Why We Can’t Expect Facebook to Fact Check Our Feeds

Why We Can’t Expect Facebook to Fact Check Our Feeds

I’ve held this opinion for awhile, that no matter what Facebook does, there’s no way it’s going to be able to deal with the scope of fake news, harassment, etc. that rolls through their platform every day. (Or any other social media company.) Anything they do simply won’t scale. Let’s take fact-checking, for example: What…

Hacking Crowd Sourced Technology

Hacking Crowd Sourced Technology

I have been concerned about the idea of trusting “crowd-sourced” data to influence how decisions are made with technology for awhile now. Mostly, it’s been with social media and “reporting” tools, which seem to me to be very easy to influence. For example, fake news reports, or harassment reports are an all-too-easy way to simply…

Linked: Singapore’s Fake News Law Is Also An Internet Surveillance Law
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Linked: Singapore’s Fake News Law Is Also An Internet Surveillance Law

The key graph is here: “Removal demands are supposed to be the last resort. The first response to alleged fake news is the issuance of a correction notice — again, as demanded by the Singaporean government. This is far less draconian than demanding removal of content, but this response method has its own set of…

What I’m Sharing (weekly)
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What I’m Sharing (weekly)

And Now The Prime Minister Of Canada Is Threatening To Fine Social Media Companies Over ‘Fake News’ “”Fake news” tends to be whatever top government officials declare it is.” What advice do you wish you’d gotten when you graduated from college? Feds: Autopilot was active during deadly March Tesla crash Apparently, we still have some…

The Poynter Institute Tried to Take On Fake News, Learned It’s Not So Easy

The Poynter Institute Tried to Take On Fake News, Learned It’s Not So Easy

I found this story a little late, but I find it to be illustrative of the whole difficulty with trying to fight what has become known as “fake news”. This was the attempt: On Tuesday, April 30, Poynter posted a list of 515 “unreliable” news websites, built from pre-existing databases compiled by journalists, fact-checkers and…

One Government Decided to “Do Something” About Fake News and Trolls, But You Might Not Like It

One Government Decided to “Do Something” About Fake News and Trolls, But You Might Not Like It

Naturally, it was Russia and human right’s groups are not happy. President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed into law a “sovereign internet” bill which will allow Russian authorities to isolate the country’s internet, a move decried by rights groups. I get why they are complaining. Putin has decided that his government will have to the…