Facebook tests Forecast, an app for making predictions about world events, like COVID-19 – ProWellTech

forecast, a new project by Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team Start today a community to build predictions. The iOS app allows users to ask questions and then use in-app points to make predictions about what could happen in the future. Users can also create, discuss, and view these crowdsourcing predictions.

At the start, only invited participants in the United States and Canada can make predictions and hold conversations while the app is in the beta test. However, these predictions and related discussions will be publicly available on the website Forecast website and made divisible.

To date, Facebook has tested the product internally with a small group of employees. Your first forecasts form the first core content of the app when it starts.

As of now, Facebook will invite members of the health, research and academic community to make predictions about the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the world.

At a time when Facebook and other major technology platforms came under fire because of their role in spreading misinformation, fake news, propaganda, conspiracy theories, and other non-factual content that was portrayed as truth, an app focused on ” Assumptions “The future seems to be badly advised – however educated these assumptions may be. This is particularly worrying as much of the app’s content focuses on COVID-19 conjectures.

The predictions of the forecast can show what people think, but COVID-19 is not a game. To understand the world, scientists form a hypothesis that is essentially an expanded form of a well-founded presumption. Then they don’t vote on crowdsource to see if a hypothesis is true. They test, experiment, collect supportive data, try to prove and disprove the hypothesis, and ultimately try to publish their results and peer review them.

The forecasting app transforms the hypothesis into the end result in a way. With the app, users can make a forecast and explain their reasoning – in other words, create a hypothesis. Instead of doing the job of testing the forecast, Forecast will track the data using the scientific method be right receives a specific question.

E.g. “When does the first COVID-19 vaccine candidate begin Phase 3 trials?” or “When will most US residents be treated with a COVID-19 vaccine?” You can come across something like this for non-COVID questions “Will Part or All of the US Presidential Election Be Postponed?”

Questions are checked by the forecasting team and processed for clarity if necessary. Users will be notified when their question is published.

At some point the question will be classified as “done” due to an elapsed time period or an event. For example, if users guess when a vaccine will be released and when it will actually be released, the questions on these topics will be “clarified”.

Forecast surveys receive aesthetically pleasing charts and graphs that can be shared outside of the app. This means that users can post these assumptions and the crowdsourcing responses on websites like Facebook, where the line between fact and fiction is already blurred. This could further complicate people’s understanding of an already complex issue: the COVID 19 pandemic.

Facebook users who see these common “predictions” may believe that if they are the result of a social polling app instead, they have some foundation in science and research.

Of course, it is fun to bet on world events and check if they turn out to be true, and it even makes sense to organize the collective “best guesses” of a wider community about a future event in order to understand what people are about think at a certain time. Crowdsourced predictions also have their place. Spreading specific COVID-19 predictions on Facebook, however, appears to be an idea that is fraught with potential problems and complications.

And the only goal of Facebook here is to test your own hypothesis – that an independent, community-based prediction app that rewards a participatory audience with social recognition reveals insightful voices and thoughtful discussions.

Ultimately, however, Facebook seems to be looking for a perspective that could lead thought leaders to engage in meaningful discussions on a Facebook platform on topics they know best. This type of discussion is difficult to do in the comment section of Facebook around a post – since comments are often a place where people can converse, argue, threaten, and otherwise derail. Forecast organizes these experts on a topic and enables them to discuss them. This could be interesting as an independent room with a checked number of participants. However, making the data generally shared is a problem.

Facebook says that the questions in Forecast are moderated for clarity Forecast moderation guidelines and Facebook’s community standards. This means that questions cannot mention the death, sexual or violent assault of a person, including public figures. (This is not a new internet Death watch, for example.) Hate speech is not allowed. Questions about illegal content or personal information, like other detailed guidelines, are not allowed Here.

The forecast app is available live in the iOS app store Here.