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Comment by fortythirteen | Hacker News Reader

Beyond the Beme platform itself, I'm greatly troubled by this SV notion that you can crowdsource objectivity, as if we have ever received a rational analysis from a mob.

Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.

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Not only that, but because Facebook is an online platform, they'll be fighting not only typical online security threats, but mass bot/troll campaigns to influence the result.

I think there's a greater threat from using "bots" as an easy excuse to silence opinions the network's owners don't agree with.

Taking a small subsection of a group and painting it as the majority is one of the oldest disinformation tactics.

bingo.

Taking a small subsection of a group and painting it as the majority

AKA stereotype

The "Surprisingly Popular Vote" actually works quite well:

- http://news.mit.edu/2017/algorithm-better-wisdom-crowds-0125

- https://www.princeton.edu/news/2017/02/06/crowd-wisdom-surpr...

Although it seems like there needs to be more research on the boundary cases

Are there people that actually want to implement "Surprisingly Popular" for voting in political candidates? It seems useful for things like finding the correct answer to a factual question, but I have no idea how it would work in politics.

It's less about politics than it is about the "wisdom of the crowds". For example, it'd be really useful to get info from traders if they have special information about how the market will move.

> Recent developments, like Facebook's decision to let its users determine what is and isn't factual (what is essentially Beme's advertised product), will lead to sanctioned groupthink.

It doesn't really matter. Groupthink is already "sanctioned" by the group. If something gets flagged as "non-factual" it will just embolden all the supporters of that thing.

Even if so, does that mean it's a good idea to use it as a profit center?

A good idea for what? I just think it doesn't really matter.

Perhaps you can identify individuals who are "usually right". And from there do the filtering.

"Usually right" by who's standard? You would require individual arbitrators to determine what's correct, and at that point, why do crowdsourcing?

> "Usually right" by who's standard

By the standard of the person you are showing the news to.

C.f.: collaborative filtering. Or how Netflix recommends movies.

Congratulations, you’ve just invented the echo chamber.

So people who at some point liked enough anti-vaxers posts to cross the threshold will never ever see any article presenting the facts that prove it's not true? And beside why would you want to serve users only the things that they agree with? It's not good for them, just makes them more stupid & easier targets for disinformation, but it's not good for Facebook neither because people love arguing online and cutting it down means also cutting the user interaction with the platform too.

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