Ask HN: Please help me teach CS to a HS student from a very different background - <AUTHOR>

Hey Everyone, I am teaching CS to a student from an interventionist high school in one of the poorest urban neighborhoods, who has foster parents which nag him at home and who is in a constant battle to ward off bad influences (drugs, alcohol etc) in his neighborhood. He is definitely motivated and talented, and is in ok academic standing. I am trying to get teach him basic concepts of CS/web programming through the summer, and hopefully continue on through the school year. In order to teach him CS, his teachers and I devised a plan of getting him an internship at my company. The reason for that is to have him work mostly during school hours at the school building so that he does not have any distractions since we are not located in the same city. We communicate through hangouts, chats, messages etc throughout the day, so location hasn't been an issue as of yet.
I would really like recommendations from the community about which curriculum and coursework they have used in teaching high school students CS. In particular, I am really interested in learning what specific curriculum paths some of you have used in the past and what online resources you have used to achieve that. My thoughts on an 8-week curriculum are the following:
1. HTML/CSS for 1.5 weeks 2. Javascript 2-3 weeks 3. Setup environment 2 days 4. Make a webpage 1 week 5. Jquery 1 week 6. Intro to Python 1 week The reason this is important to get right, is that the teachers and I really want to show other students in the school how programming can enable them to create something and change their lives. There are thousands of resources on the internet but most of these students never choose to learn CS and do not have any inclination to. We are hoping to change that bit by bit. Hopefully it works. <comment><USER2> I teach a 7 week course (it's only on weekends and 3 hours each day). I'm not 100% sure of how effective my teaching has been, based on my student's feedback they all really enjoy the course even when I'm pushing at a very rigorous pace. (All my students have almost no programming background at all and the course is aimed to hopefully engage students to further pursue CS and have a solid foundation of knowledge to do so, not to teach theory anything too heavy).

I went through the basics of HTML on the first day, including most of the HTML tags (yeah even  and ) and had them try to make a basic page out of that. Then I would review with them a bit of the tags the next day and then I'd move onto basic CSS (CSS Syntax, Block vs Inline, Basic Properties) and I have them improve their page. The second week I did more advanced CSS (positioning, CSS3, box model, etc.). The next day (day 4) I had them implement those new CSS properties into their page and had them make a nice button out of pure CSS and HTML and tried to guide them through breaking down a webpage. (I found that looking at a page and breaking it down into HTML structure isn't as intuitive as it seems now). Third week I did intro to Javascript and jQuery. On the first day it was really basic control structures, console, debugging, etc. With that I had them make a "conversation bot" to where they used a bunch of if/else's to try to respond reasonable to user input. Then I moved on to jQuery introducing selectors and then .click() and .slideUp/Down/Toggle to create an animated menu. Now the fourth week we're currently working on starting our imitation of FlappyBird. (Yes, we're using HTML elements + jQuery, not a HTML Canvas). I think this is the most important part, making sure you're able to apply the basic skills that I covered through the first 3 weeks into a practical application. At this point my focus is on asking the right questions to lead them to answers instead of telling them what to do. Since they should already know the foundations of web development, it's more important that they know how to think like a programmer. I still lead them, giving them hints on which jQuery function to use. But a lot of the time I ask them to look at the jQuery documentation and tell me what we should do. I intentionally introduce half solutions to a problem and ask them why my solution wouldn't work. As for the rest of the weeks, I'm planning to continue development and refinement and throughout it let them customize their game to use whatever images or arbitrary rules they decide to make. I hope this would help you a bit. As for resources, I wrote most of my own slides, following the path that a lot of other popular coding sites use. But I felt like some of it I could change to fit my students better and I wanted to be familiar with the curriculum I was teaching, instead of just using some pre-made curriculum. Of course I don't think there's anything wrong with the pre-made curriculum I guess that was more of a personal choice.

Full disclosure: I'm 17, so not sure how useful my experience would be.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Mike (sorry if that is incorrect). Can you email me when you get a chance? I would really like to see your slides in detail if possible.

Also, your doing more at 17 then I was, and I would love to talk more. (email in profile)

<comment><USER2> Hi ahsanhilal, I don't think I can see your email on your profile. You can contact me at mike(at)scoreportal.org

<comment><AUTHOR> sent you an email

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I consider background completely irrelevant. With sites like c9.io, he can have a coding environment in the cloud and access it from any web browser, including a random library computer.

What needs to happen is inspiration. If you can inspire someone to believe in himself and show how comparatively easy current technologies are, you should be able to ignite the self-sustaining desire to get better.

My approach would be to pick a funded company that resonates with him and clone it. There are plenty of them that can be cloned in a day. This will demonstrate that building software capable of attracting funding is not difficult and that becoming an engineer on such a team is easier than pursuing professional sports.

Once you decide on the target, systematically disassemble the site and discuss what makes it work.

Install git, setup a local repo and a repo on bitbucket, and instruct the student to 'git commit' after substantial changes and 'git push' every so often. It's never too soon to introduce version control.

Starting with HTML, talk about DIVs and nothing else. There is no need to talk about other tags. Explain that DIVs are the building blocks and demonstrate a page built of just DIVs and no other tags. Fill it with Lorem and style with Bootstrap. Ignore AJAX until much later.

This will lead into CSS. Explain how CSS is used to style DIVs so each element looks different.

Now I would talk about Bootstrap and how it changed the way we build web apps.

Once CSS is a relatively clear concept, lead into jQuery but don't talk about JavaScript in general. jQuery would be introduced as a way to interact with DOM.

JavaScript is a confusing language to learn as a first language. It may make sense to shift gears and talk about Ruby and Python, whichever one is more familiar.

By now, this person should be ready to learn about control structures, loops, and other basics of programming. It is difficult to get motivation to learn that without a reason to learn it.

I would introduce real programming by following the BDD methodology. Teach the student to write tests before talking about how to make them pass. It is so unusual that it should be intriguing. I am not familiar enough, as of this writing, whether Ruby or Python have a better integrated testing frameworks, but I will explore that in detail later.

Once the student has a solid understanding of Ruby or Python, I would only then introduce JavaScript and map the concepts from Ruby or Python to JavaScript. By now prototypal inheritance will not seem as alien and brackets and semicolons will be just extra things to type.

AJAX and oAuth as well as the concept of REST APIs would be next.

Finally, let's go to the cutting edge and tie it all up with Meteor and Velocity testing. This will introduce nodejs, MongoDB and mobile app syncing.

Just say no to PHP. We thankfully have alternatives to it now.

As for books, I would advise the student to get a library card at a library that has access to either Safari Books Online or Books 24x7. He will then have access to the bulk of O'Reilly titles. I prefer the Headfirst series when getting started with a new language.

Little known fact: as a resident of the state you can get a library card from any library within that state and different libraries have different resources. This means he doesn't have to be limited to whatever library is local to his community. I have 7 library cards.

Hmm... this might inspire me to produce a video course based on this outline and test how well this theory might work. Lean startup methodology applied to teaching could be interesting. Saving this post for reference. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the well thought out reply! The course layout you have written out is quite thorough. The only thing is that for someone who does not have any programming background, they need to see immediate results to gain an understanding of how powerful code is. That is why I thought Html/CSS is a good starting point and then go in deeper.

I am open to other methodologies, and we can talk more on email if you would like. Would love to exchange ideas and resources (email in profile)

<comment><USER3> It's a bit radical, but I am tempted to test it. :)

I am wiseleo on just about every website and gmail, so feel free to send me an instant message.

For me, seeing an executable test spec for the first time was very surprising and revealing. There is an entire book "Refactoring: improving the design of existing code" that teaches you how to name functions so your code reads like English.

After all, this is valid Jasmine from near the beginning of my test suite:

it("should return an array containing at least one object", function() { expect(menu.length).toBeGreaterThan(0); });

It reads like English. If you can show that code can be written like this rather than like typical code, you will notice an immediate jump in confidence.

If you show that in Rspec, where the alien-looking

function ( ) { };

is replaced with

      do

end

and expect('should do something useful') becomes expect "should do something useful"

it becomes even more approachable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Might I recommend processing.js? It's got a very shallow learning curve even to first-time programmers, there's plenty of support for it, it requires little setup, and lets you create visual applications immediately. If you use [https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/cs](https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/cs), KhanAcademy's processing.js curriculum/editor, you'll have no setup, documentation, and lots of examples to look off of. I've been using it for a while now and suggest it to most first-time programmers because of how easy it makes it to get into programming and start building things immediately. Not that a big name necessarily means anything, but John Resig, creator of jQuery, created processing.js and is an employee of KhanAcademy, writing their editor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great pick! I Will definitely loo into it. Thanks for the rec!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I'd say is that for the first week, don't go too deep into theory or even syntax. Have him work with tools like MIT's Scratch or Scirra's Construct to build games and in the process, learn how to think in a programmatic manner. Then, once he's interested and hooked, take him through your planned curriculum.

Source: I'm a 16 year old who got hooked on to programming a while ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input, appreciate it! I am mostly focusing on tools that give him explicit visual feedback, so that is why I am focusing on html and styling. Write some code and then have it do something on a blank page seems to be powerful.

As for theory, I am not really focusing on programming concepts, more on practical/visual work initially.

I was thinking of giving him some codecombat/scratch homework, but he is a bit older (16 already) so thought he might think it is for people younger than him. I will try it out though myself first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a high school student myself I found the odin project to be an incredible resource. I'm currently working through their curriculum(it's incredibly thorough), and it goes from basic css and html to java script, j query and rails. [http://www.theodinproject.com/](http://www.theodinproject.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing I don't think enough courses teach is how to actually get your code online. I suggest using Github Pages. Maybe get them into using some form of source control for their projects?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, basic VCS is actually pretty good not only do they get to learn how to use Git for later when they're working on bigger projects, they can leverage GH pages. However, it's kinda hard to swallow the full complexity and array of options Git provides. Personally, I only taught my class the basic idea of git and how to commit and push using a graphical interface so they can get started on GH pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This class on Coursera is likely to engage a young person.

[https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalmedia](https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalmedia)

In my opinion it's better to use the work product of seasoned professionals than that of even the most well intentioned amateurs. There are 10x teachers. There are 100x curricula. Being smart isn't expertise.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think I have a spare older Lenovo Thinkpad T60 (?) The battery doesn't work, 1gb RAM, Wireless, 80gb HD. I could give it to a good cause :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the offer! I will ask the teachers and get back to you

<comment><USER9> Its pretty old by anything of todays standards. I did get Ubuntu loaded on it for my teenage son to travel with this Summer and he says it doesn't really work for his needs, FYI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Some resources you can check out are The Odin Project (full online curriculum), BentoBox, CodeSchool, Codecademy, and Treehouse.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using codehs, codeacademy

Treehouse is very similar to other ones, Odin Project seems to be for older learners. Bentobox is fantastic! Thanks for the rec!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> this is the cutest story ever. i dont have any advice but want to say that what you're doing is really amazing <3

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm the creator of Bento ([http://bentobox.io/](http://bentobox.io/)). I think Bento can help - all the resources there are free and curated by developers. Follow the track left to right, top to bottom.

Please reach out if you need any help @jonhmchan

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Jon! Will definitely do</comment></comment>


Stories of the Development of Large Scale Scientific Computing at LLNL (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://www.computer-history.info/page1.html <comment><USER2> Wow that is so bad. Just links.

Can someone at least has an overview.

<comment><USER3> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_La...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Livermore_National_Laboratory)

I did not find "LLNL" a meaningful abbreviation either.

<comment><AUTHOR> HN has a limit of 50 characters or so for the title of an article.

"Lawrence Livermore National Labs" did not fit, and so was abbreviated to fit HN's article title length requirements...

<comment><USER4> Anyhow, I'd expect people in scientific computing to be familiar with LLNL, LANL, ANL, ORNL, ..., specifically as hosts of major supercomputing facilities. Thanks for posting it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Got customers? How we almost sunk our startup before it started. - <AUTHOR> http://mightybrand.com/2009/10/got-customers-how-we-almost-sunk-our-startup-before-it-started/ <comment><USER2> Missed a 4th reason for a lack of customer development: 4) Hard to get meaningful face time with customers and/or get honest, well-thought out responses from them, particularly hard for a brand-new startup without existing customers on existing products.

Customers are very busy people too, and they are not on your payroll. Totally agree that you should make your decisions as informed as possible, i.e. do as much Customer Development as you can, but ultimately a big part of a early- stage startup is making decisions without the luxury of a complete data set i.e. gut and luck.

Which is precisely why you need to "ship early" (get paying customers ASAP) and "ship often" (start developing them immediately and incorporating their feedback into development).

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree on ship early/ship often, but most of the startups I've observed (granted, a small sample) didn't skip customer development because potential customers wouldn't call them back. By and large, I think most folks are willing to sit down with you for a cup of coffee for 30 mins and talk about their needs and how your product could help, especially if you make it clear up-front that this is _not_ a sales call.

YMMV, but we've had great success with just sending an email or picking up the phone and asking people if we could chat for a bit.

<comment><USER2> Agree that most people who skip CD are doing for lack of trying ;-). I think the ease of gaining access depends largely on the target customer profile. Consumer, even SMB targeted stuff by definition has a large number of potential customers compared to the Enterprise. Additionally their barrier to purchase is much lower than the Enterprise, therefore the signal from your 30 minute cup of coffee is much stronger. It's a trickier proposition with Enterprise customers, but I guess that's why the deals are bigger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've been a part of two startups, neither of which did anything remotely like "Customer Development". The one was consumer oriented, and they sort of stumbled through the launch of a prototype that was built to scratch their own itch (i.e. they were their own customer, so they kind of knew what it needed).

The 2nd still has very little revenue and I would say is still struggling to align with the customer. They've spent many years now developing a product that they think will fit the customer based on their experiences working in the target industry 10 years ago. Its a little scary to watch this company spend their money after only showing a mockup to a customer once, about 3 years ago.

This 2nd company is starting to get paying customers, and then they panic when the customer says, "Wait. It doesn't do x, y, and x? I assumed it did, I mean, _everyone_ in our industry does that! You didn't know that?"

I'm curious to know how these 2 companies would be different had they done solid customer development first.

</comment><comment><USER4> I did that too. Oops. But it was actually Paul Graham's essays that made me realize I was doing the wrong thing.

Oh, well it was only about a year of my life I wasted, I'm not bitter at all... seriously.

Did anyone else make this mistake? How did you realize what you were doing was the complete wrong approach?

<comment><AUTHOR> Author of the post here.

You can take some solace in the fact that some entrepreneurs never seem to learn this lesson, and fail repeatedly until they stumble into a success by chance.

I touched on this in the article, but I think the VC industry can be blamed for some of this. If you start a company and raise a few million and hire a team and spend two years blowing through your cash before shutting down, it's easy to blame "execution" or hiring the wrong people, or whatever, rather than face up to the fact that you went down the wrong road from the beginning because you had a poor product/market fit.

Success is a poor teacher.

<comment><USER4> Well luckily for me I did not have success ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> hard not to agree, isn't it?</comment>


Google releases YouTube Capture app to upload videos directly to YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/youtube-capture/id576941441

<comment><AUTHOR> When you go to take a video in portrait mode, it refuses to continue until you rotate the phone into landscape, which is a nice touch. Maybe this will cut down on all the videos suffering from vertical video syndrome: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA></comment>


Flavors.me - automatic personal web sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.flavors.me <comment><USER2> To add my twitter stream, the site wants read/write access: #Fail.

I don't want flavors.me (or any other aggregating service) pitching itself on twitter under my name without my control. The default should be read, not read/write.

<comment><USER3> I failed to notice this and it did end up posting a Twitter message under my name (I'd like to think I missed a checkbox somewhere), so I deleted my account :\

<comment><USER4> Big mistake by the developers. Also a reason I tend to try sites like this with my disposable twitter / gmail accounts.

All in all, I do like the site and the idea. Very similar to hi.im, but a tad more stylish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those who can't stand Flash, we will soon be switching to exclusively licensed @font-face web embeddable fonts, which use HTML5 instead of Flash on compatible browsers. Also, we use OAuth where possible not for the write access, but to reduce user confusion that arises from trying to figure out usernames/passwords for authentication, particularly Flickr and other Yahoo properties.

</comment><comment><USER6> There are few effective business models where the initial customer choices are 'register' or 'wait for a video to download'. Especially if the latter boils down to a slower version of the former with a catchy tune.

<comment><USER7> This idea has (roughly) occurred to me, too, and it's cool to see someone implement it. Its simplicity is well-done. Suggestion: make it even simpler. Don't require a login. Just let someone start connecting and designing, and then they'll want to have a username etc.

<comment><USER8> I think the original commenter was saying that "sign up" and "a video for sign up" are not good options. At least that is the way I understood "There are few business models" vs "there are _a_ few business models."

The site is well done. It takes all of the technical aspects out of making a personal website, and I thought about something similar myself (including .com domains at a premium). However, the comments about it hijacking your twitter account and a complete lack of a privacy statement are a little scary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think they should focus on showcasing the directory more than the video itself since it really does a better job at showing you the possibilities.

<http://flavors.me/directory>

I really like the looks of these pages, although it seems to me it all boils down to how clever you are designing your background image.

</comment><comment><USER10> I had chatted with one of the guys at HiiDef a few weeks ago, apparently they are in hire mode and prefer east coasters: <http://jobs.hiidef.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Uhm, they might want to reconsider the background and tone it down a little bit. Like this it is just too loud, imho.

<comment><USER12> you can completely control your own background...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Gorgeous.

Now how do I find out what it is without watching a video or giving out my email address?

<continues listening to ipod in office>

<comment><USER14> I'm willing to watch a good video, but this one in particular is quite long, and with no narration. A much shorter narrated tour would be both more interesting and more personal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very similar to a service I did a while back ( card.ly ) but in the opposite direction- Big vs small- I love it :)

Its amazing how easy they make it for your pages to feel sexy. Not sure why they want read/write for twitter access. We do all the stream stuff without the need for any of that.

</comment><comment><USER16> Funny how even Helvetica needs to be rendered by flash. Signed up, saw that and deleted the account.

<comment><USER4> really?

<comment><USER16> Yes. Try visiting any page with flashblock on.

<comment><USER5> Helvetica requires a license, and the license stipulates a Flash implementation. Perhaps the foundry will release an embeddable @font-face font soon, in which case we would likely make a switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really like the front page's simplicity

I signed up about two months ago. I was pretty disappointed because I thought the purpose was to list all your online activities, tweets, facebook updates, blog entries, flickr photos, youtube favorites in one stream. But instead it allows you to create a button to each one and customize the layout a little bit...

Anyways, it was a bit of a disappointment. But here's my flavors.me: <http://flavors.me/arnorhs>

<comment><USER14> Oh, yeah, that's what I thought it was too. I really want that site. I've almost built it for myself a few times now, but I haven't quite decided how to normalize for frequency. I don't want my twitter updates drowning out all the less frequent but far more interesting content I might have out there.

<comment><USER18> Why not just calculate a score for each item that is the item's age multiplied by some function (e.g. square root) of the total number of items from that item's source?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I really like my flavors.me page; so much so that I redirected steveklabnik.com to it. I had gone through several iterations of designs before, but I'm not a desiger, so they always looked like crap. The ten minutes I spent on my flavors.me page looked approximately 10000 times better than anything I'd made previously.

</comment><comment><USER20> That demo video needs to get to the point much more quickly.

</comment><comment><USER21> This looks pretty cool. I like the simplicity of the design choices.

I haven't signed up yet -- wondering if you can add just plain ol' links to stuff. (edit: nope.)

<comment><USER22> Not in the "services" area, but in the description you can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is this yours? There seem to be two blue buttons at the bottom, but they are hidden by the footer bar. (Firefox/3.5.8)

</comment><comment><USER24> I really like some of the pages they show at the end of the video. They reminded me of thesixtyone's new design.</comment>


Ask HN: How could a Reddit competitor attract the best of Reddit community? - <AUTHOR>

A time like this is an excellent opportunity to create a reddit competitor. Current alternatives(like voat.co) are focused on completely avoiding censorship and moderation, thus attracting the worst of reddit.
I am curious, what are your thoughts on how one could go about attracting the best of reddit?
I am working on a personal project that is very similar, but I wouldn't try to compete with reddit to attract all the haters and celebrity-gossip kind of people. Do you have some ideas about what kind of startup could attract the most intelligent and creative parts of the community?
(right now my project is focused on writers, "reddit meets fictionpress", but it would be very easy to pivot into something broader, if I can come up with a smart way to do that) <comment><USER2> I'd suggest that you really, really reconsider what you mean by the "best" and "worst" of reddit. The shit-spewing churn of 4chan's various terrible boards, for example, still manages more creativity (of a sort) than most things we see posted on this site.

The "most intelligent" and "creative" folks actually spend a _great amount of time_ doing things you may consider reprehensible.

Similarly, the best folks are maybe just the most normal and harmless ones? Maybe your site is trying to be the nice Disney version of the real internet message boards?

I say this not to mock--just to point out that you should really consider your value prop.</comment>


You Only Get a Single Chance - <AUTHOR> http://www.git-tower.com/blog/you-only-get-a-single-chance/ <comment><USER2> I disagree. Sure you will lose some people going to market early but the idea is that you gain people who are major product advocates, people whose problems you are solving so well and your product resonates with so strongly that they will be patient while you work on the other stuff. And you better understand THOSE people, and as you improve your product for both the major advocates and add the extra nice to have features. Then you've figured something out and you may actually get back some of the people you lost at the beginning. Because the people who loved you all along will tell them "not having feature Y is not a reason to ignore the product because I've been using the product since day 1, it's gotten a lot better and now it has feature Y."

And that's when you've done a great job. Write a piece of software that solves your core problem and go to market early.</comment>


Dissent at Facebook over hands-off stance on political ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/technology/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-political-ads.html <comment><USER2> If Facebook decides which political ads are truthful, then either they reject _all_ political ads (because when was the last time someone ran a political ad that was wholly truthful?), or else they have do decide where to draw the line. Wherever they draw the line, they're going to reject someone's ad, and be exposed to screams of how they're biased for the other side. That's not going to end well for them.

I mean, just running them all is _also_ getting Zuckerberg raked over the coals[1], but I think picking and choosing which ads are "truthful enough" is going to be worse.

And that's if Facebook is actually completely unbiased. If this becomes a vehicle for the biases of those at FB charged with judging the ads, that's even worse.

[1] Zuck was getting raked over the coals in the name of truth, but I suspect it was at least partly because those who did so thought they would benefit politically if FB censored their opponents' ads.

<comment> j-c-hewitt It's really a question of whether or not Facebook should submit to FEC regulation or not. Other media outlets that run political ads need to submit to FEC regulation. Why does Facebook get an exemption? Newspapers literally have to run political ads by their editorial board and TV has to do something similar. It's one of the reasons why political ads are so bland and content- free: they don't want to make any claims that could be evaluated as true or false.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's not like this is a problem that hasn't been dealt with in other media.

I think one of the things that makes it more difficult in the case of facebook is that the ad targeting makes it possible to serve specific ads only to very specific groups.

This means that if the ads say untrue or damaging things, most people will never know, as opposed to newspaper or TV ads. In my mind this argues for at least as strict controls, if not more stringent.

<comment><USER4> Part of the regulation could be that Facebook can only serve stateless political ads. If a politician wants to advertise, they can't pick and choose any parameters.

<comment><USER5> Surely there are some parameters that would make sense? I don't want to see political ads from a local election across the country. There's also no reason for me to see an ad for the Republican primaries if I am voting in the Democratic primaries. Etc

<comment><USER6> "Surely there are some parameters that would make sense?"

For sure...

"I don't want to see political ads from a local election across the country."

They should be targeting eligible voters. If a local election is taking place across the country, then, of course, you shouldn't be seeing the ads.

"There's also no reason for me to see an ad for the Republican primaries if I am voting in the Democratic primaries. Etc"

No, this defeats the purpose. We should be trying to expose people to more viewpoints - not creating more echo-chambers.

<comment><USER7> FEC rules don't really cover who sees what, they cover what anyone can see.

Now we can expand on those rules to dictate who can see what, but no matter who views the ad, it would likely be bland, and confer no new viewpoint at all. Lest it fall afoul of FEC rules.

What we're really talking about with FEC rules, is a return to the middle, because extremist views can be shut down by pointing out misleading content in the ads and subsequently rejecting them. Whereas the bland, meaningless stuff will always be free of any misleading content, and be subsequently approved.

<comment><USER8> > Whereas the bland, meaningless stuff will always be free of any misleading > content, and be subsequently approved.

I'm not sure what media you consume, but TV and radio ads always seem filled with misleading content about political rivals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One thing to note: this only applies to politicians. It seems normal people and political groups can't post false political ads. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- tec...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- technology-202/2019/10/28/the-technology-202-facebook-takes-down-false-ad- from-political-group-but-it-still-won-t-police-politicians- directly/5db5bf61602ff10cf14f97e5/)

<comment> w-j-w This is what makes Facebook's behavior really inexcusable. Facebook has granted these people a special power on the platform, but are unwilling to police it.

<comment><USER10> Once again you are dammed if you do and damned if you don't. If you like, imagine a totally random hypothetical set of Facebook rules (for example, the exact reverse of what the current rules are). You will find that it is easy, really completely trivial, to come up with reasons that this is "inexcusable" as well.

The whole discourse around this is poisoned. I have literally watched people completely flip their principles in mere minutes, just to keep condemning Facebook.

<comment><USER11> You're not damned if you don't. Stop hosting political ads. I guess then you're "damned" because you make less money, but I don't think that's what you meant.

<comment><USER10> And what is a political ad?

Does an ad for an abortion clinic count? How about an ad asking for donations for Palestine? Or Hong Kong? Or wall construction? How about an ad that only points out that stocks have gone up, along with a picture of Donald Trump and a flag in the background?

Obviously this falls prey to the classic problem, which is that every partisan sees messages that benefit the other side, even incredibly indirectly, as insidious manipulation, while dismissing outright propaganda from their own side as "just getting the truth out".

<comment><USER12> >> Does an ad for an abortion clinic count? How about an ad asking for donations for Palestine? Or Hong Kong? Or wall construction? How about an ad that only points out that stocks have gone up, along with a picture of Donald Trump and a flag in the background?

FB has armies of content moderators and content policies to police non political speech already. Look at the controversies surrounding "no nudity/sexual imagery" > "banning/unbanning breast feeding pics" > "banning/unbanning pics of the african tribe who nurse sick goat calves back to health with human breast milk".

Its all complicated, every bit of it, and there is no reason to suggest that political content moderation is any more difficult than anything else.

FB _can_ do it, they are already doing very complex content moderation. There is nothing special about "political" speech.

<comment><USER10> > Look at the controversies surrounding "no nudity/sexual imagery" > > "banning/unbanning breast feeding pics" > "banning/unbanning pics of the > african tribe who nurse sick goat calves back to health with human breast > milk".

That is entirely my point. This is actually a famous story -- something as objective and straightforward as banning nudity turned turned into a nightmare with tons of exceptions and exceptions to the exceptions. Politics is the most delicate, messy, complicated subject there is. Facebook obviously can come up with _some_ policy, just like I could right now, but whatever it is, a majority of people will be pissed off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 250 signatures on a letter at a company with 35,000 employees is an eruption of dissent?

I'm reminded of a quote about urban warfare, something like "In a city of 10 million, if 1% of the population opposes you, you have 100,000 adversaries." That seems to apply here.

0.7% of the company is writing to complain? Okay - what amount do you expect to complain? How many would complain about the opposite direction?

<comment><USER14> Publicly stating your opposition to a contentious issue your company is facing isn't exactly an easy thing to do. Workplace marginalization is a real thing.

<comment><USER15> It's pretty common at Facebook. Andrew Bosworth repeatedly writes about the importance of malcontents, and there are many employees who repeatedly push back on leadership. This takes place almost entirely on Workplace.

<comment><USER16> I'm not sure why this is getting downvoted. This is correct.

I've never worked somewhere where challenging leadership is so encouraged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't want a private owned _platform_ that as far as today plays a huge role in being a place for the public discourse to regulate speech.

Of course, and it pains me to have to state the obvious for fear of strawmaning, saved the applicable boundaries like distribution of child porn, terrorist groups recruiting pages and so on.

Take Twitter as an example, does an abhorrent job on that, they have no standard other than liked/disliked people.

\- They have no transparency, people you follow will get banned and you won't be notified. \- People will get banned for tweeting exactly what "liked" people tweeted. \- They made the utterly stupid decision of changing the interpretation of their Verified mark from "This is the real person" which is perfect, to "we kind of support whatever this verified person says" which makes no freaking sense. Can you imagine a Bell PR guy saying at a press conference "We are sorry for what one of our landlines customers said on the phone, we turned their line off"?

It is transparent to me that any effort in making platforms like Facebook, Twitter and so on to take the role of speech regulators isn't coming from regular people, it comes to the detriment of the common folk like me and you.

<comment><USER18> I downvoted you because you are basically saying that if we don't agree with you, we're not regular people or common folk.

<comment><USER19> No, the comment was about the source of the driving force of the effort. Even if there are regular people who share the same sentiment, the fact is that the effort is being coopted by those special interests. Have you heard of the term "astroturf"?

<comment><USER17> Exactly, thank you. It is clear some regular people approve, support, and demand that too. But I think the bulk of the effort comes from big companies and ONGs, pressure groups.

This is at least true for my country, to put it brutally short, European influences are guiding legislative efforts regarding Fake News and media control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would give Facebook way too much power if they could decide what is true and what is not. Better allow lies than to block free speech.

I wonder if this open letter by employees advocating for more control over content combined with Mark Zuckerberg's 'hands-off stance on political ads' are just a coordinated act of 'good cop, bad cop' designed to manipulate the public. Also, my cynical side thinks that maybe some of these government authorities are in on this charade.

It seems like a show to make people think that the good employees of Facebook are on the public's side. Whatever the big mean Zuckerberg wants must be bad for everyone.

Facebook must have a PR team the size of a small country working for them by now. Of course everything they do is orchestrated. We have to be really cynical to see through the BS.

The government is completely under the thumb of these big corporations. Many of the regulations that are coming out of Washington are carefully crafted by corporate lobbyists to superficially look like they're bad for corporations and good for the public, but in reality they're intended to give corporations more power and to create a moat around their monopolies. The government and corporations are on the same team; their common objective is to fool the public into slowly accepting the erosion of their most basic rights so that corporations can have more money and governments can have more power for themselves.

<comment><USER21> > _Facebook should allow politicians to lie in ads_

There are more options than "Facebook regulates its ads" and "Facebook permits everything."

I am in favor of having a permanent, public repository of political ads, where they have to sit for a "cooling-down" period prior to going out. This lets journalists and the public fact-check them before they're blasted to a targeted group.

Another option is FEC, or some other independent body, overseeing political ads. There are a lot of options between open season and censorship, and it's only to Facebook's benefit that the debate is constrained to this axis.

<comment><USER22> We don't need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over political discourse. Because you know that any such institution would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with liberal beliefs, while giving enhanced scrutiny to assertions from other viewpoints.

<comment><USER23> I was just going to upvote and keep scrolling, but I saw the three replies to your post critique something you said that I strongly agreed with.

> We don't need journalists to have even more of a strangle-hold over > political discourse

This so true in this day and age. The quality of journalism has collectively nosedived, but the journalists keep producing and continue to guide the "conversation". I'm not quite sure what those who disagree with the statement actually _do_ believe is going well and why journalists need to have even _more_ control over the conversation.

> ...would just let pass false information that just happens to comport with > liberal beliefs

This is the natural course for a technology company in modern society. The biases of tech company employees is clearly more left-leaning. If Facebook employees or contractors were deciding what's true and false, the information displayed on Facebook would (does?) have a leftist slant. This is a bad thing to any fair-minded person and why Facebook shouldn't be regulating free speech in political ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a lot of issues with the framing of this article (it's hard to imagine _any_ major strategic decision of Facebook that you couldn't find 250 employees to sign their name opposing it, and nearly everything that happens at Facebook has a corresponding, public, Workplace post).

Moving past that, the ideas mentioned in the final paragraphs did have one interesting suggestion: change the visual display for political ads. Zuck has consistently made the good point that it's very difficult to set a clear boundary for what constitutes a political issue, but it is not difficult to determine whether or not an ad is being run by or in service of _a given politician_. Changing the visual display (even something as draconian as a persistent disclaimer stating that this is an advertisement with claims made by a politician and that everyone should do their own research) would at least remind people of the policy.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why should Facebook now be responsible for fact-checking political ads? Watching the testimony where a bunch of politicians basically berated Mark Zuckerberg about how it's now Facebook's job to police politicians and keep them honest (because, you know, ALL politicians lie and cannot be trusted) is very telling about the state of our government and democracy. Our leaders cannot police themselves or their peers so they are looking to an outside entity to do it, and moreover casting blame for their own failures.

Political attack ads have always been on cable TV, spouting bold-faced lies and half-truths for as long as I can remember. It now seems that politicians have found a new medium. And they want that service to bear the brunt of their operational status quo. Why not address the real problem in politics that leads to the symptoms of the disease at hand instead of shifting the work and burden of honesty to someone like Facebook? Has it even been proven they are equipped and capable of the task?

<comment><USER25> Forget about "equipped and capable". Who decides what is "true"? Is it the the US government's official version of "truth"? Is it "truth" that has the most objectively provable information? How are vague and/or ambiguous claims, about anything, supposed to be regarded in relation to their "truth"? Only someone who is incredibly stupid and/or trying to advance their own agenda would suggest that there is some sort of indisputable "truth" that can be discerned, let alone discerned by Facebook.

The easy answer to this problem is, and has always been, to teach everyone how to think critically. Teach the Socratic Method to every child from birth, and reinforce that mode of thinking continually through their entire educational journey. But there lies the rub. The powers that be aren't interested in "truth" or people who are able to discern truth. They want to be able to disseminate _their_ message, and have it uncritically absorbed by the masses. That isn't possible if the people are intelligent and equipped with the tools to think critically and recognize logical inconsistencies. For decades they had it both ways. The government had a population who largely lacked critical thinking skills and uncritically absorbed what they were told as "truth". The government also largely controlled the message disseminated by the corporate media outlets, which were very few before the explosion of the internet. They controlled the narrative, and had conditioned a population that uncritically accepted this narrative. Once the internet exploded on the scene, they lost control of the narrative. All of a sudden you had people who weren't equipped with critical thinking skills, who were extremely vulnerable to whatever narrative was being pushed, and you had a wide variety of people pushing a whole range of messages on the internet and over social media.

Now the genie out of of the bottle. Information and (dis)information spreads like a virus across the internet and social media. How do you deal with this? There are two ways. Either make a concerted effort to teach people how to think, hash information and employ logical consistency in their thinking (which the powers that be don't want to do, because it means the permanent loss of control), or try to put the genie back in the bottle and silence all competing narratives. Its clear that the powers that be have chosen to attempt the latter, and it won't end well for anyone who believes in freedom of speech, freedom of action or freedom of thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > For the past two weeks, the text of the letter has been publicly visible on > Facebook Workplace, a software program that the Silicon Valley company uses > to communicate internally.

For those who have never used Workplace, this literally just means "someone posted it to Workplace." It's not an abnormal or unique thing. It also wouldn't surprise me if "250 people signed it" means "250 people commented in agreement". I wish the reporting gave more details on _who posted_ the petitions and what it means to "sign the petition". I understand protecting sources, but unless Workplace has added new features, anything posted _has_ to come from someone with a profile.

That said, it's still (arguably, at least) news to cover internal divisions over a policy, but unfortunately the authors don't seem to realize how common it is at Facebook for employees to openly push back on leadership decisions while concurrently working as hard as they can to deliver impact downstream of them (it may sound odd, but it's entirely possible to disagree with a strategy and _vocally advocate for your preferred course_ but also trust that your leadership may be better equipped to set said strategy and work to implement a strategy that is not what you would have chosen).

<comment><USER26> Is _less than 1%_ of an employee population expressing disagreement worthy of a discussion on HN?

NYT has completely dropped their mask of objectivity. This is clearly agenda pushing by an extremist minority.

WaPO called 'al big-daddy' an "austere scholar" yesterday. Beyond ridculous.

<comment><USER15> Personally, I agree with you _in this example_. As I mentioned elsewhere, given the culture at Facebook and its size, it's hard for me to imagine any major strategic decision that _would not_ generate 250 employees willing to sign their name opposing it, down to things like eliminating single-use plastic.

In my original comment, I was simply conceding that covering internal disagreement about a major policy, in general, is at least arguably news, while still trying to make the rest of my point: that this article is either written in bad faith or wildly unaware of how employees communicate internally at Facebook.

<comment><USER26> It seemed to me you had insider knowledge of FB and were adding value to the discussion. Fair point that I missed your key point that is based on knowing internal politics/ procedure. I look at the big picture of the U.S. Constitution, and distributed power.

I believe in the Fediverse, and would rather take your employer out in the marketplace, than using the federal government's monopoly on violence. You might want to reconsider your alliances.

Find me a hedge fund that will short FB's stock and invest in Mastodon-based service companies (no ads or tracking), please.

<comment><USER15> I'm... not sure what you mean about reconsidering my alliances?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Facebook has no business saying which ads are wrong/lies. If they do this it opens up such a can of worms. Their stance is the only logical stance. I imagine if AOC's ads were blocked on Facebook she would suddenly want answers and claim she was censored.

<comment><USER28> > Facebook has no business saying which ads are wrong/lies

I mean it can and it does. The problem for Facebook is who Facebook should pander to. Politicians that want to break up Facebook, Google and co, or their opponent? There is an obvious conflict of interest, but many businesses have no problem promoting this or that political camp or politicians.

What is interesting in Facebook case is the internal struggle between the top and some political activist employees who disagree on who Facebook should give a platform to.

<comment><USER27> The people that want to break up Facebook are the same people that want Facebook policing political speech. I don't see the conflict of interest on Facebook's part in this regard.

<comment><USER29> You're making an awful lot of assumptions. I want to break up Facebook; but so long as it exists in its present form, I don't want it to be policing _any_ speech, much less political speech.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This has came up in my conversations with friends who work at Facebook and they always seem to use some internal talking points about creating a "Ministry of truth" type of situation. They argue that Facebook cannot (or should not) be the arbitrator of truth. My answer to them is very simple, if you want to be a (social) media company then you have to take some (social) responsibility and not amplify falsehoods in an already charged environment. Corporate profits at the cost of ruining the society by spreading falsehoods should not be an acceptable norm.

<comment><USER10> And precisely who do you think should be appointed to head your "ministry of truth"?

For example, I believe Facebook employees currently skew 90% Democrat. Should the committee seek out and add more Republicans in order to have a 50/50 split reflective of the nation, or is a 90/10 split okay? If so, how do you justify this to the other side?

<comment><USER31> > And precisely who do you think should be appointed to head your "ministry of > truth"?

The FEC. If an ad can't be printed in a newspaper or shown on TV, it shouldn't be on FB.

<comment><USER32> Then you may be surprised to find out that most ads being discussed are allowed on TV: [https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2019/oct...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2019/oct/15/elizabeth-warren/phony-facebook-ad-warren-said- most-tv-networks-wil/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't understand why Zuckerberg doesn't just cut his losses and remove political ads. It does not seem worth it financially or non-financially.

<comment><USER34> What's a political ad? Better yet, what's a NON-political ad?

If McDonalds advertizes how good and healthy their Big Mac is, is it political? What if someone complains that it contradicts some pending legislation? What if someone complains about the racial make up of the cast in the ad? What if the ad mentions a word that later someone complains about?

We live in a nation where we can't agree on what a man or woman is, and what that means. In fact, just talking about it is now political.

So, who's going to judge whether something is political or not?

<comment><USER35> There are clear, well-defined rules around what constitutes a political advertisement, published by the FEC. Some states have guidelines that go further. A smart place to start, instead of feigned ignorance or poorly constructed strawman arguments, might be there.

[https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making- di...](https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/making- disbursements/advertising/)

<comment><USER34> The rules are not clear or well defined, and often result in litigation. Often, what becomes determinitive is the context around the ad or the situation of the entity placing it, and not the ad itself. So, to do this Facebook would also have to track entities, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Honestly, I'll believe that Facebook employees are sincerely concerned when I see them walking out or quitting in large numbers. "Open letters" will do zilch in a company known for lies, dishonesty and deception. Only if the earnings take a big hit will Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg do anything.

Edit: Where were these employees when fake news and misinformation resulted in the killing of thousands of people in other countries?

</comment><comment><USER37> Does anyone know of a good group for tech workers to join to counter these issues? As an individual I don't feel like I can do anything about this.

<comment><USER38> > As an individual I don't feel like I can do anything about this.

Welcome to living in a liberal democracy where we don't get to force someone to stop saying something because it makes us mad.

<comment><USER39> But we can because it causes measurable harm, such as influencing the electorate to make decisions based on falsehoods.

We already have special rules for political advertisements on TV, radio, public posting, and print. Facebook is claiming that the rules everybody else follows don't apply to them.

<comment><USER40> Those special rules are more permissive than what these employees are asking for. The trump ads aired on most TV networks except for CNN, who objected because the ad called them "fake news".

<comment><USER39> Nobody is asking Facebook to ban Trump ads. They are asking Facebook to ban ads with explicit falsehoods.

Trump pretty clearly uses "fake news" as an insult, not a claim of fact.

Contrast with ads with false claims that Facebook has approved, like "Pope endorses Trump" or "Lindsey Graham voted for Green New Deal". No TV network would run those.

<comment><USER40> Really? I'm under the impression that TV networks _have to_ run ads even if they're not truthful:

[https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2019/oct...](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o- meter/statements/2019/oct/15/elizabeth-warren/phony-facebook-ad-warren-said- most-tv-networks-wil/)

> Broadcasters are bound by [Section 315 of the Federal Communications Act of > 1934] and therefore can't reject a presidential candidate's ad, even if > contains false information. (The candidates do have to abide by disclosure > rules to make it clear who paid for the ad.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> He should not have allowed political ads in the US election. I dont' remember what was his excuse for allowing them but it sounded like a bad decision. There's just no winning in that game. He allows himself to be used as a scapegoat.

Of course then they 'll go on and ask for facebook to censor all _user posts_ , but that will probably hit free speech protections.

<comment><USER42> Remember Zuck wanted to run for president not that long ago. He wants to sit at the table and to do that he absolutely has to pick a side. How to do that and still pretend it's in the interest of shareholders is what we're kinda witnessing now.

<comment><USER10> > Remember Zuck wanted to run for president not that long ago.

This is absolutely false. There has never been any evidence for this whatsoever, and it is a good example of a falsehood becoming true in the media by constant repetition.

<comment><USER43> If by this day, 40 years from now, Zuck hasn't at least launched an exploratory committee for a presidential run, I would be extremely surprised. If this were reddit, I'd promise to do something like eat an insect or a shoe or something.

<comment><USER44> This is the same man who tried to suck up to the PRC by asking Xi Jinping to name his daughter. If he actually tried to run for POTUS, it would be a shitshow.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/119106...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/11910668/Chinese- president-snubs-Mark-Zuckerbergs-request-for-baby-name.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> So, Facebook is operating like TV did forever?

<comment><USER46> I don't see how they have a choice. If they decide to exercise editorial control then they might be considered in the content creation business by virtue of exercising editorial control and forfeit immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. If Facebook had to be liable for what was published on their system they would be facing the possibility of liability judgements many times their market cap.

Link: [https://technology.findlaw.com/modern-law- practice/understan...](https://technology.findlaw.com/modern-law- practice/understanding-the-legal-issues-for-social-networking-sites-and.html)

<comment><USER47> That is the exact opposite of what Section 230 does.

Section 230 allows platforms to make moderation decisions while retaining legal immunity for the user created content they choose not to moderate.

However, this is currently being threatened by republicans in the senate and Facebook is trying to avoid them taking steps to reduce the scope of 230 (which was already weakened recently by inclusion of a sex trafficking exemption).

<comment><USER48> One of the biggest reasons Section 230 is being threatened by Republicans in the senate is because they believe Facebook has a bias against conservative content and viewpoints on their platform. If it's up to Facebook to moderate content as they see fit, I find it very unlikely they would find a way to do so without appearing to be biased against someone or something.

<comment><USER22> Of course Facebook has a bias against conservative viewpoints. You think the Facebook employees quoted in the article are referring to "misinformation" such as false assertions that our schools are "underfunded?"

That is not to detract from the crazy things the right has said. But it's impossible to read the NYT or HuffPo or the like without cringing over misleading assertions. And it's not just those organizations. As a card carrying ACLU member, I can't tell you how many times I've worked up a froth reading some email to members describing a case, only to be distraught when the representation turned out to be gravely misleading when I researched the case. I've started to notice that on HN, even EFF articles get some comments these days asking "wait, is that characterization accurate?"

<comment><USER49> "Schools are underfunded" is not a factual claim, so I don't see how it could be "false".

Trump's ad claimed that Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion to fire a prosecutor looking into "his son's company". This is an outright lie on several levels.

<comment><USER22> In the abstract you're correct. But as a practical matter, "underfunded" can be a fact or an opinion. If you say "schools are underfunded, and here is why" then that's an opinion. If you say, "schools are underfunded, and that's why we need to tax rich people more," that's mich closer to using it as a factual predicate. That implies that school funding has been measured against some standard (such as what other countries spend) and found deficient.

As to the Biden thing, according to fact-check.org the claim came from "a witness statement" filed in Austrian legal proceedings: [https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/fact-trump-tv-ad- misleads-...](https://www.factcheck.org/2019/10/fact-trump-tv-ad-misleads-on- biden-and-ukraine). Assertions in legal proceedings are routinely cited as "facts" in the US media.

<comment><USER49> The "witness statement" comes from disgraced former Ukranian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, and was made directly to Dmitry Firtash's legal team. Firtash is a Ukranian oligarch linked to the Russian mafia. It's not entirely clear to me yet what Shokin is getting out of it.

Firtash is trading his willingness to manufacture fake dirt on Biden in return for the Trump administration dropping his extradition to the US to stand trial for corruption. He has been stranded in Vienna for years, and wants to go back to running his mob-tied business empire.

[https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-debunked- biden-a...](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/the-debunked-biden- allegations-are-incredibly-useful-to-dmitry-firtash)

[https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/watch-this- closely-n...](https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/watch-this-closely-new- details-on-how-giuliani-pal-met-ukrainian-oligarch)

[https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/03/giuliani-claims- ukraine...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/03/giuliani-claims-ukraine- corruption-case-firtash-dmytro-wanted-extradition-whistleblower-impeachment- biden/)

[https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/oligarch-used- giul...](https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/oligarch-used-giuliani-as- means-to-gain-trump-s-favor-reports-71650885773)

etc.

Shokin's affadavit is full of holes.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/timeline-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-07/timeline- in-ukraine-probe-casts-doubt-on-giuliani-s-biden-claim)

<comment><USER22> I strongly suspect you are correct. But notice that you had to go to witness credibility. In an American court of law, that means the assertion would survive a motion to dismiss. A jury would have to decide whether the witness was telling the truth, or lying based on ulterior motivations.

Do you think the Facebook should be making calls on things that would be "jury questions" in a legal proceeding? And if so, do you think Facebook employees are an unbiased jury on that front?

<comment><USER49> When the truth is something like "A Russian-mob-tied Ukranian oligarch and his disgraced pet prosecutor is trying to make up dirt about Biden who was sent as the representative of the US/NATO countries to demand Ukraine fire that corrupt prosecutor standing in the way of corruption investigations, because the oligarch thinks he can trade manufactured dirt for political favors with the US president."

Then restating that as "Biden promised Ukraine $1 billion to stop investigating his son's crimes" is pretty much slander.

* * *

Personally I think that Facebook should not run political ads, period.

<comment><USER22> Your "truth" is an inference that you are drawing based on circumstantial evidence that contradicts the witness's story. Even if I agree with you that conclusion is probably correct, in US law we would treat that as a "disputed fact" that would require a jury to resolve.

I think Facebook shouldn't moderate political content, full stop, but if it did, surely the limit is things that provably false without making judgment calls or evaluating credibility. E.g. "Hilary Clinton was indicted for her emails but Obama pardoned her." It's shocking to me that anyone would espouse Facebook making editorial decisions on political ads based on inferences from the evidence that in a court of law a judge wouldn't be empowered to make.

And if Facebook moderators should be able to make inferences and weigh credibility in deciding "truth" doesn't that circle back to my point about education spending? The US spends more on education than all but 1-2 other OECD countries. Can't a moderator infer from that the assertion that schools are underfunded is false?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I can't blame Zuck to work so hard and try to execute the balancing act to get that political ad money, because it's targeting what is now Facebook's core demographic.

Young people aren't using Facebook anymore. This doesn't mean young people don't have an account, but I suspect no one under 35-40 is really engaging with the platform meaningfully. Facebook is the new TV and is going to go out like TV - in a slow, overly long drawn out whimper chock-full of pharmaceutical, lawyer, and mesothelioma ads aimed at the aging demographic.

Facebook has a stranglehold over older people but younger people are not falling into the trap. Facebook's ability to give Zuckerberg power is going to fade over time.

<comment><USER51> ...you're aware that Facebook owns Instagram, yes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Silicon Valley's propension to introduce externalities into the world yet never want to deal with the negative ones because "you guys have no idea how hard this is" will never cease to amaze me. But hey, I guess this is why that book is named "Chaos Monkeys".

You know, if it's too hard to run a political ads business that doesn't enable mass scale targeted disinformation and wreaking havoc on democracies, then maybe the responsible thing to say isn't "sorry our platform has enabled 2 major election fuck-ups in the Western world in 2016, but it's not our role to be an arbiter of truth so we'll do nothing" but rather : "ok, we haven't yet found a way to operate this that's not harmful to society, so we've decided not to run political ads until we do " ?

Because at the end of the day, if you don't take this into your own hands and instead you make it look like it's a choice between preserving a 15 years old private company's bottom line and keeping centuries old democracies functioning, that's gonna be a _really_ easy one to make for lawmakers around the world.

The hands off stance is a recipe for being regulated into oblivion eventually, which isn't good for shareholders either.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do you want to get CDA 230 repealed? Because this is how you get CDA 230 repealed.

</comment><comment><USER53> The problem to me can be summarized pretty simply: since unfortunately the USA doesn't have any law on the books to require political advertisement to be truthful (contrary to normal advertisement where it is enforced aggressively).

Considering how effective is Facebook at targeting individuals; you can do a lot of damage spreading lies on the platform. The question is moral: even if there's no law forbidding Facebook from spreading lies, should the company hold itself to a higher standard?

IMHO Facebook should do that, because it risks creating a lifelong enemy in the political side that's likely to win the next elections and as the Romans would say, Vae Victis.

[https://www.factcheck.org/2004/06/false-ads-there-oughta- be-...](https://www.factcheck.org/2004/06/false-ads-there-oughta-be-a-law-or- maybe-not/)

</comment><comment><USER34> Facts and truth are two different things. A set of facts can be chosen to say something untruthful.

And there can be different 'truths' depending on the values people bring to the analysis of facts.

Having Facebook, or their designates, arbitrate 'truth' will only create a privatized ministry of truth.

</comment><comment> ismail-khan Title:

> Dissent Erupts at Facebook Over Hands-Off Stance on Political Ads

From the article:

> More than 250 employees have signed the message

Facebook has >35,000 employees. 250 signees is <0.7% of employees. Hardly seems like an "eruption" of dissent.

The article does acknowledge this:

> While the number of signatures on the letter was a fraction of Facebook's > 35,000-plus work force...

So why use such a misleading title? "A tiny fraction of company employees does not like company policies" is a statement you can make about every sizable company.

</comment><comment><USER54> Maybe it is just me, as I didn't see it in the comments. But why on earth should Facebook have to run political ads at all?

This should be regulated. Provide the same exposure to all the candidates. No targetted ads (how come targetted + political ever seemed like a good idea?). Only link to their program if there's a need at all.

But I bet there's plenty of people in queue for ads on FB's platform, so I don't think that not running political ads would hurt them much.

</comment><comment><USER55> I don't know why Zuckerberg has so colossally failed to convince the world that Facebook, Inc. should not be an arbiter of what is true and what is false.

</comment><comment><USER56> The Correct Answer is to restore the Fairness Doctrine, updated to include cable, social, etc.

Media companies rejoiced when Reagan sabotaged political discourse. Political ads are huge money and are almost pure profit.

Why would Facebook, Twitter, etc. behave any differently?

[https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine)

<comment><USER41> Facebook makes way more than a couple hundred $$M that they spent in last elections. And the cost of being broken up post election is far higher, so it definitely doesn't make economic sense for them

<comment><USER56> What would Twitter be worth today without politics? CNN?

Perhaps the same is true of Facebook. Can't think why it wouldn't be, but don't care enough to find out. Because it's Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> The responsibility of handling and interpreting misinformation needs to be shifted to the consumer. People will lie to you almost every day, and you must figure out how to deal with it.

The validity of information should be vetted by those consuming it, not an entity who is in any kind of power. If enough people think someone is lying or untruthful, with enough evidence, then the content should be flagged, labeled, or potentially taken down, because every consumer had the opportunity to contribute their perspective leading up to handling said content.

We need to move away from the idea that certain authorities in our lives (governments, companies, organizations, or any entity with significant power) can determine what's true or not, because it's highly likely to be biased in either direction.

It's incredibly easy for a collective body to double cross their word—to say one thing and intend another at the expense of those who aren't in power.

The problem is, when an organization makes the decision to censor content, it is usually a very small few who make that biased decision on behalf of the—seemingly big—company. Effectively, it is a small team, or even one or two people, unless it's done by a dedicated team of moderators driven by policies, procedures—or worse: bribery—that may or may not be something those individuals believe in.

When it's left to the people interacting with that content, it's their choice in how to deal with it individually or collectively. That is maximum freedom. To enforce censorship, as a government or organization, is to assume that consumers are idiots, and that's not an assumption they should be making.

<comment><USER58> What you say has a kernel of truth -- we all need to be critical of everything we see and hear -- I think you take it too far.

> The validity of information should be vetted by those consuming it, not an > entity who is in any kind of power.

This would not lead to a place that would be good for anybody. Most people don't have the time or skills needed to do this, and telling everyone that they have to fact-check everything for themselves can only result in some combination of two bad outcomes:

1) People will simply accept everything they read that confirms their own preexisting beliefs.

2) People will simply reject everything they read that goes against their own preexisting beliefs.

Both things encourage the continued decline of public debate as well as the continued increase of overall balkanization and the demonization of our neighbors.

Also, both will lead to a dramatically increased amount of lying.

<comment><USER57> So, Twitter?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Why are the only two options to let ads through or reject them? How about, fact check them and visibly mark them as being potentially false and a link to more details. This should make both sides happy: Zuck who believes the public should decide for themselves, and the rest.

<comment><USER10> Again, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. In fact in this case we've already been through this. Instead of "why does Facebook allow possibly false ads" the discourse instantly becomes "why did Facebook allow this possibly false ad to go without a marker / why did Facebook put a marker on this ad that's true in spirit". For every action there is an equal and opposite hit piece.

<comment><USER60> I've seen you repeat these arguments over and over in this thread, without suggesting any solution. I am guessing you are content with the status quo of Facebook.

<comment><USER10> I agree there is a problem, I simply disagree that there is an easy solution. All "solutions" people suggest either propose to make Facebook nakedly partisan, or would just cause the very same criticisms to reignite in essentially the same form the next day.

<comment><USER60> Facebook is already doing moderation of political content posted by non- politicians. See the latest news about content removed about Lindsey Graham. Facebook is choosing not to stay on the sidelines themselves already. They are just doing so for politicians.

The status quo of Facebook is worse than them not touching any of the political content on their site.

<comment><USER10> This is yet another example of 'damned if you do and damned if you don't. If Facebook did literally no moderation whatsoever, then there would be (and indeed was, in the past) a furor of complaint over their callous indifference to society. The second Facebook censors anything, they are immediately hit with a furor of complaint that, under those standards, they are obligated to censor some slightly less objectionable thing. They resist for a while, then cave in, and the cycle repeats. For the past 10 years this has been a reliable mine of outrage porn, but not a cause of real progress.

<comment><USER60> This is yet another example of you just dodging the problem. FB is arbitrarily demarcating a line of their choosing with no consistency. Politicians are no different from people, and should not be treated to a special "free speech pass" on FB. Free speech for all, or free speech for none. There's no decent reasoning behind this midway solution. The true reason for this is that the politicians have regulatory leverage over FB.

<comment><USER10> I addressed exactly this. This is what you are doing:

> The second Facebook censors anything, they are immediately hit with a furor > of complaint that, under those standards, they are obligated to censor some > slightly less objectionable thing.

This is like trench warfare. Facebook never drew an arbitrary line: it just kept being pushed back by public and media pressure here and there, retreating in bits and pieces. Obviously if you just ignore that history, it looks like an arbitrary line now, but it was created by complaints almost identical to the ones you're making.

<comment><USER60> Retreating in bits and pieces is a choice made by Facebook. No one forced them to do this. It's their choice as a company trying maximize their visibility/profits. I don't think people would have left FB if FB just decided to not moderate political content at all. Just like right now, there is no exodus of people from FB in spite of the outrage.

You are attributing very little agency to a company that makes its decisions unilaterally (sometimes even ignoring laws). This is a gross misrepresentation of FB's position. FB is not a victim here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Maybe it would be preferable to provide an immutable log of political ads that have been run, who ran them and with _all_ targeting information.

This would be open and transparent and allow politicians to police the turf instead of facebook.

</comment><comment><USER62> This is not a rhetorical question:

If it's ok to lie in a political ad, if the entire responsibility for determining its truthfulness lies on the shoulders of the people view the ad, is it also ok for an administration to lie to citizens?

<comment><USER63> Based on all of the evidence thus far, yes, there are no consequences whatsoever for the federal executive to lie about all manner of topics literally every day, up to an including matters of national security.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> These people are going to be constructively terminated.

Constructive termination is where they want to fire you for 'x' but can't legally so they construct 'y' as the real reason for firing you.

</comment><comment><USER65> Why would people be willing to give up their fundamental rights so easily. Isn't free speech mainly about invalidating what is false or immoral through discourse?

</comment><comment><USER66> Why doesn't Facebook just reject political ads and keep itself out of trouble. It seems like it could be the less costly alternative.

</comment><comment><USER67> Am I the only one that wishes social media would just ban political advertising altogether?

</comment><comment><USER68> Why are we going after the platform and not the party posting the deceitful ads?

</comment><comment><USER69> The mainstream media has lost control of the narrative because of places like FB. Everything that covers politics is a form of political ad and EVERYONE has an agenda. So how will you control that?

What NYT, WaPo others offered was a brand and certain Network Effects (subscription). They can not compete with the Network Effects of FB and have been trying to rein in FB.

These entities are desperate to regain control of the narrative or they'll lose their value.

The reality is, NYT or WAPO can run false news or "political ads" under the name of op-eds. On their own platforms they can highlight these op-eds on their homepage or they can just boost them on FB. If NYT is fine with op-eds that talks about anything political related as "political ads" then they have a standing here.

It no longer has to be op-ed. Even their news coverage is turning to political propaganda. You know how bad NYT's own editorial practice is? Just watch this recent re-writing of history [0].

Any let's not forget it wasn't the political ads that gave us Donal Trump, but the $5 Billion free advertising that Trump got by the mainstream media [1], watch Bannon talk about how Trump got initial boost in the polls[2]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CE8eiWItY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CE8eiWItY)

[1] [https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump- rode...](https://www.thestreet.com/story/13896916/1/donald-trump- rode-5-billion-in-free-media-to-the-white-house.html)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKuPYArH0Gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKuPYArH0Gs) (this is an interesting interview and Bannon talks about how Trump got his boost in the polls by mainstream media)

</comment><comment><USER70> "hands-off stance" That phrase is doing a lot of work

</comment><comment><USER71> A few links that may indicate in which direction Facebook is biased:

[https://twitter.com/donie/status/1188593050546855937](https://twitter.com/donie/status/1188593050546855937)

[https://mashable.com/article/facebook-false-green-new- deal-a...](https://mashable.com/article/facebook-false-green-new-deal-ad- removed/)

[https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political- operatives](https://popular.info/p/the-republican-political-operatives)

[https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right- wing](https://popular.info/p/facebook-allows-prominent-right-wing)

</comment><comment><USER72> I posted this in the other thread on the topic,

"The Facebook workers called for specific changes including holding political ads to the same standards as other advertising, stronger design measures to better distinguish political ads from other content, and restricting targeting for political ads. The employees also recommended imposing a silence period ahead of elections and imposing spend caps for politicians."

In the U.S., political speech is often afforded the highest amount of protection from govt. censorship (c.f. the FB is private platform/publisher). One of the reasons articulated by some First Amendment commentators is that political speech is important to self-government in a democratic society. To quote Brandeis, "Political discussion is a political duty." Further, "Implied here is the notion of civic virtue - the duty to participate in politics, the importance of deliberation, and the notion that the end of the state is not neutrality by active assistance in provided conditions of freedom . . . ." [1]

Public political speech should not be censored based on perceived truth or falsehood. In fact, political speech that promulgates false or misleading messages should be exposed to criticism. Again quoting Brandeis, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants . . . ."

However, political speech is regulated to an extent by the F.E.C., e.g. requiring disclosure notices, etc. However, the political speech issues presented on FB can be more complex than that of traditional 20th century print and broadcast media. For example, micro-targeting political speech to certain demographics may cross the line from public political speech to private speech, and perhaps should be affored less protections. See Alexander Meiklejohn [2].

Also, content based prohibitions of speech tend to be more troubling than content neutral restrictions, such as time, place or manner restrictions on political ads or spending caps as mentioned in the employee statement above.

[1] Lahav, Holmes and Brandeis: Libertarian and Republican Justifications for Free Speech, 4 J.L. & Pol. 451 (1987).

[2] Meiklejohn, Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Governemnt (1948).

</comment><comment><USER73> Just put a heavy crawling international distress orange outline around political ads with a watermark saying "not fact checked".

<comment><USER17> Imagine a law mandating a sign be put on every toilet stall door with the message "wipe your ass". Rather than overregulating, we should allow ourselves time to adapt to this new world, this might include - block your kid's ears - committing quite a few mistakes and learning with them.

<comment><USER73> We do have restaurant washroom signs - "Handwashing Laws For All 50 States" \- [https://www.signs.com/blog/handwashing-laws-for- all-50-state...](https://www.signs.com/blog/handwashing-laws-for- all-50-states/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> w-j-w The amount of people making weak "both sides" arguments (nobody runs political ads without lies in them) in this thread is alarming. Facebook is easily capable of fact checking every ad on their platform, and if they can't, they should'nt run them at all. We should be prepared to demand that all political advertising be free of outright falsehoods.

<comment><USER74> I agree that claims like "the earth is flat" and "vaccinations cause autism" should probably be removed - but the trump ad in question while likely to be false, does not constitute an outright falsehood. If you ask anyone on the right they'll say it's probably true and at the very least just as truthful as any leftist political ad.

Furthermore, in the 1400s an ad claiming that the world is round would have been deemed outright false, and in the early 1900s an ad claiming equality between all races would have been deemed outright false, and in 2001 an ad claiming that Iraq had no WMDs would have been deemed outright false -- yet all are now known to be true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> The problem here is not so much Facebook (a company doing what companies do) as it is the regulatory system they fit in. This situation is unprecedented, as no single company had ever concentrated the media power Facebook has. Our legislators are barely starting to understand the problem, the ball is in their court really. In the meantime, Facebook will sit at the intersection of what's best for the company and what the law allows.

<comment><USER76> Facebook probably has considerably less media power than TV stations of old. But that was ok, because they got regulated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> The problem with Facebook is that it's too big. Different online communities have different standards of what sort of behaviour is acceptable. Facebook is effectively splintered, there is no one community and so there is disagreement on the community standards, to a degree that I don't think can realistically be resolved. Splintering may very well be the result.

If social media were more decentralized, the responsibility would also be decentralized. Standards would set by the communities. And as for overall standards, that would be dealt with by the legislature and courts, which would be a huge improvement, as those are way more transparent and fair than Facebook et al.

Abuse of power by Facebook (or advertisers pressuring them) would be much less of a problem if people could move more easily between social media platforms.

I think a more decentralized model of social media would be good all around. Add some interoperability so you can still communicate when you're not on the same platform, this should alleviate some of the tendencies for these platforms to become so big and centralized.

</comment><comment><USER78> Buying political ad is kind of like buying a new car, or a firearm.

If you leave the dealership with your new vehicle, and decide to go run over 10 people, the dealer is not on the hook for your actions.

Same with gun stores not being held liable for gun owners.

There may be background checks in place to ensure they aren't selling a car to someone that can't drive (Driver's license) or to make sure someone can own a gun (Background check), but once you pass the initial screening you are on your own for liability.

Political ads should be the same, basic KYC to verify the person buying the ad is who they say they are or allowed to represent an entity, but beyond that anything they want say let them say it, let the public scrutinize it, and let their ideas be debated.

I could see a world of hurt if this was completely unregulated, as in anyone could pretend to be anyone and buy an ad any which way without verification. This would lead to an insane amount of slander/mudslinging.

Just my 2 cents, probably not worth a penny.

<comment><USER79> Its more like having someone buy a firearm that has a bumpstock and then also giving them a free stay at a hotel that looks out on a popular concert.

We're in the information age where information is starting to be used as a weapon and we need to have ways in which we are protecting individual people's right to not get undue influence by corporations or people in power.

The parties that are in control of the media need to take responsibility to protect the public's rights and if they wont, the government should regulate them.

<comment><USER80> >The parties that are in control of the media need to take responsibility to protect the public's rights and if they wont, the government should regulate them.

Disagree. It is your responsibility to be informed and call bullshit on things that are lies.

IF you think the same politicians who get elected by lies are going to force the corporations that line their pockets to tell the truth I have a bridge I will sell you. Nice one right there in San Francisco.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask/Poll News.YC: What is a good open source Bayes classifier? - <AUTHOR>

I'm just doing a little research for a project and I thought everybody could benefit from the fact that we have happen to have an expert on the subject as a member.
I would also like learn from what other people have used as well so any input that others could give would be helpful.
<comment></comment><comment>
UPDATE: I started a poll thread below so that we can submit a project link and up-vote a link if we have experience or knowledge over one project versus another.
Thank you to everybody who replied, you are great!!! </comment><comment><USER2> Whichever one you use, you'll probably need to edit the source to change the probability formula from (n_hits / n_total) to ((n_hits + 1) / (n_total + 2)). That's the correct formula based on an even distribution of probabilities (which is close enough to the actual distribution in most situations for this to be a huge improvement). I can never find a reference for this when I search for one, but you can verify it experimentally with a short program in your favorite dynamically-typed language, or a long program.

For example, if you live in a world with only black and white birds, but you don't know the percentage of each and have no reason to believe it's more likely 2% black than 70% black, or any other percentage, if you see two black birds fly by, that doesn't mean the next bird you see has a 100% probability of being black, but that's exactly the assumption most widely-used naive Bayesian classifiers make.

I modified SpamProbe to use (spam+1)/(total+2), and the results have been good.

<comment><USER3> Sounds to me that you are describing Laplace Smoothing in a Naive Bayes classifier. This is a pretty standard technique for avoiding the problem that you are seeing where the probability comes out as 100%/0% because of a lack of information in the model.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, yes, that's what it's called.

All due credit to Laplace for the technique, but the word "smoothing" is making me wince, because it makes it sound as though this is some artificial approximation. For the assumption of an even distribution of probabilities, n+1 / m+2 really _is_ the exact probability of the event repeating. Like I said, you can confirm this experimentally with a quick program.

<comment><USER4> There are other smoothing techniques more prevalent in NLP that I'm learning about in my NLP class which distribute probability mass more evenly, but really won't help (at least I don't think so) in a classifier. Witten-Bell and Good-Turing are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What sort of classification are you trying to do? Text, I assume. If it's text and you need something open source, or just a pointer to how to write one yourself, you could read the article I wrote for Dr Dobbs on this subject: <http://www.ddj.com/development-tools/184406064>

There are quite a lot of toolkits out there that do Bayesian things (take a look at libbow or Weka).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking for something that is open source that I can start using right away with minimal configuration... I'm not smart enough to create my own, but clever enough to take somebody else's work and cater it to what I'm trying to do.

It's only for text processing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cs/BayesClassifier.aspx>

This is a simple one built in C#/.Net. I fixed a significant bug and raised classification accuracy from 74% -> 96% in my noisy dataset (automobile accident claims). I emailed the author with a bunch of improvements (such as histograms) and some other tweaks but never heard back. Anyway, the bugfix is simple: take a look at category.cs. In TeachPhrase(), move m_TotalWords++ inside the test for "if (!m_Phrases.TryGetValue(phrase, out pc))".

What you want here is to count the # of unique words. The original code was counting the total # of times all words appear.This one change reduced classification errors by 3X.

Cheers, \--Jack

<comment><USER5> Oh, forgot to mention that you'll want to compute probabilities using logarithms to avoid underflow precision loss (which will introduce classification errors). example: wordValue = System.Math.Log((double)count / (double)cat.TotalWords);

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Cadillac of bayes classifiers is CRM114--it can use classifiers that are far more advanced than naive bayes, such as clustering, or with hidden markov modeling.

<comment><USER7> I can not over-recommend crm114. I've been using it to classify some database entries and its accuracy is second-to-none, and its custom language makes working with strangely-stored data (like database entries) easy (after you learn the strange language)

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there any documentation that stands out for learning the alien language?

No doubt, I'll be combing through all of the CRM114 information on the website. Is there anything that is not referenced there that will be of use?

<comment><USER6> If you are doing a ham/spam type classification, then you won't need the alien language. I am almost a total tech novice and I was able to do well with just some bash scripts. Of course the docs will teach you about better ways to train the system, if you are interested in going from 98% correct classification to 99.5% correct.

learn ham.css < file_to_learn.txt

learn spam.css < file_to_learn.txt

classify < file_to_classify.txt

<comment><AUTHOR> I am NOT doing ham/spam type classification. I need to define some classifications for specific types of content.

<comment> a-priori Then substitute ham/spam for whatever those types of content are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the affirmation! It helps when jumping into territory with which I have no previous experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The one with the simplest interface I've seen is <http://divmod.org/trac/wiki/DivmodReverend> . Looks very easy to get started with.

If you want to get more serious, use Weka or Bow or YALE or something implemented in a reasonably fast language.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use Weka in my project. Btw, there is a book about Weka: <http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~ml/weka/book.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> How does Weka differ from CRM114?

<comment><USER10> I'm not familiar with CRM114, but upon cursory inspection it seems to be written in C and targeted mainly at document classification.

Weka is written in Java and implements all kinds of machine learning/data mining tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Andrew Mccallum's Bow library (CMU) is a very robust toolkit. <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mccallum/bow/>

Very high quality. Multiple people have used it for serious research.

</comment><comment><USER12> If Perl is ok, you can try these: [http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Bayes&mode=all](http://search.cpan.org/search?query=Bayes&mode=all)

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm not sure about this one but you should definitely look into _Orange_ if you're considering Python. <http://magix.fri.uni-lj.si/orange/>

</comment><comment><USER14> You could try Orange: <http://www.ailab.si/orange>

It is written in combination of Python and C. It can be used as a python module.

</comment><comment><USER15> The one in BioPython is pretty good.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> PROJECT LINKS/POLL

 _reply only to this message and vote on links below_

<comment><AUTHOR> Ruby :: Classifier gem

<http://classifier.rubyforge.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Use CRF for classifying/labeling.

<http://crf.sourceforge.net/>

Its extremely well written, easy to define features etc. Reasonably good support too.

</comment><comment><USER17> Write it yourself. I will say that teasing out the features you want to score can be some work; does anyone here know if the CRM114 package helps with that?

</comment><comment><USER18> crm114

<comment><USER19> awesome logo

<http://crm114.sourceforge.net/></comment></comment>