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I don't think the issue is fake news. I think the issue is that there is nearly 0 crossover between the two political spheres. I haven't seen any posts about vi

I don't think the issue is fake news. I think the issue is that there is nearly 0 crossover between the two political spheres. I haven't seen any posts about violence against Trump voters on election day (there was a surprising amount) on Facebook, and I haven't seen any posts about the uptick in hate crime on /pol/. The problem is that social media has created 2 different countries that live next to each other.

ng12 10y ago
This isn't a new problem, but more of a missed opportunity. I've spent the last 15 or so years in in incredibly liberal cities and so in real life I don't get exposed to differing opinions very often. The internet just reflects that.
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Except that anyone who lives in a liberal/conservative area knows that they live in a liberal/conservative area. The vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how intense of a filter their Facebook feed has. This is amplified when 62% of American adults get their news from social media [https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/most-people-get-their-news-from-social-media-says-report/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/most-people-get-their-news...].
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    This is 100% true. I only get ads for Clinton, only see very liberal posts on Facebook, and receive a subset of news that is tailored to the fact that I live in New York. It's kind of crazy, honestly. It's also sad - the brightest mind of an era, lying to me to increase Dwell Time.
  - fudgie 10y ago
    http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ is a good demonstration of this effect. Quite eyeopening.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      Neat. Clicked on Obama, got 2 stories from the left about the Michelle Obama "Ape" comments, and on the right a story about Obama supporting a border fence. Then a bunch of other stuff from each side. The one about the fence was from Breitbart, and it's an interesting example of the problem. Something that seems to have happened a lot with these emails is "BREAKING NEWS! SOMETHING HORRIBLE OR HYPOCRITICAL!" and then you read it and what the article is saying is "true". It's "true" because you can pick and choose sentences and build that narrative, but in context things are more complex. https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/10/22/wikileaks-podesta-emails-clinton-foundation-works-with-big-pharma-to-keep-aids-drug-prices-high/ https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/10/22/wikileaks-podest... That's one I saw yesterday. > WikiLeaks Podesta emails: Clinton Foundation works with Big Pharma to keep AIDS drug prices high Pretty horrible sounding title. That would be a big deal. > the Clinton Foundation opposed lowering the costs of AIDS drugs in the United States. Sounds pretty horrible and corrupt. I should hate her for this. But if you read the email https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440 > As you will see when you read this memo, we think that publicly pressuring the US and European AIDS drug companies to lower prices and bringing pressure to allow generic AIDS drugs into the United States will have limited if any success and could seriously jeopardize our negotiations to continually lower prices in poor countries. We also believe that there are other more impactful ways to address the US AIDS crisis today. There is much more to it, it's a paragraph from an email not the entire thing. It still shows a very different picture. So this isn't fake news, but to me it's still shitty journalism. It's very shallow, it doesn't really present any data (just the link to the emails, no analysis). I feel like you could make an argument from the America first perspective that we should be arguing for generics and lower prices, and worry about the effect elsewhere later. It doesn't do that though.
      - nogbit 10y ago
        Exactly, one day people may wake up and realize that they were sold to the highest bidder. All of this media is shit. Zero investigative work is being done and it's written in a opinionated way. It's all opinion garbage (which at one time was much less in papers) geared to making you click on more garbage to render some more ads. I seriously can not look at news online anymore. I used to use news.google.com religiously (I've never used FB or Twitter for my news) but even that shows the same shit. It's so bad now and has me very concerned. During the 80s and early 90s CNN Headline news did a good job I thought...it's garbage now. FB and Google are kidding themselves if they think they can fix this as their bottom line demands it to function as is. Simply stop giving them the page loads...boycotts work wonders my friends (and no, ad blocking will not suffice).
ethanbond 10y ago
Agreed. I don't know why everyone is fixated on the fake news thing. The real news has multiple valid interpretations, but Facebook only puts the one in front of us that we're most likely to agree with.
aikah 10y ago
Social media didn't create anything new. People are on these websites because they want to see specific things, not things they don't want. Social media want people to be engaged so they can sell ads. If they show unwanted content or irrelevant content, people will leave.
taurath 10y ago
Its not social media. My parents barely use the internet but they live in the same bubble /w fox news and conservative talk radio. Its existed for a long time, but now there are so many sources and outlets you can stay completely and entirely within the bubble. One could argue about how much a bubble there is on the left... think for example the difference between CNN US and CNN international - one is relatively vapid lowest common denominator infotainment, and the other is hard news. I feel like infotainment/tabloidization and an uneducated populace is the biggest contributor to ignorance. Granted, its hard to know how much of a factor that's always been. I'd love to actually see tags on facebook posts. "Extremely conservative", "Mostly Neutral", "Mostly liked by liberals" etc etc. At least make people think about why they're seeing these sources.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  A fun thing to do is to watch the CNBC personnel that do Nightly Business Report on PBS. They are obviously incredibly talented people, switching their editorial focus and delivery for the different audience. Not just the hosts, everybody.
- iamthepieman 10y ago
  "I'd love to actually see tags on facebook posts. "Extremely conservative", "Mostly Neutral", "Mostly liked by liberals" etc etc. At least make people think about why they're seeing these sources" I'd love to see that and a lot more. "Read by your neighbor twenty minutes ago.", "Shared by 40 people within 1 mile of you", "Most liked by self-identified christian conservatives between 42-59 that make 70-90K in combined household income" But really, your suggestion will just allow people to self-filter even more. BreitBart readers aren't avoiding articles from Daily Kos because they think they are just copies of each other.
  - taurath 10y ago
    Its the hidden nature of the self filtering that allows people to not be aware they are in a bubble. Just simply the awareness that this is an inherently biased source can make you think about other perspectives. You may go to brietbart because you agree with them, but if half the links are for infowars or other sites that you may not know the biases of it would be extremely helpful to know. Hell, even a browser extension giving you a bias bar with a sliding scale for each source would be super neat.

ng12 10y ago

This isn't a new problem, but more of a missed opportunity. I've spent the last 15 or so years in in incredibly liberal cities and so in real life I don't get exposed to differing opinions very often. The internet just reflects that.

ethanbond 10y ago
Except that anyone who lives in a liberal/conservative area knows that they live in a liberal/conservative area. The vast majority of people have absolutely no clue how intense of a filter their Facebook feed has. This is amplified when 62% of American adults get their news from social media [https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/most-people-get-their-news-from-social-media-says-report/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/26/most-people-get-their-news...].
- JBReefer 10y ago
  This is 100% true. I only get ads for Clinton, only see very liberal posts on Facebook, and receive a subset of news that is tailored to the fact that I live in New York. It's kind of crazy, honestly. It's also sad - the brightest mind of an era, lying to me to increase Dwell Time.
- fudgie 10y ago
  http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ is a good demonstration of this effect. Quite eyeopening.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    Neat. Clicked on Obama, got 2 stories from the left about the Michelle Obama "Ape" comments, and on the right a story about Obama supporting a border fence. Then a bunch of other stuff from each side. The one about the fence was from Breitbart, and it's an interesting example of the problem. Something that seems to have happened a lot with these emails is "BREAKING NEWS! SOMETHING HORRIBLE OR HYPOCRITICAL!" and then you read it and what the article is saying is "true". It's "true" because you can pick and choose sentences and build that narrative, but in context things are more complex. https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/10/22/wikileaks-podesta-emails-clinton-foundation-works-with-big-pharma-to-keep-aids-drug-prices-high/ https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/10/22/wikileaks-podest... That's one I saw yesterday. > WikiLeaks Podesta emails: Clinton Foundation works with Big Pharma to keep AIDS drug prices high Pretty horrible sounding title. That would be a big deal. > the Clinton Foundation opposed lowering the costs of AIDS drugs in the United States. Sounds pretty horrible and corrupt. I should hate her for this. But if you read the email https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440 https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440 > As you will see when you read this memo, we think that publicly pressuring the US and European AIDS drug companies to lower prices and bringing pressure to allow generic AIDS drugs into the United States will have limited if any success and could seriously jeopardize our negotiations to continually lower prices in poor countries. We also believe that there are other more impactful ways to address the US AIDS crisis today. There is much more to it, it's a paragraph from an email not the entire thing. It still shows a very different picture. So this isn't fake news, but to me it's still shitty journalism. It's very shallow, it doesn't really present any data (just the link to the emails, no analysis). I feel like you could make an argument from the America first perspective that we should be arguing for generics and lower prices, and worry about the effect elsewhere later. It doesn't do that though.
    - nogbit 10y ago
      Exactly, one day people may wake up and realize that they were sold to the highest bidder. All of this media is shit. Zero investigative work is being done and it's written in a opinionated way. It's all opinion garbage (which at one time was much less in papers) geared to making you click on more garbage to render some more ads. I seriously can not look at news online anymore. I used to use news.google.com religiously (I've never used FB or Twitter for my news) but even that shows the same shit. It's so bad now and has me very concerned. During the 80s and early 90s CNN Headline news did a good job I thought...it's garbage now. FB and Google are kidding themselves if they think they can fix this as their bottom line demands it to function as is. Simply stop giving them the page loads...boycotts work wonders my friends (and no, ad blocking will not suffice).

ethanbond 10y ago

Agreed. I don't know why everyone is fixated on the fake news thing. The real news has multiple valid interpretations, but Facebook only puts the one in front of us that we're most likely to agree with.

aikah 10y ago

Social media didn't create anything new. People are on these websites because they want to see specific things, not things they don't want. Social media want people to be engaged so they can sell ads. If they show unwanted content or irrelevant content, people will leave.

taurath 10y ago

Its not social media. My parents barely use the internet but they live in the same bubble /w fox news and conservative talk radio. Its existed for a long time, but now there are so many sources and outlets you can stay completely and entirely within the bubble. One could argue about how much a bubble there is on the left... think for example the difference between CNN US and CNN international - one is relatively vapid lowest common denominator infotainment, and the other is hard news. I feel like infotainment/tabloidization and an uneducated populace is the biggest contributor to ignorance. Granted, its hard to know how much of a factor that's always been. I'd love to actually see tags on facebook posts. "Extremely conservative", "Mostly Neutral", "Mostly liked by liberals" etc etc. At least make people think about why they're seeing these sources.

maxerickson 10y ago
A fun thing to do is to watch the CNBC personnel that do Nightly Business Report on PBS. They are obviously incredibly talented people, switching their editorial focus and delivery for the different audience. Not just the hosts, everybody.
iamthepieman 10y ago
"I'd love to actually see tags on facebook posts. "Extremely conservative", "Mostly Neutral", "Mostly liked by liberals" etc etc. At least make people think about why they're seeing these sources" I'd love to see that and a lot more. "Read by your neighbor twenty minutes ago.", "Shared by 40 people within 1 mile of you", "Most liked by self-identified christian conservatives between 42-59 that make 70-90K in combined household income" But really, your suggestion will just allow people to self-filter even more. BreitBart readers aren't avoiding articles from Daily Kos because they think they are just copies of each other.
- taurath 10y ago
  Its the hidden nature of the self filtering that allows people to not be aware they are in a bubble. Just simply the awareness that this is an inherently biased source can make you think about other perspectives. You may go to brietbart because you agree with them, but if half the links are for infowars or other sites that you may not know the biases of it would be extremely helpful to know. Hell, even a browser extension giving you a bias bar with a sliding scale for each source would be super neat.