Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/11/16/facebookers-defy-zuckerberg-f.html
…
6 Likes
This just in from the Hot News Desk: Facefuckingbook sucks! Video at 5.
10 Likes
Yeah, about that…
(I apologize if this is a frequent topic of disgruntlement that is just as frequently shot down. I don’t come here as much as I used to.)
10 Likes
What incentive does Facebook have to remove these? People want confirmation bias. This has been true since the inception of news media. With Social Media, people do not signal boost stories that counters their bias. If people stop seeing things they agree with, they will stop using the service. The reason conservatives use Facebook more than Liberals is because of exactly that. Comparatively, you’ll find more liberals on twitter and Youtube.
6 Likes
Wait, what? These people are concerned about the content of my private chats?
4 Likes
After Facebook agreed to make their “Trending” list fully automated we saw at least one Breitbart link in every list. Hey, Robots can be gamed very easily, I guess. All they had to do was hire a bunch of people to click Breitbart articles on FB and, voila, they dominated the trends. This is the kind of thing that should be easy to fix.
Next, Every time you stop to read a post involving a link to an article FB offers follow up articles in a short list immediately after. Another easy to fix thing that won’t impinge on anyone’s first amendment rights would be that when a false article is posted they can make sure that the follow up articles include an article with the headline saying that the offered information is false or misleading.
2 Likes
So is this news real or fake?
14 Likes
What if they used an up vote/down vote system like Reddit? Though I don’t use Reddit so I don’t know how well that works.
It’s 2016, why doesn’t everyone have Facebook Purity installed by now? Blocks all that crap, it’s wonderful, I’ve turned my Facebook feed back into a place where I can see my friend’s cat pictures.
8 Likes
It works great if you’re a member of /r/thedonald or many organized gamergate/redpill subreddits.
7 Likes
Reddit voting is all too easily gamed by scripts and bots, add brigading into the mix and it’s a lose/lose situation.
edit - @Phrenological, just who I was thinking of.
10 Likes
Reddit is good for small subreddits devoted to specific niches, woodworking etc.
It’s trash for general purpose discussion.
7 Likes
In theory, crowdsourced voting could work if votes were account-restricted, resistant to sockpuppeting, and implemented on a platform that had no algorithmic filtering that pre-selected items for you to see based on your past behavior and indicated interests.
Unfortunately, Facebook allows for (and even actively encourages) the same sort of self-sorting behavior that reddit does, and up/downvotes don’t mean much when a group of white supremacists can upvote posts in their own bubbles. Other community members don’t want to wade into that kind of toxic hellscape, and reddit’s own policies discourage drive-by downvoting.
There’s also an enthusiasm gap problem that could easily lead to the same distortions of reality we already have to deal with, because votes are driven by the dedication of a small but extremely vocal group of people.
6 Likes
Exactly. I don’t spend my life upvoting and downvoting and the gamifiction of fact and news is misery to me.
Basement-dwellers of all stripes drive the moderation and metamoderation of these communities.
~hits Like a few more times~
6 Likes
I think the only good solution to the proliferation of Truthiness in our news will be a small, dedicated group of individuals who are bi-partisan working to curate news site and pull links to articles on other sites that they’ve agreed are acceptably unbiased and factual.
1 Like
A few persons standing in the way of a waterfall of disinformation.
A properly curated stream is doable as a single person. Getting the masses to subscribe is folly.
I don’t scoff at the attempt on a personal level but see no greater victories to follow.
1 Like
Yep, r/crochet and the like for me, aww and dadjokes sometimes, and once in awhile r/all/new. Can’t say as I ever look at the front page.
Edit - I have many, many RES filters in place, which weeds out a lot of crap.
1 Like
This. A thousand times this.
Voting to determine if a news story is fake or not just reinforces the idea that facts are whatever we say they are*, which is the whole problem in the first place!
* I’ll acknowledge that, as a practical matter, lies repeated often enough may be indistinguishable from the truth, but you know what I mean. Facts exist, whether we believe them or not.
8 Likes
Better to do it on one’s own. There are plenty of reputable news outlets, including openly biased ones, still doing good work. Combine them with an RSS reader like Feedly and voila: crap-free newsfeed.
Feedly (and I’m sure others) offer shared collections, similar to how music sites offer shared playlists. It’s a good way to discover new quality media outlets from people you trust rather than garbage sources from bigots you happen to be related to.
2 Likes
I am actually more concerned with the ‘fake news’ being spouted during presidential debates. I would like to see a task force address this and make sure the spout-hole from which it came is not allowed to run his mouth off with other made-up-non-factual-truths while in office!!!
