According the news, Tim Cook mentioned that Siri would pop out of the Iphone 8 and do all your household tasks. At least, that is what Facebook displayed on their news feed. Of course, this story is complete nonsense. But how could this pop up as a genuine news story on Facebook? This is not exceptional. The story that Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly was fired because she supported Hillary Clinton was trending for a few hours, despite any ground of evidence. How is it possible that these fake articles keep emerging occasionally? This is because Facebook uses algorithms instead of human editors to present the news. People can be fooled easily. If somebody posts a fake story, there are always people who believe it. People will like, comment on and share the story. As a result, will pop up on other people’s news feed because the algorithm seems to think that people find this post very interesting. These actions will repeat themselves, which will lead to the fake story entering the trending topic page.
Many of you may think that a few of these accidents is not a big of a deal. Well, I think it is when you take a look at the vision of Facebook. Facebook wants to dominate the internet and introduce “notify”, which is an app that will send you a push notification about the news. This will give Facebook even more control about what news you will see. The least you can expect is the insurance that the stories are correct, right? Google is taking the right steps in this area. Last week, they announced it would launch a fact-checker to validate the news stories. Among others, Google will cooperate with “Full Fact” to validate the stories and mark them as ‘validated’ when the story is reliable.
In my opinion, Facebook has to match this service if it wants to be a big player in the news industry. What do you think about the algorithms of Facebook? Let me know in the comments.
https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/12/facebook-still-trending-fake-news-stories/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/10/14/google-to-fact-check-online-news-stories/
https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/14/google-added-fact-checking-facebook-its-your-move-now/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkantrowitz/facebook-wants-to-dominate-your-home-screen-with-notify-app?utm_term=.eivNN0ZxBP#.dyqkk3XZeK
Hi Silvan!
Thanks for the interesting article. I don’t agree that these fake news accidents are a big deal. When people see the stories and believe in them I think in most cases they ultimately find out that the articles they read were fake. They can learn that from the comment sections or follow up articles, which state that the particular news was a fake one.
Moreover, if an app or any other news service had a few of those fake story trending accidents, it can get a reputation of having fake news. In this case the market itself will resolve the problem, people will just stop using the service. Facebook’s notify app, which you mentioned in the article, is actually an example of ‘validation’ from the users. Notify was shut down by the company recently and part of the reason why, is that most people knew it shared fake news stories.
Hello Silvan, I really liked your post, you are pointing at a real issue. I totally agree with you on the fact that if Facebook wants to be a main player in the news industry they will have to follow Google’s procedures. However, I am wondering if Google and Facebook have the same interests and therefore incentives. Indeed, I think that what matters to Facebook is many people sharing, liking and commenting the content regardless of its quality. Furthermore, in my opinion a large number of users engaging with a specific content do not actually read it or just the title, showing their little interest but this also due to content proliferation. On the other hand, Google has a rather qualitative focus and wants its searchable content to be relevant and at the very least verified.
So this could lead to ask us what would happen if Facebook considerately loses engagement on its content ? Will it affect its monetization system and revenues ? Is it therefore a good idea for facebook to change its focus while risking the value of its network ?
Hi Silvan,
Thank you for posting about this interesting topic. I agree with you that Facebook should improve their news notifications regarding the content’s truthfulness. I think that the problem is two-folded. First of all, I think that Facebook tries to operate with too many news items. Facebook can’t handle the enormous amount news items and can’t translate these to your notifications. So maybe they should be focusing on fewer items. Secondly, I think that there is a lack in the algorithms that Facebook uses in its software. Facebook could probably work with key words to filter fake news items. Some words in the news articles are probably referencing to fake items. In my opinion, Facebook should invest in its IT department to solve this problem. If these fake items keep appearing too often, it could hurt Facebook’s reputation and could, at the end, lead to a decrease in the number of users.
Source: http://fortune.com/2016/10/12/facebook-fake-news/
Dear Silvan, thank you for your blog. I think it would indeed be great if Facebook would implement such a factchecker, so people can be sure the news they read is indeed true. However, will they use an algorithm to check the facts or will they let people / journalists do this task? Also, with Facebook wanting to introduce the push notification on news, they should be careful not to let users only read news they want to read, as this increases the likelihood of people being narrowminded. Of course people will prefer reading certain items, that fit with their interests, but I also think it is important for people to be aware of more than just what they are interested in / their beliefs. Hence, Facebook still has to consider several issues before implementing the push notification, in my opinion.
Hello Silvan and thank you for your post. I come across fake and incorrect news posts daily and I think this is very frustrating. It is an advantage that we can be up to date about the news by only using Facebook. Therefore, I think Google has done a good job introducing a fact checker so the fake and incorrect news can be filtered.
I also believe you are right that Facebook has to keep up with this service of Google if they really want to succesfully introduce and implement news feed in their application. Facebook has decided to shut down the Notify app (also see: http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/2/11843328/facebook-notify-shutting-down), but it will use the technology of Notify in their existing products such as Messenger. I hope Facebook has learned a lot about their ‘Notify’ experience and will deliver us correct and quality news in the future in the right way. Let’s hope it includes a fact checker.