Facebook could fight fake news with curated articles

The proliferation of fake news on its network has haunted Facebook since the presidential election. Initially downplaying its impact, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has come around to start speaking on the social platform’s action plan, including cutting off ad money. But now they have a new plan to ensure their users get quality content with actual facts: Handpick publications themselves.

Sources tell Business Insider that the new feature, called Collections, will serve up stories and media from sources chosen by Facebook. The social media titan has been courting entertainment and media companies in the last few weeks to create content for the new section. Early partners have been told that their created content will be inserted directly into users’ News Feed, giving it a much broader reach.

But the entertainment focus reason enough to expect that Facebook will likely use Collections to both editorially curate superior content and compete with Snapchat. Its Discover section is seen by its 150 million daily users. But other information, from its partner list or whether Collections will include advertising or when it will debut, is currently unknown.

Source: Business Insider

Facebook exec says it has ‘a responsibility’ to fight fake news

After a barrage of criticism over fake news stories on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that over 99 percent of content on the site was authentic. Zuckerberg has since backed off that sentiment slightly, admitting that fake news is indeed a major issue for the company. At Harvard’s Campaign Managers Conference this week, the company’s vice president of communications and public policy had more to say on the topic.

“For so long, we had resisted having standards about whether something’s newsworthy because we did not consider ourselves a service that was predominantly for the distribution of news,” explained Facebook’s Elliot Schrage. “And that was wrong.”

Schrage’s comments came during a panel discussion about the role of media during the 2016 US presidential election. “Until this election, our focus was on helping people share,” he said. “This election forced us to question whether we have a role in assessing the validity of content people share. And I have to tell you all — that’s a pretty damn scary role to play.”

Of course, policing content then raises issues of censorship and Facebook doesn’t know how it should proceed just yet. The company has already announced it plans to give users easier ways to report hoaxes, develop better detection before links even hit the News Feed and cutting ad revenue to “misleading, illegal and deceptive” sites. According to a recent BuzzFeed report, Facebook employees have unofficially taken on the task of battling the fake news problem as well.

“We have a responsibility here,” Schrage said. “I think we recognize that. This has been a learning for us.”

Schrage explained that Facebook isn’t interested in hiring human editors who decide what hits the News Feed. The company already changed course from having employees choose trending topics in favor of an algorithm-based approach. Even after the switch, Facebook is still dealing with fake stories popping up there. Another report claimed editors were knowingly suppressing conservative links, an allegation which Facebook later denied.

So, how does Mr. Schrage propose Facebook alleviate the problem? First, he said that the tools that allow users to report fake news are “not well-done” and need an overhaul. He also hinted at potential solutions that seek to change user behavior rather than pulling content that’s shared from certain sites. Schrage called it a “think before you share” program, and it sounds a bit like an awareness campaign that could be ignored by a large portion of the site’s billions of users.

“We’re in the business of giving users the power to share,” Schrage said. “Part of that is helping them share thoughtfully and responsibly, and consume thoughtfully and responsibly.” As Vox notes, merely passing the responsibility to users is a similar approach to that of Twitter on the topic of abuse. And that course of action isn’t doing much to reassure people using the service.

Source: Vox

Facebook wants to demystify AI

Though movies and TV shows would have us believe that artificial intelligence means machines rising up against us, the truth is much more benign. Indeed, many of us use AI on a regular basis: Just ask Siri for directions to a restaurant or tell Shazam to name a song. This is certainly true of Facebook too, which uses AI and machine learning for a variety of tasks such as identifying images, translating languages and, yes, ranking your News Feed. With such a vested interest in AI, Facebook is releasing a series of videos today to offer a brief introduction to what it is and how it works.

“We want to tell people it’s not magic,” says Yann LeCun, Facebook’s director of AI research. “This is not The Terminator. It’s real technology that’s useful.” In a blog post released today, LeCun and Joaquin Candela, Facebook’s director of applied machine learning, wrote that there is nothing artificial about AI: “AI is a rigorous science focused on designing intelligent systems and machines, using algorithmic techniques borrowed from the human brain.” This, LeCun and Candela say, includes the ability to learn from the past and recognize patterns.

For example, in one of the videos, LeCun says that in order for a computer to figure out if an image is of a car or a dog, it needs a learning algorithm. This requires millions of samples — after all, there are hundreds of different kinds of cars and dogs and thousands of ways they can be shown in a photo — and then that algorithm has to have a “generalization ability” in order to take what it has learned and apply it to images it’s never seen before. The result might seem magical, yet the process is anything but.

“It’s more prevalent than you suspect,” says Candela. “A lot of experiences simply wouldn’t work without AI.” That’s why one in four engineers at Facebook is well-versed in some form of AI. Facebook uses AI to vocally describe what’s in a photo to those who are visually impaired and offer quick translations of foreign languages.

This groundwork of AI and machine learning paid off when Instagram started to experiment with ranking instead of showing photos in reverse chronological order. “If none of that had existed, it would’ve taken a very long time,” says Candela. But since the company already had years of work on this subject, the team was able to implement the algorithm quickly.

Yet these algorithms have had their fair share of critics. Recent revelations about the rise of fake news on Facebook raise questions about how Newsfeed ranks these stories. LeCun and Candela say, however, that this is largely a product issue and not one with the technology itself.

“One thing that is important to explain is that different layers are involved in building an experience with AI or machine learning,” says LeCun. He compares AI to that of an unbiased oracle. “It might tell me the probabilities that it’ll rain in Mountain View, for example. It doesn’t have an opinion. It’s likely to have an error in both directions. You can take those unbiased oracles and then build a product experience from that.” Essentially, Lecun says that when it comes to issues that deal with content, that’s more about policies and product design rather than the underlying technology.

However, Candela says that the AI team could help in coming up with guidelines on how to avoid certain pitfalls and dangers. That’s one of the reasons why Facebook’s AI team is open-sourcing their efforts: so they can improve the dialogue surrounding such matters.

As for why they think this AI education is so important: “AI is going to affect our lives,” says LeCun. “It’s very important for people to have some idea on how it works and what it can do.”

Source: Facebook

Facebook shuts off Prisma’s live video support

If you’re a Prisma fan, you were likely heartbroken when the AI-driven art app lost its Facebook Live streaming feature. Why did it go almost as soon as it arrived? Now we know. The Prisma team tells TechCrunch that Facebook shut off its access to the Live programming kit over claims that this wasn’t the intended use for the framework. The platform is meant for live footage from “other sources,” such as pro cameras or game feeds. It’s an odd reason when Facebook’s public developer guidelines don’t explicitly forbid use with smartphones, but the social network does state that it’s primarily for non-smartphone uses.

We’ve asked Facebook for a comment on its decision and will let you know if there’s something to add. However, the shutoff comes right as Facebook is getting its own creative livestreaming technology off the ground. Its recently acquired app MSQRD has no problem streaming face-swapped video on Facebook Live, and the company recently previewed Prisma-like live art filters. At first blush, it looks like Facebook may be repeating what it did to Snapchat, Telegram and Vine — deny access to rivals so that Facebook’s equivalent services don’t face competition.

Prisma isn’t about to fight to the death to reclaim the feature. “It’s up to Facebook to decide which apps or devices can broadcast to Facebook. It’s their policy and we respect it,” Prisma’s CEO tells us. The company also informs TC that live video (from other services, of course) is still part of its future. It’s right about the policy — Facebook is a private company, not the internet at large, and doesn’t have an obligation to host competitors. However, the decision is a blunt reminder that internet giants (not just Facebook) can and will protect their turf, and that you base key features around their services at your own risk.

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook runs afoul of German hate speech laws

Facebook has been getting into trouble for its discriminatory content a lot lately, and it recently yielded to pressure about some of its practices in the US. But the social networking giant could face tougher restrictions in Germany around the content posted by its members. According to The New York Times, Facebook came under fire there for its failure to, in a timely manner, remove a post that targeted Jewish people and businesses.

The post in question was a map of Berlin that listed the names and addresses of local Jewish institutions and Israeli-owned businesses, and was published on a far-right group on Facebook. The map was reportedly displayed under a banner with the words “Jews Among Us,” and resulted in at least one Israeli business owner in the city receiving phone calls saying, “I hate Jews,” according to the Times.

Some of the people identified in the map complained to Facebook, which reportedly did not remove the post at first. The company said the map complied with its community standards. That drew the ire of others in social media, local press as well as German lawmakers. According to the Times, Facebook deleted the group’s entire page, including the offending post, within 48 hours of the public outcry.

A spokesperson for the company told Engadget that the page is no longer available, and that it is “very sorry for any distress caused.” The company’s director of policy in Europe, Richard Allen, also conceded in an interview with the Times that the post qualified as hate speech, and should have been taken down.

On its Community Standards page, Facebook says it “may remove certain kinds of sensitive content or limit the audience that sees it.” It also says that it believes encountering different opinions can lead to “important conversations about difficult topics.”

Allowing (and even fostering) free and open discussion while preventing the spread of inflammatory, discriminatory and all-out fake content is a delicate balancing act that the social network is still struggling to master. It’s been criticized for its recent failure to prevent the proliferation of false news during the recent American election, and has run afoul of German authorities multiple times for similar issues. But the company has, slowly but surely, been implementing changes to combat these high-profile issues.

Source: The New York Times