It only took 36 hours for these students to solve Facebook's fake news problem

Re:It only took 36 hours for these students to solve Faceboo... by glook on Monday November 14, 2016 @11:00PM (#12955489)

This article itself felt like fake news being that it states they didn't solve the fake news problem: "A Chrome plug-in that labels fake news obviously isn't the total solution for Facebook to police itself."

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Re:It only took 36 hours for these students to solve Faceboo... by qb45 on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @03:18AM (#12956441)

> This article itself felt like fake news

Totally impossible, I say.

Just how hard of a problem is it for an algorithm to determine real news from lies?

Not that hard.

... hackathon ... just 36-hours ... classifies every post ... artificial intelligence ... algorithm ... reasonable certainty ... such WOW ;)

And... how exactly does their AI tell apart two election articles differing only in reported results? What about determining whether alleged Linus Torvalds' statement on penguin equality is real or not? Or whether some random hackathon project actually delivers, for that matter?

Why did they write an article like that? What about people who don't know that this project (most likely) reacts only to cranky language or some finite number of facts it has been trained on and could be easily gamed? They'll go and share this crap to "prove" that Facebook is lazy if they feel like doing so, that's what. So thank you, BI, for your contribution to the quality of Internet discourse.

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Re:It only took 36 hours for these students to solve Faceboo... by yosito on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @12:13AM (#12955775)

It's a pretty cool plugin, really. But I'm guessing that the people interested in using it already belong to a demographic that is highly skeptical and good at spotting fake news.

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Re:It only took 36 hours for these students to solve Faceboo... by inimino on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @03:30AM (#12956487)

It's a cool hackathon project to play with classification. Presenting it as even a partial solution, as the article did, is irresponsible.

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Re:It only took 36 hours for these students to solve Faceboo... by erikpukinskis on Tuesday November 15, 2016 @02:18AM (#12956245)

Why not? Facebook doesn't need to filter for you, you can filter however you like. What's wrong with a user controlled solution?

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