspective, i think EVERY SUBJECT turning into "druuurrpmgpmffggfgfff" or "HNNNNJCKKCK LIBURLS THPFPPBBBPT" is annoying!
Your post suggests they're having exactly the desired effect they're looking for.
 
Yeah, I don't see how this will work. People will just up vote the fringe new sites that promote their conspiracy theories. Fake news is unfortunately here to stay :-(
 
Your post suggests they're having exactly the desired effect they're looking for.
oh, how stoically observed of you. congratulations for "acting normal online".

their desires are irrelevant to me. i pay no mind to the wants of trolls, who, for some reason, are always very-well defended by people like you.

if i were REALLY giving him what he wanted, i'd have started in about conservatives, not bitching about what he's doing as a whole. i'm not the fish he was fishing for, but i'm the one he got, whether or not anyone else is comfortable with it.

sorry mate, i fight back, internet faux-pas or not. for every person like you who comes out and regurgitates memes about troll feeding, i have to hope there's at least one shy would-be commenter thanking me under his breath for being "that guy" who actually says something to these pricks.

all of that is a moot point because honestly, i'll bet trolls are MUCH better-fed by comments like yours than mine. it's one thing to get a quick lol out of my piss and vinegar, but if a troll can see that the person fighting back is being attacked, NOT THEM, then what do you suppose that's going to do? think they'll say "wow, maybe i should stop" or "HEY MAYBE I SHOULD RAMP IT UP, WHOSE GONNA STOP ME"?

do i "think it'll stop him" to complain once? no. but if it gives ANYONE a moment's pause, it was better than nothing, and CERTAINLY better than what people like you do - which is to passively encourage the trolling by actively discouraging people like me from posting in defense against it.
 
The only way to get any semblance of the truth whatsoever is to read MANY different articles/pieces/interviews from MANY different newspapers/sites/people. Every individual company, government, and individual has their own agenda designed to keep you serving them (whether you realize this or not is moot). I've found a few articles here and there that may actually be honestly reported and written- the responsibility is up to each individual to do the best they can to glean the objective truths. Many of my [H] brothers are wise to Facebook/Google/Apple keeping you as their customer or servant. It's easy to become inured in any kind of ideology or belief- what's more important though? The truth, or your (or my) attachment to whatever you want to believe is true. Maybe I'm idealistic, and naive for trying to help my brothers escape Plato's cave- I'm just tired of seeing people with good intentions be deceived by social engineers, and power hungry, maniacal entities.
 
Well if history has taught us anything, whatever the masses think the truth is, is the "truth".
 
And you just showed you're bias.

I don't expect the NYT to be perfect, but to me they are nothing more than a tabloid that on rare occasion stumbles into the truth.

You are absolutely incorrect. For every time NYT gets it wrong (which they then write a retraction for) they get it right 100s of times. NYT is not brietbart, infowars, mother jones, occupy democrats, or any other BS claptrap "news" publication.

The real problem is by staying in our "bubbles" and "sharing" memes that are absolutely false it reinforces that false narative and further divides the country.
 
NYT is legit. WSJ legit. AZ Republic Legit. Dallas Morning News Legit. The Bipartisan Report and Info Wars? Not so much

All of those report from a certain viewpoint. What they say is (usually) factually true, but is very purposefully written in a way for the the reader to take a different interpretation than reality, and those agencies know that. And lets not get into the "opinion" stories, which are the vast majority of these publication's "product", and of course usually the first result of any given search you might have if you don't explicitly add "-opinion" to your google search.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/19/us/politics/trump-government-shutdown.html
If you don't see the bias in an article like this one, you're hopeless. And of course the ever present "sources say" which is roughly translated as "this is the part where we speculate and mislead you with our own opinion but imply its reality so we can better effect your opinion of the subject". In this article its "according to people on both sides familiar with" and "according to one person familiar with the discussion", but there are many variations. Sometimes its an actual source, sometimes its entirely made up... You never know because"someone familiar with..." can be anyone. I'm "familiar with" the discussion of the budget, therefore by the language of this article, I could be their source.
 
I'd have to disagree with you on some of those choices.
You lose all credibility when you say the NYT is legit.
Ah, the New York Times. I'm not sure anything can top their "legit" articles of helping to take us to war in Iraq by repeating verbatim information handed to them by the government about WMDs with no fact-checking, however, I was quite fond of their article last year about how Why the Democrats Need Wall Street, such wonderful analysis there.
 
Why is it even Facebook's obligation to determine what people read or process?

These companies, and the government to a large extent, are basically calling all of you dumbasses because you can't observe the world around you and determine what is possible. Yet these SAME people lament about how wonderful the world was 50-60 years ago when you got all of your news from Walter Cronkite every evening because it meant we were all on the same page. Sounds like they want to get us all back on the same page again.
 
The only way this works is if the moderates/independents engage. And frankly, I think they're so fucking sick of this crap as to make that highly unlikely.
 
Waste of FB effort. It's already *so* easy to spot fake news, as you read/listen and realize that it is not totally congruent with your preexisting bias -- it is FAKE.

Turn it off quickly so that you don't alter your internal database. ;)
 
oh, how stoically observed of you. congratulations for "acting normal online".

their desires are irrelevant to me. i pay no mind to the wants of trolls, who, for some reason, are always very-well defended by people like you.

if i were REALLY giving him what he wanted, i'd have started in about conservatives, not bitching about what he's doing as a whole. i'm not the fish he was fishing for, but i'm the one he got, whether or not anyone else is comfortable with it.

sorry mate, i fight back, internet faux-pas or not. for every person like you who comes out and regurgitates memes about troll feeding, i have to hope there's at least one shy would-be commenter thanking me under his breath for being "that guy" who actually says something to these pricks.

all of that is a moot point because honestly, i'll bet trolls are MUCH better-fed by comments like yours than mine. it's one thing to get a quick lol out of my piss and vinegar, but if a troll can see that the person fighting back is being attacked, NOT THEM, then what do you suppose that's going to do? think they'll say "wow, maybe i should stop" or "HEY MAYBE I SHOULD RAMP IT UP, WHOSE GONNA STOP ME"?

do i "think it'll stop him" to complain once? no. but if it gives ANYONE a moment's pause, it was better than nothing, and CERTAINLY better than what people like you do - which is to passively encourage the trolling by actively discouraging people like me from posting in defense against it.
I think you're misunderstanding me. His post to me says "I am not interested in discussing this topic in a reasonable manner and am just signaling to others who share my own limited worldviews", it's kind of like a church revival, it's meant to rally the like-minded together. There's no actual intent for any understanding or rational discussion, it's just a tribal identity thing. Nothing you say will ever influence his opinion, the end. You getting exasperated is a bonus and encourages similar behavior, you're putting out the fire with gasoline. I was trying to point out the futility of what you were doing; save your energy for someone who wants an honest discussion. Or fight the good fight with the peanut gallery, I guess. I'm sure it will be a productive use of your time.
 
Fake news has been around forever. It really only "took off" after Wikileaks blew the Democrats out of the water by releasing the DNC and Podesta emails that Seth Rich leaked. "Liberals" were forced to claim Russia "hacked" them. Hilarious. They were so busted that they had to attack the information as "fake news". So many felonies in those those Podesta emails. Human trafficking, pay for play, tax scams, charity scams, etc. etc. It really is sad what Debbie Wasserman Schultz had done to Seth Rich. Imran Awan did a very brave thing leaving behind Debbie Wasserman Schultz's laptop so the police could bring them all down for assassinating Seth. Now Hillary Clinton is forced to talk about the Podesta emails and pizzagate at every book signing. She still has to lie and claim it is all fake news...
 
NYT and WSJ legit on foreign affairs = not in a veeerrrrryyyyy long time

so how is FB going to determine whether some publication is legit on some fronts but completely bonkers in others.

and fake news had been around long before Orwell's 1984
 
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