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December 7, 2019 03:34 pm

How Fake News Is Still Fooling Facebook's Fact-Checking Systems

Slashdot reader peterthegreat321 shared an article from Medium's technology blog OneZero revealing the "cracks, loopholes, and limitations in Facebook's systems that bad actors are busily exploiting."Facebook says it's proud of the progress it has made, though it acknowledges there's more to be done. "Multiple independent studies have found that we've cut the amount of fake news on Facebook by more than half since the 2016 election," the company said in a statement to OneZero. "That still means plenty of people see fake news, which is why we now have more visible warning labels flagging this type of content, and prominent notifications when someone tries to share it or already has...." The most glaring shortcoming in Facebook's systems might also be the one that's hardest to fix. Even when everything goes right with its fact-checking partners, their human editorial resources pale in comparison to the scope of misinformation on the platform, and they can only vet a fraction of it... In most cases, a story only rises to the top of fact-checkers' priority list once it has already gone viral. And it continues going viral during the fact-checking process. By the time it's marked as debunked on Facebook, its reach may have already peaked. The discouraging reality is that Facebook's fact-checking efforts, however sincere, appear to be overmatched by the dynamics of its platform. To make the News Feed a less misleading information source would require far more than belated debunkings and warning labels. It would require altering the basic structure of a network designed to rapidly disseminate the posts that generate the greatest quantity of quick-twitch reactions. It would require differentiating between more and less reliable information sources -- something Facebook has attempted in only the most halfhearted ways, and upon which Zuckerberg recently indicated he has little appetite to expand... [T]he progress the platform has made appears to be reaching its limits under a CEO who sees his platform as a bulwark of free speech more than of human rights, democracy, or truth. Last week, Facebook's only Dutch fact-checking partner quit the program in protest of the company's refusal to fact-check politicians.

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