FaceBook (FB) has swiftly encountered the obvious limits on censoring free speech with its recent attempt to cite as “fake news” an obviously satirical news item posted on Babylon Bee (BB) but shared on FB through the BB’s FB account. That FB flagged this item shows its “spurious news” detection system has distinct shortcomings and even more sadly, no sense of humor. Here is the BB story:
The Spin Cycle Set to Music (Thanks Wagner!)
Now for the Snopes.Com judgement that I am sure took its venerable researchers but a moment to conclude that the BB story about CNN was blatantly false:
And here is an article about the FB warning to BB regarding the blatantly satirical CNN post:
Recently, with plenty of money available on my Chase Visa Card, and their awareness of my location in New Zealand, Chase declined an online refrigerator purchase. Forced to contact their customer service, when I finally got a live representative, I was none too happy. I asked why my purchase was declined. The representative stated that it was a “Large Purchase”. I answered: “I don’t buy a refrigerator every day!” So much for their sophisticated algorithms!
And by the way, three out of the four times there were fraudulent attempts to purchase items on my Chase card, I called Chase before they contacted me or blocked my account. The final chapter of the recent refrigerator purchase came, hours later, when I received an email from Chase stating that some unusual activity had occurred on my card XXXX and to contact them immediately, of course, IF I HAD NOT ALREADY DONE SO! Such operational back office antics, by a very reputable financial firm, forces me to conclude that Artificial Intelligence really is just that.
Can “big data” or AI presently (or ever?) be used to distinguish between truth and satire. I wonder what FB would conclude if we posted something from a classical English language satirist, say Jonathan Swift? I bet Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” would literally go viral within minutes if anybody bothered to read the essay, which would be far more words and images than in a day’s worth of FB posts.
More important than spin cycles and babies cooked for food to fend off a famine, is this question: Do we lose some of our humanity when we lose our sense of humor and the ability to distinguish obvious satire from fake news?
