While Facebook has promised to tackle its fake news problem, partially blamed for Donald Trump’s victorious Presidential election, it has fallen to third parties to properly deal with the issue. One such method of curating fake news on Facebook is web browser extension B.S. Detector, which fact-checks each story posted to the social networking site and flags dubious articles:
B.S. Dedector developer Daniel Sieradski created the extension as “a rejoinder to Mark Zuckerbergs [sic] dubious claims that Facebook is unable to substantively address the proliferation of fake news on its platform.”
Facbook’s counter-intuitive response, though, has been to block the extension:
https://twitter.com/selfagency/status/804701142064267264
Facebook first spoke about solving its fake news problem six weeks ago; Sieradski created B.S. Detector in an hour. The problem on Facebook’s end, according to Sieradski, isn’t technical, it’s political.
“The issue is that Facebook is probably overthinking it,” Sieradski told Inverse. “Their desire to be as impartial as possible, so that they can blame it on an algorithm instead of taking responsibility for the content on their site, is their way of indemnifying themselves against any claims that they’re censoring content because of political bias.”
Facebook has not explained why it has blocked B.S. Detector, and is yet to implement any official alternative of its own.
It would be much better to have it built into Facebook rather than it being a browser extension specifically for Chrome. Most of the bs articles posted are from middle aged and elderly folks that use internet explorer or edge and don’t even know wtf a browser plug-in is.
I do agree, though, that Facebook should stop avoiding its bias. Many people on the internet already blame political bias anyway because they can’t handle having the poor integrity of their small worldviews being exposed online.
painting with a broad brush my Friend, us oldies not only invented the internet but stuck with it through thick and thin , I could also say with the same amount of proof , that all BS news is being propagated by snotty nosed 14 year olds, without any social awareness, BUT I do agree that Facebook needs to step up its social responsibilities and take the stand on its own appointed rules and regs , it cannot still hide behind its fear of being editorial ,
FB Is a joke.
They claim to forbid fake names, yet… I submit a report for the human chocolate… sorry, a nice girl named “Lila Pause” ( which is a rather well-known chocolate bar ) and they come up with “nothing’s wrong” 😀
I’m sure their fake news detector will be as good as their Android/IOS applications are ( utter crap hehe )