Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby

Tuesday, 7 November 2017

Facebook tries promoting fake news to combat it, amazingly discovers it doesn't work

Face Fakebook : what the hell are you doing ?

A Facebook test that promoted comments containing the word fake to the top of news feeds has been criticised by users. The trial, which Facebook says has now concluded, aimed to prioritise "comments that indicate disbelief". It meant feeds from the BBC, the Economist, the New York Times and the Guardian all began with a comment mentioning the word fake.

In a statement, Facebook told the BBC: "We're always working on ways to curb the spread of misinformation on our platform, and sometimes run tests to find new ways to do this. This was a small test which has now concluded. "We wanted to see if prioritising comments that indicate disbelief would help. We're going to keep working to find new ways to help our community make more informed decisions about what they read and share."

Bullshit. No-one in their right mind could possibly think this was a good idea. Certainly no-one who's ever used the internet for more than 35 seconds.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41900877

2 comments:

  1. Perhaps it was a quiet word from the Russian state-owned enterprise who have quite a large investment in Fakebooknik.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Facebook, how are you going to verify news stories you carry on your network?"

    "...Crowdsourcing?"

    "Get out."

    ReplyDelete

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