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Censorship Microsoft The Internet

Microsoft Won't Label Fake News As False In An Attempt To Avoid 'Censorship' Cries (bloomberg.com) 164

In an interview with Bloomberg, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company won't label social media posts that appear to be false in order to avoid the appearance that the company is trying to censor speech online. From the report: "I don't think that people want governments to tell them what's true or false," Smith said when asked about Microsoft's role in defining disinformation. "And I don't think they're really interested in having tech companies tell them either." The comments are Smith's strongest indication yet that Microsoft is taking a unique path to tracking and disrupting digital propaganda efforts.

Smith said Microsoft wanted to provide the public with more information about who is speaking, what they are saying and allow them to come to their own judgment about whether content was true. "We have to be very thoughtful and careful because -- and this is also true of every democratic government -- fundamentally, people quite rightly want to make up their own mind and they should," he said. "Our whole approach needs to be to provide people with more information, not less and we cannot trip over and use what others might consider censorship as a tactic."

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Microsoft Won't Label Fake News As False In An Attempt To Avoid 'Censorship' Cries

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  • Thank you (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LeeLynx ( 6219816 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2022 @10:09PM (#62903475)
    Objective reality is overrated, anyway.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Busman85 ( 8485281 )

      Yeah! fuck science and math! Everything is a narrative we choose to our liking as the post-modernists claim and their profit Karl Rove has brought us into an age of freedum to choose whatever reality we like!

      As long as you don't cancel people it's just fine if we filter you out of OUR reality.. go ahead and filter us out of yours but whenever we clash, our might makes us right so follow our rule.

      • Re:Thank you (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Thursday September 22, 2022 @08:29AM (#62904239) Homepage

        Interesting that you picked Karl Rove as your example of someone spreading falsehoods. Karl Rove never signed on to the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, he was very vocal, criticizing other Republicans for their deception.

        https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]

        • Karl Rove never signed on to the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, he was very vocal, criticizing other Republicans for their deception.

          I guess a stopped (and corrupt) clock is correct twice a day eh? lol

  • Good. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2022 @10:55PM (#62903563) Homepage

    I hasten to remind everyone that, at some point, a political party you don't like will be in power. The tools of your friends today will be the tools of your enemies tomorrow.

    Plus, the government is full of people who couldn't hack it in real jobs, and they'd be the ones determining what is false and what isn't.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 )

      Plus, the government is full of people who were put there and kept there, by voters.

      FTFY. And yeah, I agree with your analysis. Too bad voters care about who's in charge next about as much as a CFO cares about FY2040 financial planning.

      We can generally handle and deal with people we don't like all day. That said, no one should tolerate an "enemy" Representative who turns combatant and divisive strictly for politics and Greeds sake. That's how wars get started and we already know they're not sending their kids to die.

      • Plus, the government is full of people who were put there and kept there, by voters.

        FTFY.

        Bzzzt, wrong, the vast majority of people working in the government are unelected bureaucrats, been that way since the aftermath of the assassination of President Garfield in 1881. Not that your points are wrong, but the problems are deeper and more intractable than you think they are. The elections, especially of the US President, are a mere dog and pony show when it comes to the machinations of the government as a whole.

    • I hasten to remind everyone that, at some point, a political party you don't like will be in power. The tools of your friends today will be the tools of your enemies tomorrow.

      This is why I find it astounding that politicians fight so hard for rule changes to get bills passed into law, don't they know that they could be on the other side of this after the next election?

      Plus, the government is full of people who couldn't hack it in real jobs, and they'd be the ones determining what is false and what isn't.

      These are people that get suckered into giving money to any wild idea because someone made a nice looking PowerPoint presentation. If some idea had a chance to be profitable then there would be private investors standing in line to get a piece of it. If there's no private investors touching it then they go to gov

  • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Wednesday September 21, 2022 @10:56PM (#62903565)

    The biggest problem with news reporting today is that news that people would like to know is not reported in the first place.

    We have large news networks that have been caught colluding to keep quiet on news that they'd prefer the public not know. They all have a similar political slant so in order to get an accurate view of the world people are turning to social media.

    A problem with labeling anything false is that it brings more attention to the reporting. This is like when NASA chose not to comment on claims the manned missions to the moon were faked. To say anything means that this has risen to a level that NASA felt a need to comment.

    Another problem is that any claims of something being false is to bring attention to what truth lies behind it. To say that NASA faked the missions of putting men on the moon is telling people that NASA exists, the moon exists, and putting humans on the moon is something close enough to probable that there's a debate on if it happened or not. Another example, to claim some drug is worthless to treat COVID-19 means that there is a disease called COVID-19 and treating it is something people need to be concerned about. It's something of a trope of people making denials of something happening as evidence of them knowing more than they claim, or some admission of guilt, or some other kind of revelation. Attempting to keep something quiet could reveal more than doing nothing and hoping nobody notices.

    I wonder if this isn't about avoiding accusations of censorship but avoiding the chances of highlighting something that they'd rather keep quiet.

    • They all have a similar political slant so in order to get an accurate view of the world people are turning to social media.

      If this were true, then the people would be arriving at a more accurate view of the world through social media than they would from the large news networks. I'm not saying that mainstream media doesn't have faults, but to think that social media is making things better is laughable at best.

      This doesn't come from people looking for an accurate view of the world. It's from them despe

  • What, is categorizing books into fiction and non-fiction in libraries and bookstores also censorship?

    Do rightwing snowflakes need to get participation trophies simply for being able to read and write, and still not be able to tell apart complex situations from outright lies?
  • Lots and LOTS of things marked on Twitter and Facebook as "false" were found later to be true. The best course of action is to not label things as false you think, but do not know, are false in the moment.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by belthize ( 990217 )

      Lots isn't really a statistical value, what percentage were labeled false incorrectly ?

      What percentage of things that were objectively false were left unlabeled ?

      Aren't twitter and facebook exercising their own freedom of speech to express an opinion on whether something is true or false ? Or are companies not allowed to express an opinion in such a way ?

      If you're going to be a freedom of speech absolutist you have to drink all the kool aid.

    • Can you provide lots and lots of examples? Or at least a few, to give us an idea.

  • by The_Revelation ( 688580 ) on Thursday September 22, 2022 @12:41AM (#62903729) Homepage
    I find this hilarious because Microsoft frequently carries scams on its platform (MSN, scammers are supported by Bing as being trust worthy - not in Google, just Bing and its subsidiaries such as Duck Duck Go), and does nothing about those either.

    Microsoft is complicit in their involvement in assisting fraud through its Internet platforms such as MSN via scams masquerading as news items, supported by Windows, Bing and Microsoft Edge that defaults to all of the above. Its fair to say that they have a financial incentive to continue to support fake news in as much as they support fraud. They are two sides to the same coin.

    Good job, Microsoft. Not only are you refusing to label 'fake news', you are actively creating it!
  • While I applaud this position, it seems this kind of common sense is in the minority. A majority of people either want to be shielded from real facts, or distort them to fit their world view and narrative. What's needed here is real news, without much commentary or spin. "man bites dog" is the headline and all we really need to know. "Man bites dog because he thought the dog was a rabid member of X or Y party" is what news has devolved too. Sadly, many people don't want to use their own brain to unders
    • What's needed here is real news, without much commentary or spin.

      Not only has that never been available throughout history, but it's also undesirable. People don't want to have to be foreign policy experts to understand the ramifications of a piece of news. There's too much to know, no one can ever know everything.

      • by tomkost ( 944194 )
        I get what you are saying, yes, everyone can't know everything. However, the flip side of this actually well known throughout history..

        Famous quote from Thomas Jefferson - the people cannot be all, & always, well informed. the part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

        TJ goes on to say - what country can preserve it's libertie
  • in Europe so that we only see news that is approved by the European Ministry of Truth.

  • Just want to point that out.

    It might be insulting to someone who believes the obviously false shit for whatever tribal allegiance reason, but it's not censorship.

    Only someone who can't tell false from true will think that labelling content is the same as censoring it.

    Now lowering the replication tendency of false-classified items. That would be censorship.

    Get it straight.
  • We don't want governments telling us what is true or false. But Microsoft is not the government. We do want to hold platforms accountable when promoting obvious bullshit and (sometimes dangerous) misinformation in their algorithms for profit.

    Nice strawman you made there Microsoft.

    • I may be too kind, but I think the reason for bringing up "the government" was to make a connection implied by users where some authority is telling them what they can and cannot say.

      If there were any journalists working at bloomberg, they might have pressured MS to explain exactly what they intend to do about the "fake news" problem in place of censorship. If we read in between the lines I'd guess they're experimenting with accompanying articles and shadowbanning to limit the problem without bringing the

  • If they're not going to label fake news at fake then at least make it sink like a stone. i.e. it doesn't receive prominence, it gets buried in searches and it is hard for people (and bots) to spread. I'm quite certain that website's reputation and political / scientific affiliations could be used to measure trust and then some form of moderation would also help.

    But what am I thinking? This is Microsoft and their new revenue model is embedding clickbait and other social media advertising trash straight in

  • ... those darn "censorship cries". Whiny babies!

    Well, what can you expect from some old dead white guys in powdered wigs anyway ...

  • Let us ponder, for just a moment, which of these two Microsoft is contributing to with their stance.

    Perhaps they should lean towards being part of the solution, instead of perpetuating the problem? Perhaps they can split hairs and say that something is 'unconfirmed' or 'unsubstantiated.' This would allow the reader to decide, which is, after all, what those who are posting such things want.

  • Microsoft can't win if they start to label items as fake news or real news.

    They will start to piss off portions of their money pool no matter what they do, mostly because those people believe that fake news. Sometimes because MS got it wrong.

    And then, there is the expense. Either train an AI to label (good luck on that one!), or have, hmm, how many staff to ascertain the truth (be investigative journalists themselves?) for ALL the content they deliver?

    It's all just a no go from the start.

  • Label everything as false. You'll be right 50% of the time. Maybe more.

  • After the last 30 months of lies or premature-and-inaccurate conclusions about mask effectiveness, vaccine effectiveness, who and how many are killed by cops relative to by others, whether having more minorities arrested for crime intrinsically means racist enforcement and that curtailing that enforcement would reduce crime, etc., it should be obvious that the media and the government are not capable of determining which news is "fake." Having "scientific consensus" sometimes only really means that dissent

  • Fascism needs needs false information, a soapbox, and for people to let their false information go unchallenged.

    Microsoft has provided two of the three. They are promoting fascism.

  • Because slashdot are mostly technical users, most wonâ(TM)t know this, but: On a new windows 10 and 11 install if a general user opens edge the default webpage is a msn starter page that is littered with the most outrageous scam ads for crypt coins scams, investment scams, health scams etc etc. And this has been going on for years now. They do not care. What ever generates the revenue is A - ok. Do yourself a favour and check out how bad a cesspool that page is in most regions.

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