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Comment by fragsworth | Hacker News Reader

The obvious problem is that the dissemination of news these days is determined by how many arbitrary or ignorant individuals have clicked "like" or "upvote" on whatever social network they're using.

It doesn't need to be true, it just needs to be shocking, and people will promote it.

This is only fixed by good moderation, with prominent (and powerful) "flag" buttons like Hacker News has. Hacker News and Reddit don't suffer from nearly as much fake news, because moderation teams tend to do a good job of weeding out garbage, and have an easier time with the prominent report buttons.

Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation.

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>Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation.

Sure they do. They just have zero incentive to remove fake news content. It makes them money, brings in users, everyone is happy! What could be wrong? What's good for Facebook is good for the world!

Oh, you're right. I forgot that they moderate things that are illegal in nature.

But it's still the bare minimum.

You sound like you want them to do more moderation?

It amazes me that we've reached the point where there are commenters on Hacker News arguing in favour of online censorship.

We can’t all be ideologically motivated to the point of societal suicide.

Censoring content you disagree with is societal suicide.

>Censoring content you disagree with is societal suicide.

There's a big difference between censoring truths you don't agree with, and just moderating verifiable outright lies. The problem is that most people are decent human beings, and find it impossible to believe that someone would write something on the internet that is just a completely fabricated lie. Fake news hucksters take advantage of this psychological "hack" and exploit it, which should not be allowed to happen.

One trouble is that it's much faster to create fake news than to shoot them down with evidence.

And as we have seen (for example with conspiracy theories), some people refuse to believe no matter how much facts you try to throw at them.

With centralized platforms we might be able to still block the fake stuff and discredit people who post junk, but in decentralized world this will be impossible. People choose who they follow and to which fact checking service (if any) they subscribe.

> You sound like you want them to do more moderation?

> It amazes me that we've reached the point where there are commenters on Hacker News arguing in favour of online censorship.

Moderation includes improving links (such as changing the primary link from a PR note to an actual research paper), improving titles (to reflect what is actually said in an article without unrelated hyperbole from a submitter), or even just adding the year of publishing for older articles in parentheses.

I’m just providing examples that few would debate as censorship. There are certainly others. I absolutely support constructive moderation.

But many people on Hacker News don't use Facebook. Don't you wonder why that is?

I'm not really sure that removing blatantly false nonsense would be considered "censorship". It's more about improving the quality of the site, and filtering things that are obviously wrong.

> It amazes me that we've reached the point where there are commenters on Hacker News arguing in favour of online censorship.

Why? Do you think that HN is a moderation-free bastion of unfiltered speech?

Sorry, I emphasised HN because I perceive it to be a place where "enlightened people" (in a non-sarcastic sense) tend to hang out. And therefore, of all the discussion forums I can think of, HN is the one that is most likely to have a view on censorship that prefers freedom of speech rather than suppression of wrong-thinking.

> And therefore, of all the discussion forums I can think of, HN is the one that is most likely to have a view on censorship that prefers freedom of speech rather than suppression of wrong-thinking.

You appear to be suffering from the misapprehension that "freedom of speech" means "the HN community should tolerate bullshit" rather than "you can't be put in jail for bullshit". The difference is extremely important to many of us.

I wasn't talking about moderation on HN at all. I was talking about moderation on Facebook.

> I wasn't talking about moderation on HN at all. I was talking about moderation on Facebook.

So was I. But you're talking about the people here.

I don't see why you think it matters where scam blocking happens. So far in these comments you seem to be saying that scamming needs to be defended as a practice. That's a hugely psychopathic position, so I hope the interpretation is wrong. But when you use the phrase "freedom of speech" against moderation of fake news, which are scams perpetrated on the vulnerable public, not a synonym for "news you don't want to hear", it becomes hard to interpret otherwise. I think that most people here would probably say that Facebook isn't a place where social responsibility should vanish, and part of responsibility, part of having a conscience, is protecting people, both individually and collectively, from scammers. Because Facebook is not a copper wire. Facebook is an interconnected network of its participant members, just like HN.

Would you clarify what you mean by online censorship? Do you believe that there should be no changing or altering content at all? That people should be able to post whatever they want wherever they want? Are there any limits that are reasonable in your opinion?

Facebook is trying to be the only place people communicate. It's just as unacceptable for Facebook to be removing or hiding information as it is for the email protocols to be removing or hiding information. If people don't want to look at something, they can unfriend the person posting it.

So, yes, I believe there should be no changing or altering content at all. I believe Facebook should act like a dumb utility instead of trying to impose themselves as a moderator over people's private lives.

Only on Facebook? Or anywhere? No limits on posting illegal material?

There should be no limits on anywhere that is trying to be a general-purpose communications utility. I'm fine with people, for example, deleting trolling from the comments on their personal blog or whatever.

FTP doesn't care if you're transferring "illegal material". Neither does TCP, neither does HTTP, neither does email. Why should Facebook be different just because it's implemented as a corporation instead of a protocol?

While a protocol may not care, jurisdictions do have a say as to what is transmitted over them. A mailbox doesn't care what's put into it, but it's illegal to send a bomb throw the mail.

I think your argument with respect to Facebook attempting to be a utility is interesting, but I'm not sure how true it is, and whether that actually implies no restrictions. Utilities are generally subject to regulation. Edit to add: One can discuss what form that regulation should take and what it's limits should be, but that's different from saying there should be no limits.

If you think people shouldn't be allowed to say certain things, you need to be going after the people saying those things, not the technology they're using to say it.

I think here is where a potential misunderstanding is. I've said nothing about "people shouldn't be allowed to say certain things", I've been asking purely about whether or not there should be regulations or items removed from a site, including illegal material. If I'm understanding you correctly, you're looking at this purely as a censorship issue. There's a difference here, and one that's worth at least acknowledging. For example, if someone is posting something that is illegal, the appropriate authorities will both remove it from the post and attempt to go after the persons responsible for posting it, whether that's online or in the real world.

There's room for discussion, but first we have to figure out exactly what where' discussing, otherwise we're just taking past each other, and accomplishing nothing.

Those old enough would remember fake news used to go through email chains. Even if we ban Facebook, people would do the same through email, should we ban or censor that too? Don't blame the messenger. People enjoy sharing fake stories that sound too good to be true because it makes them feel good, this is probably how most religions got to exist and propagate, way before facebook. This problem is as old as humanity and blaming it on facebook, social media or emails is a bit short sighted. We'll get through this :)

To state the obvious, there's a difference between Facebook and email. It takes effort to hit "Forward", select everyone in your address book, and send that email. Meanwhile, a "Like" is input to Facebook's stupid world-destroying algorithm (they put Trump in power, 'nuff said) to "Let's show this content to more people!".

And email is more personal, if I got email with some stupid content from someone I knew, I would probably take time to reply to show them that the mail is full of crap.

> It takes effort to hit "Forward", select everyone in your address book, and send that email

This was mostly done by computer illiterate grandpas, so I would say it was pretty easy to do.

>...this is probably how most religions got to exist and propagate

FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: SHOCKING! Learn this one secret trick a carpenter used to resurrect from the dead!

Indan here.

Just want to say majority of these fake news come from Whatsapp forwards that spreads like wildfire amongst Indians and not Facebook.Check out the subreddit r/theunkillnetwork that covers many of such forwards.

I really like HN, but I don't find the "flag" link all that obvious (nor a button). It's front and center for the top of the comment thread, but there is no obvious way to "flag" a comment in a thread other than to click on... the "age" link first, in order to load the view with that comment at the top.

If I wanted to spread disinformation that's where I'd do it; I doubt many people would take that extra step unless it was super obvious and offensive to them. Meanwhile everyone else has bought it.

I think the relative resilience of HN to FN comes from the technical nature of the audience (high expectation of evidence on most topics) and its irrelevance to political manipulations.

It seems to me that

And will never have good moderation because once you pass through the initial stages of set-up; good moderation is good editorial ability.

And that costs manpower, which would obliterate the business model of Facebook or other social media platforms.

> And that costs manpower, which would obliterate the business model of Facebook

This presents a clear legislative solution. Extend libel liability to social media platforms. Defamation law is well established. Extending it to platforms forces them to moderate, keeps things de-centralised and adds a scaling limit to boot.

I think that'd probably hurt large internet forums and other non/minimal profit communities more than anything. I mean, Facebook wouldn't like being liable, but they do at least have the money to fight any claims and to theoretically pay staff if forced to.

A site that's a fair bit smaller but still popular enough to have trouble moderating things would be utterly screwed.

Forget large internet forums; what am I supposed to do when someone alleges that my small forum with five active members gets hit by this? It would be a death knell for any new venture that doesn't have several million dollars in funding for legal defenses alone.

I used to be n flicker and many communities had pretty good moderation --there was also a flagging mechanism. It worked pretty well. It seems the issue is scalability. The bigger a group gets, the more unwieldy they become. Small ones also get ignored.

Yet, for all the good, there was also the specter of in-crowds and echo chambers. That is also manifested in Reddit.

Still, I think group-centered moderation is key. If a group is "censoring" you, go create your own group with its own rules. They might also put a limit on group size and auto-split at a given threshold.

I would assume facebook and such social network would love fake news, puffed up news since they are more likely to be sensational, raise controversy, get people talking/sharing. A win win for them. Who cares if it's right/wrong, truth/false. More clicks mean more money.

The problem in India is WhatsApp, which cannot have moderation because it is end-to-end encrypted.

Another problem is that many of us seldom correct or inform them in fear due to not wanting to antagonize them.

> Facebook and social networks have absolutely no moderation.

Do you prefer moderated fake news?

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