28 April 2018

Facebook shrinks fake news after warnings backfire


Tell someone not to do something and sometimes they just want to do it more. That’s what happened when Facebook put red flags on debunked fake news. Users who wanted to believe the false stories had their fevers ignited and they actually shared the hoaxes more. That led Facebook to ditch the incendiary red flags in favor of showing Related Articles with more level-headed perspectives from trusted news sources.

But now it’s got two more tactics to reduce the spread of misinformation, which Facebook detailed at its Fighting Abuse @Scale event in San Francisco. Facebook’s director of News Feed integrity Michael McNally and data scientist Lauren Bose held a talk discussing all the ways it intervenes. The company is trying to walk a fine line between censorship and sensibility.

These red warning labels actually backfired and made some users more likely to share, so Facebook switched to showing Related Articles

First, rather than call more attention to fake news, Facebook wants to make it easier to miss these stories while scrolling. When Facebook’s third-party fact-checkers verify an article is inaccurate, Facebook will shrink the size of the link post in the News Feed. “We reduce the visual prominence of feed stories that are fact-checked false,” a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to me.

As you can see below in the image on the left, confirmed-to-be-false news stories on mobile show up with their headline and image rolled into a single smaller row of space. Below, a Related Articles box shows “Fact-Checker”-labeled stories debunking the original link. Meanwhile on the right, a real news article’s image appears about 10 times larger, and its headline gets its own space.

 

Second, Facebook is now using machine learning to look at newly published articles and scan them for signs of falsehood. Combined with other signals like user reports, Facebook can use high falsehood prediction scores from the machine learning systems to prioritize articles in its queue for fact-checkers. That way, the fact-checkers can spend their time reviewing articles that are already qualified to probably be wrong.

“We use machine learning to help predict things that might be more likely to be false news, to help prioritize material we send to fact-checkers (given the large volume of potential material),” a spokesperson from Facebook confirmed. The social network now works with 20 fact-checkers in several countries around the world, but it’s still trying to find more to partner with. In the meantime, the machine learning will ensure their time is used efficiently.

Bose and McNally also walked the audience through Facebook’s “ecosystem” approach that fights fake news at every step of its development:

  • Account Creation – If accounts are created using fake identities or networks of bad actors, they’re removed.
  • Asset Creation – Facebook looks for similarities to shut down clusters of fraudulently created Pages and inhibit the domains they’re connected to.
  • Ad Policies – Malicious Pages and domains that exhibit signatures of wrong use lose the ability to buy or host ads, which deters them from growing their audience or monetizing it.
  • False Content Creation – Facebook applies machine learning to text and images to find patterns that indicate risk.
  • Distribution – To limit the spread of false news, Facebook works with fact-checkers. If they debunk an article, its size shrinks, Related Articles are appended and Facebook downranks the stories in News Feed.

Together, by chipping away at each phase, Facebook says it can reduce the spread of a false news story by 80 percent. Facebook needs to prove it has a handle on false news before more big elections in the U.S. and around the world arrive. There’s a lot of work to do, but Facebook has committed to hiring enough engineers and content moderators to attack the problem. And with conferences like Fighting Abuse @Scale, it can share its best practices with other tech companies so Silicon Valley can put up a united front against election interference.


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This soft robotic arm is straight out of Big Hero 6 (it’s even from Disney)


The charming robot at the heart of Disney’s Big Hero 6, Baymax, isn’t exactly realistic, but its puffy bod is an (admittedly aspirational) example of the growing field of soft robotics. And now Disney itself has produced a soft robot arm that seems like it could be a prototype from the movie.

Created by Disney Research roboticists, the arm seems clearly inspired by Baymax, from the overstuffed style and delicate sausage fingers to the internal projector that can show status or information to nearby people.

“Where physical human-robot interaction is expected, robots should be compliant and reactive to avoid human injury and hardware damage,” the researchers write in the paper describing the system. “Our goal is the realization of a robot arm and hand system which can physically interact with humans and gently manipulate objects.”

The mechanical parts of the arm are ordinary enough — it has an elbow and wrist and can move around the way many other robot arms do, using the same servos and such.

But around the joints are what look like big pillows, which the researchers call “force sensing modules.” They’re filled with air and can detect pressure on them. This has the dual effect of protecting the servos from humans and vice versa, while also allowing natural tactile interactions.

“Distributing individual modules over the various links of a robot provides contact force sensing over a large area of the robot and allows for the implementation of spatially aware, engaging physical human-robot interactions,” they write. “The independent sensing areas also allow a human to communicate with the robot or guide its motions through touch.”

Like hugging, as one of the researchers demonstrates:

Presumably in this case the robot (also presuming the rest of the robot) would understand that it is being hugged, and reciprocate or otherwise respond.

The fingers are also soft and filled with air; they’re created in a 3D printer that can lay down both rigid and flexible materials. Pressure sensors within each inflatable finger let the robot know whether, for example, one fingertip is pressing too hard or bearing all the weight, signaling it to adjust its grip.

This is still very much a prototype; the sensors can’t detect the direction of a force yet, and the materials and construction aren’t airtight by design, meaning they have to be continuously pumped full. But it still shows what they want it to show: that a traditional “hard” robot can be retrofitted into a soft one with a bit of ingenuity. We’re still a long way from Baymax, but it’s a more science than fiction now.


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T-Mobile is reportedly much closer to a merger deal with Sprint


It looks like a potential merger deal between T-Mobile and Sprint, two of the major telecom companies in the U.S., is getting closer and now has set valuation terms, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The deal could be announced as soon as Sunday, according to a report by CNBC. The proposed tie-up of the two companies was called off in November last year, but now that deal appears to be coming closer, with T-Mobile’s backer valuing Sprint at around $24 billion, according to Bloomberg. As part of the deal, Deutsche Telekom AG will get a 69% voting interest on a 42% stake in the company, according to that report. (Both reports, however, disagree on the valuation — with CNBC citing a $26 billion valuation.)

This deal seems to have been a long time coming, and consolidates two of the four major telecom providers in the U.S. into one larger entity. That could, in theory, offer it some more flexibility as they expand into 5G networks. Still, a deal of this scale could still fall apart and would be subject to regulation — with significant international ownership of both companies (Softbank for Sprint, and Deutsche Telekom for T-Mobile).

Sprint shares fell more than 8% in extended trading to under $6, while T-Mobile shares were largely unchanged. Shares of Sprint were up around 8% on the day up to $6.50 in early trading.

A representative from Sprint declined to comment. A representative from T-Mobile did not immediately respond to a request for comment.


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Essential’s first handset is coming to more markets


It’s hard launching a phone company — something Essential was pretty candid about from the start. Andy Rubin’s latest endeavor got off to something of a slow start, according to outside accounts, but today the well-funded hardware startup is getting ready to add a whole bunch of new markets to its online store.

On Twitter today, the company announced a handful of key additions to its coverage map, including Canada, France, Japan and UK. As Engadget notes, availability in some of those markets already exists, but not through the company’s own shop, most notably Canada, where users can pick the handset up via Amazon or Telus.

There are also some country specific caveats here. Those can be found through the company’s Terms of Service, which notes that the handset is now also available in Germany.

It’s been a slow roll out for the company, but understandably so. It’s not easy starting this kind of endevour from scratch, even with the $300 million in funding the company managed to drum up. Essential spent its first year primarily focused on its home market, delivering Amazon and Best Buy availability, along with a Sprint deal.

Building distribution channels this time out should ease some of the burden of launching when time comes to deliver version 2.0.


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