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Designed censorship in Facebook's fake news flag

6 years ago from , subpixel.space

Hey, I wrote an essay about the Facebook's "solution" Facebook is pursuing in response to the 'fake news' debacle that has been plaguing the news cycle. It gets into the deep specifics of the UI and the flagging process, and places these things in the context of greater sociocultural trends including how the language of fake news is being used.

http://subpixel.space/entries/bad-interface-politics-in-facebooks-fake-news-filter/

I believe it's important that this sort of extremely influential design decision be discussed and critiqued in public, and have a healthy critical dialogue reach designers and product people at Facebook. Would love to start by opening the floor here to thoughts

4 comments

  • Brand Winnie, 6 years ago (edited 6 years ago )

    Delete your facebook and get others too as well.

    It's not worth it and they are literally trying to control peoples minds by feeding them the news that they deem as truthful.

    2 points
    • Sean SchraederSean Schraeder, 6 years ago

      You can't escape the censorship; "Fake news" isn't just a facebook thing, its a concept put forth by the government and media at large.

      0 points
  • Thomas PalumboThomas Palumbo, 6 years ago

    Well written piece but aren't you basing this all off of the assumption that FB has to be involved in the curation?

    Why can't the third party review all articles that are posted?

    Why assume a neutral third party is corrupt in the first place?

    The community can flag a post, it's sent for review, and it simply shows other users a warning. I'm not entirely sold that this is flawed.

    0 points
    • Toby ShorinToby Shorin, 6 years ago (edited 6 years ago )

      Hey Thomas, thanks for reading and for the comment. Let me address some of your thoughts:

      Why can't the third party review all articles that are posted?

      3rd parties cannot review all articles that are posted because there is simply too much content on the internet. What happens if people start abusing the report feature? See my second graphic.

      Why assume a neutral third party is corrupt in the first place?

      I don't believe I have made this assumption anywhere in my piece, can you point me to where my language may have been misleading?

      aren't you basing this all off of the assumption that FB has to be involved in the curation?

      Yes I am. That is the point of the whole post—that Facebook is already the tacit curator of this information, and by changing just a few of the inputs (platform abuse, recently passed propaganda laws, etc) they are poised to become the explicit manipulator.

      Let me know if this has answered any of your questions!

      0 points