there will always be noise. there will always be sensationalism. there will always be deceit and propaganda. what we can do is offer people the tools, and teach them how to navigate through the noise to the signal. one of those tools is to instill a sense of skepticism and a moral responsibility not to propagate noise.
when facebook and google ban ads on fake news, new less scrupulous ad networks will spring into place. there is always money in the banana stand, and by banana stand i mean peddling entertaining shit. and by shit i mean shit.
I have a novel idea on that front: What if to combat ad-driven fake news we will deprive people spreading them from money, so that it would not be profitable to show them ads. That money can instead be directed to subsidizing education for those same people in formal logic and critical thinking.
Facebook makes a lot of money on the parade of bullshit that they enable and propagate. Sanction them, tie them up in investigations and fines and magically they'll find a way to stop propaganda.
Alex Jones is a snake oil salesman. Aggressively pursue his financial dealings and poof, he goes away.
I'm scared people are going to keep pushing for social media to implement stronger filters.
I believe very strongly that the free flow of information (even when it's just wrong) is critical. Information gives people power, but withholding information takes power away. If a company like Facebook implements the filter, we're giving that power to them and hoping they are ambivalent.
The solution to fake news is for people to learn how to live in this new world. There used to be only a handful of news organizations, but now there are an infant amount of them. This is GOOD, it's democratizing, but it puts a burden on us as citizens, and consumers of information to understand the motivations of the authors.
This is an opportunity we should be happy to have and be scared of technological or manual solutions that threaten it.
More relevantly, if you've got a motivation to pay handsomely for the falsehoods to be propagated because they serve your purposes, you end up with truth having to compete with heavily subsidized falsehoods. That's a big ask.
It's not only about whether the falsehoods (say, National Enquirer type stuff, nonsense that hooks gullible people) are sexy in that they latch onto people's assumptions and fears. It's also about who's paying to keep pumping them out. None of this is organic. A lot of money goes into subsidizing this stuff. Follow the money and you end up with rival countries who actively want to see their enemies harmed, and have arrived at this very effective way of sowing chaos and sabotage.
People don't have to be that dumb, if you can flood their zone with crafted information to sway 'em. You just have to hook them and then lead them. You don't have to rely on people being incredibly, organically obtuse if you can play 'em and manipulate them, and that's where social media turned into a superweapon. It was for sale, and not very concerned about who was buying it, or why they were doing it. And here we are.
On the days leading up to the election, my feed was full of fake news stories. Every single one that looked fishy to me, Snopes had debunked. I posted a few replies, but I felt like it was a Sisyphean task of shoveling shit against the tide of misinformation.
Is there any hope that Facebook will do the right thing and put information ahead of profits? As a libertarian at heart, it pains to to say this, but I think the only way to fix this is government regulations. Of course it will never happen under Trump, but how else can force them to be good curators with all the power they wield.
On the contrary, I think it is crucial for us to fight against websites selling audiences.
Fake news exists because they are able to sell ads on their pages, and they are profitable because they attract people, creating feelings, outrage, unreasonable reactions that feeds the pre-existing bias in the whole population.
Fighting these should be cutting their revenue streams. Google did just that, but it is a survival move so as to avoid precisely being in the blast of defense move that ought to be taken by citizens.
However, Google can and will only do the bare minimum for them to show that they somewhat care and that they are in control. They are starting a play of cat and mouse with people that can easily switch platforms.
> It's useless and a waste of time.
Ad-blockers are pretty effective there. If everyone used ad-blockers, fake news website would not have any revenue left, beside some marginal subscription streams. Evangelizing for ad-blockers, against Facebook, against Google and against analytics in general is an effective way to fight against these parasites.
> The time you spend blaming Facebook is the time you don't spend actually fixing what should be fixed : creating an healthy environment for debate.
The time I spend blaming all social networks is a time spent to better the Internet and fight against populisms at large. As for how to foster a healthy environment for debate, I'd quote Sartre:
> Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
Replace anti-Semites, which were the populists of the pre-45 era, to whichever populism you want today, be it from the left or from the right. You cannot win with reason against them, because they speak to the guts and then explain that since they have popular support, they have already won. You cannot defend measure and reason because their main weapon is bipartism coloring things in black and white, and this will always be more popular than trying to explain things, to have some critical thinking.
Mass-media in general will always push forward this kind of gregarian thinking. Internet ought to be a way for us to build other ways to consume and produce, to share information. Facebook and Google and Amazon are building empires upon the ashes of the old world, effectively cutting the disruptive factor that Internet was introducing in its infancy. Fighting those mastodons is not vain, it is time spent actually fixing what should be fixed.
“We” have developed systems that sell fear and controversy above all else. Divisiveness gets more mentions and clicks. Narratives that push those buttons of fear get page views which are linked to advertising revenue. So long as modern information is disseminated via this value proposition, the (often boring) details will be drowned out when presented against emotion evoking news.
Separate advertising revenue from news and you’ll get a more honest take on a subject. This system encourages not just fake news but manufactured controversy.
I'm struggling with the takeaway here. Most of the people on the planet have grown up watching blatant misinformation being broadcast on TV, radio, and print. Specifically, during every single government election of note, anyone recall John Kerry and the swiftboats? Social networks now present a new tool to amplify a message, in addition to TV, Radio, Print. So is this a movement to police the messages? And where does this lead, marketing companies can't do business with international organizations during elections? And who decides what messages are allowed and disallowed? Seems this line or reasoning only leads to infringement of freedom of speech.
You don't have to imagine that world, it is already here. The vast, vast majority of "news" sites out there is already straight up propaganda or ad-focused pseudo grassroots bullshit. Maybe not yet completely AI generated, but that seems like it would only be the cherry on top of the cake for the people behind it. We need solutions for this and not ways to prevent what has already happened.
On the other hand, that technology and research is always going to be there. Let it loose in public and we can understand it, becoming naturally immune.
Is the alternative a naive public shielded from manipulative media? How long before that weakness is exploited, and by who?
The key to that immunity is education, of course. A little skepticism is all it takes to deconstruct any message with a motive.
I think the solution for the problem of fake news is going to be very difficult. People have a tendency of believing whatever they read in Facebook or a random google search or a random WhatsApp message, and that is going to be difficult to counter.
Traditionally the source of information could be monitored at least in well run countries. However, when anyone can make his/her views visible to the whole world and make emphatic claims with false logic, it is going to be hard to prevent people from believing them.
A lot of threads I saw on the Myanmar issue say Facebook should have done more. Maybe Facebook could change its algorithms to not show people aggressive stuff. Maybe they can have an option to report stuff. But what about people spreading propaganda in an exponential way, with only very few people reporting. How on earth any messaging platform will deal with that.
I think we are looking at a very painful compromise some where down the line.
Do you think that fake news websites (websites that intentionally post falsehoods to drive traffic) should be allowed to post on social media with impunity? How is that workable? Many people cannot distinguish fake news from legitimate sources of information.
Increasing noise (disinformation) is just as damaging to free speech as decreasing the signal (censorship).
The core question, and one that has existed long before Facebook even did, was how do we protect a population against propaganda. As psychology and marketing improve their ability to manipulate the mind, we have to get answer this or else democracies will fall into the hands of those who have control over these tools.
This is a hard problem and I'm hesitant of any solution on the level of 'ban lies'.
So here’s what will happen. Ban the “fake news” from Google, FB etc. You will have a pristine, non-offensive safe space bubble. All the banned folks will create their own safe space bubble on Parler or some other yet to be created platform. This won’t be a fringe group. It could be 30-40% of the populous. Comity and public discourse is extinct and then we really do have problems.
I think we are much better off with the misinformation and lies out in the sunlight for all to see and refute.
There is also the societal expectation that, just because a mainstream media news source asserts something, it may possibly not be 100% authentic. Never mind the direction that doubt can lead you: there's a trace of skepticism.
What's going on (by now, obviously) with Twitter and Facebook and all, is that they are a vector for bypassing skepticism, by delivering information purportedly from your personal friend who is personally trusted.
Still no neutrality, but if you can make a web of propaganda through people who are believing things their apparent 'friends' (through various signifiers) are saying, and coordinate that, you can propagandize WAY more effectively than through mainstream media.
FB and Google are huge companies and control majority of the information people get today. We should want them to be moral arbiters. Otherwise what else can we do? Most of us are so gullible.
Still hoping that people tire of it or that the truth comes eventually out seems defeatist. The internet traditionally solved the spam problem by thought leaders moving on to the next platform but in the age of Facebook the network effects keep people in place.
When I look at the issue from a economic and systems view the question is not how to stop any individual fake news story but how to tune the parameters so that there is
- Feedback to creators of fake news (historically fines or loss of head)
- Feedback to spreaders of fake news (historically fines or loss of licensee or head)
- Alternate views reaching readers of fake news
- Educational starting at school: Science, critical thinking and a culture that at times appreciates Grey+Complex+Diverse over Black&White+Simple
At the moment it is simply too profitable to do it. It is simply working too well to stop it. There is not a single measure that can stop it.
when facebook and google ban ads on fake news, new less scrupulous ad networks will spring into place. there is always money in the banana stand, and by banana stand i mean peddling entertaining shit. and by shit i mean shit.
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