Gadgetory

it's Thursday August 3rd I'm BVG its episode 261 of the tree fitty tree 59 Ness monster I don't know how it took me so long to make that yeah 261 episodes to make that joke Alfred and Eric er thanks for coming in today and yeah thanks for having us we've got a real Facebook heavy episode today good blame them for making all the big news tip this morning so case you haven't heard Mark Zuckerberg is definitely not running for president even though he keeps doing all these things that kind of signals that he's got a campaign going on at least that's what it feels like to me and they also announced earlier today that they're taking another stab at fake news the whole crew you know timeline of this has been oh we don't have any fake news - oh man we have fake news and now how are we get rid of this fake news and they've been throwing a lot at it and now this time they're trying to use machine learning to get rid of it so we're gonna see if that pays off for them or not but yeah that's that's that's what we're gonna be talking about today in the meantime you know what isn't fake news this show stick around we're gonna record the podcast and be back to join you in the chat to close out the workweek here with your questions and comments so hit us up and we'll be back to chat with you in three minutes in 59 seconds from 3 - welcome to the 359 I'm Alfred Inge and I'm Derek ER so in case you haven't heard Mark Zuckerberg is definitely 100% not running for president or so the Facebook founder says and his continuing vision to not run for president Zuckerberg has hired Hillary Clinton's former chief strategist who's supposed to conduct research for the Chan Zuckerberg initiative so if he's if he's not running for president and he has a chief political strategist what what is what is the political strategists have to do with Silicon Valley if if you know that's not the case well this isn't the first tire by the Chan Zuckerberg initiative of a former Clinton strategist so they hired recently well not that recently but in January I think it was David Plouffe who came over from uber but he was also strategist for Obama advisor Cena and so maybe the Chan Zuckerberg initiative just really wants to have more political firepower I mean where would you have the most political firepower though if you're not the president I mean it just seems weird that you know he's doing all these like cross-country trips he makes all these stops and you know well-known swing states and has dinner with families and and you know goes to you know these like blue-collar workplaces that kind of here's me with you know at this at this factory or something like that it just it seems very much like a presidential campaign yeah I see what you're saying and also meeting internationally with heads of state and those kind of people it's it's true it's it's just weird that he does all this and then just tells me a little like I'm not running for president and then this is just kind of like another like layer to it you know yeah but a lot of these companies are looking to get lobbying power political power and Facebook definitely is one of those um uber has hired political strategists live just this week hired baladi Valerie Jarrett who was a senior adviser to Obama so I think a lot of these companies are seeing that they're gonna need to get cozy with Washington to get what they need yeah well speaking of Washington and Facebook we learned that the social network is expanding its fight against fake news it's been a losing battle for Facebook once people figured out that you know spreading fake news makes pretty easy money and it goes viral in an instant in May Facebook hired about 3,000 people to help review fake news content and now they're tapping into machine learning it kind of just feels like another effort that's not really going to lead to much especially with machine learning I know that it has a lot of capabilities but as far as you know policing fake news this might be something much bigger for Facebook to tackle yeah I it's unclear how much this machine learning is gonna help tackle fake news it just seems to be kind of a turn of the screw and Facebook's initiatives for fake news it's and apparently it's just was a little update to a blog post they had posted a few months ago yeah last week when I was at DEFCON I actually spoke with Gary Kasparov he's the man he's the chest former chess champion that lost a deep-blue the artificial intelligence chess machine and you know he is an a big advocate for artificial intelligence now and he's talking about how Facebook you know they needed this machine learning to match the pace of fake news that's coming on their social network because if it was just humans there's no way they can police all that content that's being posted all the time on their website but they're saying that you know the machine on its own can't basically monitor all that because machines can also be tricked very easily and that's why they needed more more people to hire on that end as well so if you like what you heard today check us out on CNET I'm Alfred Inge I'm Derek Kerr thanks for watching so we really need to expand on this because we don't ever have enough time in 3 minutes and 59 seconds an alleged fit 3 minutes and 59 seconds it's a really a timer today I didn't know how long we were going for I think I gotta get a new one I'm sorry alright so how exactly are BOTS going I mean this is we you started to answer this but how can BOTS stop fake news it seems kind of the antithesis if I may of the solution is to put more automation in place I mean there's certain ways to kind of so there's as far as automation goes I know that there's always like signatures for certain things at least when it comes to like cybersecurity so they'll take a look at basically like telltale signs of fake news and then they'll basically like teach the bots like this is fake news and if anything it like this pops up you should stop it or but the problem with that is that there's once people know that that's what the bots are looking for word tailor it to go around that and that's why it's always like a never-ending like cat-and-mouse kind of thing so certain things with fake news it will be that you know you and I know like oh this is this like website is not real is you know if their webpage only has like one byline at all times or anything like that or if you know there's no like mission statement on earth anything like that the articles are generally like very short they also like tap into like Snopes and all these other fact-checking websites where it'll automatically pop up underneath the article like whether or not this has been proven or whether or not it's been debunked how trustworthy of it so I assume that you know they're bots that they're using would be also checking against that and if it's been proven you know as like a hoax story then it'll also automatically be blocked yeah well it seems also from what we know that what these bots will be doing is looking for the fake news and then sending their what they think may be fake news to third party fact checkers so it will go through human eyes I think before being blocked yes I think a lot of people here and in the chat and elsewhere would agree that that's an important part of this is a little more human aggregation involved in it alleged intelligence instead of the artificial type yeah I I do think that the the bots here are more of just a toy like a flagging tool sure than it is for you know oh we're gonna we're gonna automatically block all these like URLs and things like that so outside of checking for already suspect sources story length what other facets are involved what other red flags are there when it comes to snooping out a fake news story I mean I know that I used to I used to manage like a Facebook for another like massive like media company and the way that another factor that Facebook kind of looks into and this is specifically for clickbait and not for like fake news but I'm sure that you know they're they're looking into that as they apply the algorithm here is the amount of time that somebody spends on a website once they've clicked through it from Facebook they back then the algorithm was if you like spam a lot of time on it like Facebook sees it as like a quality article and they promote it more on like other people's like news feeds as far as like fake news goes I don't know how long people like spend reading those I feel like one of the things is that with fake news one of the patterns that I've noticed is they'll just share it and they won't actually read the article it's all headline yeah it's all headline so that that might be another like factor of like spotting out fake news where you know if the click-through rate isn't that large or if the like time spent on the page isn't really that long because there's not really any substance interesting ultimately what I'm hearing though is we need to take more responsibility on ourselves yeah I I know that we are all probably guilty of getting overexcited sharing from time to time I try to force myself to make sure to read and understand something before I promote it even if the headlines look that's exactly how I feel yeah in life I know that that's not the way to do it and I'm certainly guilty that I'm one one thing that keeps getting me I don't know if anyone else has fallen victim or guilty to this is dates is you know you'll see a headline from something that sounds utterly shocking and it is from like two years ago I can't come up with any specific examples but I know in recent memory I have been guilty of that and I felt terrible for us it's like huh man I'm only I'm part of the problem it happened to me yesterday I didn't click through it though because I knew what the story was it was your honor that like Heineken ad that went viral because it was like a direct response to the Pepsi commercial mmm so that Heineken did one words like yeah have a beer and talk about like your differences kind of thing I saw the the the headline was basically this viral beer ad this controversial viral beer ad will make you question everything and I'm like hell is this but yeah that ad was from like whenever the Pepsi thing happened so that was that was like a long time ago and people are my feeling that long ago I was like 2 to 3 months ago yeah couple months yeah that's that's long am i and my loser of years but yeah people on my feed we're still sharing it I was like okay but yeah the whole like timestamp thing is it's incredibly frustrating yeah and I'd like I said ie sometimes you just kind of browse right over that's the one thing I don't actively look for and I'll be honest sometimes it's not very well and prominent in an article sometimes I wonder if that's part of it is they want it to be evergreen even if it's not evergreen yeah I mean I also wonder though if like the bots are looking for that though because I don't like just because it's old doesn't mean that it's fake news I don't know if that's something that like they're on the watch out for true but it could be not timely anymore therefore it's irrelevant or maybe not irrelevant is the wrong word it doesn't mean it's fake right yeah it's just it's hard to read and sometimes it's like well this is already done yeah you guys noticed any fake news coming up in your feed or just generally well I mean I kind of patrol that on my own though say anywhere like if I know somebody posted I kinda just like block them or something honestly I've kind of yeah I have I have thinned out my feed to the point where it's like only two people in there anymore like two people and like stuff about Ninja Turtles like that's all I can fix it's it's just like memes and videos we've recreated the bubble so it's not a safe place it's just a funny place I like Ronnie's comments in the chat he says I'm kind of branching off on our prior comments was if you want to save the world I'm going to need you to step up and be active so robots don't take over the world I for one look sorry I was fishing for that I needed the opportunity to go there my point like yeah but the thing is is that like there's so much content that they had to put bots on it I mean this isn't the first time that Facebook uses bots to like moderate like Facebook Church you know they do the same thing for like images of like Isis or videos anything that has to do like pornography there are like image scanning BOTS that can look out for that like if they even spot like a whiff of like a nipple will will like get the flag it and then a human moderator comes and sees it because like like BOTS can easily make mistakes like several times there was the controversy around last October or September when Facebook removed the photo the the from the Vietnam War of the of the burning girl running the forest who was you didn't have any clothes and they thought it was chopped pornography but the thing is they were saying you know the person who posted it was arguing this is this is like historical wasn't it a National Geographic photo yes yes yeah and they and and Facebook was saying you know are like or like machine kind of like flagged it and then some human moderator who did not know the significance of that photo like just yeah this is a naked kid deleted kind of thing so it was it was a that was a bad example though cuz if you read between the lines you just look at the context of it's not like somebody posted a naked kid the child was sorry thing is that like the bot flagged it to begin with okay sure yeah so but then the human should have gotten involved and then yeah yeah and that's just people being uptight yeah what though that I'm trying to make is that like machine learning you know as smarted as it as it is its advantage isn't that it's like smarter than us in terms of context or anything like that it's advantage is that it picks up things at a pace that we can never match you know we're like we're not gonna be able to look through like 10,000 photos a second or 10,000 like news links a second and be able to look like kind of figure out like which one's faking which isn't right like it's not gonna happen on this scale so we'd like to get some more input from you guys in the chat if you have any moments you want to admit to falling victim to fake news to an extent you know don't don't throw yourself under the bus here but like I said I I forgot to check a date one time and it caught me off guard and I felt like an idiot there's a great comment here from Jacob Kraft he says here's my concern though using this it's not too far of a jump for them to be able to control what we see does anybody else have concerns about that legitimate concerns that this is going down that kind of 1984 Road yeah that that was a major concern when Facebook kind of announced their whole campaign against fake news because it got to a point where well who are you to decide like what we want to read and you know what's fake and what isn't and you know some other people also kind of made our eggs like well what if I want to read fake news which that's another can of worms that I don't want to get into I mean it's the same read same kind of people who want to watch Jerry Springer right yeah so to use a dated reference it's the fat it's the freakshow element right the freakshow the same reason they watch the Kardashians and all the crap it's you just kind of want to like you want to roam around in the cesspool for a minute and see how bad it gets but I mean there's also the idea that you know a lot of these people like think that this fake news is legitimate news and you know when Facebook does something like this it's like the mainstream media trying to censor them you know with with like in recent like weeks with like the Seth Ridge conspiracy certain pizza gate yep and there's people that like legitimately believe that this is real news and that these are the facts and you know for Facebook's to come and like delete it from them and like make sure that they can't see it I can see why they would be threatened by that absolutely yeah I mean imagine of like articles that you and I thought like know or feel is like completely legitimate and real all of a sudden just starts disappearing because some like high power like you know tech companies I'm like no we don't think this is real happens to me all the time like when the Avengers trailer leaked the why I don't know we didn't see don't watch anything no that's not a bad example but you get the idea yeah there's no stretch of the imagination of why people would be upset offended is really the word if they feel like it's being yanked out of their hands losing control of their own little world but I don't really have a better imagine you're trying to tell all your friends that you know the truth that the earth is flat and then you know I don't know where you find out that you can't do it on Facebook which is probably like the largest platform that you have as a normal person did you hear that here come the flat earthers because the earth is flat the distance I saw a great meme of a flat earth sorry I don't mean to perpetuate this but I have to laugh at I'm sorry and for those of you who believe in the Flat Earth and are offended I'm not sorry I the Flat Earth eclipse and it was just a picture of a like a pizza shaped like this on top of a turtle in shadow cast on the moon it's like I I couldn't help myself Josh says Zuckerberg can't run for president because we can't have a candidate for president having the ability to control the news now to expand on that we already do Donald Trump launched a Facebook a real service real news network counteraction via it straight through the face right there's no third party website it's in India didn't Facebook just want to be clear on that so there you go it's already happening I mean but also I there's no law saying that you know person who controls the news can't run for president so I mean I I think I think there are some like issues like ethically when it comes to somebody like Mark Zuckerberg who has a fifth of the population on his website yeah right of the world's population not not not only US population but just like Donald Trump being expected to step down from his business the same would be said for Zuckerberg he'd have to step away from Facebook yeah if he was to try to go down that path that's just I mean probably the biggest reason why he doesn't run for president plenty of arguments as to why that wouldn't work why it'd be bogus even if he said he did on and on and on it's a conversation for another day but that would be expected that's part a standard operating procedure yeah I just think about the the amount of power that Mark Zuckerberg has as you know CEO of Facebook and I just think you know why would some money like that even want to run for president but then it gets to the point where you know he's doing all this stuff that I've talked about on the podcast where if that mic if a person's doing that is not running for president then I you know I don't know what's going on I don't know if i 100% believe that he's going to run for president but I don't think it's any stretch of the imagination he's going to get involved in activism and politics and some yeah fashion increasingly though perhaps even a Senate seat I think would be a good stepping stone I think we likely to see that before he goes full-on chief executive yeah that's my that's my personal perspective I think he's not a dumb guy what your opinion of him may vary but he's not stupid he's not at least yeah yeah of course he's not exactly well that's I'm saying he would there's some strategy to he's just not gonna go look I'm running for president like yeah like the rock the rock as much as there's a morbid curiosity than me I would like to see that I also was like I've had enough TV stars yeah this has become a circus now yes again a conversation for another yes let's get some personal opinions in here so root I'm sorry Reese's Saab do you guys think we can really fight fake news totally let's get just a complete gut reaction can we absolutely not I mean this has been going on since before Facebook you know there's always been propaganda there's always been oh I heard that like this happened and then everyone just starts talking about as if it like actually did I think Facebook has helped in a way where it's basically propagated like it's spread you know it's a new form of propaganda spreading yeah and it's insane and I think that you know people have kind of picked up on that where it's become a part of like political strategy now where like they're relying more on social media for some reason people are much more likely to trust sources when it comes from like somebody on social media than like a mainstream outlet or anything like that I think part of it is that the whole trust factor is like he's my friend why would he lie to me kind of thing but at the same time I also feel like that person it's kind of like the web effect where you know he's my friend why would he lie to me and the person that posted it you know probably got it from somebody else that was also thinking this is the exact same thing and it spreads through like that a vast network that way now yeah definitely I totally agree it seems it seems it would be extremely difficult yeah to stop it and I mean can we come back from this I mean I think we can rein it in but it will take self-discipline yeah it's gonna take a cultural shift it's not going to be it's not gonna be a matter of we've got BOTS that block it now you know he's gonna take a cultural shift of let me be a lot more skeptical when I'm you know clicking and reading things remember when Facebook wasn't about just sharing crap to each other when it was about a communication tool what like 10 years ago yeah I mean no the back one day it was just yeah message board yeah yeah I remember those days when it first started I was just getting into college perfect time my generation ruined everything yeah FTS tuning says I think Facebook should ban news in general so going back to that that's actually a very good idea because I don't care what you think about like on my Facebook feed where it's like oh cool there's like a new mall near your blog I don't I don't care like oh look I don't go to Facebook to find news and I know that like a large population of Millennials do do that like I think like 30 to 40% of like Millennials get there like main news source from social media I made it easy I'm not gonna lie again a lot of my news from Twitter but Facebook is just I think it's because you know on Twitter there's these professional journalists and you know industry folks that like are tailored to what my interests are and if what they do post is fake they get called out on it very frequently you know so that's the thing there's like a cultural shift there's like a different culture on Twitter and you know fake news propagates like less frequently like via Twitter people get called down on in the comments people actually check it out and if it's bogus it really doesn't get shared that much and you know if it's like egregiously bad then you know that you essentially just get roasted on Twitter which is yeah the best form of you know fake news policing whereas on Facebook it's like your aunt or your or your like grandmother or something like that or you know your uncle who like gets too drunk at parties and here's what I think about this and it just gets to a point like I don't care yeah yeah that is the best description of Facebook I may have ever heard it's just like yeah block news on on Facebook except see net first folks that's it no more news on Facebook only watch this show that's probably the perfect place to wrap it up for the week Dara thanks so much for joining us it's been fun I'm Alfred alright if you liked anything you heard today the 3:59 podcast is available on iTunes TuneIn stitcher SoundCloud Feedburner Google Play Music and of course cnet.com thanks for watching bye