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  Geebo 12:08 pm on December 16, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Facebook ( 180 ), fake news   

  Facebook’s fighting fake news again 

  

  It feels like old home week again when it comes to the news. First we had yet another Yahoo hack and now Facebook is implementing new measures to fight fake news, again. This time they mean it.

  According to reports, Facebook is testing new tools for reporting fake news. It’s basically the same tools they have for reporting spam. When some users click the little down arrow that comes with most news stories on Facebook, they’ll be able to flag the story as false or misleading. This is said to trigger a review process that could end up have the story labeled as misleading or disputed.

  While it sounds great in theory, I’m sure there’s no way that the system could be abused. That was sarcasm by the way. This system could remind someone of the ‘community policing’ touted by a certain less than scrupulous classifieds site. While it was originally intended to report scammers and illegal ads, it’s since deteriorated into a tool for petty squabbles and trolling.

  This doesn’t even take into account that Facebook takes money from just about anyone in order to ‘boost’ their post or news article. It almost seems a conflict of interest for Facebook to rake in all this cash while claiming to fight fake news when anyone can pay to be featured.

  It seems like Facebook is trying to be both the cause of and the solution to fake news but logic dictates it can be only one of them.

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  Geebo 10:56 am on December 1, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Facebook ( 180 ), fake news, politics ( 15 )   

  Fake news is a problem, but is it Facebook’s problem? 

  

  A lot has been made about Facebook and its problem with fake news articles appearing on its social network. We even started discussing this back in August. Ever since Facebook eliminated its human curation staff the site seems to have flooded over night with fake or misleading headlines.

  In a blog post on Quartz, they discuss a study that shows that a majority of traffic to these fake, or what they call hyperpartisan news sites, comes from Facebook. As you may have surmised, hyperpartisan news sites are specifically designed to garner traffic from members of whatever political party they tend to represent For example, a site called ‘Occupy Democrats’ gets almost 80% of traffic from Facebook alone while the New York times only gets 11%.

  While Facebook’s former curation team would have prevented stories like this from ending up in their trending topics, it’s ultimately up to the Facebook user who shares and spreads this disinformation or hyperbole. Again, there are too many people on Facebook and the internet in general, who are too eager to share articles that reinforce their confirmation bias no matter how outlandish the premise of the story may be.

  While Facebook’s fake news quandary is indeed a problem, ultimately it’s not really Facebook’s problem. As a wise man once said “We have met the enemy and he is us.”