Facebook made nearly $27 billion last year,Watch Black Panther Online but the tech giant can't seem to figure out how to fix its fake news problem on its own.
Their solution: enlist a nonprofit that has successfully done so—with the help of 133,540 moderators.
In its latest move to prove it's no longer a threat to democracy, Facebook is tapping Wikipedia. Now, when Facebook users see articles on News Feed, they can click on a little "i" button and see the Wikipedia description of the publisher. They also will see a button to follow the Page and see trending or related articles.
Facebook previously balked at the notion of using human editors to oversee the flow of news and information across its network, instead relying on algorithms to handle everything from publisher posts to advertisements. Now, it's slowly starting to embrace the human touch, hiring editors and now even partnering with Wikipedia and its army of moderators.
SEE ALSO: In a crisis, Facebook's far from perfect—but still essentialWhy not just show the description on the publishers' Facebook Page? Perhaps because Facebook can't trust that. Publishers could have such a space and fill it with terms like "Jew haters" or other malicious words. Of course, publishers could also do that on Wikipedia, but Wikipedia has managed to monitor for and prevent such abuse.
Remember when teachers told you not to trust anything you read on Wikipedia? Well, according to Facebook, you now should. But you might not want to trust everything you read on Facebook. Wikipedia is not perfect, but it's been able to curb a fake news problem by enlisting volunteers—real, living people—to moderate pages while incorporating other algorithmic systems.
Wikipedia has long taken the fake news problem seriously. In its early days, anyone could create and get away with making pages with false information. People took advantage of this. But as Wikipedia grew, it created a community of moderators that helped prevent those misleading pages and errors from staying up. English Wikipedia now has 133,540 editors who have edited a page in the last 30 days, according to a Wikipedia page.
Facebook seemed to only wake up to the problem of fake news after the 2016 election. In the aftermath of Donald Trump's victory, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook influencing the election was a "pretty crazy idea" and said fake news was only a small portion of posts on the site.
While that scale may be true, Zuckerberg has since apologized for his words, and his company has been working to release solutions to prevent fake news from spreading on the platform. Facebook launched the Facebook Journalism Project, and it recruited third-party fact-checking organizations to help monitor for fake news.
But early reports show that it may be more of a pony show than a serious initiative, and we may have Facebook to blame. Fact-checkers enlisted by Facebook told Politicolast month their efforts have been harmed because Facebook refuses to share information. Fact-checkers are unable to see if the "disputed" tags they add to articles actually have an effect and are not able to prioritize stories.
Facebook said its efforts are working. “We have seen data that, when a story is flagged by a third party fact-checker, it reduces the likelihood that somebody will share that story,” Sara Su, a product manager on Facebook’s News Feed team, told Politico. But she declined to share data proving the point.
Meanwhile, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has been quite outspoken about the fake news problem.
"I would say just in the last couple of years, I feel like things have gotten much worse in terms of clickbait headlines, fake news," Wales told Mashableearlier this year. "People will contribute if they're asked, and if they're protected from trolls."
In fact, Wales is taking the fake news problem so seriously that he launched a new company. Earlier this year, he announced WikiTribune, an online news site with articles reported and written by professional journalists. The site will also have volunteer researchers and fact-checkers.
So, yes, Facebook is a profitable company with a glaring fake news problem led by someone who once brushed off the severity of the issue. Wikipedia is a nonprofit that enlisted volunteers years ago to battle misinformation and is led by someone who wants to do more to help.
Topics Facebook Social Media Elections
Elon Musk opens up about the personal toll Tesla is taking on himArcheologists find the world's oldest cheese in Egyptian tombJustin Trudeau looks damn heroic in upcoming Marvel variant coverA first look inside SureFly's reAretha Franklin, the queen of soul, dead at 76Here is a young Barack Obama protesting homework in schoolSEC is formally investigating Musk's tweet about taking Tesla privateWoman finds contact lens that'd been lodged in her eye for 28 YEARSDriver disguised like a seat was for Ford's selfApple hacked by teen who stored files in 'hacky hack hack' folderGoogle One officially launches with cheaper storage plansGoogle One officially launches with cheaper storage plansKim Kardashian displays how to respond to sexy Kim Kardashian photos'World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth' feels like older 'WoW': ReviewApple Car could launch between 2023 and 20255 things to fill the void now 'Game of Thrones' is overHouse Benghazi report faults security, not Clinton, for responseA first look inside SureFly's reGorgeous drone footage captures couple sex'ing in a church steepleDad constructs his very own selfie stick to take pictures of birds in a tree The Action of Love: A Conversation with Charif Shanahan by Morgan Parker Michael Bazzett, Dobby Gibson, and Sophie Haigney Recommend by The Paris Review Diary, 1994–1999 by Dina Nayeri SpaceX's breathtaking bullseye rocket landing in gifs Lucky rocket just left Trump's America behind My Ugly Bathroom by Sarah Miller James Lasdun, Jessica Laser, and Leopoldine Core Recommend by The Paris Review A list of privacy protections Facebook users in the UK have that U.S. users don't John Wick Marathon by The Paris Review Inertia by Kate Zambreno On Mary Wollstonecraft by Joanna Biggs The Mother of the Mother of the Virgin Mary by Marta Figlerowicz Rivers Solomon, Elisa Gonzalez, and Elaine Feeney Recommend by The Paris Review Making of a Poem: Kyra Wilder on “John Wick Is So Tired” by Kyra Wilder Elon Musk's Neuralink has implanted a brain chip in a human for the first time “The Dead Silence of Goods”: Annie Ernaux and the Superstore by Adrienne Raphel Shadow Canons: Danzy Senna and Andrew Martin Recommend by The Paris Review Musical Hallucinations by Nancy Lemann Leonie the shark doesn't need a man, begins impregnating herself instead On Paper: An Interview with Thomas Demand by Olivia Kan
2.458s , 10133.8046875 kb
Copyright © 2025 Powered by 【Watch Black Panther Online】,Exquisite Information Network