Facebook's new anti-fake news strategy is not going to work – but something else might

Have you seen some “tips to spot fake news” on your Facebook newsfeed recently?

Over the past year, the social media company has been scrutinized for influencing the US presidential election by spreading fake news (propaganda). Obviously, the ability to spread completely made-up stories about politicians trafficking child sex slaves and imaginary terrorist attacks with impunity is bad for democracy and society.

Something had to be done.

Enter Facebook’s new, depressingly incompetent strategy for tackling fake news. The strategy has three, frustratingly ill-considered parts.

New products

The first part of the plan is to build new products to curb the spread of fake news stories. Facebook says it’s trying “to make it easier to report a false news story” and find signs of fake news such as “if reading an article makes people significantly less likely to share it.”

It will then send the story to independent fact checkers. If fake, the story “will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to a corresponding article explaining why.”

This sounds pretty good, but it won’t work.

If non-experts could tell the difference between real news and fake news (which is doubtful), there would be no fake news problem to begin with.

What’s more, Facebook says: “We cannot become arbiters of truth ourselves — it’s not feasible given our scale, and it’s not our role.” Nonsense.

Facebook is like a megaphone. Normally, if someone says something horrible into the megaphone, it’s not the megaphone company’s fault. But Facebook is a very special kind of megaphone that listens first and then changes the volume.



The company’s algorithms largely determine both the content and order of your newsfeed. So if Facebook’s algorithms spread some neo-Nazi hate speech far and wide, yes, it is the company’s fault.

Worse yet, even if Facebook accurately labels fake news as contested, it will still affect public discourse through “availability cascades.”

Each time you see the same message repeated from (apparently) different sources, the message seems more believable and reasonable. Bold lies are extremely powerful because repeatedly fact-checking them can actually make people remember them as true.

These effects are exceptionally robust; they cannot be fixed with weak interventions such as public service announcements, which brings us to the second part of Facebook’s strategy: helping people make more informed decisions when they encounter false news.

Helping you help yourself

Facebook is releasing public service announcements and funding the “news integrity initiative” to help “people make informed judgments about the news they read and share online”.

This – also – doesn’t work.

A vast body of research in cognitive psychology concerns correcting systematic errors in reasoning such as failing to perceive propaganda and bias. We have known since the 1980s that simply warning people about their biased perceptions doesn’t work.

Similarly, funding a “news integrity” project sounds great until you realise the company is really talking about critical thinking skills.

Improving critical thinking skills is a key aim of primary, secondary and tertiary education. If four years of university barely improves these skills in students, what will this initiative do? Make some Youtube videos? A fake news FAQ?



Funding a few research projects and “meetings with industry experts” doesn’t stand a chance to change anything.

Disrupting economic incentives

The third prong of this non-strategy is cracking down on spammers and fake accounts, and making it harder for them to buy advertisements. While this is a good idea, it’s based on the false premise that most fake news comes from shady con artists rather than major news outlets.

You see, “fake news” is Orwellian newspeak — carefully crafted to mean a totally fabricated story from a fringe outlet masquerading as news for financial or political gain. But these stories are the most suspicious and therefore the least worrisome. Bias and lies from public figures, official reports and mainstream news are far more insidious.

And what about astrology, homeopathy, psychics, anti-vaccination messages, climate change denial, intelligent design, miracles, and all the rest of the irrational nonsense bandied about online? What about the vast array of deceptive marketing and stealth advertising that is core to Facebook’s business model?

As of this writing, Facebook doesn’t even have an option to report misleading advertisements.

What is Facebook to do?

Facebook’s strategy is vacuous, evanescent, lip service; a public relations exercise that makes no substantive attempt to address a serious problem.

But the problem is not unassailable. The key to reducing inaccurate perceptions is to redesign technologies to encourage more accurate perception. Facebook can do this by developing a propaganda filter — something like a spam filter for lies.

Facebook may object to becoming an “arbiter of truth”. But coming from a company that censors historic photos and comedians calling for social justice, this sounds disingenuous.



Nonetheless, Facebook has a point. To avoid accusations of bias, it should not create the propaganda filter itself. It should simply fund researchers in artificial intelligence, software engineering, journalism and design to develop an open-source propaganda filter that anyone can use.

Why should Facebook pay? Because it profits from spreading propaganda, that’s why.

Sure, people will try to game the filter, but it will still work. Spam is frequently riddled with typos, grammatical errors and circumlocution not only because it’s often written by non-native English speakers but also because the weird writing is necessary to bypass spam filters.

If the propaganda filter has a similar effect, weird writing will make the fake news that slips through more obvious. Better yet, an effective propaganda filter would actively encourage journalistic best practices such as citing primary sources.

Developing a such a tool won’t be easy. It could take years and several million dollars to refine. But Facebook made over US$8 billion last quarter, so Mark Zuckerberg can surely afford it.

Paul Ralph, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

The Soweto Declaration

At a “Land Imbizo” in Soweto this weekend, Andile Mngxitama, the leader of the Black Land First movement, issued a declaration which is quoted in full below.

Mngxitama stated last week that the BLF is not interested in attendance of any white people at the imbizo. The declaration makes no provision for recognition of the fact that black people has no claim to large parts of South Africa, including predominantly the Western Cape where the first black people arrived AFTER the European settlement of 1652. The declaration makes no provision for recognition of the fact that there is no legal evidence of prior ownership to the land claimed, nor of the fact that all farmers have evidence of legally obtaining and owning their land. The declaration fails to acknowledge that white people are South African citizens as well with a full right of residence and the right to own property as protected by the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa and the Statutes of the United Nation as recognised by the government of South Africa.

In light of the wording of this statement, which boils down to utter racism, incitement to violence and hate speech, Front National South Africa regards Mngxitama and his gang of followers as terrorists and demand that they be treated as such under the legal procedures against terrorism in the South African Constitution and Laws of the Republic.

If anybody has to go to jail – it is this man!

National Land Imbizo
Mofolo Park
Soweto
27 May 2017
Introduction
We, the landless people who are the rightful owners of this country, its wealth and the land – here today, in Soweto (at Mofolo Park) declare the following:
1. South Africa belongs to black people!
2. White people came here in 1652 and stole our land and made us their slaves.
3. The land and its wealth, everything underground, the oceans and the sky belong to black people.
4. All our sufferings, our poverty, the violence in the townships, in the squatter camps, and in our rural villages are caused fundamentally by the fact that we remain a landless people.
5. Without land there is no freedom or dignity.
6. All the land in the hands of white people is stolen property.
We note with anger that:
1. After twenty three years of democracy, only 35 000 white families own 80% of the land!
2. Blacks own only 3% of the JSE!
3. Racism is rife in South Africa!
4. Whites exploit, oppress and murder black people every day in the farms and the rural townships!
5. White monopoly capital which exploits our land and minerals has murdered our brothers in Marikana and has not paid reparations or accounted for their wrongdoings!
6. White monopoly capital mines illegally in South Africa (SA) – who gave De Beers, Lonmin and others the right to mine on stolen land?
7. When blacks mine they are called illegal, forced into unsafe conditions and condemned by white owned media as “Zama Zama” miners.
8. White monopoly capital murders the rightful owners of the land and wealth and calls them Zama Zamas.
9. We note that the courts don’t take racism seriously!
10. Blacks are being evicted every day from our homes and land by the white racist farmers on the farms; by white owned racist and corrupt banks; by the courts and sheriffs in the towns and townships; and by municipalities we vote for in squatter camps!
11. Because of landlessness we blacks are congested in the townships including in the backyards!
12. The government has up now not produced a plan to return our land and help stop our suffering!
13. Our government is buying land which was stolen from us through its “willing buyer, willing seller” policy.
14. It will take us more than 100 years to buy back only 30% of the land, if we follow the current pace of land delivery!
15. 8% of the land was bought back from whites at more than R50 billion since 1994!
We furthermore, declare that:
1. The post 1994 government has failed to return our land for the past 23 years!
2. That the ANC must apologise for this, ask for pardon and take action now!
3. White people have not shown that they are sorry or that they acknowledge their sins for slavery, colonialism, apartheid and land theft!
4. White people have not acknowledged that the wealth, comfort and security that they enjoy today is from the direct oppression, exploitation and land dispossession of the black majority!
5. Whites have had 350 years to give back our land and they did not do so. Moreover, whites had twenty three years to say they are sorry and they did not say so!
6. Now, we no longer want dialogue with whites – want our land back!
7. The biggest and most evil corruption is land theft – this is the mother of all corruption!
8. The crisis in the life of black people comes from historical land dispossession – we cannot heal if the land is not returned!
We note with sadness the following:
1. Our political leaders remain divided and not focused on the real issues affecting black people.
2. Most of our political leaders speak one thing and do the opposite.
3. Most of the political leaders are in the pockets of white monopoly capital.
4. President Zuma has called for Land Expropriation Without Compensation – instead of supporting this call, the land question has been made into a political football in parliament.
5. White owned media, the politicians captured by imperialism and white monopoly capital (both inside the ANC and the opposition) only pay lip service to the question of land return.
7. Politics are made to make blacks fight amongst themselves over nothing!
8. All black politicians in parliament, irrespective of political party affiliation, are landless people like the rest of us.
9. The talk of state capture and corruption is focused only on blacks.
We therefore ask the following questions:
1. Can a landless people play the games of politics amongst themselves?
2. What can be gained by fighting amongst ourselves when the country remains in white hands?
3. Why are these political parties and elders not supporting the call of President Zuma for land expropriation without compensation?
4. We ask the ANC, why do you say we must buy land which was stolen from us?
5. We ask the ANC further, why are you not listening to your own President?
Our Demands!
These demands must be met by any means necessary!
1. “Land expropriation without compensation” must be made policy before the end of 2017!
2. Stop all evictions – from bond houses, from farms, from flats in the inner cities, from squatter camps NOW!
3. We want state owned banks in all the provinces by the end of 2017!
4. The Zama Zama miners must be regularised and given all the assistance they need!
5. Backyards Must Fall! All adult persons must be given land and subsidies for housing!
6. The value of mortgage bonded houses must be reduced up to 50% because the land is free!
7. Those who have paid for land as part of the mortgage bond must be refunded!
8. Nationalisation of the mines must be realized so that we may benefit!
9. Workers must get a minimum wage of R12500.00 per month. The Marikana mine workers died for this!
10. All the schools must educate the learners about land dispossession and the struggle to regain our land and dignity!
11. Government must assist us to plant our own food!
12. A law must be made that clearly states that any white person found guilty of murdering or harming a black person must go to jail after which that person must lose his/her property and be deported to Europe!
Our Program of Action
We call on all those organisations that are not here and those that are present, to each send two representative to serve on the National Steering Committee for the return of the land!
What must parliament do?
1. We call upon parliament to amend section 25 of the Constitution to affect the policy of “land expropriation without compensation”, before the end of 2017!
2. The Steering Committee must meet all black political parties which are represented in parliament.
3. The Steering Committee must meet the ANC about these demands before their policy conference.
4 The Steering Committee must meet President Zuma as soon as possible.
5 The Steering Committee must visit President Mugabe to get wisdom and courage to fight for land!
What must the church do?
1. The colonial churches must repent and ask for forgiveness. The church which worked closely with the colonialists to take the land of black people must return the land to the people! In 2007, the churches under South African Council of Churches (SACC) made a declaration to return the stolen land, they have not done so!
2. The Steering Committee must demand a meeting with the SACC as soon as possible!
What must white people do?
White people are the direct beneficiaries of land theft from black people. Even those who today are not involved in mining or farming are direct beneficiaries of colonialism and apartheid. The schools they go to, the houses they live in, the wealth they have, all come from land theft and oppression of black people. No white person is not implicated or is not a beneficiary of racism – this includes those who are dead and even those who are not yet born.
Whites have a choice to continue with arrogance or they can decide to cooperate with blacks and return the stolen land. Whites must meet in their own land imbizo and resolve by when the land shall be returned to its rightful owners! The whites imbizo must happen before the end of 2017! We don’t want dialogue we want land!
What must the landless do?
If the landless wait for politicians, for the church or whites to do something about land, then we shall wait forever. Its up to the landless and their organisations to take action on the ground so as to speed up all the processes to regain the lost land. When land was taken from us, there was no law, no parliament, no talks of two third majority – the whites just took our land through force. We have to regain our land by any means necessary!
1. The Steering Committee must work to establish a national land occupation program which must be launched on the 1st of January 2018! The night of the New Year, shall be the night of new things!
2. All the war veterans of the liberation movement must join and lead the struggle for land return through direct action. The veterans of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), the MKMVA and the Azanian National Liberation Army (AZANLA) must join hands with all those who seek the return of the land now!
3. The Steering Committee shall also meet these war veterans organisations within the next two months!
4. The Steering Committee must also work with the revolutionary High School learners and university students on the programme for land return through re-occupying our stolen land.
5. The Steering Committee must meet with the African Kings and Indigenous leaders (traditional leaders) on the this Declaration and POA.
6. Every town and village must identify white owned productive land, and prepare to occupy it!
If we don’t take action nothing will change!

The bones of our ancestors are crying out for land. They are not resting in peace. The bones of Sikhukhune, Shaka, Nyabela, Hintsa, Moshweshwe, Cetshwayo, Nghunghunyane are calling for land now! The spirit of Bambatha, Sobukwe, Biko, Mantatise, Nzinga, Nehanda, Tsietsi Mashinini, Kgotso Seatlholo cry over the centuries across the African continent for land to be returned!

It is the land that gives us life and when we die, it’s the land that takes care of our bodies. Without land we are nothing! With land we are everything! That is why we must be black first through getting the land first!

Today here in Soweto we declare that for these commitments we shall fight side by side as comrades, sisters and brothers, as one united black people, until we get back the land!
Take back the land! Land or Death!

Delivered by Andile Mngxitama,
President of Black First Land First
Read the original article by Daniel Lötter on Front Nasionaal SA – blad
Published on South Africa Today – South Africa News

The Guptas – How they came to be the brains of the Shadow State

The Gupta family read and analyzed our country’s fault lines. The father sent his 3 sons to South Africa in 1993, just one year before the ANC took over. He must have been aware that the ANC was a corrupt and inept organization. He must have been mindful of the fact that all liberation movements in Africa created corrupt dictatorships. He knew that Madiba was already old and that the bad apples would soon take over. The Guptas bided their time.

He must have known that there would be enormous corruption opportunity.

That family came here and cultivated Zuma783 since way before Zuma783 rose to power. They made Zuma783’s children directors of their companies.

They ingratiated themselves so much with the Zuma family and the ZANC that Zuma783 actually outsourced the running of the shadow state to the Guptas. The Guptas were the brains of the criminal cartel that was created to loot the resources of the state on an industrial scale.

In short Gupta- Zuma Inc now owned the State. They owned all of the SOE’s. They owned Eskom, Denel, Transnet and the SABC through the boards, the CEO’s and CFO’s and the ministers who were all on their payroll. They started to loot the SOE’s in a systematic and orchestrated way. Details of that were already revealed by amaBhungane, the SACC, and the PARI academic research group.
I heard from someone that the Gupta family is involved from the mother and father down. The mother drives her children. Not that they need any motivation.

The Guptas became fabulously wealthy in the space of a few years. They spirited billions out of the country. When the banks picked up illegal activity from the Guptas, the Guptas relocated to Dubai but kept on running South Africa by remote control, through their puppet, the President.

The Guptas then turned to something very dark and evil when more and more of the actual nature of what they did start to emerge. They began to sow racial hate and division – the so-called WMC narrative – through the white-owned British-based PR company Bell Pottinger, who also worked for George Bush to generate worldwide support for the invasion of Iraq.

The racial division campaign was designed to take attention away from state capture. No matter the blood that would inevitably be spilled as a result of such a racial hate campaign.

Bell Pottinger went all the way to achieve their aims, social media infiltration, paid twitter, disinformation campaigns, in particular through their Gupta media like ANN7. They also hired the facists Andile Mngxitama and Jimmy Manyi to assist them.

The Guptas really exploited the divisions of the past to their fullest.

The Guptas might wear fancy clothes and stay in fancy houses, but they are worse than vultures.

Vultures have a useful and noble function of getting rid of dead carcasses.

The Guptas are co-responsible for the junk status and collapse of the State and the capture of SA’s criminal justice system. Millions will be kept in poverty, so that one Indian foreign family, with a small Zuma783 elite cabal, can be rich beyond their wildest dreams.

The Guptas are criminal human scum. They are the scum that floats on top of a septic tank, the septic tank of all their criminal activities, including mass looting and high treason.

Opinion by Daniel Sutherland
Published on South Africa Today – South Africa News

Does playing chess make you smarter? A look at the evidence

The stereotype of the chess player is someone who is smart, logical and good at maths. This is why so many parents around the world are keen to get their children playing chess – in the hope that the game might help to boost their son or daughter’s intelligence levels and help them succeed in a wide variety of subjects.

But apart from chess being a great game, its history rooted in eastern India military, is there actually any evidence to show that playing chess can make you smarter?

In a previous article, we showed that chess players exhibit, on average, superior cognitive ability compared to non-chess players. And the skills needed to play chess have also been shown to correlate with several measures of intelligence – such as fluid reasoning, memory, and processing speed.

But while the existence of a relationship between general cognitive ability and chess-skill is clear, is this simply because intelligent people are more likely to engage in the game of chess, or does engaging in chess make people smarter?

Brain game

The notion that playing chess makes you smarter goes something like this: chess requires concentration and intelligence, and as mathematics and literacy require the same general skills, then practising chess must also improve one’s academic achievement.

With this idea in mind, the Institute of Education conducted a large investigation to test the effects of chess instruction on the academic skills of nearly 4,000 British children.

School chess club. Pexels.

The recently released results were disappointing – it seemed chess played no effect on children’s attainment levels in mathematics, literacy, or science.

Promptly, the chess community questioned the reliability of the results, particularly given that other studies offer a more optimistic picture about the academic benefits of chess instruction.

Assessing the evidence

The chess community is probably right in criticising the recent study, as it suffers from several methodological shortcomings that probably invalidate the results.

Before the results were published, we carried out a review of all the studies in the field. Our results showed some moderate effects of chess instruction on cognitive ability and academic achievement – especially mathematics.

Does chess need intelligence? Shutterstock

And yet, we still need to be cautious in interpreting these results as a positive indication of the power of chess on cognitive or academic skills. This is because most of the reviewed studies compared the effect of chess with groups doing no alternative activities.

This is a problem because research has shown that the excitement and fun induced by novel activities can cause a positive temporal effect on test scores – a placebo effect.

Crucially, when compared to an alternative activity – such as checkers or sports – chess did not show any significant effect on children’s skills. So, it could well just be that the observed positive effects of chess instruction are merely due to placebo effects.

Chess notes

What all this shows is that it is unlikely chess has a significant impact on overall cognitive ability. So while it might sound like a quick win – that a game of chess can improve a broad range of skills – unfortunately this is not the case.

The failure of generalisation of a particular skill, in fact, happens to occur in many other areas beyond chess – such as music training, which has been shown to have no effect on non-music cognitive or academic abilities. The same applies to video game training, brain training, and working memory training, among others.

Ancient intelligence or just a good game? Pexels.

The fact that skills learned by training do not transfer across different domains seems to be a universal in human cognition. In other words, you get better, at best, at what you train in – which may just sound just like good old fashioned common sense.

But although expecting chess to enhance children’s cognitive ability and overall academic achievement is just wishful thinking, this doesn’t mean it can’t still add value to a child’s education.
Clearly, playing chess involves some level of arithmetical and geometrical skill, and designing mathematical games or exercises with chess material can still be a simple and fun way to help children to learn.
Published on The Conversation

COPE SHARES THE UTTER OUTRAGE OF ALL SOUTH AFRICANS

Issued by: MOSIUOA LEKOTA
The Congress of the People shares the utter outrage of all South Africans at:

 The extent of brazen corruption on a grand scale never before
witnessed;
 The capture of significant portions of our State;
 The setting up of a parallel shadow criminal state;
 The creation of a Mafia State - with the President of the Republic at its
apex; and
 The disregard for our Constitutional Order and the Rule of Law
that has been exposed by the South Africa Council of Churches in their
‘Unburdening Report’, the ‘Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is being
Stolen’ Report by academics and the revelations contained in the Sunday
press.

It is imperative that this ‘silent coup’ is immediately halted in its tracks and
that the ‘Zuma-centered power elite’ is dismantled.

Jacob Zuma must go! Has betrayed his Country. His actions constitute treason!
Should the ANC not recall the president this weekend, it will show all South
Africans that the ANC itself is more than complicit in the grand theft of our
state; and that it too has been captured and corrupted beyond redemption,
with no chance of self-correction. 

Should the ANC fail to immediately remove the criminal-in-chief, Jacob Zuma,
then it will be incumbent upon all South Africans to take up their collective
responsibility to rid the Presidency of Jacob Zuma; to reclaim our state and to
ensure that ‘government is based on the will of the people - and for the
people’

The removal of Jacob Zuma represents but the first step in cleansing our
systems and structures of governance, and the restoration of our
Constitutional order and the rule of law.