Is Facebook right in asking its users to solve the problem of fake news?
As part of his New Year resolution to fix Facebook’s problems, Mark Zuckerberg has posted a new entry in his page with some ideas about how he intends to select the items users will see in their News Feeds.
His first measure, modifying News Feeds to reduce the reach of news and videos to the benefit of content created by users’ friends, sparked controversy about the interaction between the social network and the media; the second promises to deepen that controversy: Mark says the company must create a ranking based on the reliability of the sources of information, but given he’s not comfortable deciding which media should be considered reliable sources and didn’t want to create an external committee to do so, he’s opted to ask Facebook users.
Which raises the question as to whether we can we trust the judgment of Facebook users as to the reliability of news sources. Which is pretty much the same as asking whether voters can be relied on to make the right call with a candidate. What happens on a network of over two billion users when, for example, the readers of an openly sensationalist source or one that is fiercely biased or controversial is regarded as the most reliable? We shouldn’t forget that tabloids are the most popular newspapers in many countries: they reflect a basic human need, and one that appeals to many of us.
In his sketchy entry, Mark says the idea is to ask Facebook users about their level of familiarity with a certain source, and then ask them to make a statement about its reliability. This is to separate publications considered reliable only by their readers, compared to those recognized or accepted as such by society as a whole, even by people who don’t read them. When those who are not familiar with a source are eliminated from the sample, the result becomes a ratio between those who trust a source and those who are familiar with it, which, again, raises all kinds of questions: what happens when trying to preserve a balance between large, obvious and strongly consolidated or established sources, compared to smaller, specialized or newly created publications? Will Facebook become a place where only traditional, long-standing media are accepted? How can Facebook prevent users from lying, by claiming to be familiar with a source even if they have never read it, calling it unreliable even though they know it really is, or vice versa? And what about publications rallying their readers to take sides, editorializing about Facebook’s intentions trying to manipulate them? After all, it is very likely that a large proportion of people know they are sharing fake news and want to extend their reach because they want to believe their lies, wish they were true, or because they reflect their world view.
Fake news is not simply about tricking gullible or uneducated people with misleading headlines or content. The problem is more complex, and fake news can be spread as much by interested parties or simply out of curiosity or a desire to see arguments out there that go against the mainstream. Letting the public decide is all well and good in theory, but is the public sufficiently informed, or is it liable to respond based on received wisdom or lies that have been dressed up as truth or misinformation? Establishing a source’s reliability is probably more about the ideological distance between a publication’s editorial line and the opinions of the person deciding its reliability. Is it possible to avoid, detect or take into account these factors when making decisions about which sources of information are considered reliable and which are not? What can be done algorithmically when detecting patterns of fake news, whether deliberate or artificially constructed as part of a system? Is it possible to establish a single universal classification of reliability, and what are the likely results?
(En español, aquí)
