Facebook Bans Fake News Sites from Using Its Advertising Network
wsj.com
wsj.com
http://www.gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was...
This got me thinking. I'm center-leftish, but I'd like to think open minded. To me, the results FB saw are correct - from Birtherism, Obama being a Muslim, Sandy Hook trutherism, all the way to Democrats using the voting records of dead people to swing the election, the false conspiracy pedalling news stories I've seen have been overwhelmingly on the right. (note that I am not saying all right-wing people believe these things, just that most of the people who do are right-wing)
But am I wrong? I'm constantly aware that Facebook puts me in a filter bubble. Does anyone have any good examples of left-leaning fake, conspiratorial news stories in the last few years?
Half of my more liberal friends on Facebook believe the election was rigged in one way or another. Of course I don't know if other people are seeing the same response post election in their social feeds. It seems common on Twitter.
The great right wing conspiracy that the Clintons claim have been following/targeting them for decades, rather than their own actual behavior being the issue. That's not new, however it was present during Hillary's run.
Some of the more fringe leftists claim that Trump is in the pocket of zionists and that the election was being thrown for the benefit of Israel's interests (he was very outspoken in favor of Israel during all phases of the election). That's also not new however, that group tends to be universally anti-Israel regardless of the candidate.
Or the greatest conspiracy theory of them all for the election: Hillary was prevented from winning by sexist men determined to keep a woman out the Presidency. I've seen that one commonly in the mainstream left-leaning media.
Out of interest, in news reports or in opinion pieces? I wish newspapers did away with opinion sections, they serve no good purpose and cloud what news reporting actually is. I'd be interested to read the justification a news organisation gives for stating something like that as fact and not opinion.
What you typically get in the news stories, is indirect leaner statements, such as: 'and Donald Trump - who often ran a hateful campaign filled with racist and sexist statements - is the President-elect.'
I didn't vote for Trump and I had to stop reading content on most of those sites throughout the end of the election because they became overwhelming propaganda platforms for Hillary's campaign. Business Insider seemed to become 1/2 anti-Trump articles in its content, they weren't even pretending to be unbiased - fine, but if I wanted that I'd go to the Huffington Post not a mainstream business news site.
Which gets us into is the news media real news, fake news, or opinion. With the rise of Fox news other news companies have had to go heavy on opinion to survive. Fox News has sucked up most of the conservative audience CNN, MSNBC, etc has to fight over the left leaning audience becoming more sensational in the process.
The reason it was repeated in the media was because he initially refused to apologise for the comments. After pressure from the media and voters, he did.
That wasn't a "conspiracy theory", that was a straightforward interpretation of events which are not in dispute. Hillary had to mess up pretty badly for things to get to the point where that'd be relevant, but by calling it a "conspiracy theory" you come across as very dishonest.
The theory that Putin hacked the Democrats to get Donald Trump elected.
There's zero proof that Russia is behind the leaks, but Dems still peddle this myth. Hillary Clinton even went as far as threatening Russia with military intervention over the emails. And there's still zero proof Russia had anything to do with it.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john...
Like I said, not conclusive, but I wonder what definite evidence you're likely to have with intelligence agencies. Point taken, though.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/29/cozy-bear...
The western intelligence community has converged on the conclusion that the Russian government was involved and staked their reputation on that conclusion. So, unless you just don't trust your government at all, it's likely to be true.
Though if you have any other credible source, please share it.
Not really. There was a decent amount of dissent in the western intel community on Iraqi WMDs (pretty much everyone not in the "coalition of the willing" and even some within it), it's just that the Bush administration purposefully ignored the dissenters.
>Though if you have any other credible source, please share it.
If you don't believe the intelligence community can ever be trusted again after Iraq, I don't think there's any source could be enough for you. If the authorities on the subject are in on the conspiracy, then any proof could be just another layer on the conspiracy, right? Turtles all the way down.
Suffice to say, this doesn't seem like a reasonable perspective to me.
> "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations."
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-pr...
The Director of National Intelligence is capable of mistakes, and their saying it does not necessarily mean it's true. But the statement was absolutely unambiguous. And yet, on a google search for "Podesta email DNI-DHS statement", I found lots of sites lying outright about the content of the statement:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441266/hillary-clinton-... http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/11/01/hillarys-russian-hack-... http://www.wuc-news.com/2016/10/no-hillary-17-us-intelligenc...
That is far from proof. I might be a good reason to suspect but it's far from proof.
>Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company.
How do the differentiate an attack originating from a Russian server from an attack Russian Attack? How do they know they aren't just being used?
Of course one might insist it's a conspiracy by the Director of National intelligence but that just makes the claim even less reasonable.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-pr...
AFAICT, this is itself a propaganda myth of the right (its a radical distortion of Clinton's suggestion that cyberattacks should be met with a range of political, economic, and military responses like any other attacks -- an announcement which was fairly similar in content, including the four identified adversaries, the Pentagon's own most recently announced cyberwar strategy, which predates the emails.
> And there's still zero proof Russia had anything to do with it.
There is nonzero public evidence backing the conclusion of various cybersecurity firms that particular previously identified Russian actors were involved, a conclusion which predated and whose data likely provided a key input to the intelligence community determination (which may or may not also have additional all no public evidence backing it, which you wouldn't expect to be published.)
If conservatives come to power, they'll be more left-ish conspiracy theories around.
It's just a way to explain their minority status. We lost because "lizard people control the government" is much easier on the psyche than, "a lot of people simply don't agree with us".
I can't think of any other examples of outright lies, but there's alot of lying by omission; e.g. we now know that the DNC was heavily biased towards Clinton in the primaries, that they were inciting violence at Trump rallies, and that they were given the debate questions prior to debates. Was this even reported on main leftwing media?
Edit: also all the reduction of Trump's voters to just being racist, sexist and the accusations of the "whitelash" - why don't they talk about "blacklash" every time a democrat wins?
Edit 2: another example is the recent backlash against Breitbart. Although I see them mainly as a contrarian news site (similar to ZeroHedge), they probably have some bias - but just because it's the opposite of other media, you can't call it racism/sexism. Why is women voting for a woman feminist, men voting for a man sexist? Why are pro-black movements described as #BlackLivesMatter and pro-white movements as white supremacist? Accusations of bias are pretty empty when you're so full of it yourself...
A lie is a false statement made with the intent to deceive. I believe CNN is merely wrong. The difference is the intent, but people are far too quick to throw out the accusation of lying every time someone makes a mistake.
Hanlon's razor and all that, would suggest incompetence rather than malice. I find it hard to believe there's a deliberate misinformation campaign going on at CNN where they are trying to get people to believe it's illegal to view Wikileaks emails even though they know it isn't - cui bono?
EDIT - Of course, it is possible CNN were deliberately lied to by, for example, an NSA or CIA official, who they incorrectly believed (due to the implied authority of government officials) and therefore took at face value. I can see the motive for NSA or CIA to lie here, so that people are frightened of committing an illegal act by reading the emails, therefore less people will see them; an obvious benefit, just not for CNN...
If you include NYT in this, yes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/us/politics/video-dnc-trum...
> another example is the recent backlash against Breitbart
Breitbart was taken over by Steve Bannon after Breitbart's death, and it seems (inarguably to me) like it took a turn after that point. When you have headlines like "Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew", you're going to attract negative attention.
I think most seem to be right wing, but the left has it's share. Anti vaxers, anti GMO, anti "chemicals" tend to come from the left.
I think your mistaking the causation too. They aren't conspiracy theorists because they are right wing, they are right wing because they are conspiracy theorists. When you think the government is doing all these bad things then wanting less government is perfectly logical.
Well actually that too is a right-wing thing.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2015/09/20/donald...
http://www.salon.com/2016/08/03/jill_steins_anti_vax_game_ho...
Heaven forbid one of them end up in the white house.
Amanda Marcotte claims that the Snopes article is attacking a strawman because "the accusation is not that Stein herself is personally anti-vaccination. The accusation is that Stein panders to anti-vaccination crowd" - but as your comment demonstrates, that isn't true. Indeed, her article and similar articles try hard to leave readers with this false impression, twisting Stein's argument that we need to restore public trust because vaccines are a vital public health tool into "sowing doubts about vaccination safety". If claiming that "Dr. Stein uses a common anti-vaccine dodge" isn't claiming that she's a secret anti-vaxxer, then I'm a chocolate teapot.
https://reason.com/blog/2016/11/11/election-night-hijab-atta... http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/01/attorney-rolling-stone-... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-13/anti-trump-protests...
for a while now, liberalism has held an "ends justify the means" sort of attitude towards victims stories, out of context gender statistics, and "grassroots" activism. (conservatism has too, but that wasnt the question posed.)
obviously not all attacks are fake, and there is a lot of hate in the country. but a lot of sensationalized stories come out, that basically exist as propaganda, and spread like wildfire, without being fact checked. how many of you saw this link on facebook? how many of its stories are untrue? https://twitter.com/i/moments/796417517157830656?lang=en
if you stick to huffingtonpost & salon, and all the clickbait derived from their sphere, it really could be as manufactured and fake as the right, it just feels more real because the stories are more plausable.
there is also this article http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-el...
i mean, fuck, the story you just posted is allegedly fake, if that doesnt say something i dont know what does. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/11/14/did_faceb...
and as other people have pointed out, gmo, chemtrails, vax dangers have transcended parties and infected hippys and teapartiers alike.
[some variation of a return to morality] vs [some variation of an evolution towards morality]
i guess its whether you think we were there at one point, or havent gotten there yet.
traditional bedrooms vs equal protection. is homosexuality immoral, or is is infringing on liberty and freedom immoral?
We've done it for pornography, and it has worked really well. I don't get bombarded with pornography on the internet anymore. Why can't we apply the same logic to fake news?
And no one thinks banning certain type of advertising from pornography sites as censorship. It still exists, it's still growing, and you can find it easily. Same applies here I think.
Running ads for shady publications improves your quarterly results, but in the long term worsens the public perception of your company and drives off high quality advertisers/publishers.
Disclaimer: I don't think this new policy from Google/FB is an attempt to control the narrative.
Clearly this action is being taken because people don't like who and which party got elected, and of course that must have happened because of "lies". So clearly it's now OK. Unfortunately what's going to happen is exactly what you fear : the republicans/Trump control congress, the Senate and the presidency. They can do a lot to bend these sorts of rules their way, and of course this puts them in a corner with a gun aimed at their head. Of course they will react.
So how do we get non-free press in America ? Well bay area overwhelmingly democratic private sector companies introduce it, in reaction to losing an election, to thunderous applause.
Fake news is socially acceptable, if it agrees with your (and many of you friends') viewpoint.
I have had a numerous friends and family of all levels of education genuinely share things that is clearly misleading, if not fake, to my eyes at first glance. There could be multiple reasons: some people simply want the story to be true, others simply trust a place that has a website and a mostly-shady look.
We need major change and guidance to help people separate lies from the truth... as long as people still want the truth, which is not entirely clear to me right now.
Could something like Slashdot's meta-moderation ever be applied? In that case, you judged moderation anonymously.
Is spouting non-defamatory lies or exaggerated information free speech?
Google does a pretty good job of detecting scam website these days by looking at site reputation and detecting link farms. Hopefully Facebook will do the same.
I have always seen more likes on the story itself than on any fact-checking correction follow-up comment.
how about the uva rolling stone. i dont know how you can claim there isnt a gray area.
how about the dnc rigging the election, obviously one of the two sides is wrong.
What's the point in having a news source which presents only/mostly true news, the same time ignoring huge amount of those ones which do not fit their political line?
This will result in people having a false image of an overall situation, exactly the same as fake news will.
Moreover, I think news omitting is the root cause of fake news problem. People see certain events happen around them. They know these events are true because they see them with their own eyes. But they do not see reports on these events in mass media. The same time alternative and partisan media report these events, people see them on their FB timelines. So they redirect their trust towards these media and FB. If this schema repeats for years, they can trust these media so much that they can accept fake and unbelievable stories (which are also naturally more likely to appear in partisan media). And refuting these stories by mass media makes them even more sound in their eyes, especially if they once saw these media refuting stories which were real.
And this applies to both sides.
Granted there's a difference between bias and a completely fabricated article about something that did not happen, but presenting half the story is also problematic, as is coordinating with the people who the story is being written about.
Unfortunately, if one were to entertain the idea of banning Politico, it would be considered an affront to the idea of freedom of the press.
By agreeing to allow biased coverage to profit from advertising, Facebook is essentially saying that you can do this as long as you don't get caught. By the same yardstick, several right leaning media companies are guilty of the same sin, but the fact that we have proof in this case suggests that this is a standard practice in the industry, which reveals that honest reporting may only exist upto a particular point.
How do you expect reporters to have access to "sources inside the X campaign" without making an effort to build relationships and trust?
http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/how-the-mainst...
An obviously detectable "fake" news site is kinda benign compared to a serious looking outlet that tells the reader what they want to hear regardless of accuracy.
Remember when Jon Stewart spent a decade arguing that Fox News was doing a disservice to the country? Do you think Breitbart, HuffPo or any of the Gawker properties do better at informing the public.
http://www.memeorandum.com/river
How is that going to change the content of the news? How does that change the incentives that have resulted in the current situation?
when facebook and google ban ads on fake news, new less scrupulous ad networks will spring into place. there is always money in the banana stand, and by banana stand i mean peddling entertaining shit. and by shit i mean shit.
- it can be prone to an echo chamber effect if one's not careful
- it does nothing to prevent the promulgation of "bad" content (think clickbait), or rather, it doesn't improve the quality of the news
As for improving critical thinking skills, wow. That's a tough one. I agree, it's incredibly important. If you can figure out a way of doing that in short order, be sure to let me know, okay? :)
This is why I focused on incentives in my question. What would motivate publishers to improve their content?
In my opinion, the current situation is due in large part to the reliance on on-line ads, which focus on clicks and eyeballs. Subscriptions encouraged maintaining quality content day to day, not click to click. There's been a lot written about how hard the media industry has been hit in the move from print to digital. I don't see how that's going to get easier over the short term, either, given how deeply imbedded advertising is online. People don't want to pay for content, or at least they're not used to it. And it's difficult for content that's available digitally to be controlled, which it needs to be if the publishers are going to make money producing it. I'm not saying anything new here, and I'm sure it's been stated much better elsewhere.
I fear that this is too much armchair-philosophizing on my part now. Thanks for providing the opportunity for me to write some of this up that's been rattling around in my head.
agreed, that can be combated by training, teaching, education, etc. you cant make tools and not advertise them or convince people to use them. you either convince them or manipulate people into using them (through advertising or gamification)
youre right, chasing ads makes for bad content, but newspapers have always been content mills to support the hard hitting journalism. the alternative could be tax funded journalism (npr, pbs, bbc) or one of the many startups that try to track what you read and then pay out accordingly.
And what is defined as fake news ? These developments will prove really interesting.
"We rated 82 out of a total 666 right-wing Facebook posts as mostly false, for a percentage of 12.3%. Another 169 posts (25.4%) were rated as a mixture of true and false. Viewed separately or together (38%), this is an alarmingly high percentage."
I had a good laugh when I checked the domain though.
“The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office”: Republicans warn of Trump presidency
Donald Trump has killed American Exceptionalism: Why his election was the deathblow for our great national myth
White flight from reality: Inside the racist panic that fueled Donald Trump's victory
Has the American “experiment” run its course? The empire of chaos has overtaken America.
Please Google/Facebook add this to the list to remove as well.
http://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-misogyny-apocalypse-turn...
Organizations that do original journalism and news reporting seem to be struggling financially. Meanwhile, many popular sites now considered legitimate "news sites" don't do much original journalism of their own and instead they are mainly just curating or aggregating news from those original news sites.
(I'm not talking about sites like HN or reddit, I'm referring to large popular sites with "articles" where they're rewriting/spinning/summarizing news stories found elsewhere, then linking somewhere in their "article" to the original news site, lastly they add the most sensationalist clickbait headline they can come up with!)
News curation/aggregation sites offer a service people want, they are usually free to read, and copyright law cases have determined what they are doing is legal.
Facebook and Google clearly have a huge amount of power here. I support them taking action against fake news sites (I do look forward reading details what that means and how they do this).
But it's not just FBerg and Googy at fault here, part of the reason things have gotten this bad is the slippery slope where "real" newspapers, news-agencies and other organizations that have trained journalists doing original news reporting have let themselves be overrun by sites using their work without appropriate compensation or recognition. They have also fallen behind on the tech skills needed to deliver news on the noisy interwebs, and they have not pushed to revisit copyright laws that aren't working for anyone as intended.
Since we've removed the rule that requires news to show the opposing view point on every piece of news -- it's pretty much all op-ed anymore...
We tend to live in our own information universes. Broadening our views is uncomfortable.
Are the 3000 thousand opinion pieces assuming that that Megyn blood was coming from her vagina and not her eyes, because it suited them more also fake news?
You cannot abstract talking to the other side. You cannot abstract discussion - and I mean real discussion, not demonstrating intellectual superiority