10 ms·

Moral panic over fake news hides the real enemy – the digital giants

90 points by clydethefrog 10y ago

potatosoup 10y ago
The sudden obsession with "fake news" started last November after the election. Why then? The big media also seems very discontent that Trump uses social media to communicate his news with people directly, bypassing the middlemen.
- bjt2n3904 10y ago
  > Why then? My personal opinion? Doubling down on why they lost. Much easier to point fingers. </opinion> In all seriousness though, the ability to manipulate media is nothing new. What about "fake comments", or vote spamming?
- RikNieu 10y ago
  I remember when I heard that Trump had won, in contrast to what all the media sources "knew" about the outcome before. My first thought was, "Wonder what the narrative would be on this one. I smell a bull market for scapegoats right about now." And, hey! Whaddya know, a week or so afterwards and we have this fake news fetish.
- awfgylbcxhrey 10y ago
  I think it's simply because the election cycle was excellent fodder for the already-increasing fake news trend. Incidentally, here's an interesting podcast episode where they track down and interview a fake news producer. I don't recall them getting into specific timelines or an in-depth analysis of the trend, unfortunately: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episode-739-finding-the-fake-news-king http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episo...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  Yup, I'm still trying to figure out if this whole thing is overblown or people actually consider things they see on Facebook to be reliable. I've never seen a news article on Facebook that wasn't by a news source I already knew about, and considered that to be reliable. Facebook just doesn't optimise for that, obviously. It just seems so obvious that the content on Facebook around news is and always has been trash that I'm amazed if enough people actually took it seriously enough for it to matter in the election.
  - potatosoup 10y ago
    If anything, the content of the e-mail leaks (that the intelligence report from the other day confirmed to be authentic, although this was also known from verifying DKIM signatures) had a bigger impact.
  - yellow_viper 10y ago
    I'm also concerned about who gets to decide what fake news is and filter it out. The 'real news' networks barely covered any of the DNC leaks
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > The 'real news' networks barely covered any of the DNC leaks That is not true at all. Fox covered it heavily, as far as I know; the New York Times and Washington Post both seemed to publish a new articles on the topic daily; CNN seemed to cover it heavily. Who didn't cover that story?
      - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
        Cnn covered the dnc leaks in a extraordinary biased way. Telling people it was illegal for them to view it themselves. Also the huffington post, cnn, msnbc, wapo, and nytimes did not cover it objectively. I hear tons of complaints from Bernie Supporters still to this day on campus.
        10y ago
- skybrian 10y ago
  A lot of people thought Hillary would win anyway, so they didn't care as much that some people believe crazy things. A mistake this big is a wake-up call.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > The sudden obsession with "fake news" started last November after the election That's not what I saw. There was plenty of coverage before that of the tidal wave of false information. In fact, fact-checking Trump's statements was a major issue and frequently reported.
  - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
    Google trends suggest the opposite. It spiked right after the election. https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%2012-m&q=fake%20news https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%2012-m&q=fa...
    - hackuser 10y ago
      Thanks for providing some data. Maybe the term started being used then, but not the concept. At least in my information bubble, it was an ongoing issue.
      - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
        It seems wrong and honestly disingenious to dismiss the term fake news and its narrative just because you've heard it once before. Thats an anecdote, and we've had things like batboy and fake news about hillary clinton since the 90s. Also the huge spike on google trends right after the election is undoubtedly important and meaningful.
        hackuser 10y ago
        Please reread my actual words. That's not what I wrote.
- forgottenpass 10y ago
  Why then? Because Trump won, and people saw this as a failing of the news to inform. And ignoring for a second the assumption that a better informed populus would have naturally voted Clinton... The finger was easier to point at hack "news" blogs than admit the organizations that are supposed to make up the respectable press outlets were all complicit in failing to focus on topics of good governance (candidates' positions, issues and suitability for office) instead preferred to focus on the horse race and reality show-esque manufactured drama.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    > And ignoring for a second the assumption that a better informed populus would have naturally voted Clinton... Exactly. There are a bunch of people who knew all about Trump's lies, distortions of reality, character flaws, and so on, and voted for him anyway. Why is that? Hillary was a deeply flawed candidate. First, she was the establishment candidate. This wasn't a good election to be wearing that mantle. Next, she gave off the vibe that she felt she was entitled to the presidency. There were more than two decades of scandals (never mind how much actual fire there was; after two decades of smoke surrounding her, people were sick of it). Her email servers were a very bad look; it gave the impression that she wanted to hide stuff so it wouldn't come back to haunt her during her presidential run, and it also gave the impression that she thought rules were for other people. The allegations of pay for play with the Clinton Foundation was a continuation of the corruption allegations, but it was very fresh. And for the working class, their financial position mostly got worse under Obama, and Clinton was viewed as a continuation of that. But sure, blame people voting for Trump on fake news. (For the record, I'm a conservative who could not in good conscience vote either for Trump or Hillary, but who was cheering for Hillary on election night because I viewed Trump as more dangerous.)
    - forgottenpass 10y ago
      The line you quoted was written because I wanted to focus on a different part of a faulty reasoning chain. I wanted to step over it entirely without agreeing or disagreeing. For what it's worth, I think it's a massively erroneous assumption. But it's also one I'm not particularly interested in discussing in the context of this thread.
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
moral of the digital giants: you're all idiots.
Gys 10y ago
Conclusion: 'We need to make online advertising – and its destructive click-and-share drive – less central to how we live, work and communicate. At the same time, we need to delegate more decision-making power to citizens – rather than the easily corruptible experts and venal corporations.' So the very same people (the masses, everybody) that 'created' the ad driven tech-giants by refusing to pay for anything, should have more decision power ?! The fake news is a hot topic because it indicates people are easily influenced by non-factual messages. More decisions by the public will only result in less rational decisions. Making the world even more unpredictable.
- hackuser 10y ago
  What do you suggest?
brighteyes 10y ago
I don't agree with 100% of the article, but overall it is convincing. I've been worrying about this stuff for a while, the article puts it into words fairly well. A lot of people don't trust "experts" anymore. The article touches on that, in relation to climate change denial, etc. But I think there is also something more specific there regarding science. Universities and colleges have become very liberal, with hardly any conservatives left. The public is aware of this, and constantly sees on the news the actions of progressives on campus (demonstrations, censorship, etc.), while conservatives are in the closet there. The downside to this liberal success is that the public image of "scientist" is now tied to "liberal". When half the population does not trust liberals, they won't trust scientists. If scientists were as politically balanced as the general public, the general public might trust them more. We might also have more conservative scientists say "climate change isn't a partisan issue, I'm a conservative like you." With the liberal dominance of academia, we've lost those things.
- eropple 10y ago
  What is there to suggest that the arrow of causality is going in the way that you imply? Personally, I am fairly convinced that academia and science being "liberal" is, I think, much more a characteristic of the underlying philosophies involved than some externally-imposed groupthink. "Conservatism", at least the modern variant, and "exploring and expanding knowledge for a greater good, while entertaining ideas that you don't necessarily agree with" are literally antithetical. I thought of myself as a conservative before I went to college and realized that, hey, American conservatism is not only railing against stuff like observational science, but "morally" against the existence of these fellow human beings who have done nothing wrong and deserve to exist. So, yeah, maybe "the public" would trust academia and the whole "science" thing more if it was More Conservative, but who's to say that it'd actually work as well? It's not like this stuff exists to tell people what they want to hear--and the epistemic closure of the American conservative is such an ideological purity test that if you're not telling them what they want to hear, you're not conservative. It's not on "science and academia" to break itself for such a warped thing, is it?
  - godzillabrennus 10y ago
eruditely 10y ago
As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as "fake news" and either is some overt scheme to breed dissent, or some foolish attempt at doing away the relevance of their enemies, either way it lacks ingenuity and is probably one of the worst ploys ever created to convince the public of what i'm not sure. Ask, Who does this benefit? What do they seek to acquire? Who does this hurt credibility wise?
pcmaffey 10y ago
In an attention economy, our attention is our greatest resource. The business model of digital capitalism extracts our attention by whatever means it can. And we give it to them, because we don't understand its true value.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
acd 10y ago
The consumption has shifted from plain old media TV, Radio and News papers towards online social media with news feeds and blogs. Somehow along the way critical qualitative journalism was lost. There is probably a democratic issue there. Its noisy out there. Just because it looks like a news site does not mean it is serious with deep journalism behind it. How do we make sure we consume news from good sources?
- d0mine 10y ago
  It is worse than that. The disinformation is not accidental and it is not new (it always dominated the traditional media it was just less prominent in the social media). Ask yourself "who benefits" from a particular spin or a narrative you see in the news online. Who benefits from the climate change denial? Who benefits from the war with Iraq (or with other "Evil Enemy du Jour")? Who benefits from religious conflicts, immigration crisis? Who benefits from the existence of "too big to fail" financial institution? ...

90 points by clydethefrog 10y ago

The sudden obsession with "fake news" started last November after the election. Why then? The big media also seems very discontent that Trump uses social media to communicate his news with people directly, bypassing the middlemen.

bjt2n3904 10y ago
> Why then? My personal opinion? Doubling down on why they lost. Much easier to point fingers. </opinion> In all seriousness though, the ability to manipulate media is nothing new. What about "fake comments", or vote spamming?
RikNieu 10y ago
I remember when I heard that Trump had won, in contrast to what all the media sources "knew" about the outcome before. My first thought was, "Wonder what the narrative would be on this one. I smell a bull market for scapegoats right about now." And, hey! Whaddya know, a week or so afterwards and we have this fake news fetish.
awfgylbcxhrey 10y ago
I think it's simply because the election cycle was excellent fodder for the already-increasing fake news trend. Incidentally, here's an interesting podcast episode where they track down and interview a fake news producer. I don't recall them getting into specific timelines or an in-depth analysis of the trend, unfortunately: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episode-739-finding-the-fake-news-king http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episo...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
mcintyre1994 10y ago
Yup, I'm still trying to figure out if this whole thing is overblown or people actually consider things they see on Facebook to be reliable. I've never seen a news article on Facebook that wasn't by a news source I already knew about, and considered that to be reliable. Facebook just doesn't optimise for that, obviously. It just seems so obvious that the content on Facebook around news is and always has been trash that I'm amazed if enough people actually took it seriously enough for it to matter in the election.
- potatosoup 10y ago
  If anything, the content of the e-mail leaks (that the intelligence report from the other day confirmed to be authentic, although this was also known from verifying DKIM signatures) had a bigger impact.
- yellow_viper 10y ago
  I'm also concerned about who gets to decide what fake news is and filter it out. The 'real news' networks barely covered any of the DNC leaks
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > The 'real news' networks barely covered any of the DNC leaks That is not true at all. Fox covered it heavily, as far as I know; the New York Times and Washington Post both seemed to publish a new articles on the topic daily; CNN seemed to cover it heavily. Who didn't cover that story?
    - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
      Cnn covered the dnc leaks in a extraordinary biased way. Telling people it was illegal for them to view it themselves. Also the huffington post, cnn, msnbc, wapo, and nytimes did not cover it objectively. I hear tons of complaints from Bernie Supporters still to this day on campus.
      - 10y ago
skybrian 10y ago
A lot of people thought Hillary would win anyway, so they didn't care as much that some people believe crazy things. A mistake this big is a wake-up call.
hackuser 10y ago
> The sudden obsession with "fake news" started last November after the election That's not what I saw. There was plenty of coverage before that of the tidal wave of false information. In fact, fact-checking Trump's statements was a major issue and frequently reported.
- rokosbasilisk 10y ago
  Google trends suggest the opposite. It spiked right after the election. https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%2012-m&q=fake%20news https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%2012-m&q=fa...
  - hackuser 10y ago
    Thanks for providing some data. Maybe the term started being used then, but not the concept. At least in my information bubble, it was an ongoing issue.
    - rokosbasilisk 10y ago
      It seems wrong and honestly disingenious to dismiss the term fake news and its narrative just because you've heard it once before. Thats an anecdote, and we've had things like batboy and fake news about hillary clinton since the 90s. Also the huge spike on google trends right after the election is undoubtedly important and meaningful.
      - hackuser 10y ago
        Please reread my actual words. That's not what I wrote.
forgottenpass 10y ago
Why then? Because Trump won, and people saw this as a failing of the news to inform. And ignoring for a second the assumption that a better informed populus would have naturally voted Clinton... The finger was easier to point at hack "news" blogs than admit the organizations that are supposed to make up the respectable press outlets were all complicit in failing to focus on topics of good governance (candidates' positions, issues and suitability for office) instead preferred to focus on the horse race and reality show-esque manufactured drama.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  > And ignoring for a second the assumption that a better informed populus would have naturally voted Clinton... Exactly. There are a bunch of people who knew all about Trump's lies, distortions of reality, character flaws, and so on, and voted for him anyway. Why is that? Hillary was a deeply flawed candidate. First, she was the establishment candidate. This wasn't a good election to be wearing that mantle. Next, she gave off the vibe that she felt she was entitled to the presidency. There were more than two decades of scandals (never mind how much actual fire there was; after two decades of smoke surrounding her, people were sick of it). Her email servers were a very bad look; it gave the impression that she wanted to hide stuff so it wouldn't come back to haunt her during her presidential run, and it also gave the impression that she thought rules were for other people. The allegations of pay for play with the Clinton Foundation was a continuation of the corruption allegations, but it was very fresh. And for the working class, their financial position mostly got worse under Obama, and Clinton was viewed as a continuation of that. But sure, blame people voting for Trump on fake news. (For the record, I'm a conservative who could not in good conscience vote either for Trump or Hillary, but who was cheering for Hillary on election night because I viewed Trump as more dangerous.)
  - forgottenpass 10y ago
    The line you quoted was written because I wanted to focus on a different part of a faulty reasoning chain. I wanted to step over it entirely without agreeing or disagreeing. For what it's worth, I think it's a massively erroneous assumption. But it's also one I'm not particularly interested in discussing in the context of this thread.

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

moral of the digital giants: you're all idiots.

Gys 10y ago

Conclusion: 'We need to make online advertising – and its destructive click-and-share drive – less central to how we live, work and communicate. At the same time, we need to delegate more decision-making power to citizens – rather than the easily corruptible experts and venal corporations.' So the very same people (the masses, everybody) that 'created' the ad driven tech-giants by refusing to pay for anything, should have more decision power ?! The fake news is a hot topic because it indicates people are easily influenced by non-factual messages. More decisions by the public will only result in less rational decisions. Making the world even more unpredictable.

hackuser 10y ago
What do you suggest?

brighteyes 10y ago

I don't agree with 100% of the article, but overall it is convincing. I've been worrying about this stuff for a while, the article puts it into words fairly well. A lot of people don't trust "experts" anymore. The article touches on that, in relation to climate change denial, etc. But I think there is also something more specific there regarding science. Universities and colleges have become very liberal, with hardly any conservatives left. The public is aware of this, and constantly sees on the news the actions of progressives on campus (demonstrations, censorship, etc.), while conservatives are in the closet there. The downside to this liberal success is that the public image of "scientist" is now tied to "liberal". When half the population does not trust liberals, they won't trust scientists. If scientists were as politically balanced as the general public, the general public might trust them more. We might also have more conservative scientists say "climate change isn't a partisan issue, I'm a conservative like you." With the liberal dominance of academia, we've lost those things.

eropple 10y ago
What is there to suggest that the arrow of causality is going in the way that you imply? Personally, I am fairly convinced that academia and science being "liberal" is, I think, much more a characteristic of the underlying philosophies involved than some externally-imposed groupthink. "Conservatism", at least the modern variant, and "exploring and expanding knowledge for a greater good, while entertaining ideas that you don't necessarily agree with" are literally antithetical. I thought of myself as a conservative before I went to college and realized that, hey, American conservatism is not only railing against stuff like observational science, but "morally" against the existence of these fellow human beings who have done nothing wrong and deserve to exist. So, yeah, maybe "the public" would trust academia and the whole "science" thing more if it was More Conservative, but who's to say that it'd actually work as well? It's not like this stuff exists to tell people what they want to hear--and the epistemic closure of the American conservative is such an ideological purity test that if you're not telling them what they want to hear, you're not conservative. It's not on "science and academia" to break itself for such a warped thing, is it?
- godzillabrennus 10y ago

eruditely 10y ago

As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as "fake news" and either is some overt scheme to breed dissent, or some foolish attempt at doing away the relevance of their enemies, either way it lacks ingenuity and is probably one of the worst ploys ever created to convince the public of what i'm not sure. Ask, Who does this benefit? What do they seek to acquire? Who does this hurt credibility wise?

pcmaffey 10y ago

In an attention economy, our attention is our greatest resource. The business model of digital capitalism extracts our attention by whatever means it can. And we give it to them, because we don't understand its true value.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

acd 10y ago

The consumption has shifted from plain old media TV, Radio and News papers towards online social media with news feeds and blogs. Somehow along the way critical qualitative journalism was lost. There is probably a democratic issue there. Its noisy out there. Just because it looks like a news site does not mean it is serious with deep journalism behind it. How do we make sure we consume news from good sources?

d0mine 10y ago
It is worse than that. The disinformation is not accidental and it is not new (it always dominated the traditional media it was just less prominent in the social media). Ask yourself "who benefits" from a particular spin or a narrative you see in the news online. Who benefits from the climate change denial? Who benefits from the war with Iraq (or with other "Evil Enemy du Jour")? Who benefits from religious conflicts, immigration crisis? Who benefits from the existence of "too big to fail" financial institution? ...