Nieman Foundation at Harvard
The growing stream of reporting on and data about fake news, misinformation, partisan content, and news literacy is hard to keep up with. This weekly roundup offers the highlights of what you might have missed.
Oh look, Facebook is actually taking something down. Facebook would rather downrank fake news and conspiracy theories than remove them from the platform all together. The company has gotten slammed, especially over the past week, for this try-to-have-it-both-ways policy. This week, Facebook announced that “there are certain forms of misinformation that have contributed to physical harm” that it actually will be taking down — or, well, here’s the slightly more wishy-washy statement, to CNBC: “Reducing the distribution of misinformation — rather than removing it outright — strikes the right balance between free expression and a safe and authentic community. There are certain forms of misinformation that have contributed to physical harm, and we are making a policy change which will enable us to take that type of content down. We will begin implementing the policy during the coming months.” The change seems linked in particular to activity in countries like Myanmar, India, and Sri Lanka: “Although the policy change is upcoming, the company used these principles to remove posts in Sri Lanka alleging Muslims were poisoning food given or sold to Buddhists.”
The Guardian’s Olivia Solon attended the hearing where Facebook announced the change, and has some good questions — one of which is about the statute of limitations for this kind of thing. The Pizzagate hoax, for instance, led to an actual shooting months after that hoax began.
The focus is on Sri Lanka at first, but I'm v curious to know the threshold for "real-world harm" and whether something like Pizzagate would qualify
— Olivia Solon (@oliviasolon) July 18, 2018
Separately, here are some things that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Recode’s Kara Swisher on Wednesday, as part of a lengthy podcast interview for Recode Decode:
What we will do is we’ll say, “Okay, you have your page, and if you’re not trying to organize harm against someone, or attacking someone, then you can put up that content on your page, even if people might disagree with it or find it offensive.” But that doesn’t mean that we have a responsibility to make it widely distributed in News Feed. I think we, actually, to the contrary —
This @karaswisher interview with Zuckerberg is great, a zillion times better than the Congressional hearings. It reveals his tortured efforts to argue that people who *intentionally* post clear falsehoods are somehow just mistaken & should remain. https://t.co/QXg04SfxnP
— Walt Mossberg (@waltmossberg) July 18, 2018
Among the revealing pieces of @karaswisher's interview with Zuckerberg: he seems to think there's a meaningful difference between domestic misinformation (wrongness protected by free speech) and misinformation abroad (which causes "real harm"). https://t.co/KZXxWTIDb2 pic.twitter.com/bYQQRTp3V0
— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) July 18, 2018
A few words about holocaust denialism.
I'm a moderator on one of the non-toxic parts Reddit (r/AskHistorians). We've dealt with holocaust deniers for a while and find that the best policy is to shut that shit down.
Here's a short thread on what I've seen/dealt with. https://t.co/UR6wUPqmvy
— Andrés Pertierra (@ASPertierra) July 18, 2018
Also:
When asked about Trump's comment that there were "fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville, Sec. Nielsen seemingly doubled down. "it's not that one side was right and one side was wrong" #AspenSecurity
— Tess Owen (@misstessowen) July 19, 2018
"..anybody that is advocating violence, we need to work to mitigate"
— Tess Owen (@misstessowen) July 19, 2018
❤️️is eclipsed by 😠 Facebook users are increasingly using the “angry” reaction in response to legislators’ Facebook posts, Pew finds.
Legislators’ Facebook audiences became much more likely to react to posts with Facebook’s “angry” button in the wake of the 2016 election. Prior to the election (but after the “angry” feature was released), just 1 percent of all reactions to posts by Democrats were angry. After the election, that share increased to 5 percent, on average. Among Republicans, the share of angry reactions increased from 2 percent before the election to 6 percent after. While “likes” remain the most common reaction, “angry” was the most frequently used of the six alternatives (such as “haha,” “wow,” and “love”). This has not always been the case. Prior to Trump’s inauguration, the “love” reaction was the most commonly used alternative to “likes,” but it has since been largely eclipsed by “angry.” The use of angry reactions to congressional Facebook posts rose throughout 2017, reaching its highest observed rates at the end of the year, comprising 9 percent of all reactions to the average Democrat’s posts in December 2017, and 13 percent of the average Republican’s.
Angry reactions were especially likely to ensue when posts expressed political opposition. Posts that expressed opposition to Trump received an estimated five times as many angry reactions as posts that did not express support or opposition toward any figure or group. When Democrats expressed opposition to Republicans, they earned six times as many angry reactions, on average. Because the emotional reactions were not available across the entire timeframe, this analysis is based upon posts created between Feb. 23, 2016 (the day before the reactions were released) and Dec. 31, 2017.
NewsWhip previously looked at reactions to hyper-partisan Facebook pages and found that “angry” was the most common reaction.
Apolitical Macedonian teens? Not so much. Sometimes it’s just “disinfobros” seeking AdSense cash, sometimes it’s more. A BuzzFeed joint investigation revealed that the political news industry of Veles, Macdeonia “was not started spontaneously by apolitical teens. Rather, it was launched by a well-known Macedonian media attorney, Trajche Arsov — who worked closely with two high-profile American partners for at least six months during a period that overlapped with Election Day.”
Our report about fake news from Macedonia, from Nov 3: https://t.co/Sdl6m6o0Oz
Wash. Post profile of two US guys — Wade and Goldman — running a hyperpartisan conservative site, Nov. 20: https://t.co/zXRhnLBjN0
Turns out these two hugely viral stories were completely connected.
— Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) July 18, 2018
Gab. A group of researchers from Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais took a look at the “free speech” social network Gab, which was founded by a Silicon Valley Trump supporter in June 2016 and has almost no content moderation. It’s turned into a haven for the alt-right and conspiracy theorists, and Apple and Google have both banned its app from their app stores. In addition to analyzing users’ race and gender (it’s mostly white men) and how far-right they are (61.1 percent of people listed on the Anti-Defamation League’s extremist list have Gab accounts), the researchers looked at how news is shared on the platform, and what sources that news comes from.
And here’s another research paper on Gab from earlier this year, if you’re interested.
