[woodchuck64]

One thing's for certain: Facebook AI research is running deep-layered natural-language ANNs right now on a year of election comments and likes. I think well before four years they'll know exactly how to detect bubbles of alternate political reality and also how to break them up. There will be some interesting decisions facing them before the next election.

[mzw_mzw]

Do you trust them to break up all the alternate reality bubbles, or just the ones they don't like?

What's truly dangerous here is that one organization has so much control over what news people see.

[astrodust]

I don't trust them one bit when their profitability is driven by clicks, and clicks are driven by bullshit stories.

[fokov]

Is this really different than TV news? Most people stick to one network (Fox news, NBC, CNN, etc) and not only do they not watch the others but believe they are corrupt, fixed, and lying.

The problem is we don't have multiple major news organizations per major area like we used to. Back then there was bias, but it was easier to be called out on it. Now I think many people are fine living in the bubble.

[adventured]

It's different because Facebook has captured nearly every American adult and they have a Google-like (in search) dominance over social. There's no news platform in US history that has ever come even remotely close to being able to claim that. They're just about worth more than every US media company combined, their reach and financial power are already incredible; four years from now they'll be as profitable as Google is today and their reach will likely have expanded further.

I can't see a scenario where Facebook manages to avoid anti-trust action against it in the next four to six years, both in Europe and the US.

[woodchuck64]

There's got be some non-political algorithms. Maybe tracking news articles to their sources (text/phrase similarity searching), showing sources, and flagging quality by accuracy of details? A few years of improvement on automatic text summarizing might be able to catch political "telephone" articles that erase and morph crucial details.

[mzw_mzw]

That just pushes the problem back, unfortunately. Do you trust the people who designed the algorithm? Even if they were wonderful, apolitical idealists, do you trust the people who maintain the systems after those guys leave the company to stick with it, no matter what? After all, this election is the Most Important One In Our Lifetimes, so surely it's okay to put our thumbs on the scale just a little bit in the name of truth and justice... it's for the sake of the children/gays/whoever, you know... what kind of heartless monster would just stand by when they could make a difference?

Ultimately the only way to really address this problem is to have a diverse variety of competing news sources so at least they aren't all captured in the same way at the same time. There's no way to line this up with Facebook being the One News Source, any more than if it was the government doing it.