4 ms·

Crowdsourcing a "hitting them where it hurts" approach to fake news seems like an interesting and promising strategy to eliminate the income streams of websites

by rgejman 10y ago

Crowdsourcing a "hitting them where it hurts" approach to fake news seems like an interesting and promising strategy to eliminate the income streams of websites that promote hatred. I am trying to think of the downsides, i.e. how will this come to bite us in the butt...

amorphid 10y ago
A version of that idea was the winning project from the Reboot Democracy hackathon last month in San Francisco. They called it AdStrike. https://twitter.com/rebootdem/status/808456933795475456 https://twitter.com/rebootdem/status/808456933795475456 http://adstrike.us/ http://adstrike.us/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rgejman 10y ago
  Very neat. Thanks for the link.
candiodari 10y ago
Trump got elected. Imagine if the US government threatened to refuse to work with anyone who's got "inaccurate" news, according to the republican definition of the word. More generally, the definition of acceptable opinion will shift to something you will find unacceptable, and this system will still be in place. Note: before you say that'd be illegal, I'd like to remind you that the republicans control Congress, the Senate and the presidency, and soon the Supreme Court and the Fed. Illegal actions for the republicans is effectively only things that violate the constitution, and only when so judged by republican judges.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  This is my greatest hope for the next four years - that Trump's blatant exercise of state power against his political adversaries (where his predecessors have wielded it quietly for the same purpose) will drive Congress and the judiciary to curtail the power of the Presidency back to something resembling Constitutional limits.
LyndsySimon 10y ago
> I am trying to think of the downsides, i.e. how will this come to bite us in the butt... The right has discovered social media. If you start brigading right-wing sites by going after their advertisers, they're going to start doing the same thing to you. What's more, as the recent election showed, the right's brigading ability is far greater than the left's at the moment. What do you think would happen if Milo Yiannopoulos were to post the contact information for advertiser at Vox.com and the Huffington Post and tell his followers to demand that they pull their ads? I'd be willing to bet a good deal of money that it would be more impactful than an opinion piece in the NY Times.
- rgejman 10y ago
  I'm not sure this is true. Big companies tend to have more liberal politics because (a) it helps them retain talent (e.g. LGBT employees) and (b) liberal politics tends to be less offensive to population sub-groups. Do you really think advertisers would pull their funding from Vox or HuffPo absent very offensive headlines like the ones on Breitbart?
  - LyndsySimon 10y ago
    > Big companies tend to have more liberal politics because (a) it helps them retain talent (e.g. LGBT employees) and (b) liberal politics tends to be less offensive to population sub-groups. I'm not even a conservative, and my choice of employers is drastically limited by politics. I won't work in California, New York, Maryland, Illinois, or several other states because of their gun laws. I know I'm not alone in that. The talent pool for companies with liberal politics is artificially limited by the liberal states where they are located. There is an echo chamber effect at play that the left seems to be completely blind to. Likewise, I see no evidence that liberal politics are less offensive to population sub-groups across the country. In major cities, sure, but that's only around half of the country's population. I also suspect that you're conflating inclusivity with liberalism. Yes, LGBT issues have been a liberal cause, but the resistance to that is waning very quickly. To most people outside of the major cities, "liberalism" means "higher taxes", "anti-business", "welfare", "pro-union", and "anti-gun". Each of those alienates a substantial part of the country. > Do you really think advertisers would pull their funding from Vox or HuffPo absent very offensive headlines like the ones on Breitbart? You may not find HuffPo or Vox offensive, but the right absolutely does. Consider things like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fox-news-eye-for-an-eye_us_56a9790fe4b0016489225a54 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fox-news-ey... > Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S. In short, there is a culture war in full swing in the US. The left has been winning that war for a long time, but they're not recognizing the rise of real resistance to their agenda. That's in large part because it doesn't look like what we're used to seeing as a movement.

by rgejman 10y ago

amorphid 10y ago

A version of that idea was the winning project from the Reboot Democracy hackathon last month in San Francisco. They called it AdStrike. https://twitter.com/rebootdem/status/808456933795475456 https://twitter.com/rebootdem/status/808456933795475456 http://adstrike.us/ http://adstrike.us/

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
rgejman 10y ago
Very neat. Thanks for the link.

candiodari 10y ago

Trump got elected. Imagine if the US government threatened to refuse to work with anyone who's got "inaccurate" news, according to the republican definition of the word. More generally, the definition of acceptable opinion will shift to something you will find unacceptable, and this system will still be in place. Note: before you say that'd be illegal, I'd like to remind you that the republicans control Congress, the Senate and the presidency, and soon the Supreme Court and the Fed. Illegal actions for the republicans is effectively only things that violate the constitution, and only when so judged by republican judges.

LyndsySimon 10y ago
This is my greatest hope for the next four years - that Trump's blatant exercise of state power against his political adversaries (where his predecessors have wielded it quietly for the same purpose) will drive Congress and the judiciary to curtail the power of the Presidency back to something resembling Constitutional limits.

LyndsySimon 10y ago

> I am trying to think of the downsides, i.e. how will this come to bite us in the butt... The right has discovered social media. If you start brigading right-wing sites by going after their advertisers, they're going to start doing the same thing to you. What's more, as the recent election showed, the right's brigading ability is far greater than the left's at the moment. What do you think would happen if Milo Yiannopoulos were to post the contact information for advertiser at Vox.com and the Huffington Post and tell his followers to demand that they pull their ads? I'd be willing to bet a good deal of money that it would be more impactful than an opinion piece in the NY Times.

rgejman 10y ago
I'm not sure this is true. Big companies tend to have more liberal politics because (a) it helps them retain talent (e.g. LGBT employees) and (b) liberal politics tends to be less offensive to population sub-groups. Do you really think advertisers would pull their funding from Vox or HuffPo absent very offensive headlines like the ones on Breitbart?
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  > Big companies tend to have more liberal politics because (a) it helps them retain talent (e.g. LGBT employees) and (b) liberal politics tends to be less offensive to population sub-groups. I'm not even a conservative, and my choice of employers is drastically limited by politics. I won't work in California, New York, Maryland, Illinois, or several other states because of their gun laws. I know I'm not alone in that. The talent pool for companies with liberal politics is artificially limited by the liberal states where they are located. There is an echo chamber effect at play that the left seems to be completely blind to. Likewise, I see no evidence that liberal politics are less offensive to population sub-groups across the country. In major cities, sure, but that's only around half of the country's population. I also suspect that you're conflating inclusivity with liberalism. Yes, LGBT issues have been a liberal cause, but the resistance to that is waning very quickly. To most people outside of the major cities, "liberalism" means "higher taxes", "anti-business", "welfare", "pro-union", and "anti-gun". Each of those alienates a substantial part of the country. > Do you really think advertisers would pull their funding from Vox or HuffPo absent very offensive headlines like the ones on Breitbart? You may not find HuffPo or Vox offensive, but the right absolutely does. Consider things like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fox-news-eye-for-an-eye_us_56a9790fe4b0016489225a54 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-fox-news-ey... > Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S. In short, there is a culture war in full swing in the US. The left has been winning that war for a long time, but they're not recognizing the rise of real resistance to their agenda. That's in large part because it doesn't look like what we're used to seeing as a movement.