This much is obvious: What the world needs now is less fake news. In general, sure, but particularly on the planet's leading source of information: Facebook. The thing is, to separate the informational wheat from the disinformational chaffe, what you actually need is a better definition of fake news. And that's … well … less obvious. "What does it mean, exactly? It's not always clear. We know, for instance that if somebody doesn't like a story they see on Facebook that they might classify it as false, when it actually just reflects an opposing ideology," says political scientist Gary King, director of Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science. But just because you find an ideological viewpoint abhorrent doesn't mean it's factually incorrect. So King wants to know: Could some clever researcher develop rules capable of classifying news as true or false—rules that could be shared with other people, platforms, algorithms, and universally applied? "Is it possible? I don't know," King says. "But it would be a terrific development." It's the kind of development King is optimistic could emerge from Social Science One, an independent research commission he cofounded to give social scientists unprecedented access to data inside Facebook and—one day, he hopes—other private companies with troves of scientifically valuable user data. The organization, and Facebook's participation, was first announced in April, but its official name was only announced today, along with its inaugural mission: To investigate the spread of information and misinformation on Facebook, and their impact on elections and democracy. For years, accessing Facebook's private data came with a whopper of a caveat: Whatever findings your research turned up had to be preapproved by the company—before you made it public. But Social Science One, acting as an intermediary, removes that condition. The organization has insight into what kind of data Facebook has available and what kind of data researchers need. Now it's bridging the gap: Starting today, researchers from around the world can apply for funding and data access that Social Science One will approve—not Facebook. If researchers want to search for something in the platform's data that could make it look bad—or if they actually find something—Facebook won't be able to pump the brakes. The first data set Facebook makes available will comprise roughly one petabyte—that's one million gigabytes—of privacy-protected data on public Facebook posts, including many links to intentionally false news stories. Contained in the data set will be anonymized information on things like the age, gender, and political views of the people who clicked those links; what kind of device they used to access them; which links they viewed, shared, and reshared (including the ones they shared without clicking on); along with the number of likes and loves and wows and so-ons that the posts received. It's … a lot of data. But, hopefully, very useful data. "There's an enormous number of questions you can ask about what 2 billion people around the world are clicking and reading and sharing," King says. Researchers will have a month to submit requests for money (up to $50,000 each) or data, before the initial review process kicks off. King says he's streamlined the process to make it easier for researchers to apply. (The description of the proposed investigation can be no longer than five pages, single spaced—a limit he says scientists accustomed to 20-page grant applications will appreciate.) The Social Science Research Council, an international social science nonprofit and a separate entity from Social Science One, will handle the money, which will flow from seven ideologically diverse organizations, from the Charles Koch Foundation to the James L. Knight foundation. SSRC will also oversee the peer-review process.
Facebook is granting social scientists studying the spread of fake news on social access to the network's private servers. Gary King, director of Harvard University's Institute for Quantitative Social Science, is examining whether it is possible to develop rules to classify whether news is true or false, rather than just an opposing ideology. He has co-founded Social Science One to give researchers unprecedented access to Facebook user data in a bid to establish whether such rules could then be applied universally to determine whether a report is fake or not.