feed on feeds - 2018/12/14 - items 30 to 45

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Journalists working as factcheckers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation. Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform's collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they've lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook's hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics -- fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk -- should be a deal-breaker. Facebook now has more than 40 media partners across the globe, including the Associated Press, PolitiFact and the Weekly Standard, and has said false news on the platform is "trending downward." While some newsroom leaders said the relationship was positive, other partners said the results were unclear and that they had grown increasingly resentful of Facebook. Facebook has said that third-party factchecking is one part of its strategy to fight misinformation, and has claimed that a "false" rating leads an article to be ranked lower in news feed, reducing future views by 80% on average. The company has refused, however, to publicly release any data to support these claims. Facebook said in a statement that it had "heard feedback from our partners that they'd like more data on the impact of their efforts," adding that it has started sending "quarterly reports" with "customized statistics" to partners and would be"looking for more statistics to share externally in early 2019." Facebook declined to share the reports with the Guardian.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Police summon ex-leader for questioning as court freezes accounts over allegations of 'illicit financial transactions'.

When the US space agency's next rover gets to Mars in 2021, it will seek evidence of ancient life.

Security services intend to deploy the same numbers and strength as last weekend, with about 8,000 officers in Paris.

US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have pushed ISIL fighters out of Hajin in Syria's eastern province of Deir Az Zor.

The latest test flight by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic makes it to the edge of space and back.

Relief for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as Supreme Court says no evidence of 'favouritism' in deal.

Trump acted because he 'was very concerned about how this would affect the election', Cohen told ABC News.

Three young activists put everything on the line to change the political future of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The successful test flight presages a new era of civilian space travel that could kick off as soon as next year.

NASA's Juno mission to the gas giant Jupiter has reached its halfway mark and has revealed new views of cyclones at the poles. The BBC reports: As it orbits the planet every 53 days - Juno performs a science-gathering dive, speeding from pole to pole. Its sensors take measurements of the composition of the planet, in an effort to decipher how the largest world in our Solar System formed. Mapping the magnetic and gravity fields should also expose Jupiter's structure. But images from JunoCam -- a camera that was intended to capture images that could be shared with the public -- has already given us some surprising insights. "When we made our first pass over the poles, we knew we were seeing a territory on Jupiter we had never seen before," said Dr Candice Hansen, from the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona. "What we did not expect was that we would see these orderly polygons of cyclones; huge storms - twice the size of Texas."