9 ms·

Russian Agents Are Not Behind Every Piece of Fake News You See

94 points by Jerry2 10y ago

cinquemb 10y ago
Don't worry everyone, Fake News is the biggest problem the world has faced ever and we will not hear the end of this very, very serious issue. If we keep repeating this message enough, include it on everything from t-shirts, billboards to radio and tv ads (maybe even handing out steep discounts at stores everywhere if you have people regurgitate some of the websites to not visit from the very reputable list that the extremely unbiased and trustworthy Jeff Bezos' Washington Post has helped distribute recently), everyone will eventually come around, the world will be saved and everything everyone dead or alive has ever wished for will come true.
- dmichulke 10y ago
  Or shorter: "Don't feed the (WaPo) trolls" :)
trendia 10y ago
How do we know that this article isn't Russian propaganda? I just prefer to go full solipsism.
- labster 10y ago
  You're behind everything, aren't you?
- ry4n413 10y ago
  How do we know you aren't working for the KGB?
  - jedmeyers 10y ago
    We can be pretty sure that he does not, since KGB no longer exists.
    - westpfelia 10y ago
      That sounds like something a KGB agent would say.... Comrade....
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
devsquid 10y ago
This is an odd sentiment. Most of the reporting around fake new shows it comes from entrepreneurial people, some I would say are morally suspect, but I have never seen any reporting show it going back to nation states. Its just clever people take advantage of people awful biases.
- chokolad 10y ago
  Really? here are a few stories https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/report-russian-propaganda-effort-spread-fake-news/2016/11/25/72eb461c-b33a-11e6-bc2d-19b3d759cfe7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/report-russian-propa... http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/russian-propaganda-effort-behind-flood-fake-news-preceded-election/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/russian-propaganda-effor... Edit: a few more http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/11/25/reports-russian-operation-boosted-fake-news-phenomenon/94424206/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/11/25/reports-russia... http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/25/13746250/us-election-russia-influence-fake-news-propaganda http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/25/13746250/us-election-russ... http://www.seattlepi.com/business/technology/article/Report-Russian-propaganda-effort-spread-fake-news-10635910.php http://www.seattlepi.com/business/technology/article/Report-...
  - fixxer 10y ago
    You are actually citing that WaPo propOrnot piece? You trust independent, anonymous experts to tell you what is legit? There is zero fact checking in that thing. You might as well be sourcing 4chan. Talk about playing to people's biases... EDIT: I'm retarded.
    - chokolad 10y ago
      You misunderstood me. Parent mentioned that he had not seen this narrative about Russian propaganda anywhere. I saw a whole bunch just yesterday so I posted them there. I personally find them ridiculous and agree with fortune piece which I believe was a reaction to WaPo piece.
      - 10y ago
PretzelFisch 10y ago
I have a hard time accepting twitter quotes as a source for use in real journalism.
up_so_floating 10y ago
It seems dangerous to view "fake news" as a binary value. All news is just approximation of the truth.
- koheripbal 10y ago
  In a world where news is so commoditized, interpretation is so rare
- imh 10y ago
  There are two different kinds of fake news. The first type is just shitty journalism. Stuff that isn't fact checked, doesn't tell the whole story, actively misleads, or what not. Thats the kind that has a spectrum. The second type is "Clinton ate an alien baby yesterday then died." That kind is kinda binary. It seems like facebook can't even tell the difference between those.
  - dangerboysteve 10y ago
    Or some "news" organizations will quote another story from another news organization to lend credibility to the original unchecked shitty journalism. Rinse and repeat.
    - tormeh 10y ago
      No, fake news is not shitty journalism. Fake news is stuff that the writer and editor knew were made up and wrong when they posted it. There's a difference between not particularly caring about the veracity of what you repeat and just making shit up.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  >> All news is just approximation of the truth. No. There is something called truth. Did it rain yesterday or did it not? What was the temperature last week? These are things that are scientifically true or not true and yet over the last election cycle these facts were up for "debate". I don't mean climate change. They argued about whether it was hot or cold on a specific day at a specific place. The weather is easy. Where the grey areas start are with things like budgets. Did a particular department spend more or less this year that last? Such statements would seem objectively true or untrue yet we saw grown men and women fight for years, one side seeing surplus and the other deficit. In the middle is an accountant who knows the objective truth, the real story from the fake news. When the accountant comes forward, that story is then slotted into real or fake. If there are never any objectively true or untrue facts, why do we even bother talking?
vaadu 10y ago
The washington post recently printed a staggering hypocritical article on fake news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop... This is a rag that has been a sock puppet for the DNC since forever.
- fixxer 10y ago
  Greenwald's piece on it: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgrace...
  - greenyoda 10y ago
    HN discussion of Greenwald's article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045381
- freshhawk 10y ago
  Judging by the popularity and response, that was extremely effective propaganda. Bit depressing that it was that easy in my opinion, those anonymous "researcher" sources could have been much more believable.
ryuuchin 10y ago
I'm not sure how relevant this is to this story but for news in general something which I found extremely helpful in my life has been actually learning how to digest the news (media) through a course that was taught at university (news literacy). The news media is to a certain extent peer reviewed. Although perhaps not the the extent that scientific papers are but actually non-opinion news media does hold itself to certain standards. These may including correcting factual errors, attempting to contact both/all sides for comments, or if they use anonymous sources if they state a reason why they are anonymous. Furthermore the actual news media should always have the opinion section marked as opinion (which you should generally steer clear of). Another example which is often brought up is "bias". However actual bias is extremely difficult to prove. Opinion pieces don't count towards bias since they should be under a (labeled) opinion section. There are courses that deal with news literacy[1] that are probably taught around the country but this is just one example that I'm familiar with. [1] http://www.centerfornewsliteracy.org/ http://www.centerfornewsliteracy.org/ (SUNY @ Stony Brook)
- dangerboysteve 10y ago
  Bias usually takes the form of news suppression. There was lots of that during the last election.
  - droopyEyelids 10y ago
    Literally any detalied look at either candidate's policies or the issues facing the american people
- aikah 10y ago
  > However actual bias is extremely difficult to prove. Actually it is extremely easy. It is easy to tell if an article has an angle or as not, by the choices of word and expressions. For instance, let's take the immigration crisis in Europe. Whether a media chose to call immigrants "illegal immigrants" or "asylum seekers" denoted bias in one direction or another. So left-wing media called them "asylum seekers" because they wanted to paint them in a good way, while right-wing media called them "illegal immigrants" to paint them in a negative way. Now calling something "fake news" is biased too. All news are fabricated to an extent. "fake news" basically means , "news that don't come from an established source", it's new speak for unsanctioned news, to make it look like trusted news can only come from the NYT, Wapo and co ... it is extremely dishonest, since these media are propaganda organs. > Opinion pieces don't count towards bias since they should be under a (labeled) opinion section. Journalists are activists. Whether they write opinion pieces or not. The easiest way to tell facts from opinion is to take multiple sources opposed politically, and compare what they have in common and in which way they differ. Facts may be inferred that way. Off course it gets harder when the media choose not to report events because it contradicts the narrative they are pushing, and we all saw the result in the latest election. They can't blame "fake news" yet suppress information when it doesn't fit their narrative. So obviously i'm not a journalist, but you could say I'm biased against MSM. More accurately I don't give them the benefit of the doubt just because they are professionals.
3131s 10y ago
'Fake news' is as old as humanity itself and there is no reason to prefer this new term to simply 'false information' or something similar. As another poster said, this current rash of articles is pushing the idea that there is a binary distinction between fake and real news, when in reality we already have a rich vocabulary to discuss the nuanced spectrum between truth and falsehood, e.g. misinformation, disinformation, black / white / grey propaganda, selective exposure, fallacy, rumor, hyperbole, euphemism / dysphemism, limited hangout, dog whistling, spin / framing, FUD, bias, etc. It is hard not to feel very cynical about the sudden post-election focus that large media outlets are putting on 'fake news'. I think it is mostly an attempt to discredit alternative media and reinforce the establishment / government narrative.
- mc32 10y ago
  To me it seems that traditional media is taking this opportunity to make their case with Google/Facebook that they are the sole/main providers of "real" news and that others are less reputable. And this is just a way to re-establish their pedigree as canonical sources for news to the detriment of alternative news sources --including of course the inflated purveyors of "fake news" who are not the real targets. The actual targets being anyone not associated with an institutional news organization [your local news, independent news, bloggers, etc]. Imagine the glee in mainstream news if FB GOOG would mainly surface the news of the NYT, WaPo, FoxNews, etc.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    They should only surface news from reputable companies. And that doesn't mean those companies have to be giants like Fox or NYT. It just means that they need to have content that has gone through some editorial process and isn't just made up.
    - tux1968 10y ago
      As a practical matter how do you ensure that without a process to vet every single source that wishes to publish news? This makes it harder for someone to enter the market and makes it possible for arbitrary or stilted rules to be imposed by the gatekeepers on a whim.
whybroke 10y ago
I do not google a term to get a false result that I happen to agree with. Especially not one that is doing so just to sell ads. I am not interested in soothing nonsense on _any_ topic not just political ones. For some reason it is being argued that google's (and facebook's) algorithms, which obviously must rank their results, should not take accuracy into account at all. The value of google is exactly proportional to the accuracy of its results, not its random interspersing of fabrications. If I want insane conspiracy theories I can always take 3 seconds to type bullshit.com in the url line. And ironically, somehow observations like this one are ruthlessly down voted by defenders of free speech.
- inimino 10y ago
  Google indexes content, and displays it by relevance to your query and overall relevance (e.g. PageRank). The idea that Google and FB should be in the business of discriminating truth from falsehood is one of the most naive ideas to come out of this election cycle.
  - whybroke 10y ago
    On the contrary. The discovery that social media, as currently implemented, is in the process of annihilating rational discourse is the single most important discovery of this election cycle. Possibly of the last decade. Even now, because of this problem, there is no longer agreement on many basic facts. The notion that a people so polarized on basic truths will ever be able to function together democratically is what is utterly naive. Under such circumstances, ultimately one side will have to force its view of reality on the other. Indeed it may not be a coincidence that the sudden success of extremists parties in the west, driving voters to vote so conspicuously against their own self interest, corresponds almost exactly to the emergence of social media in general and facebook in particular. What is naive is the belief that truth will somehow win out when the bulk of mankind sees the world predominantly through a facebook feed that explicitly selects for spectacular self confirming nonsense algorithmicly suppressing anything unpleasant to know.
    - inimino 10y ago
coldtea 10y ago
The global media (and the US ones disproportionately) is behind almost every piece of fake news people all over the world see -- only it's called just "news".
dschiptsov 10y ago
Why people are so stupid? No one would say that "Russians" wrote this or that shitpost. What they did - they developed and successfully used "innovative" techniques of producing and spreading catchy memes along with trolling and shitposting into any meaningful discussion on popular public forums. These methods nowadays are used on a "factory scale". The famous "Troll factories" were a great success. Basically, it is a next level of jamming techniques used against western radio stations in old times - active trolling instead of passive jamming, using paid people instead of dumb noise generators. What Russians developed is very efficient (optimized, if you wish) set of methods to manipulate the minds of idiots, to implant naive, unverified (and unquestioned by wast majority of idiots) assumptions and false premises, in forms of emotionally charged but primitive memes (textual or graphical) - "Shillary will start WW3". Fucking degenerates. In the same way all the Russian media propaganda is organized nowadays - meme-like framed "news", tailored to the vocabulary and mentality of uneducated, primitive majority, along with marketing-like targeting. You do not have to have a PhD to do that. What happened is that almost everyone else nowadays are re-using these simple ready-made methods. All this is nothing but virus-like meme contagion, plus applied manipulative psychology of advertising on internet scale. That's all. No KGB agents or anything like that. How a third-world, corruption-ridden country with stagnant economy could be so powerful? It obviously wasn't. The cause is these "information viruses" (memes) spreading through human stupidity. Russians didn't invent them, of course, only used on a large scale.
kodfodrasz 10y ago
I guess Putin's hackers tricked BBC to publish that the late owner of Coronita beer factory left enormous amounts of money to the village where he was born. This fake news meme is so boring by now. The mainstream media try to blame others for their falure to manipulate the people in a direction desired by the elites, but actually nowadays mainstream media is no better than the fake news sources.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
welanes 10y ago
So The Washington Post article on fake news is lying to its readers. This perfectly illuminates the problem with trust, truth, and the Internet. Two good rules of thumb - and this goes for established media outlets - when reading an article. A. Follow the links that writers include in their articles. Example: Well the article above. But this is how bad it is: Currently the WP's most popular article is titled 'Americans keep looking away from the election’s most alarming story' which includes the line "Trump reveled in information gained from...“fake news” stories that evidence suggests (link) were generated by Russian intelligence operation". Well, if you click that link there is zero evidence, just an article from 'geektime.com' (who?) asking 'Could Russia be behind US election-based fake news on Facebook?'. This is incredibly disingenuous. B. Read the comments. Example: Just go to the comments on any article on The Economist or The Guardian and you'll almost always find high quality addenda that either refute or add context to the article being commented on. Perhaps it's the limited number of media outlets in Europe, or just the nature of our media, but there's a high level of healthy dissent below-the-line that I don't see on The NYT, WP etc. This assumes, of course, that people care about the truth. Yet critical thinking may be futile against a firehose of information and this trait of human psychologically: many people value how they feel over the truth and so will be biased towards 'news' that fulfills that role. It's not fearless critical reporting they're after, but rather a bubble of moral affirmation.
- inimino 10y ago
  Not sure why you are being downvoted specifically, but the idea that responsible readership is the solution to widespread credulity seems to be less popular on HN than I would have expected.
  - lunula 10y ago
    Maybe the assertion that the WaPo is lying is a little bit extreme for some readers. But they do seem to be overstating the case based on the available sources.
    - sprafa 10y ago
jyriand 10y ago
All of this fake news discussion makes me think about McLuhan. It's as if we are forgetting the point of internet. > McLuhan's central thesis, encapsulated in the famous phrase "the medium is the message", was that the technologies through which we take in information - the media, broadly defined - become "extensions" of our bodies, exerting a profound influence over us. When an important new medium arrives, it can reshape who we are as individuals and as a society. [1] > Electric media, being cool technologies that promote interaction, would bring back our lost tribal consciousness, McLuhan believed. But our tribes would no longer be small, isolated groups. Because the new media spanned the planet, we would become members of a "global village". [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/nov/01/comment.internet https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/nov/01/comment.i...
- sprafa 10y ago
  It's curious how people like McLuhan and Lippman and Bernays are hardly ever discussed, even though they hold the keys to understanding what's going on.
tomohawk 10y ago
Pot, meet Kettle.
throw2016 10y ago
Don't believe everything you read on the internet, or the newspapers. Nobody has the monopoly on truth. Healthy scepticism is a life skill. More so now when rumours can spread globally in seconds. The solution is not control but education and discernment. Our prejudices and current knowledge often determine to a large degree what we more easily believe. The traditional media is not only losing reach but also its power to 'shape and influence events' ie propaganda and in desperation the 'free press' has been reduced to the sorry state of seeking 'official source of truth status'. Sort of like a ministry of truth.

94 points by Jerry2 10y ago

Don't worry everyone, Fake News is the biggest problem the world has faced ever and we will not hear the end of this very, very serious issue. If we keep repeating this message enough, include it on everything from t-shirts, billboards to radio and tv ads (maybe even handing out steep discounts at stores everywhere if you have people regurgitate some of the websites to not visit from the very reputable list that the extremely unbiased and trustworthy Jeff Bezos' Washington Post has helped distribute recently), everyone will eventually come around, the world will be saved and everything everyone dead or alive has ever wished for will come true.

dmichulke 10y ago
Or shorter: "Don't feed the (WaPo) trolls" :)

trendia 10y ago

How do we know that this article isn't Russian propaganda? I just prefer to go full solipsism.

labster 10y ago
You're behind everything, aren't you?
ry4n413 10y ago
How do we know you aren't working for the KGB?
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  We can be pretty sure that he does not, since KGB no longer exists.
  - westpfelia 10y ago
    That sounds like something a KGB agent would say.... Comrade....
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]

devsquid 10y ago

This is an odd sentiment. Most of the reporting around fake new shows it comes from entrepreneurial people, some I would say are morally suspect, but I have never seen any reporting show it going back to nation states. Its just clever people take advantage of people awful biases.

chokolad 10y ago
Really? here are a few stories https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/report-russian-propaganda-effort-spread-fake-news/2016/11/25/72eb461c-b33a-11e6-bc2d-19b3d759cfe7_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/report-russian-propa... http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/russian-propaganda-effort-behind-flood-fake-news-preceded-election/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/russian-propaganda-effor... Edit: a few more http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/11/25/reports-russian-operation-boosted-fake-news-phenomenon/94424206/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/11/25/reports-russia... http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/25/13746250/us-election-russia-influence-fake-news-propaganda http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/25/13746250/us-election-russ... http://www.seattlepi.com/business/technology/article/Report-Russian-propaganda-effort-spread-fake-news-10635910.php http://www.seattlepi.com/business/technology/article/Report-...
- fixxer 10y ago
  You are actually citing that WaPo propOrnot piece? You trust independent, anonymous experts to tell you what is legit? There is zero fact checking in that thing. You might as well be sourcing 4chan. Talk about playing to people's biases... EDIT: I'm retarded.
  - chokolad 10y ago
    You misunderstood me. Parent mentioned that he had not seen this narrative about Russian propaganda anywhere. I saw a whole bunch just yesterday so I posted them there. I personally find them ridiculous and agree with fortune piece which I believe was a reaction to WaPo piece.
    - 10y ago

PretzelFisch 10y ago

I have a hard time accepting twitter quotes as a source for use in real journalism.

up_so_floating 10y ago

It seems dangerous to view "fake news" as a binary value. All news is just approximation of the truth.

koheripbal 10y ago
In a world where news is so commoditized, interpretation is so rare
imh 10y ago
There are two different kinds of fake news. The first type is just shitty journalism. Stuff that isn't fact checked, doesn't tell the whole story, actively misleads, or what not. Thats the kind that has a spectrum. The second type is "Clinton ate an alien baby yesterday then died." That kind is kinda binary. It seems like facebook can't even tell the difference between those.
- dangerboysteve 10y ago
  Or some "news" organizations will quote another story from another news organization to lend credibility to the original unchecked shitty journalism. Rinse and repeat.
  - tormeh 10y ago
    No, fake news is not shitty journalism. Fake news is stuff that the writer and editor knew were made up and wrong when they posted it. There's a difference between not particularly caring about the veracity of what you repeat and just making shit up.
sandworm101 10y ago
>> All news is just approximation of the truth. No. There is something called truth. Did it rain yesterday or did it not? What was the temperature last week? These are things that are scientifically true or not true and yet over the last election cycle these facts were up for "debate". I don't mean climate change. They argued about whether it was hot or cold on a specific day at a specific place. The weather is easy. Where the grey areas start are with things like budgets. Did a particular department spend more or less this year that last? Such statements would seem objectively true or untrue yet we saw grown men and women fight for years, one side seeing surplus and the other deficit. In the middle is an accountant who knows the objective truth, the real story from the fake news. When the accountant comes forward, that story is then slotted into real or fake. If there are never any objectively true or untrue facts, why do we even bother talking?

vaadu 10y ago

The washington post recently printed a staggering hypocritical article on fake news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-prop... This is a rag that has been a sock puppet for the DNC since forever.

fixxer 10y ago
Greenwald's piece on it: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgracefully-promotes-a-mccarthyite-blacklist-from-a-new-hidden-and-very-shady-group/ https://theintercept.com/2016/11/26/washington-post-disgrace...
- greenyoda 10y ago
  HN discussion of Greenwald's article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045381 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13045381
freshhawk 10y ago
Judging by the popularity and response, that was extremely effective propaganda. Bit depressing that it was that easy in my opinion, those anonymous "researcher" sources could have been much more believable.

ryuuchin 10y ago

I'm not sure how relevant this is to this story but for news in general something which I found extremely helpful in my life has been actually learning how to digest the news (media) through a course that was taught at university (news literacy). The news media is to a certain extent peer reviewed. Although perhaps not the the extent that scientific papers are but actually non-opinion news media does hold itself to certain standards. These may including correcting factual errors, attempting to contact both/all sides for comments, or if they use anonymous sources if they state a reason why they are anonymous. Furthermore the actual news media should always have the opinion section marked as opinion (which you should generally steer clear of). Another example which is often brought up is "bias". However actual bias is extremely difficult to prove. Opinion pieces don't count towards bias since they should be under a (labeled) opinion section. There are courses that deal with news literacy[1] that are probably taught around the country but this is just one example that I'm familiar with. [1] http://www.centerfornewsliteracy.org/ http://www.centerfornewsliteracy.org/ (SUNY @ Stony Brook)

dangerboysteve 10y ago
Bias usually takes the form of news suppression. There was lots of that during the last election.
- droopyEyelids 10y ago
  Literally any detalied look at either candidate's policies or the issues facing the american people
aikah 10y ago
> However actual bias is extremely difficult to prove. Actually it is extremely easy. It is easy to tell if an article has an angle or as not, by the choices of word and expressions. For instance, let's take the immigration crisis in Europe. Whether a media chose to call immigrants "illegal immigrants" or "asylum seekers" denoted bias in one direction or another. So left-wing media called them "asylum seekers" because they wanted to paint them in a good way, while right-wing media called them "illegal immigrants" to paint them in a negative way. Now calling something "fake news" is biased too. All news are fabricated to an extent. "fake news" basically means , "news that don't come from an established source", it's new speak for unsanctioned news, to make it look like trusted news can only come from the NYT, Wapo and co ... it is extremely dishonest, since these media are propaganda organs. > Opinion pieces don't count towards bias since they should be under a (labeled) opinion section. Journalists are activists. Whether they write opinion pieces or not. The easiest way to tell facts from opinion is to take multiple sources opposed politically, and compare what they have in common and in which way they differ. Facts may be inferred that way. Off course it gets harder when the media choose not to report events because it contradicts the narrative they are pushing, and we all saw the result in the latest election. They can't blame "fake news" yet suppress information when it doesn't fit their narrative. So obviously i'm not a journalist, but you could say I'm biased against MSM. More accurately I don't give them the benefit of the doubt just because they are professionals.

3131s 10y ago

'Fake news' is as old as humanity itself and there is no reason to prefer this new term to simply 'false information' or something similar. As another poster said, this current rash of articles is pushing the idea that there is a binary distinction between fake and real news, when in reality we already have a rich vocabulary to discuss the nuanced spectrum between truth and falsehood, e.g. misinformation, disinformation, black / white / grey propaganda, selective exposure, fallacy, rumor, hyperbole, euphemism / dysphemism, limited hangout, dog whistling, spin / framing, FUD, bias, etc. It is hard not to feel very cynical about the sudden post-election focus that large media outlets are putting on 'fake news'. I think it is mostly an attempt to discredit alternative media and reinforce the establishment / government narrative.

mc32 10y ago
To me it seems that traditional media is taking this opportunity to make their case with Google/Facebook that they are the sole/main providers of "real" news and that others are less reputable. And this is just a way to re-establish their pedigree as canonical sources for news to the detriment of alternative news sources --including of course the inflated purveyors of "fake news" who are not the real targets. The actual targets being anyone not associated with an institutional news organization [your local news, independent news, bloggers, etc]. Imagine the glee in mainstream news if FB GOOG would mainly surface the news of the NYT, WaPo, FoxNews, etc.
- threeseed 10y ago
  They should only surface news from reputable companies. And that doesn't mean those companies have to be giants like Fox or NYT. It just means that they need to have content that has gone through some editorial process and isn't just made up.
  - tux1968 10y ago
    As a practical matter how do you ensure that without a process to vet every single source that wishes to publish news? This makes it harder for someone to enter the market and makes it possible for arbitrary or stilted rules to be imposed by the gatekeepers on a whim.

whybroke 10y ago

I do not google a term to get a false result that I happen to agree with. Especially not one that is doing so just to sell ads. I am not interested in soothing nonsense on _any_ topic not just political ones. For some reason it is being argued that google's (and facebook's) algorithms, which obviously must rank their results, should not take accuracy into account at all. The value of google is exactly proportional to the accuracy of its results, not its random interspersing of fabrications. If I want insane conspiracy theories I can always take 3 seconds to type bullshit.com in the url line. And ironically, somehow observations like this one are ruthlessly down voted by defenders of free speech.

inimino 10y ago
Google indexes content, and displays it by relevance to your query and overall relevance (e.g. PageRank). The idea that Google and FB should be in the business of discriminating truth from falsehood is one of the most naive ideas to come out of this election cycle.
- whybroke 10y ago
  On the contrary. The discovery that social media, as currently implemented, is in the process of annihilating rational discourse is the single most important discovery of this election cycle. Possibly of the last decade. Even now, because of this problem, there is no longer agreement on many basic facts. The notion that a people so polarized on basic truths will ever be able to function together democratically is what is utterly naive. Under such circumstances, ultimately one side will have to force its view of reality on the other. Indeed it may not be a coincidence that the sudden success of extremists parties in the west, driving voters to vote so conspicuously against their own self interest, corresponds almost exactly to the emergence of social media in general and facebook in particular. What is naive is the belief that truth will somehow win out when the bulk of mankind sees the world predominantly through a facebook feed that explicitly selects for spectacular self confirming nonsense algorithmicly suppressing anything unpleasant to know.
  - inimino 10y ago

coldtea 10y ago

The global media (and the US ones disproportionately) is behind almost every piece of fake news people all over the world see -- only it's called just "news".

dschiptsov 10y ago

Why people are so stupid? No one would say that "Russians" wrote this or that shitpost. What they did - they developed and successfully used "innovative" techniques of producing and spreading catchy memes along with trolling and shitposting into any meaningful discussion on popular public forums. These methods nowadays are used on a "factory scale". The famous "Troll factories" were a great success. Basically, it is a next level of jamming techniques used against western radio stations in old times - active trolling instead of passive jamming, using paid people instead of dumb noise generators. What Russians developed is very efficient (optimized, if you wish) set of methods to manipulate the minds of idiots, to implant naive, unverified (and unquestioned by wast majority of idiots) assumptions and false premises, in forms of emotionally charged but primitive memes (textual or graphical) - "Shillary will start WW3". Fucking degenerates. In the same way all the Russian media propaganda is organized nowadays - meme-like framed "news", tailored to the vocabulary and mentality of uneducated, primitive majority, along with marketing-like targeting. You do not have to have a PhD to do that. What happened is that almost everyone else nowadays are re-using these simple ready-made methods. All this is nothing but virus-like meme contagion, plus applied manipulative psychology of advertising on internet scale. That's all. No KGB agents or anything like that. How a third-world, corruption-ridden country with stagnant economy could be so powerful? It obviously wasn't. The cause is these "information viruses" (memes) spreading through human stupidity. Russians didn't invent them, of course, only used on a large scale.

kodfodrasz 10y ago

I guess Putin's hackers tricked BBC to publish that the late owner of Coronita beer factory left enormous amounts of money to the village where he was born. This fake news meme is so boring by now. The mainstream media try to blame others for their falure to manipulate the people in a direction desired by the elites, but actually nowadays mainstream media is no better than the fake news sources.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

welanes 10y ago

So The Washington Post article on fake news is lying to its readers. This perfectly illuminates the problem with trust, truth, and the Internet. Two good rules of thumb - and this goes for established media outlets - when reading an article. A. Follow the links that writers include in their articles. Example: Well the article above. But this is how bad it is: Currently the WP's most popular article is titled 'Americans keep looking away from the election’s most alarming story' which includes the line "Trump reveled in information gained from...“fake news” stories that evidence suggests (link) were generated by Russian intelligence operation". Well, if you click that link there is zero evidence, just an article from 'geektime.com' (who?) asking 'Could Russia be behind US election-based fake news on Facebook?'. This is incredibly disingenuous. B. Read the comments. Example: Just go to the comments on any article on The Economist or The Guardian and you'll almost always find high quality addenda that either refute or add context to the article being commented on. Perhaps it's the limited number of media outlets in Europe, or just the nature of our media, but there's a high level of healthy dissent below-the-line that I don't see on The NYT, WP etc. This assumes, of course, that people care about the truth. Yet critical thinking may be futile against a firehose of information and this trait of human psychologically: many people value how they feel over the truth and so will be biased towards 'news' that fulfills that role. It's not fearless critical reporting they're after, but rather a bubble of moral affirmation.

inimino 10y ago
Not sure why you are being downvoted specifically, but the idea that responsible readership is the solution to widespread credulity seems to be less popular on HN than I would have expected.
- lunula 10y ago
  Maybe the assertion that the WaPo is lying is a little bit extreme for some readers. But they do seem to be overstating the case based on the available sources.
  - sprafa 10y ago

jyriand 10y ago

All of this fake news discussion makes me think about McLuhan. It's as if we are forgetting the point of internet. > McLuhan's central thesis, encapsulated in the famous phrase "the medium is the message", was that the technologies through which we take in information - the media, broadly defined - become "extensions" of our bodies, exerting a profound influence over us. When an important new medium arrives, it can reshape who we are as individuals and as a society. [1] > Electric media, being cool technologies that promote interaction, would bring back our lost tribal consciousness, McLuhan believed. But our tribes would no longer be small, isolated groups. Because the new media spanned the planet, we would become members of a "global village". [1] [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/nov/01/comment.internet https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/nov/01/comment.i...

sprafa 10y ago
It's curious how people like McLuhan and Lippman and Bernays are hardly ever discussed, even though they hold the keys to understanding what's going on.

tomohawk 10y ago

Pot, meet Kettle.

throw2016 10y ago

Don't believe everything you read on the internet, or the newspapers. Nobody has the monopoly on truth. Healthy scepticism is a life skill. More so now when rumours can spread globally in seconds. The solution is not control but education and discernment. Our prejudices and current knowledge often determine to a large degree what we more easily believe. The traditional media is not only losing reach but also its power to 'shape and influence events' ie propaganda and in desperation the 'free press' has been reduced to the sorry state of seeking 'official source of truth status'. Sort of like a ministry of truth.