A modest proposal for Facebook News Feed

Over the past year, there has been much hue and cry about Facebook's fake news problem. The company deferred dealing with it first by saying that a better machine-learning model will fix the problem and then by saying it will rely on third-party fact checkers to flag "disputed" stories when they are shared. Both of these ideas are OK, but they are missing one crucial ingredient. That ingredient, as Charlton Heston screams in Soylent Green, is people.

Economist Brad DeLong has been saying for a while that robots may take over many jobs, but there are some things robots cannot do alone. Humans will always be needed to make decisions that require a nuanced understanding of how culture works, especially in political and social debates where context is everything. An algorithm might be able to learn some of the signs of fake news—certain hashtags perhaps, or a viral reach that starts with shares happening at bot-like speed. But a human is always going to be needed at some point to determine whether those signs point to fake news or real news that's blowing up organically because it's actually important. And these humans need to be well-trained in media analysis themselves, able to spot hoaxes and lies better than an average reader.

In short, Facebook needs a team of trained editors. But wait, you are saying. Facebook already had a group of editors the company fired earlier this year. So obviously human workers couldn't solve the problem, right? Wrong. Very few of Facebook's editors were highly experienced, nor were they full-time employees. They were contract workers, treated like outsiders at Facebook and given very little in-depth training or decision-making power. Not surprisingly they grew disgruntled with their work, and a few who had been fired talked about Facebook's slapdash editorial policies in a tell-all with Gizmodo. The point is, Facebook has never made an honest, concerted effort to create an internal team of humans devoted to making the News Feed a good experience for users.

Like it or not, Facebook is a news organization

Upon explaining this idea to a certain Facebook executive, I was told that Facebook isn't a news organization. If that's true, why does Facebook need a News Feed? Why is it partnering with media companies to make Facebook Instant and Facebook Live into places where journalists can broadcast or publish news? Why does over half of the US population get news on Facebook? It's time for Facebook to admit that it is a major source of news and take responsibility for it.

There's a major misconception that this would make Facebook legally liable for what people post and share. It would not. Facebook removes content that violates its terms of service all the time (sometimes mistakenly), and future versions of Facebook's TOS could simply define fake news as a violation like spam or abuse. So there are no good legal reasons for Facebook to shy away from hiring a human editorial team for News Feed.

But how could a human team possibly read and evaluate every single news item on Facebook, in every single language? They don't have to. Facebook has already set up a way for users to flag fake news, and only items that are flagged would go to the editorial team. The editorial team could also work with a group of humans responsible for developing a decent machine-learning model that recognizes the signs of fake news. So some of the possible fake news would be flagged by algorithm, too. That means that our team of full-time human editors at Facebook are functioning something like an abuse team at places like Tumblr, YouTube, eBay, and other social sites where users can flag objectionable content for human review.

Humans are needed in the decision-making loop on what counts as fake news, but they could also do a lot more at Facebook News Feed. They could evaluate news sources for credibility and track emerging trends in journalism for Facebook. They could help craft policies on how to recommend news to users, based on observing trends in how people prefer to get news. They could work with fact-checking groups to refine what counts as fake news. They could come up with ways to make unbiased news available to people who want it, and biased news for those who don't—all while making sure that none of those sources is scammy or fake, even if they lean toward one end or the other of the political spectrum. These human editors could even look for new ways that hoaxers are trying to game News Feed, just the way computer security professionals look for exploits to patch before the script kiddies get to them.

Could Facebook actually afford to hire real humans to make News Feed a better source of actual news? Hmmm, let's do the math. Let's say Facebook wants to start with 50 editors, which is a very reasonable number given the scope of the task. An editor at a typical online publication, if they are getting a reasonable salary, makes anywhere from $65,000 to north of $200,000 if they are incredibly fancy. Most editors with experience fall somewhere between $70,000 and $150,000. Each of these people will be a full-time staffer, so would need health insurance and whatever other free crap Facebook gives its employees. Free lunch? Free massages? I have no idea, but I assume there are some perks rolled into any Facebooker's salary. Add all that up, and you know what? Facebook is a multibillion dollar company that can afford to hire 50 News Feed editors, with varying degrees of seniority.

My point is that there are no real legal, economic, or logistical reasons keeping Facebook from hiring a team of full-time editors as members of the News Feed team. All that stands in the way is the company's culture, which is to deny that Facebook is primarily an entertainment company rather than a technology company. (Maybe it's a techno-entertainment company!)

At this point, Facebook not hiring editors for News Feed is like a videogame company not hiring story writers for their games. Imagine if a game company said, "People play games because they like to punch buttons and yell at their friends!" OK fine, I'm sure there are some game company execs who believe that. But their games suck. And so will Facebook if it doesn't face the reality that it is in the same business as game studios and YouTubers. They are all content dealers. Ultimately, you need a human team to handle human content.