Weeding Out Toxic Commentary

Accountability, Accuracy, Media, Minimizing Harm, Social Media, , , , , ,

Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. finds a way to weed out toxic commentary: Take a quiz.

Many large media organizations eliminated their comment sections because of abusive commentary, writes Steve Friess. The Guardian, for example, last year closed comments under articles on race, immigration and Islam because they attract “unacceptable levels of toxic commentary.”

A short quiz on the contents of a story, the Norwegian brainstorm, unlocks access to the comments section.

“We wanted to create a bump in the road to make people think a bit before ranting away,” a source tells Friess.

Facebook Home of Viral Hoaxes

Accountability, Accuracy, Fairness, Media, Minimizing Harm, Online News, Social Media, Transparency, Using Deception, , , ,

Rumors, misinformation and fake news: Craig Silverman says he helped popularize the term “fake news” and now regrets it.

Silverman and colleagues published an analysis of 50 of the biggest fake news hits on Facebook in 2017.

“This highlights the challenge faced by Facebook to find ways to halt or arrest the spread of completely false stories on its platform, and raises questions about how much progress has been made in fighting this type of misinformation.”

Facebook “remains the home of massively viral hoaxes,” says Silverman.

Killing Net Neutrality Rules Could Hurt Students

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Killing net neutrality rules could hurt students using videoconferencing and other forms of high-tech distance learning, writes Klint Finley.

The Federal Communications Commission on Dec. 14 scraped rules that ban internet providers from blocking or slowing data delivery. Rural populations could suffer most, says Finley.

Unnamed Sources Harms Public Trust

Accountability, Conflict of interest, Media, Minimizing Harm, Online News, Transparency, ,

Reading a story with unnamed sources: Bethania Palma quotes experts who say that journalists risk losing audience trust by frequent or unnecessary use of unnamed sources.

“The public, like the reporters and editors putting a story together, should question whether the story is important enough to grant public-facing anonymity to the sources making the claims.”

Facial-recognition and Internet Vigilantes

Accountability, Accuracy, Fairness, Media, Minimizing Harm, Online News, Social Media, Transparency, Using Deception, , , , , ,

Year of the Internet Vigilantes: Doris Truong writes about online identification technology to combat misinformation.

“It might lie in facial-recognition technology. You might have it in your hands already, depending on which smartphone you’re using.” Trust but verify.