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Re:The Applied Machine Learning group at Facebook by orthoganol on Thursday February 23, 2017 @06:46PM (#13719092)
>... metrics on how well the company has managed to reduce fake news

Or an arrogance in how they believe it's fine (if not their duty) to censor news stories, as they deem fit, almost as if people of voting age can't think for themselves.

Re:The Applied Machine Learning group at Facebook by eli_gottlieb on Thursday February 23, 2017 @07:04PM (#13719267)
Was it already "censorship" when Facebook didn't present me, a card-carrying socialist, with far-right websites in my feed? Or is it "censorship" when they start taking USUncut out of my feed because, frankly, its journalistic quality is crap?

Which one of these was censorship? Does Fox News have a right to show up in my feed, given that I very much don't want to see it?

Re:The Applied Machine Learning group at Facebook by orthoganol on Thursday February 23, 2017 @07:39PM (#13719576)
A small group of people doesn't get to say what is true, and then impose it on everyone else, without being called arrogant, infantilizing of their own users, or simply pushing politics (which is not farfetched given their execs had such strong ties to one party last election). You should have the ability to curate your own feed even if by managing your friends, but the buck stops there.
Re:The Applied Machine Learning group at Facebook by eli_gottlieb on Friday February 24, 2017 @12:06AM (#13721164)
While I would never say the Facebook staff are intellectual authority figures, I think that "a small group of people doesn't get to say what is true" is just plain false. A small group of people tell the rest of us what's true all the time. They're called domain experts.

>You should have the ability to curate your own feed even if by managing your friends, but the buck stops there.

The feed is generated by an algorithm designed to maximize the chance I click links from my feed. It has never been a rote concatenation of my Facebook friends' walls/timelines/whatever-they're-called-today.

That kind of concatenation and interleaving of content from my friends would be an improvement. It's just not what we ever had at any point. Facebook has not suddenly acquired a bias or agenda. It's been filter-bubbling everyone since forever, and now people have objected that some of what it feeds them in their own personal bubble is bullshit.

Re:The Applied Machine Learning group at Facebook by aanm1988 on Thursday February 23, 2017 @08:41PM (#13720065)
> A small group of people doesn't get to say what is true

The pope didn't endorse Donald Trump. That is objective fact. Yet that popped up on facebook.

Why shouldn't they censor that shit?

Re:The Applied Machine Learning group at Facebook by aanm1988 on Thursday February 23, 2017 @08:40PM (#13720061)
This is exactly why the facebook feed and people getting news from it is such a problem. God forbid you see an alternative viewpoint.
Re:The Applied Machine Learning group at Facebook by neuronexmachina on Thursday February 23, 2017 @07:46PM (#13719655)
Judging by the number of people I see on my feed who share Onion articles without realizing they're satire, it's pretty clear that the ability of many to think for themselves is lacking.