<story><title>Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/21/facebook-is-rating-trustworthiness-its-users-scale-zero-one/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WiseWeasel</author><text>To me, fake news also includes slanted coverage of true events (i.e. covering events in such a way as to convey a sponsored message, biased polling methodology, etc.). That encompasses statistically approaching 100% of trashy sources you’re likely to encounter as &amp;#x27;sponsored content&amp;#x27;, as well as a healthy portion of more established sources&amp;#x27; content. I&amp;#x27;d be likely to report a majority as fake news in perfectly good faith if given the option.&lt;p&gt;Maybe the term isn’t as narrowly defined as your (former?) employer would like.&lt;p&gt;Edit: upon a bit more reflection, I do take for granted a desire to protect life and liberty (in that order), and anything that appears to threaten that view will draw special scrutiny, and potential abuse of reporting features.</text></item><item><author>mic47</author><text>I worked for FB anti-spam team, and believe me, nobody trusted user feedback absolutely (i.e. it&amp;#x27;s good to send to review, but not automatically take down). I guess that with fake news the signal to noise ratio is even worse.&lt;p&gt;The whole article sounds more like focusing on one implementation details of review queue prioritization (i.e. what is the difference of definition of &amp;quot;fake news&amp;quot; for this user vs Facebook&amp;#x27;s definition), rather than bigger picture.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;quot;Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false simply because they did not agree with the content.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Well, yes. Have they not learned from any of the preceding work on moderating?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rmrfrmrf</author><text>I think the use of &amp;quot;trustworthiness&amp;quot; is misleading. Really it&amp;#x27;s more &amp;quot;how likely is this person to accurately flag an article that matches Facebook&amp;#x27;s internal definition of fake news.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That would mean that your number would be on the lower end, but that&amp;#x27;s not a reflection of your character. More likely it just means that whatever queue is set up for review will wait until more and higher-scoring individuals also flag the article before bumping it up the queue.&lt;p&gt;Funny how this article is something I would flag if I used your definition of fake news. To me this article is trying to allude to some nefarious Black Mirror nonsense.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook is rating the trustworthiness of its users on a scale from zero to one</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/08/21/facebook-is-rating-trustworthiness-its-users-scale-zero-one/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>WiseWeasel</author><text>To me, fake news also includes slanted coverage of true events (i.e. covering events in such a way as to convey a sponsored message, biased polling methodology, etc.). That encompasses statistically approaching 100% of trashy sources you’re likely to encounter as &amp;#x27;sponsored content&amp;#x27;, as well as a healthy portion of more established sources&amp;#x27; content. I&amp;#x27;d be likely to report a majority as fake news in perfectly good faith if given the option.&lt;p&gt;Maybe the term isn’t as narrowly defined as your (former?) employer would like.&lt;p&gt;Edit: upon a bit more reflection, I do take for granted a desire to protect life and liberty (in that order), and anything that appears to threaten that view will draw special scrutiny, and potential abuse of reporting features.</text></item><item><author>mic47</author><text>I worked for FB anti-spam team, and believe me, nobody trusted user feedback absolutely (i.e. it&amp;#x27;s good to send to review, but not automatically take down). I guess that with fake news the signal to noise ratio is even worse.&lt;p&gt;The whole article sounds more like focusing on one implementation details of review queue prioritization (i.e. what is the difference of definition of &amp;quot;fake news&amp;quot; for this user vs Facebook&amp;#x27;s definition), rather than bigger picture.</text></item><item><author>pjc50</author><text>&amp;quot;Lyons said she soon realized that many people were reporting posts as false simply because they did not agree with the content.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Well, yes. Have they not learned from any of the preceding work on moderating?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>macintux</author><text>The problem with conflating biased coverage with fake news is that the latter phrase becomes meaningless.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Fake&amp;quot; means &amp;quot;false&amp;quot;, not &amp;quot;stuff I disagree with&amp;quot;.</text></comment>