Philippine 2021 Nobel winner Ressa calls Facebook “biased against facts” | Hacker News Reader

Philippine 2021 Nobel winner Ressa calls Facebook “biased against facts”

reuters.com

29 pointsgraderjs18 comments

She is correct with that statement. A decade ago I would have not imagined that "fake news" will become such a big issue for society.

We need to find ways to combat at the very least the state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. FB and others must be forced to do much more here.

I remember my faculty colleague tackling fake news in the political context using machine learning back in 2008 and he was worried that this could be the next iteration of "digital wars" that could distrupt economies.

We all shrugged it off because we didn't believed that people could be so easily manipulated as to "believe everything they saw on the Internet".

Yeah...

> need to find ways to combat at the very least the state-sponsored disinformation campaigns. FB and others must be forced to do much more here.

Here is the root of the problem... the state is the only entity that can force them. Facebook doesn't have an internal value system that will allow them to do the right thing. They could be so much better.

  "We need to find ways to combat at the very least the state-sponsored disinformation campaigns"

Require each account to have unique ID verification in order to confirm that it's a real person. Government can provide this service if there's concerns about user data. Allow users to post under a fake name in order to protect open speech, the only requirement is that it's a real person. This removes the bots. Foreign govts can still co-opt real people's IDs but it would be much harder for them.

If we could, it would be more sustainable to not chase bad guys or implement more "fact control systems", but make people and networks more resilient against misinformation.

I would speculate in terms of better education to make people more resistant, and controls mechanisms that limit viral spread (no matter what the content is - i.e without fact review boards).

I’m a bit confused on the solution she advocates. Does she want government, in her case, Duarte, go tell Facebook how to run Facebook? What is her solution?

I think you exactly hit the nail on head, not just about Duarte, but especially about the whole "regulate Facebook" meme

Regulating Facebook, while it mantains its monopoly position, means opening the door to a very grim future.

The problem of Facebook, it's not their internal policies or moderation guidelines. The problem is its own size and prevalence in the world. And this, yes, requires bold public action. Facebook should be seen as infrastructure.

There is a delicious irony in a nobel peace prize winner advocating for more centralised control on speech. But I’ll leave it to people who take non-scientific nobel prizes more seriously than me.

Don't you think that Facebook is a centralised entity that controls speech globally?

The most mainstream interpretation of this problem is that the issues are:

1. The speech is not controlled strictly enough

2. The speech needs to be controlled by somebody else who’s more aligned with my views

You know that famous sculpture of politicians debating climate change as they're up to their necks in water? They should add a few people beside the politicians holding up banners fighting for the right of Koch brothers and their climate change denying brethren to spend billions of dollars spreading fake news about climate change.

Surely you'll forgive us unsophisticated philistines who place more weight on non-scientific Nobel Prizes than you for having profound respect for people who have the balls to risk their own well-being to stand up to thugish, corrupt and oppressive leaders by exposing their corruption.

I also trust your intellect is able to grasp the absurdity of trying to frame Rappler, who risked her own safety to hold a leader with a track record of criminalizing journalism to account for their corruption, as an opponent of free speech.

Daily posts about how hard Facebook sucks. It’s getting old.

Until FB stops sucking, the volume, frequency and intensity of the commentary should continue to increase. "It getting old" is precisely what FB is waiting for so that they can continue their shittiness without consequence.

Sadly history shows us that they're probably right about how it'll play out.

I haven’t used facebook since 2012. That’s helpful. It’s the only thing that can make a difference.

Daily posts about how evil and sucky and blabla they are. Not so much. It’s annoying. We, as in HN, all know by now. Post Facebook alternatives instead.

I am not the OP, and I closed my Facebook account in 2008, because I really disliked the platform and I dislike walled gardens on the net. I saw where this was going and I was right.

Facebook is clearly bad. But I find that pointing at Facebook failings, it is becoming a bit too convenient for politicians and other higher-ups.

The problem of fake news has always been a problem. Manufacturing consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent didn't start with Facebook. Foreign propaganda didn't start with Facebook either.

I feel that bashing Facebook nowadays, hides a lot of more serious, nuanced and complicated political problems that need to be addressed.

For example, one among many, the “Russiagate conspiracy” was, indeed, a conspiracy: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/03/russiagate-donald-trump-muell... - but it was an extremely convenient one, and spread as truth for a long time, especially in mainstream media. Why was this happening?

In general, with Facebook, we are looking for technical solutions to political problems. The main problem with Facebook is not how it censors news, or how it regulates speech, the main problem with Facebook is that is a monopoly.

Trying to regulate speech on FB, while it keeps a monopoly position, that’s the real danger for democracy. And, of course, that’s exactly where we are headed to.

Last time I checked it still sucks, and it's getting worse by the day.

Could also say FB newsfeed is biased towards engagement--whether that be mob behavior or controversy. It's just Lord of the Flies in virtual form.

Even before newsfeed came out, the premise of FaceBook, a place to obsess over schoolmates and avoid doing your homework, was never going to distill a positive part of society. We could see Zuck itching to paper over that original reputation of superficiality by pushing more 'engagement' (and conveniently selling more advertising). But that objective function created an even bigger problem by resonant amplification of the human id.

We might think that bringing in regulation will solve this. But like LOTF shows at the end, even government is a bunch of kids on an island. http://LordOfTheFaces.com

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