PBS高端访谈:新工具将帮助Facebook用户识别假新闻

 　　HARI SREENIVASAN: It was a stunning¹ finding, even in a digital age where stories of all kind go viral. During the last three months of the presidential campaign, fake or false news headlines actually generated more engagement on Facebook than true ones. Facebook and other social media platforms were criticized for not doing enough to flag or dispute these posts.

　　Today, Facebook launched several new tools to flag and dispute what it calls the "worst of the worst" when it comes to clear lies. Those tools are essentially² embedded³ in your individual feed.

　　Here's a bit of a video the company posted about how it will work.

　　NARRATOR: You may see an alert before you share some links that have been disputed by third-party fact checkers. You can then cancel or continue with the post. If you suspect a news story is fake, you can report it. It just takes a few taps. Your report helps us track and prevent fake news from spreading.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Let's learn more about this effort to detect and slow the spread of fake news, part of our occasional series on the subject. Will Oremus has been writing about this extensively for "Slate⁴" and working on that site's own new tool for identifying false stories.

　　First, Will, let's talk a little bit about what Facebook announce today. How is it going to work?

　　WILL OREMUS, Slate, So, Facebook's approach to fake news has several components⁶. One thing it's going to try to do is make it easier for users to report it when they see fake news in their feeds. The next thing they're going to do is they're going to take that information about stories that are being reported as fake, and they're going to use some software, run some algorithms and create a dashboard of stories that might be fake and give access to that dashboard to third-party checking organizations. So, these are like Snopes or PolitiFact, Factcheck.org.

　　Those fact checkers are going to have their human editors evaluate some of the most viral of the stories that have been flagged as fake, and if they determine it is in fact a fake news story, Facebook is going to treat it differently. It's going to show it to fewer people in its feeds. It's going to make it go less viral and it's also going to give people a warning before they try to share that story, saying this story has been disputed. It will still let you share it. It's not censoring⁷ or filtering out anything. But it is downgrading it in the ranking algorithm and it is letting people know that this has been disputed.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: So, Facebook is not the arbiter⁸ of the truth. There are third parties checking this for them, right?

　　WILL OREMUS: Yes, and Facebook has been incredibly reluctant to become the arbiter of what's true for good reason. Facebook, the value of its business, depends on appealing to people on both sides, all across the political spectrum⁹.

　　So, it doesn't want to be a media company. It has said this many times. What it is doing here is shrewd, I think. It is delegating the responsibility to respected, non-profit, third-party organizations whose whole job is to figure out what's true and what's not.

　　新工具将帮助Facebook用户识别假新闻

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: You have been covering this space for a while. You want to draw a distinction between what's fake news and what are just outright¹⁰ lies and conspiracies¹¹. There is a distinction.

　　WILL OREMUS:Yes, the term "fake news" is relatively¹² news. A few years ago if somebody said, "fake news," you wouldn't know necessarily what they are talking about, maybe they were talking about a satire¹³ site like "The Onion "or "The Daily Show." It came in to currency in recent months because of the rise of a particular type of thing, which is a story that's basically made up. It was very popular during the election season for people to– for hoaxsters to make up stories that played to people's political biases¹⁶.

　　So, something like, you know, Hillary Clinton is about to be arrested by the New York Police Department for email crimes.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Yes.

　　WILL OREMUS: They would just make that up. They would publish it. And it would get shared widely on Facebook. Since then, the term has become applied¹⁷ — it has become a political football. And people call — you hear people on the right calling the "New York Times" fake news, people on the left saying Breitbart is fake news. But originally, it was actual hoaxes¹⁸ that were made up out of whole cloth.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Now, people have been trying to fix the fake news problem. There was a recent hack-a-thon, and some Princeton students came up with what they thought was a fix. Your folks at "Slate" had actually worked on a tool. You guys just launched this, not coincidentally on Monday.

　　Let's take a look at how this works. We're going to put this up on the screen here. So, if I come across a fake news story in my feed, and there's this big red banner saying, "This news story is fake. Here's how we know. Share the proof."

　　How do you know? Identify by this as fake. This is the tool.

　　WILL OREMUS: Yes, that's right. So, what we wanted to do was not just flag stories as fake when they appear in your Facebook feed. We actually wanted to give users the power to do something about it, because — I mean, it's so frustrating¹⁹, right? You try to be a good consumer of the media, you try to evaluate what's true and what's credible²⁰, but then you see friends and relatives sharing this stuff.

　　So, what we do is we actually provide a link to a reputable debunking²² of that particular story that will appear automatically. And then we prompt you to share that link with the person who posted the fake news so that they and all of their followers²³ can see that that story is fake or they can go to the debunking site and judge of the evidence for themselves.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Now, there's a tool you can actually add to your browser²⁴. It's kind of an extension, a Chrome extension and a button that works there. We can look at other examples of stories as well.

　　Who is the arbiter of truth in your system? Who decided²⁵ that this story was false, even though it looks just like an ABC news site?

　　WILL OREMUS: Yes, I mean, that's a good question, and this is really the trickiest²⁶ question on this whole thing. This is going to be an issue for Facebook, too. I mean, if one of these fact check organizations says this story has some parts that are true, some parts that are false. Is that a fake news story?

　　I think what we've done and in fact it seems what Facebook has done as well is to try to set a really high bar for what counts as fake. It's not just a story that might be misleading.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Yes.

　　WILL OREMUS: Or has a couple of factual errors in it. It's a story intentionally²⁷ designed to mislead people and it's just — you know, it's a hoax¹⁴, basically. So we have human editors who are going to be reviewing the posts that are flagged by our users as potentially fake and they're going to be looking for, again, a reputable third-party site that has used evidence to debunk²¹ that. We're not going to be, you know, doing the debunking ourselves.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Can technology solve this problem? There is a recent Pew study saying 14 percent of people out there shared a fake news story, even after they knew it was fake.

　　WILL OREMUS: Yes. No, technology can't solve the whole problem. I think technology can be a part of the solution. And that's because it's not just a technological²⁸ problem or just a human problem.

　　And there are human issues at work here in why fake news is shared. There's confirmation²⁹ bias¹⁵. There's the desire for something to be true. I mean, you want something to be true.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Yes.

　　WILL OREMUS: What's your incentive³⁰ to go and check it out. But there is also a technological component⁵, which is that Facebook in particular has had this leveling effect on the media where a story from abcnews.com, which is a big, reputable news site, looks just the same in your Facebook feed as a story from abcnews.com.co, which is a hoax site designed to trick people.

　　And so, Facebook has created the conditions for this fake news to thrive. And that's why I think, you know, technology, whether it's Facebook or a tool like ours, technology can be part of the solution. But it has to be human, too.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: That and a wonderfully informed citizenry and who are media literate³¹.

　　Will Oremus from "Slate" — thanks so much.

　　WILL OREMUS: Thanks for having me.

1 stunning   

adj.极好的；使人晕倒的

参考例句：

• His plays are distinguished only by their stunning mediocrity.他的戏剧与众不同之处就是平凡得出奇。
• The finished effect was absolutely stunning.完工后的效果非常美。

2 essentially   

adv.本质上，实质上，基本上

参考例句：

• Really great men are essentially modest.真正的伟人大都很谦虚。
• She is an essentially selfish person.她本质上是个自私自利的人。

3 embedded   

a.扎牢的

参考例句：

• an operation to remove glass that was embedded in his leg 取出扎入他腿部玻璃的手术
• He has embedded his name in the minds of millions of people. 他的名字铭刻在数百万人民心中。

4 slate   

n.板岩，石板，石片，石板色，候选人名单；adj.暗蓝灰色的，含板岩的；vt.用石板覆盖，痛打，提名，预订

参考例句：

• The nominating committee laid its slate before the board.提名委员会把候选人名单提交全体委员会讨论。
• What kind of job uses stained wood and slate? 什么工作会接触木头污浊和石板呢？

5 component   

n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的

参考例句：

• Each component is carefully checked before assembly.每个零件在装配前都经过仔细检查。
• Blade and handle are the component parts of a knife.刀身和刀柄是一把刀的组成部分。

6 components   

（机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分

参考例句：

• the components of a machine 机器部件
• Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。

7 censoring   

删剪（书籍、电影等中被认为犯忌、违反道德或政治上危险的内容）( censor的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Therefore, exhibitors shall not make use of these materials before censoring. 展商在审查前不可使用这些资料。
• The company then said it would end self-censoring search results, putting it at odds with Beijing. 随后该公司表示，将停止自我审查搜索结果，从而与中国政府发生对抗。

8 arbiter   

n.仲裁人，公断人

参考例句：

• Andrew was the arbiter of the disagreement.安德鲁是那场纠纷的仲裁人。
• Experiment is the final arbiter in science.实验是科学的最后仲裁者。

9 spectrum   

n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列

参考例句：

• This is a kind of atomic spectrum.这是一种原子光谱。
• We have known much of the constitution of the solar spectrum.关于太阳光谱的构成，我们已了解不少。

10 outright   

adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的

参考例句：

• If you have a complaint you should tell me outright.如果你有不满意的事，你应该直率地对我说。
• You should persuade her to marry you outright.你应该彻底劝服她嫁给你。

11 conspiracies   

n.阴谋，密谋( conspiracy的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• He was still alive and hatching his conspiracies. 他还活着，策划着阴谋诡计。 来自辞典例句
• It appeared that they had engaged in fresh conspiracies from the very moment of their release. 看上去他们刚给释放，立刻开始新一轮的阴谋活动。 来自英汉文学

12 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

13 satire   

n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品

参考例句：

• The movie is a clever satire on the advertising industry.那部影片是关于广告业的一部巧妙的讽刺作品。
• Satire is often a form of protest against injustice.讽刺往往是一种对不公正的抗议形式。

14 hoax   

v.欺骗，哄骗，愚弄；n.愚弄人，恶作剧

参考例句：

• They were the victims of a cruel hoax.他们是一个残忍恶作剧的受害者。
• They hoax him out of his money.他们骗去他的钱。

15 bias   

n.偏见，偏心，偏袒；vt.使有偏见

参考例句：

• They are accusing the teacher of political bias in his marking.他们在指控那名教师打分数有政治偏见。
• He had a bias toward the plan.他对这项计划有偏见。

16 biases   

偏见( bias的名词复数 )； 偏爱； 特殊能力； 斜纹

参考例句：

• Stereotypes represent designer or researcher biases and assumptions, rather than factual data. 它代表设计师或者研究者的偏见和假设，而不是实际的数据。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓
• The net effect of biases on international comparisons is easily summarized. 偏差对国际比较的基本影响容易概括。

17 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

18 hoaxes   

n.恶作剧，戏弄( hoax的名词复数 )v.开玩笑骗某人，戏弄某人( hoax的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• The disc jockey, a young separatist named Pierre Brassard, has made his name with such hoaxes. 这位名叫彼埃尔 - 布拉萨尔的音乐节目主持人，是一名年轻的分离主义者，以制造这类骗局闻名。 来自百科语句
• This chain-letter hoaxes, has mutated over the years. 这一骗局多年来在互联网上不断发展和变异。 来自互联网

19 frustrating   

adj.产生挫折的，使人沮丧的，令人泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的现在分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's frustrating to have to wait so long. 要等这么长时间，真令人懊恼。
• It was a demeaning and ultimately frustrating experience. 那是一次有失颜面并且令人沮丧至极的经历。 来自《简明英汉词典》

20 credible   

adj.可信任的，可靠的

参考例句：

• The news report is hardly credible.这则新闻报道令人难以置信。
• Is there a credible alternative to the nuclear deterrent?是否有可以取代核威慑力量的可靠办法？

21 debunk   

v.揭穿真相，暴露

参考例句：

• let's debunk some of the most common falsehoods.让我们来揭穿一些最常见的谬误吧。
• Sequences of maps can also debunk misconceptions.一系列的地图，也有助于厘清错误概念。

22 debunking   

v.揭穿真相，暴露( debunk的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• The debunking of religion has been too successful. 对于宗教的揭露太成功了。 来自互联网

23 followers   

追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件

参考例句：

• the followers of Mahatma Gandhi 圣雄甘地的拥护者
• The reformer soon gathered a band of followers round him. 改革者很快就获得一群追随者支持他。

24 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

25 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

26 trickiest   

adj.狡猾的( tricky的最高级 )；（形势、工作等）复杂的；机警的；微妙的

参考例句：

• Many believe this is the trickiest area to navigate. 很多人认为这是最难驾驭的领域。 来自时文部分
• Establishing confidence in a new monetary system was the trickiest part. 建立对新货币体系的信心是其最棘手的部分。 来自互联网

27 intentionally   

ad.故意地，有意地

参考例句：

• I didn't say it intentionally. 我是无心说的。
• The local authority ruled that he had made himself intentionally homeless and was therefore not entitled to be rehoused. 当地政府裁定他是有意居无定所，因此没有资格再获得提供住房。

28 technological   

adj.技术的；工艺的

参考例句：

• A successful company must keep up with the pace of technological change.一家成功的公司必须得跟上技术变革的步伐。
• Today,the pace of life is increasing with technological advancements.当今， 随着科技进步，生活节奏不断增快。

29 confirmation   

n.证实，确认，批准

参考例句：

• We are waiting for confirmation of the news.我们正在等待证实那个消息。
• We need confirmation in writing before we can send your order out.给你们发送订购的货物之前，我们需要书面确认。

30 incentive   

n.刺激；动力；鼓励；诱因；动机

参考例句：

• Money is still a major incentive in most occupations.在许多职业中，钱仍是主要的鼓励因素。
• He hasn't much incentive to work hard.他没有努力工作的动机。

31 literate   

n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的

参考例句：

• Only a few of the nation's peasants are literate.这个国家的农民中只有少数人能识字。
• A literate person can get knowledge through reading many books.一个受过教育的人可以通过读书而获得知识。