Facebook has TRUST ratings for users – but it won’t tell you your score
SOCIAL SCORE Facebook has TRUST ratings for users – but
it won’t tell you your score
The social network is predicting your trustworthiness in
a bid to fight fake news
By Sean Keach, 21st August 2018, 3:20 pm Updated
FACEBOOK is rating users based on how
"trustworthy" it thinks they are.
Users receive a score on a scale from zero to one that
determines if they have a good or bad reputation – but it's completely hidden.
The rating system was revealed in a report by the
Washington Post, which says it's in place to "help identify malicious
actors".
Facebook tracks your behaviour across its site and uses
that info to assign you a rating.
Tessa Lyons, who heads up Facebook's fight against fake
news, said: "One of the signals we use is how people interact with
articles.
"For example, if someone previously gave us feedback
that an article was false and the article was confirmed false by a
fact-checker, then we might weight that person’s future false news feedback
more than someone who indiscriminately provides false news feedback on lots of
articles, including ones that end up being rated as true."
Earlier this year, Facebook admitted it was rolling out
trust ratings for media outlets.
This involved ranking news websites based on the quality
of the news they were reporting.
This rating would then be used to decide which posts
should be promoted higher in users' News Feeds.
It's not clear exactly what users' ratings are for, but
it's possible they may be used in a similar way.
But Facebook hasn't revealed exactly how ratings are
decided, or whether all users have a rating.
According to Lyons, a user's rating "isn't meant to
be an absolute indicator of a person's credibility".
Instead, it's intended as a measurement of working out
how risky a user's actions may be.
Online commentators are already comparing the system to
China's creepy "social credit" system.
The Chinese government analyses users' social media
habits and online shopping purchases, assigning citizens a score.
Jaywalking or skipping train fares can result in you
getting a lower score.
This score is then used to determine whether people can
take loans, and even travel on public transport.
Some citizens with very low ratings become
"blacklisted", making it impossible to book a plane flight, rent or
buy a property or stay in a luxury hotel.
The system is currently being piloted, but will become
mandatory in China by 2020.
Facebook's own rating system is the latest drive in its
bid to tackle fake news, a growing problem for the social network.
The site, which sees 2.23 billion users log on every
single month, has become a hot-bed for falsified news coverage.
Earlier this year, billionaire Facebook boss Mark
Zuckerberg vowed to fight fake news.
"The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook
has a lot of work to do," the 34-year-old Harvard drop-out explained.
Facebook has admitted that its site has been the subject
of political fakery campaigns from Russia.
After initially denying any complacency on its part, the
social network admitted more than 126 million US users had viewed some form of
Russian propaganda.
A congressional hearing followed, with Facebook, Twitter,
and Google in the dock.
And Facebook's been grappling with the problem ever
since.
Speaking in January, Samidh Chakrabarti, who heads up
civic engagement at Facebook, said: "Even a handful of deliberately
misleading stories can have dangerous consequences.
"We're committed to this issue of transparency
because it goes beyond Russia.
"Without transparency, it can be hard to hold
politicians accountable for their own words.
"Democracy then suffers because we don't get the
full picture of what our leaders are promising us," he wrote, in what
looks like a subtle snipe at US President Donald Trump.
"This is an even more pernicious problem than
foreign interference.
"But we hope that by setting a new bar for
transparency, we can tackle both of these challenges simultaneously."
Chakrabarti said that the misinformation campaigns
targeting Facebook users are "professionalised, and constantly try to game
the system".
"We will always have more work to do," he
added.
We've asked Facebook for comment and will update this
story with any response.
Comments
Post a Comment