Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalbasal | Hacker News Reader

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I agree, but I think these two are related and that's part of the reason why it's an issue. It's a knowledge = power situation.

FB have datasets designed to find those people who will register for a conference, sign up to a streaming service or buy a shoe. The same tools also work for "spreading fake news, etc." There are side effects to large scale use of this, beyond the basic. "Bubbles" was a first pass at describing it, but I think it understates the issue by putting the emphasis on groups of people, and implying insularity is the root cause. I think the truth is more individual focused. There are two types of groups. One is the type you could describe in terms of facebook's "social graph," people connected to eachother in various ways. Another is a segment. People who are not necessarily related to eachother, but "inform" on eaother statistically.

Finding a piece of content you will like is becoming finding a piece of news you will believe.

FB are now a news outlet, the biggest and most important one. I don't know if regulation is the best path to a better news media, it could also make things worse. But, what I'm worried about is that FB does not want to be a news outlet. They would like to maintain their "agregator" designation, like the news tab in google search. I'd like to see them abandon that position, and take on the role of news media more consciously and deliberately. Journalism has an ethic, it's not perfect but at least it recognizes that they play a responsible role in society. FB need to adopt something like this, regulaton or not. .

I think the reasons for "Facebooks fake news problem" even being a story are two-fold: elites in the corporate "journalism" cabal understand that its a great distraction from the important discussion of data retention. & it also helps to shift the blame away from Hillary's party for losing the election because of a terribly run campaign.

Call it a conspiracy theory. I really don't see the actual cause being, primarily, anything other than those.

Exactly, the reality is that there isn't really such a thing as "news" because it's always been opinionated. Fox news, CNN, etc have always been fake to a degree in that they aren't reporting core facts with no bias. Even when I see local news broadcasts about things that aren't political in nature they still use alarmist tactics to try to elicit emotions in the viewer. Many supposed news articles will present some facts but then try to infer things by asking questions or saying things like, "this may lead to x" without any source to back up this claim. The reality is that real news is boring as it's just presenting facts and letting people draw their own conclusions and I have never seen this be the way that news is presented in America at any point in my life. If we could somehow get to that point I think things would be much better.

I think you guys are looking past the point.

The definition of “Fake News,” that was being used when it started “trending” and the definition FB are now using in their anti-fakenews efforts is not inaccurate news, bad news, biased news or anything like that. It refers to a simple, common sense meaning of “fake.” Articles pretending to be news: written by a fictional journalists in a fictional publication, citing fictional sources at a fictional address.

Fake news did quickly become an insult that everyone (especially you -know-who) uses to flavour their scorn of regular news. …like the way “fraud,” or “whore” are used as insults.

This is not some impossibly abstract conversation about truth. It’s a simple conversation about spam.

So if I'm still being emailed promotions for penile enhancement today, how are we going to regulate those promotions on a government level?

I'm genuinely asking. I don't intend for my question to be a slight against your argument.

I don't know if regulations are necessary or useful here. I think you should buy the penis pills. Let me know if they're good

My point being that if the issue is spam, as you say, then why is spam-news different?

> it also helps to shift the blame away from Hillary's party for losing the election because of a terribly run campaign

This doesn't have anything to do with Hillary or that whole "election hacking" story. If you've followed the hearings and the angles that US legislators have been taking on these companies it seems clear that most of them don't see this as being related to the elections at all.

From what I've seen the focus has been on the fact that foreign nation states are able to use the tools provided by these companies to target groups of people and then directly use the promotion and communication channels provided by these companies to pump propaganda to those groups.

And that this has been done already, specifically to instigate division and confrontation between groups within our society.

Side notes:

1. Maybe you think that their tools don't have an impact on people and this is all just hyperbole. Perhaps that's true, but if it is true then the business model they've been pitching to advertisers seems like hyperbole as well.

2. All of that aside. These few companies have quickly become the dominant gateway for which a majority of people access the internet. It's where they read news, talk to family and friends, organize events, keep all of their photos, keep their contact list, authenticate into other websites on the internet, get tracked by ads and social media buttons across the internet... None of which is inherently bad but it seems foolish for us to not keep them in check. We don't exist to make sure their companies survive. If society decides that the amount of risk and harm resulting from them outweighs the potential good in their current form then we should consider regulation.

Regulation by whome, exactly? At least in its current state, I get to choose between my state-sponsored media attacks...

If your opaque point is that we need to break these companies up for... reasons... (Because maybe Russia-something?) Then I suppose I disagree with you less, but not on that principle.

It seems to me that these problems are better solved through education, rather than censorship & policing. But educating is impossible because it would lead to a more informed public.

> Regulation by whome, exactly?

Regulation by publicly elected and representative officials in our democracy.

> It seems to me that these problems are better solved through education, rather than censorship & policing.

I'm not talking about censorship. My point was regarding the mass data collection and analysis of our personal information that's being done at an impressive scale by these for-profit companies without any form of oversight or transparency.

It isn't cool when the NSA does it and it isn't cool when they're doing it either. Especially not if they're actually profiting from selling our data to other people who are doing whoknowswhat. There is no incentive for them to be responsible.

Publicly elected officials on what level? The FCC? What powers are we giving them?

When I hear a Senator Dianne Feinstein scolding a panel of tech giants, I don't hear a benevolent leader with our best interests at heart, I hear someone infantalizing me for their own gain.

If the topic is data retention, let's target everyone. No one should be safe unless they can justify it under scrutiny & demonstrate security.

If the topic is "fake news", then its a battle of definitions, & regulation is unconstitutional on any government level--no matter how you spin it.

> it also helps to shift the blame away from Hillary's party for losing the election because of a terribly run campaign.

It also shifts the blame away from Americans who liked what Trump was saying.

A similar thing is happening in the UK with the brexit vote. People are now claiming that Russians bought some adverts. They want to deny the decades of Euroskepticism and misleading stories (bendy bananas anyone?), and years of anti-immigrant newspaper stories.

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