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Facebook will start telling you when a story may be fake
Facebook will start telling you when a story may be fake
Facebook has struggled for months over whether it should crack down on false stories and hoaxes being spread on its site. Now, it has finally come to a decision. The social network is going to partner with the Poynter International Fact-Checking Network, which includes groups such as Snopes, to evaluate articles flagged by Facebook users.
washingtonpost.com




I made the mistake of reading the comments on that story. Why do I keep doing that? But so many people are complaining about censorship and their free speech and how they should be able to share anything. Its pretty depressing how many people dont see a problem with stories like pizzagate, spirit cooking or the claims that Hillary only had votes from illegals or dead people.
They don't see a problem because to them it is truth. (Which is a whole other level of sad.)
As long as I can make a case as to why something shouldn't be censored or considered fake news, then I'm all for it. Because lets be honest - it's going to happen where real news is going to get caught in the filter (and vice versa fake news let free).
The filter isnt going to be perfect right away but over time it will get better. The whole free speech or censorship argument as it is being used currently is kind of BS, you can say what you want but others can also not listen to you and tell you that you're an idiot too. It seem a lot of the current free speech crowd just wants to call people n@gger or other racist slurs and spread white supremacist BS and force everyone else to listen to them and give them a platform to spread their speech.
I'm a strong supporter of free speech but not just to be able to say racist slurs or anything like that. I just want to be able to disagree with someone without getting in any serious trouble.
I am not saying everyone who uses the free speech claim lately is racist or a nazi. Just a lot of them on sites like reddit are, its fine to disagree with someone as long as you can keep it civil.
They don't understand that freedom of speech is not about presenting ideas or opinions as facts.
More importantly they don't want to understand the difference.
Relevant XKCD
I agree with that comic all the way, bro.
Some of those comments are coming from people who essentially are trying to make a "controversy" out of nothing. See them on Twitter all the time.
Some of those comments are coming from people who enjoy the spread of fake/misleading news because they get a kick out of watching people be manipulated by propaganda they've helped spread. This is a threat to their pastime.
Some of those comments are coming from people who legitimately believe there's no such thing as fake news except for the Mainstream Media and Its Lies™. Facebook informing people that some news is fake is seen as further attacking the opinions they want to believe are facts, and replacing them with the facts they believe are lies.
This was mentioned over a lunch break at recent data conference I was at; the day's debate was all about how poorly the automated programs on offer analyse free text, as opposed to discrete data sets. Few businesses wanted to spend lots of money on humans to moderate their site content, but were aware it was the best last defence against the garbage that was undermining their brand.
Better late than never I suppose.