You can't trust news on Facebook – and (once again) you can't trust its web ad metrics Amid its efforts to get out of the business of fake news distribution and to identify the fake accounts said to represent 2 per cent of its 1.79 billion monthly active users, Facebook for the fourth time in recent months is correcting erroneous advertising metrics. In a December 16 update to a December 9 post declaring that it …
I trust the news (but not the headlines) in The Register a hell of a lot more than Facebook. But just look at the history of Facebook - it started so that rich college kids could boast to each other, then expanded so that they could get dates and after about a dozen years it's got about as much social benefit as a tube of ancient toothpaste.
Frankly I find The Daily Mail a more reliable source of news than Facebook.
I don't get it. How many times does Facebook have to fail at this before people start to notice? Every time they've tried using algorithms to solve social problems, it's blown up on the launch pad. You know, just like the rocket they tried to launch in real life. Real name policy? Bans drag queens, LGBT people, domestic violence victims, and other marginalized groups. Insert obligatory hog wash about how it's a welcoming community (Honest!) from the Facebook mouth pieces here. Then we find out their marketing backend allows for blatant abuses of anti-discrimination laws in housing, employment, etc. And again out comes the algorithms and the inevitable failure, followed by boilerplate from the spokesperson. Then they have fouled up an election in a major world power because they threw out the curated news and replaced it with an algorithm, leading to another horrifying train wreck... and yet again, the public seemed satisfied with the same tired story.
And now here we are... Chapter 193 of the same. Damn. Story.... Facebook creates algorithm, exclusive footage of the flaming wreckage at 11 on ZNN News... Hell. We should just put a FDA "Black Box" label on it. WARNING: This product is known to have major health consequences and sociopolitical disasters. Please use responsibly. Age discrimination in this industry will be the death of us all... In every other engineering discipline, its the grey beards who develop critical civil infrastructure. But on the internet, it's 22 year olds. Yeah... we're pumping out about 5 titanics' worth of disaster a week now and still, nobody asks questions. Only the young and stupid could believe technology can solve social problems.
The rest of us know better: It takes people to solve people problems. You can't automate that.
Recently (this past week - 2016-12-19) Zuckerberg announced his intentions to harm those sites that far left *fact checking organizations* deem faux news. Jack Dorsey (Twitter CEO) is pretty much of the same mindset as is Page and Brin. These enterprises have no physical substance. If they all went out of business tomorrow, the world would not be significantly harmed. Facebook, Twitter and Google are the Tulip Mania of the 21st century. All are built on a foam of "advertising" -- a foam that ought to be washed away, in my view.
Are there alternative news-feeds where an owner (e.g. Zuckerberg) does NOT want to inflict his views on the world? [Even today, Zuckerberg is speaking with the ChiCom's about his new "filter" that would allow the ChiCom's to find and arrest people who disagree with the government. Will he use that tool in France, Iran, UK and the USA? Zuckerberg desperately wants to re-enter the Chinese Communist ("ChiCom") market after being kicked out a number of years ago. He will do anything to achieve that goal. ] I know of none.
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