Back in 1998/9, Random House ask editors and readers to list the top 10 novels of the 20th century, and the readers' list was dominated by obsessive cultists more motivated to vote than the average reader.

I'm sure the consumers/targets of Fox and Infowars are more convinced of the trustworthiness of those sources than casual viewers are of "mainstream media", especially since Fox etc. spend an inordinate amount of time and effort indoctrinating their viewers into not trusting other sources. How will Zuckerbot's algorithms take that sort of bias into account and not let Facebook become even more dominated by obsessive lunatics?

Ahhh Fox News...

Here's a random fact about my life. My Grandfather is a die hard democrat. He didn't vote Hillary because "she's a woman", or Trump because he's a republican.

But for some fucking reason, his go to source for news is Fox News... 🙄

Maybe grandpa just likes the blonde eye candy on Fox.

Foxnews is built to frighten old people into anger.

It's well known that people become more conservative as they age. Especially if you have children, or girls, and other life changing events like retirement, lack of mobility, and health problems. You become a bit fearful of the future, and faux news targets that fear and creates more.

Faux caters to the 2 basic types of conservatives - those that have little or nothing and blame it all on liberals and minorities, and those that have everything and want to damn sure keep it that way.

See, that's why this is insanely funny in my case.

My family is part of that minority Fox attributes the blame to

Maybe your dad likes anger, doesn't get enough from sports.

I know this will very likely filter my least favorite things first and foremost.

...This fails to make me very enthusiastic for the feature. I kind of wish I didn't rely on the connections I only maintain in Facebook.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Its Shitty AI all the way down.

"Zuckerberg said the company has gathered data on how consumers perceive news brands by asking them to identify whether they have heard of various publications and if they trust them."

Or....OR....you could evaluate the accuracy of the reporting done by that agency. Just a thought.

That would require Facebook employees to evaluate each news source. The way Facebook is doing it can be automated, which will save a lot of money.

It's a pretty simple automation algorithm to make, considering that 88 percent of Facebook's revenues are from advertising, and just about all of that is comprised media outlets.

I can see the golden rule applying here first and foremost - "they who have the gold, make the rules"

If Facebook's trust rankings don't match my own, that means Facebook is biased and unreliable and so are the news sources they say are trustworthy. That means I need to continue trusting the news sources I currently trust.

Do I understand this correctly? This model is the same as google search. It's not the best hit, it's the most commonly chosen link. In other words, that means the mob mentality is what determines trustworthiness? Isn't that what we currently have?

That doesn't sound like a good model.

It's all they know.