Facebook is going to use Snopes and other fact checkers to combat fake news | Hacker News Reader

Facebook is going to use Snopes and other fact checkers to combat fake news

businessinsider.com

24 pointsspking16 comments

This is terrible. The world is too complicated to fact check.

For example, "thousands lose their jobs due to minimum wage increase". Is this true or not? Well, some schools of economic thought will think its true, and some will not. Some might say the jobs were lost because there was an increase in automation and some might think the increase in automation was caused by the minimum wage. I truly hope that facebook doesn't try to fact check statements like this.

There is inherent bias in the way we look at the world.

i.e. "Assad bombs his own people" vs "Assad continues the fight against ISIS and Al Qaeda" Although an argument could be made that these two statements are not mutually exclusive, they are saying different things. It is quite possible that one will pass through the fact checker and one will not.

Facebook is such a huge source of information, it makes me very concerned when a select few organizations have the ability to discredit information across the entire site.

I can't imagine Facebook is going to intervene in the examples you listed. Especially when they are factual, thoughtful disagreements on a particular topic.

But seriously something has to be done about the situation. You can't just allow kids in Macedonia to say what is and isn't real in this world. And the fact is that what happened during the last election. And it is simply unacceptable for it to continue.

> it makes me very concerned when a select few organizations have the ability to discredit information across the entire site

One could look at this conversely and say it is concerning when people and oragnizations are able to use Facebook to successfully disseminate misinformation unchecked.

I personally find both sides concerning and see no clear solution.

Looking at the list of fack checkers includes a bunch of political organizations (NGOs) supported by the US government abroad.

An example is a group in Kosovo that supports Serbian separation. Similarly, the group from Serbia is politically attached to a Eurocentrist worldview.

The list includes, for example, an NGO supported by American investors and German and American academics in places like Ukraine.

The promise that these are non-partisan sources is a nice garuntee that it is neither Democrat nor Republican. Unfortunately in many controversial political situations, there are far more opinions and perspectives than those shared by Republicans and Democrats.

Given that Facebook has been accused of being a front for American political imperialism, I don't think this list of "truth deciders" filled with American investors and groups that have American intelligence and State Department support is going to improve things. At the very least it looks bad.

The current list of fact checkers:

1. ABC News (USA) Added Dec. 13th

2. Africa Check (South Africa, Senegal and Kenya)

3. Agência Lupa (Brazil)

4. Agência Pública - Truco (Brazil) Added Sept. 16th

5. Aos Fatos (Brazil)

6. AP (USA) Added Dec. 15th

7. Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Kosovo (Kosovo)

8. Climate Feedback (USA) Added Dec. 5th

9. Colombiacheck (Colombia) Added Nov. 11th

10. Chequeado (Argentina)

11. Demagog CZ (Czech Republic)

12. Demagog PL (Poland)

13. Doğruluk Payı (Turkey)

14. El Deber Data (Bolivia)

15. El Mercurio El Poligrafo (Chile)

16. El Objetivo La Sexta (Spain)

17. Factcheck.org (USA)

18. FactCheck Georgia (Georgia)

19. FactCheck Northern Ireland (UK)

20. FactCheck-Ukraine (Ukraine)

21. FactChecker.in (India)

22. FactsCan (Canada)

23. Faktabaari (Finland)

24. Full Fact (UK)

25. GKillCity.com (Ecuador)

26. Internews Kosova (Kosovo)

27. Istinomer (Serbia)

28. Melu Detektors (Latvia) Added Sept. 26th

29. Metamorphosis Foundation (Macedonia)

30. Observador (Portugal)

31. Ojo Publico (Peru)

32. Pagella Politica (Italy)

33. Pesa Check (Kenya)

34. PolitiFact (USA)

35. Snopes (USA)

36. South Asia Check (Nepal)

37. TheJournal.ie (Ireland)

38. UY Check (Uruguay)

39. Valheenpaljastaja (Finland)

40. VERA Files Fact Check (Philippines) Added Sept. 19th

41. VoxUkraine (Ukraine)

42. The Washington Post Fact Checker (USA)

43. Zašto ne Istinomjer (Bosnia & Herzegovina)

Nice to see a good mix of bipartisan sources. /s

No fact-checking system will be perfect, but the perfect should not be the enemy of the good. Is there a gray area of what constitutes fake news and what a valid fact-checking body is? Of course, but flags don't stop the discussion, they enable discussion. If someone wants to go ahead and post something knowing it will be flagged, they can also post their argument for why they think it is being wrongly flagged.

I am all for this. I've given up on posting snopes links to posts from friends who either tell me snopes is wrong or outright delete my comment. I live near DC, where a man recently opened fire in a restaurant because he read a fake news story that Hillary Clinton was running a child prostitution ring there. I'm sick of this. We are entitled to our own opinions, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

The people in my feed who post fake news tend to be obnoxious and not very bright. It's a good customer service move to make the social network more pleasant. I know that the majority of my thoughtful friends on Facebook will greatly appreciate this.

During the Snowden Disclosures Facebook prevented me from posting direct links to the leaked documents and articles detailing their technical content.

I do not trust Facebook as an information steward, and feel that the solution is much more dangerous than the problem. I personally do not face many problems with fake news, but have suffered a great deal from propaganda, surveillance and censorship.

These solutions seem to double down on the costs, without offering a real benefit.

If FB outright banned your post and it did not contain graphic content, then that was wrong and an abuse on their part. But this modification isn't taking content down, they are adding a flag to posts identifying the source as suspect and, more importantly, why it is considered suspect. This is a much more transparent solution because we can see what FB is flagging, why it is being flagged, and openly discuss whether the flag is fair or not.

Right, now they may possibly allow me to post the Snowden documents or let's say a report from SANA about a successful campaign to save people from terrorist captors.

But it could be marked by a stamp basically telling people: "Don't look at this. Don't take it seriously." People will be trained not to click on the reason for why, and they won't have the context to - as it was the case when the Snowden Documents were first coming out - differentiate "This post was marked fake news because the government engages in 'bulk collection' NOT 'mass surveillance'" from an legitimate reason to pariah the post and poster.

The type of influence this gives Facebook as a provider is one of scale, not one of instance. If large numbers of people are discouraged from engaging with certain ideas while each individual case has to be litigated individually and during a time later when the news and narrative making is already completed and people have moved on, it's a serious problem.

I would criticize China if they intended to put branding marks on reporting, analysis and posts that they don't consider trustworthy or factual.

It is this same criticality that I aim at Facebook and the United States. There are other, better solutions. I looked at the list of 'fact-checkers'. They don't pass the sniff test.

Finally, there's no way Facebook is going to mark its advertising, partnered content and purchased 'likes' as fake. It's just not in the calculation.

I will agree with you however that the abuse of taking down posts or ranking them so that nobody sees them (another issue I've encountered) is 'worse' in its immediate affect. Though I think it's more explicit. I can talk to other people who have had their posts censored and it isn't deniable.

This solution, on the other hand, is extremely deniable.

I don't like having to pick between two poisons. I've had quite enough of that.

They shouldn't have allowed you to post that content.

It is illegally obtained and they are liable for its publication. Facebook is not a news organisation and as such they aren't covered by the same legal precedents.

First the premise that the documents were illegally obtained.

There is prior case law (Ellsberg) that suggests what Snowden did was legal, in that all documents exposed were done through the media and journalists.

The claim that it was illegal needs to be substantiated in court as it would be a vast departure from the case law established by the Supreme Court.

Second, Facebook is not liable for what I post on my feed and the things that I communicate to my friends and family. Nor should they be. Facebook also is a private company that makes its money from spam. It is not a law enforcement agency, and it is not and should not be required to enforce the law.

In any case, in authoritarian countries like the United States (countries where citizens are punished if they do not spy on and censor one another), there has been an increasing and dangerous trend toward claiming that legal things (such as posting information from international news sources, here The Guardian and Der Speigel) are illegal.

The argument here that such behavior is illegal is a strong and present indicator of that authoritarian streak in the American political consciousness.

This would only work if news were a mere presentation of facts.

I'm afraid this will be used not the way its intended, but to silence and discredit any opposition to e.g. government's agenda.

Meanwhile, they will continue to saturate your feed with ads for fake products... especially counterfeits.

Would business insider pass?

So the onion will be marked fake correct?

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