This is a stupid plan.
Fake news is apparently a large problem on Facebook. Mostly due to how Facebook works. I wouldn’t know; I tend to be pretty good at spotting unfounded hyperbole and complete and utter bullshit. I guess most people can’t, though, which is why Facebook has come up with a solution to combat it. Wanna know what it is?
They’re going to have you do it for them.
I’m getting way more mileage out of a 15 year old Futurama clip recent of late than is probably healthy.
The hard question we’ve struggled with is how to decide what news sources are broadly trusted in a world with so much division. We could try to make that decision ourselves, but that’s not something we’re comfortable with. We considered asking outside experts, which would take the decision out of our hands but would likely not solve the objectivity problem. Or we could ask you — the community — and have your feedback determine the ranking.
We decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted would be most objective.
Here’s how this will work. As part of our ongoing quality surveys, we will now ask people whether they’re familiar with a news source and, if so, whether they trust that source. The idea is that some news organizations are only trusted by their readers or watchers, and others are broadly trusted across society even by those who don’t follow them directly. (We eliminate from the sample those who aren’t familiar with a source, so the output is a ratio of those who trust the source to those who are familiar with it.)
Sure, I could slobber Zucc’s knob over this stroke of absolute brilliance. But I won’t, as I’m pretty sure that would be fake news. Gotta keep in those good graces of the public mob, you know.
Source: Gizmodo
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