8 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg Is in Denial

53 points by tucif 10y ago

chinese_donald 10y ago
Why only mention pro-Trump fake news? I know plenty of people spreading fake Propaganda about Trump based on hearsay and false information. ...including links and comments on HN. Maybe HN needs to filter out the fake stuff too?
- ComteDeLaFere 10y ago
  And is Google guilty as well? The story below is currently at the top of the World section of Google News - Nuclear War Alert: US Prepares For North Korea Missile Launch http://www.morningnewsusa.com/nuclear-war-alert-us-prepares-north-korea-missile-launch-23122421.html http://www.morningnewsusa.com/nuclear-war-alert-us-prepares-... I have no idea what this "news" site is, but I'm pretty sure that the US is not currently rushing to prepare for a North Korean nuclear missile launch.
  - Fej 10y ago
    North Korea is thought to be gearing up for a missile test. Not a war.
- echlebek 10y ago
  Care to cite some instances? I'm not sure why you would need to create propaganda about Trump. The truth is pretty damning already.
  - solvedit 10y ago
    I can help with that. I, like you, also thought that there would be no reason to, so why would they do it... But then I went and watched the actual Q&A recording that all of the "Trump wants to put all the Muslims into a database" claims came from and find that the claim is quite false. He never says it. He says something that when taken entirely out of context can be interpreted by someone with preconceived notions as meaning it, except that in context it is actually very clear that he's talking about something else. I don't like Trump, and I don't want him to be our President, but the amount of seemingly fabricated stories about him are upsetting.
    - wahern 10y ago
      FWIW, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/donald-trumps-comments-database-american-muslims/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/... Trump's statements are usually non-specific and often contradictory. He's made denials that go far beyond straining credulity. Basically, I think it's fair to say that people aren't fabricating stories so much as grasping at straws. Much like his supporters. The only real way to understand Trump is as a textbook case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Or maybe some surreal parody of NPD. Once you understand that his primary and in many cases sole motivation is self-aggrandizement and attention seeking[1], everything he says makes so much sense. Or rather, you stop searching for the earnest, substantive policies and opinions. He's alot like an adolescent in that regard--his opinions are based on an immature and highly self-referential worldview. Sometimes his points and counter-points seem well-grounded until you realize that he's literally parroting an argument he's read or heard elsewhere, without any serious attempt at critical assessment or application. The fact that they're all over the board (as opposed to consistently preferring a particular narrative) is only more evidence of this methodology. Again, it's basically the methodology of an adolescent. You cannot identify anything concrete about Trump's policies, and you cannot predict what Trump will do, without understanding that. And once you do, you realize that you _still_ cannot identify or predict anything. You can't even predict whether he'll be a devastating president, become more popular than the second-coming of Christ, or fit somewhere in-between. I mean, by most definitions he's successful. That means something... I'm just not sure what. The only thing you can say for certain is that people acting intelligently and honestly would never vote such a man into the Presidency. That he's President-elect is a devastating testament to a deep pathology in American politics and culture. [1] I don't even mean to use those terms derisively. They just seem so apt and obvious and beyond dispute. And I'm not using them to imply he's good or bad or right or wrong. The only way to come close to understanding the man and his behavior is with an almost clinical detachment. A Trump presidency is like a natural, cosmic phenomenon. Even the word cataclysmic doesn't work because it implies some subjective value judgment. His eventual policy decisions can and will be judged. But the man himself and his words... there's nothing you can really say. Just like there's nothing you can really say when a small child surprises you with some facially sophisticated argument that he's just echoing. The statement and the thought process behind them are basically immune from meaningful criticism. Put another way, in some sense both the child and Trump lack capacity for the same kind or degree of culpability of a typical adult. Yes, normally selfishness is frowned upon; but if it's the product of an abnormal mind, there's no value judgment to be made.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    This one was pretty popular: http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/ http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/
  - chinese_donald 10y ago
    During the election, there were countless stories nearly every day. Trump used all of the hyperbole and fake news articles about him to destroy the competition. These articles were written by the left-leaning mainstream media and repeated ad nauseam over social media. I see people that still believe that Trump is going to deport all of the 'Brown people'. There isn't one instance where he said this. The media created this fear through lies and propaganda and made Trump out to be a monster. They are mostly to blame for all of the violence and protests we are seeing today. But a Trump win still won't force them to tell us the truth. I'm just glad that the American people did.
- AndrewUnmuted 10y ago
  > Why only mention pro-Trump fake news? See Ms. Tufekci's previous hard-hitting, facts-be-damned op-ed contribution to the NYT, "WikiLeaks Isn't Whistleblowing" to get your answer.
- Terretta 10y ago
  > "Why only mention pro-Trump fake news?" Sounds like you didn't read the whole article, as it mentions anti-Trump fake news and then answers your question: After the election, Mr. Zuckerberg claimed that the fake news was a problem on “both sides” of the race. There are, of course, viral fake anti-Trump memes, but reporters have found that the spread of false news is far more common on the right than it is on the left. The Macedonian teenagers found this, too. They had experimented with left-leaning or pro-Bernie Sanders content, but gave up when they found it wasn’t as reliable a source of income as pro-Trump content. But even if Mr. Zuckerberg were right and fake news were equally popular on both sides, it would still be a profound problem.
  - chinese_donald 10y ago
    I read the article just fine. It's mentioned in a byline at the bottom of the article.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Reporters found? The same reporters that had it in the bag for Clinton all along?
owly 10y ago
Simply show your inner strength and delete your facebook account. Done.
- arthurtsang 10y ago
  Just did that a few days ago!
- untog 10y ago
  That isn't going to help when everyone else still has their account.
- vinay427 10y ago
  I still use Messenger and occasionally Groups (for events I don't plan) so I opted to block my newsfeed instead using a browser extension. I've found that to be a very manageable and in my experience healthy option.
arthurtsang 10y ago
If Facebook only serves what I preferred, what I already liked, how could the fake news change anyone's opinion?
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  In that case it enforces your opinion. So it's still of influence. There are however a lot of votes that decide last minute. There are also voters that have decided, but can't be bothered to vote. In that case it might change and opinion. You can't say that it's impossible for fake news to influence anyone. How many people believe that Obama is a muslim because they read it (repeatedly) on Facebook? I'm guessing millions.
zigzigzag 10y ago
This looks like a continuation of a long running theme in the media: how awful and terrible and threatening to democracy it is when Google and Facebook suddenly made it easy to be exposed to lots of alternative points of view on the same story. The media have been going after Google News for years with various arguments. Now they're latching on to "Only human editors can ensure your news is not fake". I suspect it'll fail like all the rest unless they can convince governments to regulate, and even then maybe not as Germany and Spain's attempt to control Google News didn't work out. At any rate, Facebook isn't in denial. They're talking about the problem and fixing it, which is probably quite easy to do algorithmically (once you've knocked off the existing sites, simply send sites that appear to be news but which are brand new through manual review). American media still is in denial though. Other than a few articles blaming all their mistakes on polling companies, I haven't seen much self reflection amongst journalists on why their trust numbers are so low, why so many Americans have simply concluded they're hopelessly biased and tuned them out, or why it's tech companies that now control their traffic instead of themselves.
- amelius 10y ago
  > how awful and terrible and threatening to democracy it is when Google and Facebook suddenly made it easy to be exposed to lots of alternative points of view on the same story You are being sarcastic here but (imho) gossip, fake news, and echo chambers are really threatening democracy. > I haven't seen much self reflection amongst journalists The problem is that journalists are getting caught in a vicious circle. Either they present true news and have little viewers, or present gossip or echo what people want to hear and have lots of viewers.
  - zigzigzag 10y ago
    Echo chambers? Would you lump existing media outlets into that bucket? I think if there's one thing that 2016 revealed very clearly it's the extent to which journalists tend to line up behind whatever the political elite groupthink is, regardless of how well it matches what the overall population thinks. The Guardian has become something of a joke paper - on the rare occasions these days that they open the comments the top rated comments are mostly giving them flak over the wildly extreme positions their journalists take.
detaro 10y ago
previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958661
eggy 10y ago
Hold on. The NYT just admitted bias recently regarding their reporting on the election, and an opinion piece talks about 'Liberal Intolerance' in the NYT, but now FB is almost as culpable due to false stories? I still think there is a higher signal-to-noise ratio when there are many people able to debunk a piece on FB or other social media, than when a hardcopy, accepted as trusted source such as the NYT once was, posts a story. The fly-over states were discounted by most media, and people are still reeling from the election results they can't believe. People raise the popular vote in political conversations, not realizing that almost all of Hillary's popular vote differential came from NY and CA, again urban coastal vs. the fly-over states. People are in denial about what other Americans aside from them felt about all of this. I predicted a Trump victory in July and September publicly on Twitter, and I am no fan of Trump, or Hillary for that matter. People laughed at me. I was born and raised in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, so it came from purely talking to other Americans in my travels in the US and overseas, and I am no journalist tasked to go out and get the Five Ws [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  The fact that a lot of media didn't think Trump would win is unrelated to the fact that fake news is damaging to democracy. Just like fake science is damaging to scientists. Fake scientific articles are read, quoted and shared through the scientific community and it can take a long time to weed out. How many people still believe Obama is a muslim because they read it (repeatedly) on Facebook? I'm guessing millions.
  - wav-part 10y ago
    The "curated news" is not a solution, its a bigger problem. When you request top 10 voted posts thats what you get. Not the truth. If voters believe 1 like = 1 truth, then you have identified the problem with democracy that have always existed. > Just like fake science is damaging to scientists. Fake scientific articles are read, quoted and shared through the scientific community and it can take a long time to weed out. No its not. Scientist = Sceptic.
  - 10y ago
mikebay 10y ago
Facebook, Twitter and Google all pushing same agenda. Alternatives needed, services that are truly unopionated as they should be. Otherwise we all can watch CNN and believe all what they say.
jbmorgado 10y ago
There are also lots of fake articles from the alt-left being shared with millions in FB. An example, is the foto of thousands of Albanian immigrants on a boat going to Italy in the 80's, being shared as being the foto of thousands of European refugees running away from the Nazis and going to North Africa in the 40's, that keeps resurfacing all the time. Articles like this one from NyTimes, implying that this kind of stuff only favours the right are a big part of the problem. It passes a message that censorship is good, but only if it's applied solely to the right wing.
soyiuz 10y ago
The suggestion that Facebook and other channels of distribution should filter "fake" or "bad" news is not well thought out. Why would we want a private entity have any say in what is being shared? We should be fighting for net neutrality, not for what amounts to censorship.
pdubbs90 10y ago
Fake news is a real problem, but this seems like an unfair no-win for Facebook from major media outlets. When they had more human editors on trending topics it was "Facebook is injecting their own bias into news and manipulating the public." Now that it's more purely algorithmic it's "Facebook isn't policing content enough and making it too easy for fake outlets to manipulate the public." I'm certain that when they follow up by cranking up machine learning to censor fake content it will be "algorithms don't stop everything fake and sometimes block real things, thus manipulating the public."

53 points by tucif 10y ago

Why only mention pro-Trump fake news? I know plenty of people spreading fake Propaganda about Trump based on hearsay and false information. ...including links and comments on HN. Maybe HN needs to filter out the fake stuff too?

ComteDeLaFere 10y ago
And is Google guilty as well? The story below is currently at the top of the World section of Google News - Nuclear War Alert: US Prepares For North Korea Missile Launch http://www.morningnewsusa.com/nuclear-war-alert-us-prepares-north-korea-missile-launch-23122421.html http://www.morningnewsusa.com/nuclear-war-alert-us-prepares-... I have no idea what this "news" site is, but I'm pretty sure that the US is not currently rushing to prepare for a North Korean nuclear missile launch.
- Fej 10y ago
  North Korea is thought to be gearing up for a missile test. Not a war.
echlebek 10y ago
Care to cite some instances? I'm not sure why you would need to create propaganda about Trump. The truth is pretty damning already.
- solvedit 10y ago
  I can help with that. I, like you, also thought that there would be no reason to, so why would they do it... But then I went and watched the actual Q&A recording that all of the "Trump wants to put all the Muslims into a database" claims came from and find that the claim is quite false. He never says it. He says something that when taken entirely out of context can be interpreted by someone with preconceived notions as meaning it, except that in context it is actually very clear that he's talking about something else. I don't like Trump, and I don't want him to be our President, but the amount of seemingly fabricated stories about him are upsetting.
  - wahern 10y ago
    FWIW, http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/donald-trumps-comments-database-american-muslims/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2015/nov/24/... Trump's statements are usually non-specific and often contradictory. He's made denials that go far beyond straining credulity. Basically, I think it's fair to say that people aren't fabricating stories so much as grasping at straws. Much like his supporters. The only real way to understand Trump is as a textbook case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Or maybe some surreal parody of NPD. Once you understand that his primary and in many cases sole motivation is self-aggrandizement and attention seeking[1], everything he says makes so much sense. Or rather, you stop searching for the earnest, substantive policies and opinions. He's alot like an adolescent in that regard--his opinions are based on an immature and highly self-referential worldview. Sometimes his points and counter-points seem well-grounded until you realize that he's literally parroting an argument he's read or heard elsewhere, without any serious attempt at critical assessment or application. The fact that they're all over the board (as opposed to consistently preferring a particular narrative) is only more evidence of this methodology. Again, it's basically the methodology of an adolescent. You cannot identify anything concrete about Trump's policies, and you cannot predict what Trump will do, without understanding that. And once you do, you realize that you _still_ cannot identify or predict anything. You can't even predict whether he'll be a devastating president, become more popular than the second-coming of Christ, or fit somewhere in-between. I mean, by most definitions he's successful. That means something... I'm just not sure what. The only thing you can say for certain is that people acting intelligently and honestly would never vote such a man into the Presidency. That he's President-elect is a devastating testament to a deep pathology in American politics and culture. [1] I don't even mean to use those terms derisively. They just seem so apt and obvious and beyond dispute. And I'm not using them to imply he's good or bad or right or wrong. The only way to come close to understanding the man and his behavior is with an almost clinical detachment. A Trump presidency is like a natural, cosmic phenomenon. Even the word cataclysmic doesn't work because it implies some subjective value judgment. His eventual policy decisions can and will be judged. But the man himself and his words... there's nothing you can really say. Just like there's nothing you can really say when a small child surprises you with some facially sophisticated argument that he's just echoing. The statement and the thought process behind them are basically immune from meaningful criticism. Put another way, in some sense both the child and Trump lack capacity for the same kind or degree of culpability of a typical adult. Yes, normally selfishness is frowned upon; but if it's the product of an abnormal mind, there's no value judgment to be made.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  This one was pretty popular: http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/ http://www.snopes.com/1998-trump-people-quote/
- chinese_donald 10y ago
  During the election, there were countless stories nearly every day. Trump used all of the hyperbole and fake news articles about him to destroy the competition. These articles were written by the left-leaning mainstream media and repeated ad nauseam over social media. I see people that still believe that Trump is going to deport all of the 'Brown people'. There isn't one instance where he said this. The media created this fear through lies and propaganda and made Trump out to be a monster. They are mostly to blame for all of the violence and protests we are seeing today. But a Trump win still won't force them to tell us the truth. I'm just glad that the American people did.
AndrewUnmuted 10y ago
> Why only mention pro-Trump fake news? See Ms. Tufekci's previous hard-hitting, facts-be-damned op-ed contribution to the NYT, "WikiLeaks Isn't Whistleblowing" to get your answer.
Terretta 10y ago
> "Why only mention pro-Trump fake news?" Sounds like you didn't read the whole article, as it mentions anti-Trump fake news and then answers your question: After the election, Mr. Zuckerberg claimed that the fake news was a problem on “both sides” of the race. There are, of course, viral fake anti-Trump memes, but reporters have found that the spread of false news is far more common on the right than it is on the left. The Macedonian teenagers found this, too. They had experimented with left-leaning or pro-Bernie Sanders content, but gave up when they found it wasn’t as reliable a source of income as pro-Trump content. But even if Mr. Zuckerberg were right and fake news were equally popular on both sides, it would still be a profound problem.
- chinese_donald 10y ago
  I read the article just fine. It's mentioned in a byline at the bottom of the article.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Reporters found? The same reporters that had it in the bag for Clinton all along?

owly 10y ago

Simply show your inner strength and delete your facebook account. Done.

arthurtsang 10y ago
Just did that a few days ago!
untog 10y ago
That isn't going to help when everyone else still has their account.
vinay427 10y ago
I still use Messenger and occasionally Groups (for events I don't plan) so I opted to block my newsfeed instead using a browser extension. I've found that to be a very manageable and in my experience healthy option.

arthurtsang 10y ago

If Facebook only serves what I preferred, what I already liked, how could the fake news change anyone's opinion?

spiderfarmer 10y ago
In that case it enforces your opinion. So it's still of influence. There are however a lot of votes that decide last minute. There are also voters that have decided, but can't be bothered to vote. In that case it might change and opinion. You can't say that it's impossible for fake news to influence anyone. How many people believe that Obama is a muslim because they read it (repeatedly) on Facebook? I'm guessing millions.

zigzigzag 10y ago

This looks like a continuation of a long running theme in the media: how awful and terrible and threatening to democracy it is when Google and Facebook suddenly made it easy to be exposed to lots of alternative points of view on the same story. The media have been going after Google News for years with various arguments. Now they're latching on to "Only human editors can ensure your news is not fake". I suspect it'll fail like all the rest unless they can convince governments to regulate, and even then maybe not as Germany and Spain's attempt to control Google News didn't work out. At any rate, Facebook isn't in denial. They're talking about the problem and fixing it, which is probably quite easy to do algorithmically (once you've knocked off the existing sites, simply send sites that appear to be news but which are brand new through manual review). American media still is in denial though. Other than a few articles blaming all their mistakes on polling companies, I haven't seen much self reflection amongst journalists on why their trust numbers are so low, why so many Americans have simply concluded they're hopelessly biased and tuned them out, or why it's tech companies that now control their traffic instead of themselves.

amelius 10y ago
> how awful and terrible and threatening to democracy it is when Google and Facebook suddenly made it easy to be exposed to lots of alternative points of view on the same story You are being sarcastic here but (imho) gossip, fake news, and echo chambers are really threatening democracy. > I haven't seen much self reflection amongst journalists The problem is that journalists are getting caught in a vicious circle. Either they present true news and have little viewers, or present gossip or echo what people want to hear and have lots of viewers.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Echo chambers? Would you lump existing media outlets into that bucket? I think if there's one thing that 2016 revealed very clearly it's the extent to which journalists tend to line up behind whatever the political elite groupthink is, regardless of how well it matches what the overall population thinks. The Guardian has become something of a joke paper - on the rare occasions these days that they open the comments the top rated comments are mostly giving them flak over the wildly extreme positions their journalists take.

detaro 10y ago

previous: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12958661

eggy 10y ago

Hold on. The NYT just admitted bias recently regarding their reporting on the election, and an opinion piece talks about 'Liberal Intolerance' in the NYT, but now FB is almost as culpable due to false stories? I still think there is a higher signal-to-noise ratio when there are many people able to debunk a piece on FB or other social media, than when a hardcopy, accepted as trusted source such as the NYT once was, posts a story. The fly-over states were discounted by most media, and people are still reeling from the election results they can't believe. People raise the popular vote in political conversations, not realizing that almost all of Hillary's popular vote differential came from NY and CA, again urban coastal vs. the fly-over states. People are in denial about what other Americans aside from them felt about all of this. I predicted a Trump victory in July and September publicly on Twitter, and I am no fan of Trump, or Hillary for that matter. People laughed at me. I was born and raised in a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, so it came from purely talking to other Americans in my travels in the US and overseas, and I am no journalist tasked to go out and get the Five Ws [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

spiderfarmer 10y ago
The fact that a lot of media didn't think Trump would win is unrelated to the fact that fake news is damaging to democracy. Just like fake science is damaging to scientists. Fake scientific articles are read, quoted and shared through the scientific community and it can take a long time to weed out. How many people still believe Obama is a muslim because they read it (repeatedly) on Facebook? I'm guessing millions.
- wav-part 10y ago
  The "curated news" is not a solution, its a bigger problem. When you request top 10 voted posts thats what you get. Not the truth. If voters believe 1 like = 1 truth, then you have identified the problem with democracy that have always existed. > Just like fake science is damaging to scientists. Fake scientific articles are read, quoted and shared through the scientific community and it can take a long time to weed out. No its not. Scientist = Sceptic.
- 10y ago

mikebay 10y ago

Facebook, Twitter and Google all pushing same agenda. Alternatives needed, services that are truly unopionated as they should be. Otherwise we all can watch CNN and believe all what they say.

jbmorgado 10y ago

There are also lots of fake articles from the alt-left being shared with millions in FB. An example, is the foto of thousands of Albanian immigrants on a boat going to Italy in the 80's, being shared as being the foto of thousands of European refugees running away from the Nazis and going to North Africa in the 40's, that keeps resurfacing all the time. Articles like this one from NyTimes, implying that this kind of stuff only favours the right are a big part of the problem. It passes a message that censorship is good, but only if it's applied solely to the right wing.

soyiuz 10y ago

The suggestion that Facebook and other channels of distribution should filter "fake" or "bad" news is not well thought out. Why would we want a private entity have any say in what is being shared? We should be fighting for net neutrality, not for what amounts to censorship.

pdubbs90 10y ago

Fake news is a real problem, but this seems like an unfair no-win for Facebook from major media outlets. When they had more human editors on trending topics it was "Facebook is injecting their own bias into news and manipulating the public." Now that it's more purely algorithmic it's "Facebook isn't policing content enough and making it too easy for fake outlets to manipulate the public." I'm certain that when they follow up by cranking up machine learning to censor fake content it will be "algorithms don't stop everything fake and sometimes block real things, thus manipulating the public."