Analytics Case

Tell us how you would estimate how much fake news is there on Facebook. How would you estimate its impact?

Data Scientist

Google

Meta

Mollie

Ubisoft

Huawei

Benchling

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Answers

Anonymous

5 months ago
3.8Strong
Clarification - 
  • What is defined as fake news?
  • Why does it matter? 
  • Impact to what? User retention? user engagement? Acquisition rate?
Let's define fake news as posts from new users who create a large amount of content and have low friend count & friend invites. Offer to define "new" & "low" if interviewer wants you to spend time there. If this is a brand new definition, start small and have human review to validate that definition is in fact reasonable.

Let us consider only US created posts that appear in the newsfeed.

Let's say the impact we prioritize is user engagement. Few metric options:
  • login freq or 
  • total time spent on newsfeed or
  • Total time spent on FB
  • User activity i.e. reactions & comments
Pick one. 
Check if the selected metric is co-related to how many fake news posts appear in their news feed? 
Segment this by user type (new vs established)



Anonymous

4 months ago
3.2Strong
Look at how many posts in the news category gets tagged as spam or reported. Also look into the virality, as fake news spreads faster. Impact could be estimated by tracking bounce rates when this news is viewed or number of reports as scam. also look at churn rate

Anonymous

5 months ago
3.2Strong
  • What isfake news:
  • News that have inaccurate/incorrect information
  • User/page generated, shared from other platform
  • Or created by anti social groups, extreme groups with agenda
  • Impact:hurt credibility of information
  • discourage user from engaging
  • churn in the end
  • Identify fake news: Users reported fake news:by number of reports vs probability of fake Sample posts and do manual screening by agents For posts that do not have reports, find proxy: sensitive keywords, unknown source stratified sampling, Existing labels - build a classification model
  • Tell us how you would estimate how much fake news is there on Facebook. How would you estimate its impact?
  • What factors do you consider when trying to gauge the quantity of fake news circulating on Facebook and the level of impact it has?
  • How do you go about determining the prevalence of fake news on Facebook and what impact it is having on the platform's users?
  • Could you walk us through your approach for assessing the amount of fake news present on Facebook and its impact on society?
  • What techniques do you use to estimate the volume of fake news on Facebook and the potential influence this misinformation can have?
  • Can you describe your process for evaluating the magnitude of fake news on Facebook and its impact on public discourse?
  • How do you determine the amount of fake news on Facebook and its potential consequences, such as political polarization or spread of misinformation?
  • What steps do you take to calculate the extent of fake news on Facebook and its impact on users' behavior and attitudes?
  • Could you elaborate on how you estimate the quantity of fake news on Facebook and its outcomes, such as erosion of trust or creation of echo chambers?
  • What methods do you use to measure the incidence of fake news on Facebook and its impact, including such indicators as engagement rates or cognitive effects?
  • Can you share your methodology for measuring the amount of fake news on Facebook and how you estimate its impact?
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Interview question asked to Data Scientists interviewing at Onfido, Databricks, Elastic and others: Tell us how you would estimate how much fake news is there on Facebook. How would you estimate its impact?.