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The soft tyranny of fake news detection
by kleinbl00

    CBS News reported developers increased pressure on Facebook to address its “fake news problem” with a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox called the “B.S. Detector.” It claimed the extension relies upon “a constantly-updated list of known fake news sites, propaganda mills and ‘promoters of kooky conspiracy theories'” as a reference point.

    However, CBS News was wrong. The extension is not “constantly updated.” The extension, as developer Daniel Sieradski shared, was created to “make fun” of Facebook. Sieradski “scraped some data together” that included sites, which are not “fake news” websites. (One of those sites was Shadowproof.com.)

    “B.S. Detector” displays a red banner that indicates a news website is “not a reliable news source.” Up until publication, the extension still flagged Consortium News, Naked Capitalism, Truthout, and Truthdig, even though Sieradski said they would not be listed in the update.

    Around twenty volunteers worked on an update to the extension to correct “performance” issues that were highlighted by tech websites and pledged to remove sites that should not have been in the dataset used to make a list.

    CBS News, as well as the tech websites, never thought to question the criteria or process for including websites in the extension. They presumed all the websites were actual “fake news” websites.