18 ms·

Fake News

55 points by rgun 10y ago

mightykan 10y ago
“Fake news” is an oxymoron. I think you mean “propaganda.”
- james_pm 10y ago
  Perhaps putting the Smith-Mundt Act back in place would be a start. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-propaganda-ban-repealed-freeing-state-dept-to-direct-its-broadcasting-arm-american-citizens.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-...
- linkregister 10y ago
  Propaganda can be truthful. Propaganda is defined by intent and breadth.
  - MrZongle2 10y ago
    In the truest sense of the word ("that which is to propagated"), yes. But for common usage, it's seen as less than honest. For example, consider "spreading awareness" and "spreading propaganda". Which seems benign and which sinister?
    - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
      Mr Propaganda himself, Edward Bernays, had consumer-facing Propaganda renamed as Public Relations because people had a sour association with the word from the Great War, but openly stated that it was the same thing.
  - astrodust 10y ago
    The difference between fake news, à la The Onion, and fake news that's propaganda is the propaganda has an agenda that isn't advertised. Pieces in The Onion do have an overt political leaning, but the publication's primary function is comedy, not news. A lot of these so-called fake news agencies may quietly label themselves as satire simply for legal reasons but make an effort to conceal this whenever convenient. I'm not sure if you can categorically differentiate between the characteristics of an Onion piece full of hyperbole and some typical nonsense fake news piece, but the impression left in the readers is probably the differentiator: Fake news sites are trying to convince people that they're true, where actual parody and satire sites do not.
ideonexus 10y ago
Coincidentally, I was on FB today and started seeing a red flag on two friends' posts reading, "This website is not a reliable news source. Reason: [REASON]" with reasons like state-sponsored news and unclassified. The flag appeared on an article about Pokemon Go that was clearly sensationalist speculation and a conspiracy website about George Soros. The div tag in the post had a class "bsAlert" and, my favorite part, a poop icon beside it. None of my other friends are seeing the flag, so I suspect I'm one of the lucky A/B testers. This article notes that consumers want fake news, but I want to see more of these flags. I realize it's a huge risk for FB, as the article notes, but I've unfollowed (not unfriended) so many friends for posting this nonsense that it's really hurting my own end-user experience in the network. When you're dealing with people for whom snopes and wikipedia are "part of the MSM," you are dealing with people who are living in a consensual hallucination. It's simultaneously infuriating and frightening to be exposed to that on a daily basis.
- farnsworth 10y ago
  "State-sponsored news" - will I see that tag next to NPR articles? What about wikileaks? I have very mixed feelings about this. I know that Facebook is a company and can censor or allow whatever they want to. They censor obscene and offensive stuff, sure. But deciding what is "true" and "false" is a whole new ball game. Do we want to get used to having a central authority telling us what's true and false? If I want to say something stupid on Facebook, I should be allowed to say it. Remember that you can have an authority run by a trusted leader one day, and someone else the next.
  - soupgal5 10y ago
    Well, firstly, this isn't "censoring" as such. I know that, living in 2016, the concept of "objective truth" and "objective falsehood" is a hard one to really wrap our brains around. But lets try: Some things are true, and some things are false. You're very welcome to say "something stupid on Facebook" as an individual because you haven't presented yourself as a news source. But Facebook shouldn't play willing participant in giving conspiracy sites a platform to present made up stories as truths.
- 10y ago
genieyclo 10y ago
One side calls it fake news, another lugenpresse. Some from both want to police it and tell everyone else what needs to be silenced. This is why free speech is so important.
- MrZongle2 10y ago
  "One side calls it fake news, another lugenpresse." Correction: two groups are using that word. One is an extremist faction. The other is an opposing faction gleefully trying to connect the historical use of the word to a candidate and his supporters in general. Edit: to the authors of the responses below, thank you for taking time to provide a rebuttal (I'm not sure why HN isn't allowing me to reply further). To those individuals who simply downvoted and moved on, I believe the German word you're looking for in this case is säuberung.
  - genieyclo 10y ago
    What if I told you there are more than these 2 sides?
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    I don't think anyone is gleeful about it at all. I think people are freaked out, angry, and frightened and have a right to feel that way. The candidate drew on that extremist faction for support during his campaign, didn't make any effort to distance himself from that extremist faction, and surrounded himself with people that that extremist faction were delighted by during his campaign. Then, after winning, not only does he not distance himself from the people he had previously surrounded himself with, but appears to be following through in terms of appointments and proposed legislation that, again, absolutely delights that extremist faction. I get that the candidate is not a member of that extremist faction, but if that extremist faction adores that candidate and voices strong agreement with every political appointment and policy position, many people have good reason for being a little concerned about it. I don't know why this is so hard for people to grasp. Just because a particular argument is being used by his political opponents for the purpose of discrediting him, doesn't mean that that argument isn't a real issue that people should be very aware of and concerned about.
nsxwolf 10y ago
Why are we talking about fake news now? Would we be talking about it if Clinton had won?
- gaius 10y ago
  "Social Media" in general is another scapegoat, but don't you remember when everyone was changing their profile pics to be that "Hope" meme that Obama did? Why was social media good then but evil now? No-one seems to be able to explain it.
  - untog 10y ago
    How on earth are those things connected? Changing your profile picture is nothing like disseminating factually untrue news stories to an audience of millions.
    - gaius 10y ago
      They are connected by being scapegoated, in a display of cognitive dissonance to avoid a real root cause analysis. No piece of "fake" news changed anyone's mind, simply reinforced beliefs they already had. Same reason people subscribe to newspapers that reflect their existing worldview or value system.
      - untog 10y ago
        > No piece of "fake" news changed anyone's mind, simply reinforced beliefs they already had You make it sound like that doesn't matter. It does. Reinforcing an incorrect belief is a bad thing.
        gaius 10y ago
        Who gets to define correct or incorrect here? Everyone has an agenda.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  If enough people were concerned that Clinton had won because of fake stories that circulated throughout the campaign, and there was incontrovertible evidence that Clinton benefitted from it, then yes. Of course. Duh.
zw123456 10y ago
In my view, we need to go farther than just fixing Facebook in this regard, although that would be a great start. We have “truth in labeling laws” and I think we should also have “labeling of truth laws”. What I mean by this is that we restrict the free speech rights of those selling food and drugs and require that claims of ingredients and claims must be truthful. This is of course because it goes to the health of the public. I assert that we need something similar when it comes to "NEWS", anything labeled news should have certain standards of accuracy such that the public consuming something labeled news can be confident that what they are consuming is reasonably factual much in the same way that someone consuming food and drugs feel reasonably confident they are consuming what is on the label. This goes to the health of our democracy and hence indirectly to the wellness of the public. I know this sounds pretty controversial and has 1st amendment implications but it is not without precedence. Prior to the 1996 telecom deregulation act, there were restrictions placed on the public TV networks under something called the “Fairness Doctrine”. That was done under the 1934 telecom act which (http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/piac/novmtg/pubint.htm http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/piac/novmtg/pubint.htm), in return for free use of the airwaves in exchange for "public services" such as news programming. With deregulation came the selling of spectrum through auction, which in my view, I don't think it was a good bargain for the public. But I also think that falsely calling something news could also fall under the regulations by the FTC. I think it is important for the functioning of a democracy that the public have access to a source of information that they can feel confident is fact based. All of this is obviously academic as it seems pretty unlikely the Trump administration would consider anything like that.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > anything labeled news should have certain standards of accuracy such that the public consuming something labeled news can be confident that what they are consuming is reasonably factual Who determines what is factual? How do you police the global Internet? Consider the Snowden disclosures. The government held its line on their non-factuality for surprisingly long, including by lying to Congress [1]. Also, The Guardian, who led the charge on vetting and publishing Snowden's claims, is a British newspaper. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-director-john-brennan-lied-senate https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-di...
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Great writeup. I had the same concern, that is, who controls the censorship. It is far better to have a multitude of sources and let people choose, which is not what occurs for the corporate news media.
- pg314 10y ago
  Having a multitude of sources and letting people choose as a solution presupposes that people have the time and the inclination to fact-check and are capable of evaluating news and sources critically. If I see how much time it takes to carefully fact-check some of the nonsense articles that have been doing the rounds recently, it would be a full-time job just to stay reasonably up-to-date. This is why people have been sourcing out the job of fact-checking and editing to e.g. newspapers in the past. I also very much doubt that the majority of people are capable of critically evaluating news items. Some of the discussions I've had recently, where people wouldn't change their opinion even when confronted with clear-cut evidence, haven't helped convince me otherwise.
dfabulich 10y ago
In this article, Ben Thompson proposes no clear alternative to the status quo of Facebook distributing fake news/propaganda, suggesting, vaguely, that "whatever fixes this problem must spring from the power of the Internet." Furthermore, he seems to argue for an economic fatalism about both the news media and Facebook, that they must provide what users want, and that users want fake news/propaganda to support their own opinion, so the media and Facebook must provide it. On the media: "The media couldn’t have done a damn thing about Trump if they had wanted to. The reason the media covered Trump so extensively is quite simple: that is what users wanted." On Facebook: "the company is heavily incentivized to be perceived as neutral by all sides; anything else would drive away users, a particularly problematic outcome for a social network." If this economic fatalism argument is correct, then I see no reason to believe that some other solution will "spring from the power of the Internet," and democracy is doomed. Certainly Thompson himself provides no reason to think a solution will exist, even one that "springs from the power of the Internet." He is correct that "if we choose, [we have] access to more information and sources of truth than ever before, and more ways to reach out and understand and persuade those with whom we disagree." But if we can't actually tell which news sources are providing truth, and we all want lies, and so thereby the lies are easier to find/access/distribute, then the problem cannot be solved. But if his economic fatalism argument isn't correct, then it really has nothing to do with his second argument that FB shouldn't decide the news. As for Facebook, most their proposed solutions https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 look like solutions Thompson would like. Thompson argues that Facebook shouldn't "decide the news," not for economic reasons, but because FB could make the wrong decisions under a totalitarian government. Facebook strongly agrees, "We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves," so they won't. FB proposes easy reporting and third-party verification, which sound to me like they "spring from the power of the Internet," whatever that means. If FB decides to "raise the quality bar" on the "Related Articles" section by measuring positive citations, in a way vaguely reminiscent of Google PageRank, that would spring from the power of the Internet, I guess. None of that matters if people are always going to click on propaganda and share it no matter what. So Thompson is either wrong about the economic fatalism argument, or FB is already planning to give him what he wants, or both.
curiousgeorgio 10y ago
I can't help but feel that "fake news" is just the latest scapegoat being used by all the left-leaning media organizations (which represent a majority of the media in the US) in an attempt to hide the painful reality that they've been feeding us B.S. for years - and Trump's election effectively calls them out on it. If there is a problem with the media in general (apart from strong political bias), it's a human problem that we all share. People respond to shock, outrage, and disgust much more than they respond to pragmatic ideas, logic, or even truth in general. As long as media companies are built on revenue models tied to ad impressions and social engagement, we'll likely see more of the same. Censorship will not help; it can only make the problem worse. Perhaps instead, social networks should return to being social networks rather than scrolling billboards. I recall a time (around 2005-2006) when Facebook consisted mostly of people's own words, thoughts, and conversations rather than embedded media. I think I'd really enjoy a Facebook that didn't even turn URLs into hyperlinks - one where the only media that can be embedded is your own original content. That's partly why I believe Instagram is on the rise, while Facebook seems to be on the decline (depending on who you ask - and yes, I know Instagram is owned by FB). The current social media landscape is like trying to host a party at your house with TVs on every wall (showing random propaganda) so loud that no one can even hear themselves talk.
- untog 10y ago
  But they haven't been feeding BS for years. The vast, vast majority of news reporting done on a day to day basis is factually correct. Journalists call people, check facts, get quotes. I'm not saying that the media is faultless and never makes mistakes. Or that they don't, from time to time, overhype absolute nonsense stories or clicks or viewing figures. But we're comparing infrequent reporting mistakes with deliberate and calculated lying. They are not anywhere near the same thing. The fact that you feel like fake news is being used as a scapegoat should make you stop and wonder if there is any evidence to back up that feeling, rather than double down on it.
  - james0001 10y ago
    Except the Podesta emails basically showed us that most mainstream news is for sale to the highest bidder. Most news isn't reporting facts, it's simply an embedded advertisement. This fake news thing is assuredly a scapegoat
joshuaheard 10y ago
The world's intelligence agencies were wrong about Iraq's nuclear program, but this is hardly "fake news" on par with "Restore hair growth with this one simple trick". This whole "fake news" issue is one giant slippery slope. True fake news that damages someone is already actionable under our defamation laws. But what about facts being bandied about in the marketplace of ideas? Do facts counter to the current dogma become fake? Do we allow state or corporate curators to determine for us what the facts are? One only has to go to Wikipedia discussion pages to see how difficult that can be. I can't help but be reminded by Orwell in 1984, "He who controls the present controls that past. He who controls the past controls the future". Is controlling the facts we read what Orwell was warning us about? The only defense against fake news is an informed educated reader.
- danbruc 10y ago
  The world's intelligence agencies were wrong about Iraq's nuclear program, but this is hardly "fake news" [...] That is absolutely not the way it went. Essentially nobody believed what Iraq was accused of by the USA, not even the CIA trusted the available evidence. It was all fabricated to justify the invasion, a total fake.
firekvz 10y ago
If you want to understand how this works, you can find some example in some other thread that was started a bit ago but I think it got moderated, here's the link to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016561 It's an article about the "scapegoat" person behind the website dolartoday.com You can find my explanation about how much damage this website does by publishing fake news to a large audience... I dont even go in details about the economically damage (the one with more impact on my country) just a simple example, link to my post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13017182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13017182
pwinnski 10y ago
I think all of this talk about "fake news" in the abstract is unhelpful, because I suspect we all have something different in mind for "fake news." I mean, if there's a widespread belief that Secretary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor[0], widespread enough that it's turning up in response to random phone polling in the days before the election, that's a different category of "fake news" than "Restore hair growth with this one simple trick." If a tweet of some parked busses for a Tableau conference in Austin, Texas, can result in a tweeted claim by the President-Elect and a thread that runs for more than a week on cable news about "paid protestors,"[1] that's not the same as "Aliens take President-Elect for a ride on their flying saucer." These seem to be in a different category than the NY Times' in-retrospect-horrible reporting prior to the US invasion of Iraq. It's possible to be certain but wrong, and marshal evidence in support of your beliefs. In the case of the NY Times, that mistaken reporting was enormous, and the impact of it was enormous, but it is reasonable to think that others given the same information would have made the same mistakes. Lots of people did, in fact. In the meantime, 99% of the rest of NY Times reporting was accurate, as is usually the case. The two examples of "fake news" I linked seem ludicrous, and they're just the tip of the iceberg. Anecdotally, I personally saw claims about eight LGBT youth having killed themselves as a result of the election, but those claims seem to be unsubstantiated at best, and most like "fake news" from the other political side. It's not entirely a partisan issue. So yeah, Judith Miller's reporting turned out to be terrible. I'm not sure how that counters the fact that the so-called "fake news" currently being discussed is reprehensibly awful, and apparently effective. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011496 [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-ne...
banku_brougham 10y ago
A nothing-burger of an article, im my opinion. There is a problem, can't really be fixed, also 'liberty.' I am actually concerned by the implications of our destroyed arbiters of truth, but I'm not smart enough to envision a path back to sanity. People accustomed to the relative political stability of the US have no idea how bad it can get.
PravlageTiem 10y ago
I gotta say, watching the political ideology that doubled down on postmodernism massively backpedal on the "truth is relative" meme is endlessly entertaining.
pdeuchler 10y ago
I cant believe I'm posting a quote from a video game in a thread debating politics, but I guess we live in strange times... "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
sigsergv 10y ago
Beware, a new trend in social media: Confirmation Bias As A Service.

Fake News

55 points by rgun 10y ago

mightykan 10y ago

“Fake news” is an oxymoron. I think you mean “propaganda.”

james_pm 10y ago
Perhaps putting the Smith-Mundt Act back in place would be a start. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-propaganda-ban-repealed-freeing-state-dept-to-direct-its-broadcasting-arm-american-citizens.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-...
linkregister 10y ago
Propaganda can be truthful. Propaganda is defined by intent and breadth.
- MrZongle2 10y ago
  In the truest sense of the word ("that which is to propagated"), yes. But for common usage, it's seen as less than honest. For example, consider "spreading awareness" and "spreading propaganda". Which seems benign and which sinister?
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Mr Propaganda himself, Edward Bernays, had consumer-facing Propaganda renamed as Public Relations because people had a sour association with the word from the Great War, but openly stated that it was the same thing.
- astrodust 10y ago
  The difference between fake news, à la The Onion, and fake news that's propaganda is the propaganda has an agenda that isn't advertised. Pieces in The Onion do have an overt political leaning, but the publication's primary function is comedy, not news. A lot of these so-called fake news agencies may quietly label themselves as satire simply for legal reasons but make an effort to conceal this whenever convenient. I'm not sure if you can categorically differentiate between the characteristics of an Onion piece full of hyperbole and some typical nonsense fake news piece, but the impression left in the readers is probably the differentiator: Fake news sites are trying to convince people that they're true, where actual parody and satire sites do not.

ideonexus 10y ago

Coincidentally, I was on FB today and started seeing a red flag on two friends' posts reading, "This website is not a reliable news source. Reason: [REASON]" with reasons like state-sponsored news and unclassified. The flag appeared on an article about Pokemon Go that was clearly sensationalist speculation and a conspiracy website about George Soros. The div tag in the post had a class "bsAlert" and, my favorite part, a poop icon beside it. None of my other friends are seeing the flag, so I suspect I'm one of the lucky A/B testers. This article notes that consumers want fake news, but I want to see more of these flags. I realize it's a huge risk for FB, as the article notes, but I've unfollowed (not unfriended) so many friends for posting this nonsense that it's really hurting my own end-user experience in the network. When you're dealing with people for whom snopes and wikipedia are "part of the MSM," you are dealing with people who are living in a consensual hallucination. It's simultaneously infuriating and frightening to be exposed to that on a daily basis.

farnsworth 10y ago
"State-sponsored news" - will I see that tag next to NPR articles? What about wikileaks? I have very mixed feelings about this. I know that Facebook is a company and can censor or allow whatever they want to. They censor obscene and offensive stuff, sure. But deciding what is "true" and "false" is a whole new ball game. Do we want to get used to having a central authority telling us what's true and false? If I want to say something stupid on Facebook, I should be allowed to say it. Remember that you can have an authority run by a trusted leader one day, and someone else the next.
- soupgal5 10y ago
  Well, firstly, this isn't "censoring" as such. I know that, living in 2016, the concept of "objective truth" and "objective falsehood" is a hard one to really wrap our brains around. But lets try: Some things are true, and some things are false. You're very welcome to say "something stupid on Facebook" as an individual because you haven't presented yourself as a news source. But Facebook shouldn't play willing participant in giving conspiracy sites a platform to present made up stories as truths.
10y ago

genieyclo 10y ago

One side calls it fake news, another lugenpresse. Some from both want to police it and tell everyone else what needs to be silenced. This is why free speech is so important.

MrZongle2 10y ago
"One side calls it fake news, another lugenpresse." Correction: two groups are using that word. One is an extremist faction. The other is an opposing faction gleefully trying to connect the historical use of the word to a candidate and his supporters in general. Edit: to the authors of the responses below, thank you for taking time to provide a rebuttal (I'm not sure why HN isn't allowing me to reply further). To those individuals who simply downvoted and moved on, I believe the German word you're looking for in this case is säuberung.
- genieyclo 10y ago
  What if I told you there are more than these 2 sides?
- mwfunk 10y ago
  I don't think anyone is gleeful about it at all. I think people are freaked out, angry, and frightened and have a right to feel that way. The candidate drew on that extremist faction for support during his campaign, didn't make any effort to distance himself from that extremist faction, and surrounded himself with people that that extremist faction were delighted by during his campaign. Then, after winning, not only does he not distance himself from the people he had previously surrounded himself with, but appears to be following through in terms of appointments and proposed legislation that, again, absolutely delights that extremist faction. I get that the candidate is not a member of that extremist faction, but if that extremist faction adores that candidate and voices strong agreement with every political appointment and policy position, many people have good reason for being a little concerned about it. I don't know why this is so hard for people to grasp. Just because a particular argument is being used by his political opponents for the purpose of discrediting him, doesn't mean that that argument isn't a real issue that people should be very aware of and concerned about.

nsxwolf 10y ago

Why are we talking about fake news now? Would we be talking about it if Clinton had won?

gaius 10y ago
"Social Media" in general is another scapegoat, but don't you remember when everyone was changing their profile pics to be that "Hope" meme that Obama did? Why was social media good then but evil now? No-one seems to be able to explain it.
- untog 10y ago
  How on earth are those things connected? Changing your profile picture is nothing like disseminating factually untrue news stories to an audience of millions.
  - gaius 10y ago
    They are connected by being scapegoated, in a display of cognitive dissonance to avoid a real root cause analysis. No piece of "fake" news changed anyone's mind, simply reinforced beliefs they already had. Same reason people subscribe to newspapers that reflect their existing worldview or value system.
    - untog 10y ago
      > No piece of "fake" news changed anyone's mind, simply reinforced beliefs they already had You make it sound like that doesn't matter. It does. Reinforcing an incorrect belief is a bad thing.
      - gaius 10y ago
        Who gets to define correct or incorrect here? Everyone has an agenda.
mwfunk 10y ago
If enough people were concerned that Clinton had won because of fake stories that circulated throughout the campaign, and there was incontrovertible evidence that Clinton benefitted from it, then yes. Of course. Duh.

zw123456 10y ago

In my view, we need to go farther than just fixing Facebook in this regard, although that would be a great start. We have “truth in labeling laws” and I think we should also have “labeling of truth laws”. What I mean by this is that we restrict the free speech rights of those selling food and drugs and require that claims of ingredients and claims must be truthful. This is of course because it goes to the health of the public. I assert that we need something similar when it comes to "NEWS", anything labeled news should have certain standards of accuracy such that the public consuming something labeled news can be confident that what they are consuming is reasonably factual much in the same way that someone consuming food and drugs feel reasonably confident they are consuming what is on the label. This goes to the health of our democracy and hence indirectly to the wellness of the public. I know this sounds pretty controversial and has 1st amendment implications but it is not without precedence. Prior to the 1996 telecom deregulation act, there were restrictions placed on the public TV networks under something called the “Fairness Doctrine”. That was done under the 1934 telecom act which (http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/piac/novmtg/pubint.htm http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/piac/novmtg/pubint.htm), in return for free use of the airwaves in exchange for "public services" such as news programming. With deregulation came the selling of spectrum through auction, which in my view, I don't think it was a good bargain for the public. But I also think that falsely calling something news could also fall under the regulations by the FTC. I think it is important for the functioning of a democracy that the public have access to a source of information that they can feel confident is fact based. All of this is obviously academic as it seems pretty unlikely the Trump administration would consider anything like that.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> anything labeled news should have certain standards of accuracy such that the public consuming something labeled news can be confident that what they are consuming is reasonably factual Who determines what is factual? How do you police the global Internet? Consider the Snowden disclosures. The government held its line on their non-factuality for surprisingly long, including by lying to Congress [1]. Also, The Guardian, who led the charge on vetting and publishing Snowden's claims, is a British newspaper. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-director-john-brennan-lied-senate https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/cia-di...

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Great writeup. I had the same concern, that is, who controls the censorship. It is far better to have a multitude of sources and let people choose, which is not what occurs for the corporate news media.

pg314 10y ago
Having a multitude of sources and letting people choose as a solution presupposes that people have the time and the inclination to fact-check and are capable of evaluating news and sources critically. If I see how much time it takes to carefully fact-check some of the nonsense articles that have been doing the rounds recently, it would be a full-time job just to stay reasonably up-to-date. This is why people have been sourcing out the job of fact-checking and editing to e.g. newspapers in the past. I also very much doubt that the majority of people are capable of critically evaluating news items. Some of the discussions I've had recently, where people wouldn't change their opinion even when confronted with clear-cut evidence, haven't helped convince me otherwise.

dfabulich 10y ago

In this article, Ben Thompson proposes no clear alternative to the status quo of Facebook distributing fake news/propaganda, suggesting, vaguely, that "whatever fixes this problem must spring from the power of the Internet." Furthermore, he seems to argue for an economic fatalism about both the news media and Facebook, that they must provide what users want, and that users want fake news/propaganda to support their own opinion, so the media and Facebook must provide it. On the media: "The media couldn’t have done a damn thing about Trump if they had wanted to. The reason the media covered Trump so extensively is quite simple: that is what users wanted." On Facebook: "the company is heavily incentivized to be perceived as neutral by all sides; anything else would drive away users, a particularly problematic outcome for a social network." If this economic fatalism argument is correct, then I see no reason to believe that some other solution will "spring from the power of the Internet," and democracy is doomed. Certainly Thompson himself provides no reason to think a solution will exist, even one that "springs from the power of the Internet." He is correct that "if we choose, [we have] access to more information and sources of truth than ever before, and more ways to reach out and understand and persuade those with whom we disagree." But if we can't actually tell which news sources are providing truth, and we all want lies, and so thereby the lies are easier to find/access/distribute, then the problem cannot be solved. But if his economic fatalism argument isn't correct, then it really has nothing to do with his second argument that FB shouldn't decide the news. As for Facebook, most their proposed solutions https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103269806149061 look like solutions Thompson would like. Thompson argues that Facebook shouldn't "decide the news," not for economic reasons, but because FB could make the wrong decisions under a totalitarian government. Facebook strongly agrees, "We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves," so they won't. FB proposes easy reporting and third-party verification, which sound to me like they "spring from the power of the Internet," whatever that means. If FB decides to "raise the quality bar" on the "Related Articles" section by measuring positive citations, in a way vaguely reminiscent of Google PageRank, that would spring from the power of the Internet, I guess. None of that matters if people are always going to click on propaganda and share it no matter what. So Thompson is either wrong about the economic fatalism argument, or FB is already planning to give him what he wants, or both.

curiousgeorgio 10y ago

I can't help but feel that "fake news" is just the latest scapegoat being used by all the left-leaning media organizations (which represent a majority of the media in the US) in an attempt to hide the painful reality that they've been feeding us B.S. for years - and Trump's election effectively calls them out on it. If there is a problem with the media in general (apart from strong political bias), it's a human problem that we all share. People respond to shock, outrage, and disgust much more than they respond to pragmatic ideas, logic, or even truth in general. As long as media companies are built on revenue models tied to ad impressions and social engagement, we'll likely see more of the same. Censorship will not help; it can only make the problem worse. Perhaps instead, social networks should return to being social networks rather than scrolling billboards. I recall a time (around 2005-2006) when Facebook consisted mostly of people's own words, thoughts, and conversations rather than embedded media. I think I'd really enjoy a Facebook that didn't even turn URLs into hyperlinks - one where the only media that can be embedded is your own original content. That's partly why I believe Instagram is on the rise, while Facebook seems to be on the decline (depending on who you ask - and yes, I know Instagram is owned by FB). The current social media landscape is like trying to host a party at your house with TVs on every wall (showing random propaganda) so loud that no one can even hear themselves talk.

untog 10y ago
But they haven't been feeding BS for years. The vast, vast majority of news reporting done on a day to day basis is factually correct. Journalists call people, check facts, get quotes. I'm not saying that the media is faultless and never makes mistakes. Or that they don't, from time to time, overhype absolute nonsense stories or clicks or viewing figures. But we're comparing infrequent reporting mistakes with deliberate and calculated lying. They are not anywhere near the same thing. The fact that you feel like fake news is being used as a scapegoat should make you stop and wonder if there is any evidence to back up that feeling, rather than double down on it.
- james0001 10y ago
  Except the Podesta emails basically showed us that most mainstream news is for sale to the highest bidder. Most news isn't reporting facts, it's simply an embedded advertisement. This fake news thing is assuredly a scapegoat

joshuaheard 10y ago

The world's intelligence agencies were wrong about Iraq's nuclear program, but this is hardly "fake news" on par with "Restore hair growth with this one simple trick". This whole "fake news" issue is one giant slippery slope. True fake news that damages someone is already actionable under our defamation laws. But what about facts being bandied about in the marketplace of ideas? Do facts counter to the current dogma become fake? Do we allow state or corporate curators to determine for us what the facts are? One only has to go to Wikipedia discussion pages to see how difficult that can be. I can't help but be reminded by Orwell in 1984, "He who controls the present controls that past. He who controls the past controls the future". Is controlling the facts we read what Orwell was warning us about? The only defense against fake news is an informed educated reader.

danbruc 10y ago
The world's intelligence agencies were wrong about Iraq's nuclear program, but this is hardly "fake news" [...] That is absolutely not the way it went. Essentially nobody believed what Iraq was accused of by the USA, not even the CIA trusted the available evidence. It was all fabricated to justify the invasion, a total fake.

firekvz 10y ago

If you want to understand how this works, you can find some example in some other thread that was started a bit ago but I think it got moderated, here's the link to it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13016561 It's an article about the "scapegoat" person behind the website dolartoday.com You can find my explanation about how much damage this website does by publishing fake news to a large audience... I dont even go in details about the economically damage (the one with more impact on my country) just a simple example, link to my post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13017182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13017182

pwinnski 10y ago

I think all of this talk about "fake news" in the abstract is unhelpful, because I suspect we all have something different in mind for "fake news." I mean, if there's a widespread belief that Secretary Clinton is running a child sex ring out of a Washington D.C. pizza parlor[0], widespread enough that it's turning up in response to random phone polling in the days before the election, that's a different category of "fake news" than "Restore hair growth with this one simple trick." If a tweet of some parked busses for a Tableau conference in Austin, Texas, can result in a tweeted claim by the President-Elect and a thread that runs for more than a week on cable news about "paid protestors,"[1] that's not the same as "Aliens take President-Elect for a ride on their flying saucer." These seem to be in a different category than the NY Times' in-retrospect-horrible reporting prior to the US invasion of Iraq. It's possible to be certain but wrong, and marshal evidence in support of your beliefs. In the case of the NY Times, that mistaken reporting was enormous, and the impact of it was enormous, but it is reasonable to think that others given the same information would have made the same mistakes. Lots of people did, in fact. In the meantime, 99% of the rest of NY Times reporting was accurate, as is usually the case. The two examples of "fake news" I linked seem ludicrous, and they're just the tip of the iceberg. Anecdotally, I personally saw claims about eight LGBT youth having killed themselves as a result of the election, but those claims seem to be unsubstantiated at best, and most like "fake news" from the other political side. It's not entirely a partisan issue. So yeah, Judith Miller's reporting turned out to be terrible. I'm not sure how that counters the fact that the so-called "fake news" currently being discussed is reprehensibly awful, and apparently effective. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13011496 [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-news-spreads.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/business/media/how-fake-ne...

banku_brougham 10y ago

A nothing-burger of an article, im my opinion. There is a problem, can't really be fixed, also 'liberty.' I am actually concerned by the implications of our destroyed arbiters of truth, but I'm not smart enough to envision a path back to sanity. People accustomed to the relative political stability of the US have no idea how bad it can get.

PravlageTiem 10y ago

I gotta say, watching the political ideology that doubled down on postmodernism massively backpedal on the "truth is relative" meme is endlessly entertaining.

pdeuchler 10y ago

I cant believe I'm posting a quote from a video game in a thread debating politics, but I guess we live in strange times... "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

sigsergv 10y ago

Beware, a new trend in social media: Confirmation Bias As A Service.