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Did you even read the article? It's about implication of Facebook in international politics. I have relatives in India and I know exactly how this plays out. Th

by dmode 10y ago

Did you even read the article? It's about implication of Facebook in international politics. I have relatives in India and I know exactly how this plays out. They are constantly sharing fake news that confirms their bias. For example one of the stories was how NASA has validated a religious book in India which had calculated the distance between Earth and Sun

jerkstate 10y ago
Hey now - there's plenty of fake news to confirm everyone's biases on Facebook, yours included.
msravi 10y ago
And that affects the outcome of an election, how? Sure, it's a bias that you ought to measure and factor in into your projections and your campaigning, but to say that the fake news item swung the vote in one or either direction is to completely miss the point.
rdtsc 10y ago
> Did you even read the article? Yes I did. Did you read my comment? There is a reason we are all of the sudden talking about Fake News and just a few days almost nobody thought about the phrase. It has little to do with elections in India.
- fweespeech 10y ago
  > Yes I did. Did you read my comment? There is a reason we are all of the sudden talking about Fake News and just a few days almost nobody thought about the phrase. It has little to do with elections in India. [2014] https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/08/30/large-the-internet-fake-news-problem/SABBRta88xgqwEPY86oP3M/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/08/30/large-the-intern... > The Internet’s fake news problem > Some of it is satire (The Onion and, to a less proven extent, its clickbaiting sister site Clickhole continue to bear the standard of mastery), but the larger part of what’s out there is “satire” — from the chronically unfunny half-jokes of the Daily Currant to the shrug-inducing falsehoods of Empire News , the toothlessly goofy sendups of Free Wood Post , the over-the-top Christian-trolling of Christwire , and the more pernicious race-baiting of sites like CreamBPM and Newsbuzzdaily . https://newrepublic.com/article/118013/satire-news-websites-are-cashing-gullible-outraged-readers https://newrepublic.com/article/118013/satire-news-websites-... > Upworthy and Viralnova, at least, are honest about what they're selling: gaudy, sentimental, life-affirming stories. But the Currant class promises humor and almost universally fails to deliver it—because the actual goal is SEO clickbait. Given that, you might wonder why they even bother identifying themselves, usually in disclaimers at the bottom of the page, as satirical news sites.The answer is simple: to avoid a lawsuit. > But the biggest mystery isn’t the identity of the conmen—it’s how much they're hauling in. Barkeley told Slate that his humor provides him with a “tight but livable” income. A number of publically available valuation services, which are by no means precise, estimate that The Daily Currant brings in anywhere from mid-five figures to $130,000 dollars a year on ad revenue alone. Finkelstein, the SEO expert, says even those numbers may be low, as they doesn't include revenue derived from short-term revenue bumps when a story goes viral. “I would estimate their yearly revenue from display advertising at about $100,000–$150,000 a year,” he said, noting that even with his expertise and access to estimation tools, it's not an exact science. “It isn’t perfect, but it is close. But at most, over the few years they’ve existed, The Daily Currant may have made as much as $500,000 in revenue—split between two people who are hardly doing any work.” > The Daily Currant is likely the king of this particular con. But others may be catching up. The same public revenue calculators place Mediamass’s annual ad revenue alone at just under $40,000; Huzzlers' is rapidly approaching $45,000. Not bad takes, especially when you consider that some of these sites don’t even bother to write their own unfunny canards: They just steal them from other sites. [2016] http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-human-news-editors-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-human-news-editors-2... > After a Gizmodo story claimed Facebook editors had suppressed conservative news from the Trending section, the social network fired those editors in favor of an algorithm. As part of the change, the Trending section no longer shows custom headlines and summaries of news topics. > “We’re not in the business of deciding what issues people should read about," he said. "We don’t create content. We’re not in that business.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/10/12/facebook-has-repeatedly-trended-fake-news-since-firing-its-human-editors/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/10... > Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news since firing its human editors
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    Ok? What was the point. You pasted a whole page full of links without a single response... Are you saying that "Fake News" was always just as popular topic and not just something that was picked up in the last 4-5 days? Ok then, I'll just post one link: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22Fake%20news%22 https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22Fake%20news%22
    - fweespeech 10y ago
      Simply because people start searching for it more doesn't mean it wasn't always a topic being discussed. Why is it people always try to argue ignorance is okay because it is popular?
      - rdtsc 10y ago
        What's a better way to quickly discover popularity? You posted a wall of links talking about Fake News without explaining or adding anything to it. I never said Fake News were unknown. The point was that the sudden popularity (of the topic) has certain implications, which I feel are not correct and too dismissive.
- ameen 10y ago
  Indian Politicians are well known to engage click-farms to push their narratives through naive trending algorithms [1]. [1] - http://www.dailyo.in/politics/bjp-modi-bhakts-social-media-trolls-aap-kejriwal-thailand/story/1/11324.html http://www.dailyo.in/politics/bjp-modi-bhakts-social-media-t...
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  > There is a reason we are all of the sudden talking about Fake News There's even two reasons: - Distract from looking at how biased the NYT et al. were - Censor those pesky midges who say different from the approved line Win-win. (Bonus URL: http://nypost.com/2016/11/15/new-york-times-edits-its-election-apology-letter/ http://nypost.com/2016/11/15/new-york-times-edits-its-electi... )
return0 10y ago
This would not be here if it wasn't for the election, no?
dang 10y ago
Please avoid the snarky "did you even read the article" trope when commenting here. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

by dmode 10y ago

jerkstate 10y ago

Hey now - there's plenty of fake news to confirm everyone's biases on Facebook, yours included.

msravi 10y ago

And that affects the outcome of an election, how? Sure, it's a bias that you ought to measure and factor in into your projections and your campaigning, but to say that the fake news item swung the vote in one or either direction is to completely miss the point.

rdtsc 10y ago

> Did you even read the article? Yes I did. Did you read my comment? There is a reason we are all of the sudden talking about Fake News and just a few days almost nobody thought about the phrase. It has little to do with elections in India.

fweespeech 10y ago
> Yes I did. Did you read my comment? There is a reason we are all of the sudden talking about Fake News and just a few days almost nobody thought about the phrase. It has little to do with elections in India. [2014] https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/08/30/large-the-internet-fake-news-problem/SABBRta88xgqwEPY86oP3M/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2014/08/30/large-the-intern... > The Internet’s fake news problem > Some of it is satire (The Onion and, to a less proven extent, its clickbaiting sister site Clickhole continue to bear the standard of mastery), but the larger part of what’s out there is “satire” — from the chronically unfunny half-jokes of the Daily Currant to the shrug-inducing falsehoods of Empire News , the toothlessly goofy sendups of Free Wood Post , the over-the-top Christian-trolling of Christwire , and the more pernicious race-baiting of sites like CreamBPM and Newsbuzzdaily . https://newrepublic.com/article/118013/satire-news-websites-are-cashing-gullible-outraged-readers https://newrepublic.com/article/118013/satire-news-websites-... > Upworthy and Viralnova, at least, are honest about what they're selling: gaudy, sentimental, life-affirming stories. But the Currant class promises humor and almost universally fails to deliver it—because the actual goal is SEO clickbait. Given that, you might wonder why they even bother identifying themselves, usually in disclaimers at the bottom of the page, as satirical news sites.The answer is simple: to avoid a lawsuit. > But the biggest mystery isn’t the identity of the conmen—it’s how much they're hauling in. Barkeley told Slate that his humor provides him with a “tight but livable” income. A number of publically available valuation services, which are by no means precise, estimate that The Daily Currant brings in anywhere from mid-five figures to $130,000 dollars a year on ad revenue alone. Finkelstein, the SEO expert, says even those numbers may be low, as they doesn't include revenue derived from short-term revenue bumps when a story goes viral. “I would estimate their yearly revenue from display advertising at about $100,000–$150,000 a year,” he said, noting that even with his expertise and access to estimation tools, it's not an exact science. “It isn’t perfect, but it is close. But at most, over the few years they’ve existed, The Daily Currant may have made as much as $500,000 in revenue—split between two people who are hardly doing any work.” > The Daily Currant is likely the king of this particular con. But others may be catching up. The same public revenue calculators place Mediamass’s annual ad revenue alone at just under $40,000; Huzzlers' is rapidly approaching $45,000. Not bad takes, especially when you consider that some of these sites don’t even bother to write their own unfunny canards: They just steal them from other sites. [2016] http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-human-news-editors-2016-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-human-news-editors-2... > After a Gizmodo story claimed Facebook editors had suppressed conservative news from the Trending section, the social network fired those editors in favor of an algorithm. As part of the change, the Trending section no longer shows custom headlines and summaries of news topics. > “We’re not in the business of deciding what issues people should read about," he said. "We don’t create content. We’re not in that business.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/10/12/facebook-has-repeatedly-trended-fake-news-since-firing-its-human-editors/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/10... > Facebook has repeatedly trended fake news since firing its human editors
- rdtsc 10y ago
  Ok? What was the point. You pasted a whole page full of links without a single response... Are you saying that "Fake News" was always just as popular topic and not just something that was picked up in the last 4-5 days? Ok then, I'll just post one link: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22Fake%20news%22 https://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=%22Fake%20news%22
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    Simply because people start searching for it more doesn't mean it wasn't always a topic being discussed. Why is it people always try to argue ignorance is okay because it is popular?
    - rdtsc 10y ago
      What's a better way to quickly discover popularity? You posted a wall of links talking about Fake News without explaining or adding anything to it. I never said Fake News were unknown. The point was that the sudden popularity (of the topic) has certain implications, which I feel are not correct and too dismissive.
ameen 10y ago
Indian Politicians are well known to engage click-farms to push their narratives through naive trending algorithms [1]. [1] - http://www.dailyo.in/politics/bjp-modi-bhakts-social-media-trolls-aap-kejriwal-thailand/story/1/11324.html http://www.dailyo.in/politics/bjp-modi-bhakts-social-media-t...
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
> There is a reason we are all of the sudden talking about Fake News There's even two reasons: - Distract from looking at how biased the NYT et al. were - Censor those pesky midges who say different from the approved line Win-win. (Bonus URL: http://nypost.com/2016/11/15/new-york-times-edits-its-election-apology-letter/ http://nypost.com/2016/11/15/new-york-times-edits-its-electi... )

return0 10y ago

This would not be here if it wasn't for the election, no?

dang 10y ago

Please avoid the snarky "did you even read the article" trope when commenting here. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.