Facebook Promises To Censor All Material That Makes Zuckerberg Sad

Earlier this morning, Facebook Vice President of Media Partnerships shared a new blog post on the company"s website detailing precisely how they intend to censor content with which they happen to disagree.  Apparently all content providers who share "clickbait or sensationalism, or post misinformation and false news" will be deemed ineligible to monetize their efforts over Facebook.

To use any of our monetization features, you must comply with Facebook’s policies and terms, including our Community Standards, Payment Terms, and Page Terms. Our goal is support creators and publishers who are enriching our community. Those creators and publishers who are violating our policies regarding intellectual property, authenticity, and user safety, or are engaging in fraudulent business practices, may be ineligible to monetize using our features.

Creators and publishers must have an authentic, established presence on Facebook — they are who they represent themselves to be, and have had a profile or Page on Facebook for at least one month. Additionally, some of our features like Ad Breaks require a sufficient follower base, something that could extend to other features over time.

Those who share content that repeatedly violates our Content Guidelines for Monetization, share clickbait or sensationalism, or post misinformation and false news may be ineligible or may lose their eligibility to monetize.

Ironically, the biggest peddlers of "clickbait or sensationalism, or misinformation and false news" these days seems to be the largest, and "most respected" mainstream media outlets...presumably there is a carve out for the likes of CNN, NYT and Wapo?

Of course, we first noted the efforts of Facebook to combat the spread of "fake news" over social media back in December 2016 when they first introduced a filter intended to flag "fake" content so that users wouldn"t have to go through the hassle of critically analyzing information on their own.  As we noted at the time, it was a genius plan, except for one small issue:  who determines what is considered "fake news" and how exactly do they draw those conclusions?  From our prior post (see "Facebook Launches Campaign To Combat "Fake News""):

The first problem, however, immediately emerges because as NBC notes, "legitimate news outlets won"t be able to be flagged", which then begs the question who or what is considered "legitimate news outlets", does it include the likes of NYTs and the WaPos, which during the runup to the election declared on a daily basis, that Trump has no chance of winning, which have since posted defamatory stories about so-called "Russian propaganda news sites", admitting subsequently that their source data was incorrect, and which many consider to be the source of "fake news".

Also, just who makes the determination what is considered "legitimate news outlets."

Luckily, Zuckerberg cleared up all the confusion in a subsequent post in which he basically admitted that all "fact-checking" would be outsourced to disaffected Hillary voters and the completely impartial, "myth-busting" website Snopes.com.

Historically, we have relied on our community to help us understand what is fake and what is not. Anyone on Facebook can report any link as false, and we use signals from those reports along with a number of others -- like people sharing links to myth-busting sites such as Snopes -- to understand which stories we can confidently classify as misinformation. Similar to clickbait, spam and scams, we penalize this content in News Feed so it"s much less likely to spread.

Keep in mind folks, this entire Facebook witch hunt has been prompted by $50,000 worth of ads that "MAY" have been purchased by Russian-linked accounts to run "potentially politically related" ads. 

Visualizing The Fake News Problem

PEER OPINION FILLS A VOID LEFT BY FALLING TRUST IN MASS MEDIA

There’s been no shortage of blame passed around for the so-called “fake news” epidemic that has been front and center since the U.S. election.

As Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins explains, social media has been singled out as one key factor leading to the spread of misleading or false news. However, low barriers to entry for creating content, hyperpartisanism, confirmation bias, and the echo-chamber effect have also been identified as causes or symptoms in the proliferation of such stories.

It’s certainly a complex problem to unravel, and many proposed solutions are just as alarming as the symptoms they try to treat. The decentralization and fragmentation of information is the core of what makes the internet great, and this democratization helps to decouple power away from the established institutions that may or may not have our interests at heart.

Source: Visual Capitalist

How do we regulate news for its authority and legitimacy without stifling alternate viewpoints, differing narratives, and independent sources of information?

ROOT CAUSES

In today’s landscape, people are turning away from traditional media and gravitating towards digital content. In this new digital media paradigm, who is considered a trustworthy and convenient source of information?

As long as they could remain reputable, the mainstream outlets that garnered eyeballs throughout broadcasting history should have been the obvious benefactors of this transition. Groups like CNN and Fox News, or The New York Times and The Washington Post, could have remained unquestioned authorities on the issues.

However, Desjardins continues, it seems like this opportunity has been recently squandered to some extent. These outlets have been slow to adopt their business strategies to the digital landscape, and they remain in damage control mode as advertising revenues drop and profitability wanes. Publishers have been under immense pressure to generate views, and have taken shortcuts in content creation to do this. Hyperpartisan viewpoints that confirm existing biases (aka, the Huffington Post or Breitbart models) and sensational clickbait headlines have been one easy way to build traffic. Some publishers also have an itchy trigger finger, and it seems that getting a story out first has become more important than verifying its validity.

These above factors have, ironically, led to mass media as being a direct part of the “fake news” problem. The retracted stories on Russian propaganda by the Washington Post have been a lightning rod for scrutiny, and entire posts are dedicated to keeping misleading stories from established media at bay. Having a track record with zero blemishes is obviously a difficult target to hit, but the reality is that we are seeing misleading news from everywhere now: “fake news” outlets, mainstream outlets, and the White House itself.

FALLING TRUST IN MEDIA AND INSTITUTIONS

Even before “fake news” hit the mainstream, a poll by Gallup showed that Americans’ trust in mass media was hitting an all-time low. In September 2016, only 32% of people said they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the media, which is a decline of -8% from the previous year.

A report from Edelman from January 2017 is even more damning. Trust of the media declined -5% from 2016, which is faster than trust is declining in government (-1%), business (-1%), and NGOs (-2%).

As we mentioned earlier, the rise of fake news is complex and very difficult to untangle. However, the fact is that established news outlets aren’t doing themselves any favors. If people feel like they can’t trust the Washington Post or other such sources, then it should be no surprise that they are turning to the power of “word of mouth” from their peers more often – no matter how fallible this might be.