Microsoft's mobile Edge browser begins issuing fake news warnings

Re:Microsoft's mobile Edge browser begins issuing fake news ... by whatshisface on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @10:54AM (#18979256)

>If you can‘t immediately spot the difference, you may be a late victim of post-modern relativism.

The claim is not that all news is equally true; that would be ridiculous. The claim is that lists of trusted sources are ripe for abuse by the list-makers.

Consider this evil plan: suppose that I put a grassroots issue blog on the same list as 100 fake publications. Everyone will believe me, because, look: I was right one hundred times! That problem can even arise without intentional evil on the part of the list makers, just look at the history of spam blacklists. People, even teams of people, are not one hundred percent just one hundred percent of the time.

(I just called something evil, and you can't get any less postmodernist than that! ;)

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Re:Microsoft's mobile Edge browser begins issuing fake news ... by Bartweiss on Wednesday January 23, 2019 @01:43PM (#18981207)

> suppose that I put a grassroots issue blog on the same list as 100 fake publications

Worth noting that PropOrNot already exists, and got a lot of positive coverage before people started to get suspicious. Its model was almost precisely what you describe: providing extensive lists of clearly Russia-affiliated sources like Sputnik News, then including a handful of high-quality domestic gadflies like Naked Capitalism without any justification.

This isn't just a hypothetical risk of such tools, its already an active problem on these exact topics.

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