Facebook Bans Fake News Sites from Using Its Advertising Network

http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-bans-fake-news-sites-from-using-its-advertising-network-1479175778

by kawera • 10 years ago

62 106 10 years ago

wsj.com

dvhh2• 10 years ago

would that be the end of the onion http://www.theonion.com/ ?

And what is defined as fake news ? These developments will prove really interesting.

Tempest19812• 10 years ago

This page provides some examples of fake news: https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-an...

"We rated 82 out of a total 666 right-wing Facebook posts as mostly false, for a percentage of 12.3%. Another 169 posts (25.4%) were rated as a mixture of true and false. Viewed separately or together (38%), this is an alarmingly high percentage."

Frqy3• 10 years ago

The critical part is the difference in how those on the right and left rate articles that are viewed as right or left leaning. No prizes for guessing how that will turn out.

Houshalter• 10 years ago

I love the onion, but it's deeply disturbing how many people believe their articles are real. There is a small niche online of screenshots of people falling for them: http://literallyunbelievable.org/

tscs37• 10 years ago

I admit that I once fell for an article from the German-based equivalent of the Onion.

I had a good laugh when I checked the domain though.

m1sta_• 10 years ago

I'd be surprised if they couldn't identify satire sites.

dvhh2• 10 years ago

Some people are not able to tell the difference ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Onion#Taken_seriously ) , and on the other side of the coin, some website could hide behind the the veil of satire to bring fake news ( or maybe put this article as one offshot satire attempt ).

yosito• 10 years ago

Interesting development and a move in the right direction.

vinhboy4• 10 years ago

I find it odd that a lot people think discerning between real and fake news is hard, or has some sort of insurmountable "gray area" filled with slippery slopes.

We've done it for pornography, and it has worked really well. I don't get bombarded with pornography on the internet anymore. Why can't we apply the same logic to fake news?

And no one thinks banning certain type of advertising from pornography sites as censorship. It still exists, it's still growing, and you can find it easily. Same applies here I think.

trendia• 10 years ago

Because there are perverse incentives to ban news that don't vibe with a company's/CEO's political goals.

vinhboy4• 10 years ago

Isn't there a bigger incentive to keep fake news since it attract eyeballs and make them money?

candiodari2• 10 years ago

If you refuse to accept the notion that anyone can be neutral, even if they want to, that's not just a case of incentives. It would happen, even if there were explicit policies to prevent it.

Clearly this action is being taken because people don't like who and which party got elected, and of course that must have happened because of "lies". So clearly it's now OK. Unfortunately what's going to happen is exactly what you fear : the republicans/Trump control congress, the Senate and the presidency. They can do a lot to bend these sorts of rules their way, and of course this puts them in a corner with a gun aimed at their head. Of course they will react.

So how do we get non-free press in America ? Well bay area overwhelmingly democratic private sector companies introduce it, in reaction to losing an election, to thunderous applause.

karmelapple2• 10 years ago

Pornography is socially unacceptable.

Fake news is socially acceptable, if it agrees with your (and many of you friends') viewpoint.

I have had a numerous friends and family of all levels of education genuinely share things that is clearly misleading, if not fake, to my eyes at first glance. There could be multiple reasons: some people simply want the story to be true, others simply trust a place that has a website and a mostly-shady look.

We need major change and guidance to help people separate lies from the truth... as long as people still want the truth, which is not entirely clear to me right now.

vinhboy4• 10 years ago

That's a valid point. I guess I am just hoping that viewing and sharing fake news is also socially unacceptable. Kinda like how you should be ashamed of telling people you got your stock picks from a palm reader or something like that.

ec1096854• 10 years ago

Fake news is absolutely not socially acceptable if it agrees with your own viewpoint.

Google does a pretty good job of detecting scam website these days by looking at site reputation and detecting link farms. Hopefully Facebook will do the same.

TheAceOfHearts• 10 years ago

I find it difficult to discern real and fake news because many in the mainstream media seem all too happy to twist words and take the least charitable position possible. How much twisting does it take until it becomes fake news?

basch8• 10 years ago

how about household cleaning tips. diy/lifehack blogspam advocating mixing vinegar and baking soda together to clean.

how about the uva rolling stone. i dont know how you can claim there isnt a gray area.

how about the dnc rigging the election, obviously one of the two sides is wrong.

makomk2• 10 years ago

No, banning pornography hasn't exactly been clean or simple. Remember the Facebook breastfeeding controversy?

Tempest19812• 10 years ago

Fake news is a natural extension of sticking to news sources that reaffirm our beliefs.

We tend to live in our own information universes. Broadening our views is uncomfortable.

forgingahead3• 10 years ago

The problem is that so-called "real" news is itself full of subjectivity, bias and hyperbole. So continues the hand-wringing and pearl-clutching from last week.

ec1096854• 10 years ago

How is that the problem? Can you cite some examples?

fareesh4• 10 years ago

There are multiple reporters who colluded with the Clinton campaign to push a specific narrative during the election. In one example, Glenn Thrush went so far as to call himself a hack in one of the emails to her campaign chairman, which he ended with "Please don't tell anyone I did this".

Granted there's a difference between bias and a completely fabricated article about something that did not happen, but presenting half the story is also problematic, as is coordinating with the people who the story is being written about.

Unfortunately, if one were to entertain the idea of banning Politico, it would be considered an affront to the idea of freedom of the press.

By agreeing to allow biased coverage to profit from advertising, Facebook is essentially saying that you can do this as long as you don't get caught. By the same yardstick, several right leaning media companies are guilty of the same sin, but the fact that we have proof in this case suggests that this is a standard practice in the industry, which reveals that honest reporting may only exist upto a particular point.

Source: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/12681

forgingahead3• 10 years ago

This article does a great job highlighting the double standards halfway down:

http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/media/how-the-mainst...

forgottenpass• 10 years ago

How is that the problem?

An obviously detectable "fake" news site is kinda benign compared to a serious looking outlet that tells the reader what they want to hear regardless of accuracy.

Remember when Jon Stewart spent a decade arguing that Fox News was doing a disservice to the country? Do you think Breitbart, HuffPo or any of the Gawker properties do better at informing the public.

grzm4• 10 years ago

I agree that the news situation is terrible. What's your solution?

forgingahead3• 10 years ago

Break up the media companies -- 6 of them owning the vast majority of media in the US is a massive problem. Unfortunately, the people supposed to guard against this are part of the same revolving-door lobbyist/crony complex that exists. The AT&T deal is the most recent one that should be blocked, and it seems like Trump has already indicated that is his position on the issue.

basch8• 10 years ago

better aggregators. we will never make the internet less noisy. we need better filters. facebook could easily have different toggles for the newsfeed to let you have more temporal control over what you see. currently any feedback you give goes into a black box and you cant change a feedback contribution later, you can only contribute more.

http://www.memeorandum.com/river

http://www.techmeme.com/river

http://www.mediagazer.com/river

https://redef.com

https://longform.org

http://www.aldaily.com

untog10• 10 years ago

Yes, news is a tricky, subjective thing. No, not all news sources are equal. Some contain hyperbole. Some contain outright lies. To suggest that we shouldn't fix the latter unless we can also fix the former is disingenuous.

r00fus• 10 years ago

News that is factually wrong and not redacted or corrected is disinformation.

tdb7893• 10 years ago

I don't understand why media being biased means you shouldn't try to stop stories that are completely untrue.

JacobJans• 10 years ago

The next step is to ban them from the platform. Any Facebook Page that continually posts fake news should be given a warning, and then booted if the practice continues. Just as Google has quality guidelines for websites, there should also be quality guidelines for Facebook Pages. To do otherwise is to open up Facebook's users to abuse.

_audakel• 10 years ago

When fb starts getting into the business of censorship, it's time there monopoly is investigated.

wmf2• 10 years ago

That's why if they're smart they won't block "fake news" but will add some kind of disclaimer.

untog10• 10 years ago

Facebook apparently already had a fix ready for fake news, but didn't implement it because it disproportionately affected right-wing news sites, and they were afraid of backlash:

http://www.gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was...

This got me thinking. I'm center-leftish, but I'd like to think open minded. To me, the results FB saw are correct - from Birtherism, Obama being a Muslim, Sandy Hook trutherism, all the way to Democrats using the voting records of dead people to swing the election, the false conspiracy pedalling news stories I've seen have been overwhelmingly on the right. (note that I am not saying all right-wing people believe these things, just that most of the people who do are right-wing)

But am I wrong? I'm constantly aware that Facebook puts me in a filter bubble. Does anyone have any good examples of left-leaning fake, conspiratorial news stories in the last few years?

adventured2• 10 years ago

The left was rampant with conspiracy theories about the FBI throwing the election. Hillary went so far as to partially blame Comey.

Half of my more liberal friends on Facebook believe the election was rigged in one way or another. Of course I don't know if other people are seeing the same response post election in their social feeds. It seems common on Twitter.

The great right wing conspiracy that the Clintons claim have been following/targeting them for decades, rather than their own actual behavior being the issue. That's not new, however it was present during Hillary's run.

Some of the more fringe leftists claim that Trump is in the pocket of zionists and that the election was being thrown for the benefit of Israel's interests (he was very outspoken in favor of Israel during all phases of the election). That's also not new however, that group tends to be universally anti-Israel regardless of the candidate.

Or the greatest conspiracy theory of them all for the election: Hillary was prevented from winning by sexist men determined to keep a woman out the Presidency. I've seen that one commonly in the mainstream left-leaning media.

untog10• 10 years ago

I've seen that one commonly in the mainstream left-leaning media.

Out of interest, in news reports or in opinion pieces? I wish newspapers did away with opinion sections, they serve no good purpose and cloud what news reporting actually is. I'd be interested to read the justification a news organisation gives for stating something like that as fact and not opinion.

jimrandomh3• 10 years ago

The left was rampant with conspiracy theories about the FBI throwing the election. Hillary went so far as to partially blame Comey.

That wasn't a "conspiracy theory", that was a straightforward interpretation of events which are not in dispute. Hillary had to mess up pretty badly for things to get to the point where that'd be relevant, but by calling it a "conspiracy theory" you come across as very dishonest.

planetjones2• 10 years ago

On the rare occasions I stray to see what nonsense is on my FB feed all I have seen is left wing fake left wing new stories. For instance the fake Trump quote from people magazine about republicans being the dumbest voters just would not die, despite it clearly being completely made-up.

etherfuse• 10 years ago

Ever heard of Fahrenheit 911?

geowwy• 10 years ago

Does anyone have any good examples of left-leaning fake, conspiratorial news stories in the last few years?

The theory that Putin hacked the Democrats to get Donald Trump elected.

There's zero proof that Russia is behind the leaks, but Dems still peddle this myth. Hillary Clinton even went as far as threatening Russia with military intervention over the emails. And there's still zero proof Russia had anything to do with it.

untog10• 10 years ago

There isn't conclusive evidence, but from what I've read, the hack to Podesta's email used a Bitly account known to be associated with Russian intelligence:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-hackers-broke-into-john...

Like I said, not conclusive, but I wonder what definite evidence you're likely to have with intelligence agencies. Point taken, though.

sirrocco• 10 years ago

When you say no proof, what would you expect good enough proof? I expect the Russians would never admit to anything.

badlucklottery2• 10 years ago

And there's still zero proof Russia had anything to do with it.

The western intelligence community has converged on the conclusion that the Russian government was involved and staked their reputation on that conclusion. So, unless you just don't trust your government at all, it's likely to be true.

jimrandomh3• 10 years ago

In response to this comment, I went and googled the incident. The primary source is a joint statement by the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence, which says:

"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations."

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-pr...

The Director of National Intelligence is capable of mistakes, and their saying it does not necessarily mean it's true. But the statement was absolutely unambiguous. And yet, on a google search for "Podesta email DNI-DHS statement", I found lots of sites lying outright about the content of the statement:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/441266/hillary-clinton-... http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/11/01/hillarys-russian-hack-... http://www.wuc-news.com/2016/10/no-hillary-17-us-intelligenc...

whybroke3• 10 years ago

I think you have the backwards: the right's instance that there is no evidence is the unreasonable position.

Of course one might insist it's a conspiracy by the Director of National intelligence but that just makes the claim even less reasonable.

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/215-pr...

dragonwriter• 10 years ago

Hillary Clinton even went as far as threatening Russia with military intervention over the emails.

AFAICT, this is itself a propaganda myth of the right (its a radical distortion of Clinton's suggestion that cyberattacks should be met with a range of political, economic, and military responses like any other attacks -- an announcement which was fairly similar in content, including the four identified adversaries, the Pentagon's own most recently announced cyberwar strategy, which predates the emails.

And there's still zero proof Russia had anything to do with it.

There is nonzero public evidence backing the conclusion of various cybersecurity firms that particular previously identified Russian actors were involved, a conclusion which predated and whose data likely provided a key input to the intelligence community determination (which may or may not also have additional all no public evidence backing it, which you wouldn't expect to be published.)

rdtsc• 10 years ago

Conspiratorial stuff starts brewing in the opposition. If say liberals are the majority, then conservatives will start generating conspiracy theories.

If conservatives come to power, they'll be more left-ish conspiracy theories around.

It's just a way to explain their minority status. We lost because "lizard people control the government" is much easier on the psyche than, "a lot of people simply don't agree with us".

tomp2• 10 years ago

CNN saying that it is illegal for the public to read Wikileaks emails.

I can't think of any other examples of outright lies, but there's alot of lying by omission; e.g. we now know that the DNC was heavily biased towards Clinton in the primaries, that they were inciting violence at Trump rallies, and that they were given the debate questions prior to debates. Was this even reported on main leftwing media?

Edit: also all the reduction of Trump's voters to just being racist, sexist and the accusations of the "whitelash" - why don't they talk about "blacklash" every time a democrat wins?

Edit 2: another example is the recent backlash against Breitbart. Although I see them mainly as a contrarian news site (similar to ZeroHedge), they probably have some bias - but just because it's the opposite of other media, you can't call it racism/sexism. Why is women voting for a woman feminist, men voting for a man sexist? Why are pro-black movements described as #BlackLivesMatter and pro-white movements as white supremacist? Accusations of bias are pretty empty when you're so full of it yourself...

fareesh4• 10 years ago

Wolf Blitzer was receiving interview questions from the Clinton campaign when he was going to interview candidate Trump. While this isn't evidence of lying it is certainly evidence of an unethical relationship between the media and the candidates that it is supposed to be covering impartially. To collude with one of the campaigns is effectively allowing the campaign to skirt FEC regulations and utilize the strength of an entire news corporation to influence the outcome of an election. One could argue that this has the same impact as fake news.

Source: https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/22673

grkvlt• 10 years ago

examples of outright lies

A lie is a false statement made with the intent to deceive. I believe CNN is merely wrong. The difference is the intent, but people are far too quick to throw out the accusation of lying every time someone makes a mistake.

Hanlon's razor and all that, would suggest incompetence rather than malice. I find it hard to believe there's a deliberate misinformation campaign going on at CNN where they are trying to get people to believe it's illegal to view Wikileaks emails even though they know it isn't - cui bono?

EDIT - Of course, it is possible CNN were deliberately lied to by, for example, an NSA or CIA official, who they incorrectly believed (due to the implied authority of government officials) and therefore took at face value. I can see the motive for NSA or CIA to lie here, so that people are frightened of committing an illegal act by reading the emails, therefore less people will see them; an obvious benefit, just not for CNN...

untog10• 10 years ago

Was this even reported on main leftwing media?

If you include NYT in this, yes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/21/us/politics/video-dnc-trum...

another example is the recent backlash against Breitbart

Breitbart was taken over by Steve Bannon after Breitbart's death, and it seems (inarguably to me) like it took a turn after that point. When you have headlines like "Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew", you're going to attract negative attention.

flukus6• 10 years ago

But am I wrong? I'm constantly aware that Facebook puts me in a filter bubble. Does anyone have any good examples of left-leaning fake, conspiratorial news stories in the last few years?

I think most seem to be right wing, but the left has it's share. Anti vaxers, anti GMO, anti "chemicals" tend to come from the left.

I think your mistaking the causation too. They aren't conspiracy theorists because they are right wing, they are right wing because they are conspiracy theorists. When you think the government is doing all these bad things then wanting less government is perfectly logical.

whybroke3• 10 years ago

...Anti vaxers...

Well actually that too is a right-wing thing.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2015/09/20/donald...

basch8• 10 years ago

How about fictionalized stories to emotionally support the narrative (just from this month!)

https://reason.com/blog/2016/11/11/election-night-hijab-atta... http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/01/attorney-rolling-stone-... http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-13/anti-trump-protests...

for a while now, liberalism has held an "ends justify the means" sort of attitude towards victims stories, out of context gender statistics, and "grassroots" activism. (conservatism has too, but that wasnt the question posed.)

obviously not all attacks are fake, and there is a lot of hate in the country. but a lot of sensationalized stories come out, that basically exist as propaganda, and spread like wildfire, without being fact checked. how many of you saw this link on facebook? how many of its stories are untrue? https://twitter.com/i/moments/796417517157830656?lang=en

if you stick to huffingtonpost & salon, and all the clickbait derived from their sphere, it really could be as manufactured and fake as the right, it just feels more real because the stories are more plausable.

there is also this article http://www.newsweek.com/myths-cost-democrats-presidential-el...

i mean, fuck, the story you just posted is allegedly fake, if that doesnt say something i dont know what does. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/11/14/did_faceb...

and as other people have pointed out, gmo, chemtrails, vax dangers have transcended parties and infected hippys and teapartiers alike.

dictum3• 10 years ago

Interesting point — it seems that right-wing misinfo is usually of the reactionary outrage kind (e.g. group X is doing this, this is outrageous, that's why we need [some variation of a return to morality]) while left-wing misinfo is of the revolutionary outrage kind (group X is doing this, this is outrageous, that's why we need [some variation of revolution])

stormcrowsx• 10 years ago

Hacker News is also a left leaning bubble so asking this question here will probably mostly just yield liberal viewpoints on the topic.

piotrjurkiewicz• 10 years ago

All of you are complaining about fake news, but what about omitted news?

What's the point in having a news source which presents only/mostly true news, the same time ignoring huge amount of those ones which do not fit their political line?

This will result in people having a false image of an overall situation, exactly the same as fake news will.

Moreover, I think news omitting is the root cause of fake news problem. People see certain events happen around them. They know these events are true because they see them with their own eyes. But they do not see reports on these events in mass media. The same time alternative and partisan media report these events, people see them on their FB timelines. So they redirect their trust towards these media and FB. If this schema repeats for years, they can trust these media so much that they can accept fake and unbelievable stories (which are also naturally more likely to appear in partisan media). And refuting these stories by mass media makes them even more sound in their eyes, especially if they once saw these media refuting stories which were real.

And this applies to both sides.

wmf2• 10 years ago

OTOH the media also loves to report non-newsworthy events, making them appear to be more common than they are. We now return you to our developing "missing white woman" story...

gscott3• 10 years ago

Please ban the Huffington Post while you are at it.

basch8• 10 years ago

before salon?

gscott3• 10 years ago

You are right. Some samples from the Salon webpage:

“The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office”: Republicans warn of Trump presidency

Donald Trump has killed American Exceptionalism: Why his election was the deathblow for our great national myth

White flight from reality: Inside the racist panic that fueled Donald Trump's victory

Has the American “experiment” run its course? The empire of chaos has overtaken America.

Please Google/Facebook add this to the list to remove as well.

olivermarks• 10 years ago

who is going to rubber stamp 'news' as 'real'?

venomsnake2• 10 years ago

The Ministry of Truth

wattt• 10 years ago

Exactly this. Worst possible outcome. It is solving the problem with more of the same the problem.

planetjones2• 10 years ago

I don't think it would be so hard for FB to partner up with snipes.com and provide some kind of check which flags news stories as potentially fake and offer the user the chance to click through to snopes in order to read more about it. With simple text matching and maybe extracting text from some of the images this shouldn't be too difficult. I know FB already have a tool, but I am not sure how it's implemented.

xiaoma• 10 years ago

snipes.com -> snopes.com

venomsnake2• 10 years ago

The cure is worse than the illness. The left went out of its way to take every word Trump said literally. In the most damning way, to produce outrage.

Are the 3000 thousand opinion pieces assuming that that Megyn blood was coming from her vagina and not her eyes, because it suited them more also fake news?

You cannot abstract talking to the other side. You cannot abstract discussion - and I mean real discussion, not demonstrating intellectual superiority

qwrusz• 10 years ago

While debating what is a "fake news" site. Maybe it's also time to revisit the debate what is a "news" site...

Organizations that do original journalism and news reporting seem to be struggling financially. Meanwhile, many popular sites now considered legitimate "news sites" don't do much original journalism of their own and instead they are mainly just curating or aggregating news from those original news sites.

(I'm not talking about sites like HN or reddit, I'm referring to large popular sites with "articles" where they're rewriting/spinning/summarizing news stories found elsewhere, then linking somewhere in their "article" to the original news site, lastly they add the most sensationalist clickbait headline they can come up with!)

News curation/aggregation sites offer a service people want, they are usually free to read, and copyright law cases have determined what they are doing is legal.

Facebook and Google clearly have a huge amount of power here. I support them taking action against fake news sites (I do look forward reading details what that means and how they do this).

But it's not just FBerg and Googy at fault here, part of the reason things have gotten this bad is the slippery slope where "real" newspapers, news-agencies and other organizations that have trained journalists doing original news reporting have let themselves be overrun by sites using their work without appropriate compensation or recognition. They have also fallen behind on the tech skills needed to deliver news on the noisy interwebs, and they have not pushed to revisit copyright laws that aren't working for anyone as intended.

gremlinsinc• 10 years ago

What's considered 'fake news' though.. I mean you could argue breitbart/huffington post which are both very biased are fake... yet they do have some honest articles in there- - but many REAL news services were calling it w/ major odds for Hillary even if they had data that pointed otherwise... MSM also did not report pro-Bernie news that might have led to him beating Clinton, and Trump in the end...

Since we've removed the rule that requires news to show the opposing view point on every piece of news -- it's pretty much all op-ed anymore...

Facebook Bans Fake News Sites from Using Its Advertising Network

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