5 ms·

I don't understand why everyone is going around talking about 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' and these other stupid terms. They're called lies and misinfor

I don't understand why everyone is going around talking about 'fake news' and 'alternative facts' and these other stupid terms. They're called lies and misinformation and propaganda. Call them what they are.

srean 10y ago
Indeed and most news is mostly fake/manufactured anyway. Distinctions lie in degree and intent only.
- milesrout 10y ago
  'Most news is mostly fake'? What?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rbanffy 10y ago
    That campaign is working.
    - seppin 10y ago
      Exactly, propaganda is from the last century. Why try to convince when you can discourage and confuse?
  - srean 10y ago
    I seem to have forgotten the place where they discovered the much feared Saddam's WMDs that we went to an expensive war for. Surely you can help.
thedonkeycometh 10y ago
hmmm... Misinterpreted Satire (Colbert Report, et al) has come under the shadow of being "fake" where it certainly isn't. But if someone believes a mock story as true, is that fake? This seems an impossible result of irony based humour that simply can't be squared.
sarreph 10y ago
I agree, and I can't imagine how much Chomsky is cringing about it right now[0]. But the sad truth is that psychological phenomena only become identifiable by the general public once they've entered our lexicon under catchy names, i.e. 'fake news'. I recently help but couldn't feel confused why 'fake news' is a new concept to people; why is everyone going on about it when (as you say) we've been subject to propaganda for as long as we can remember? I think it largely comes down to social media and how (as other commenters have pointed out) its utterly widespread use only now warrants the spread of misinformation as 'propaganda' — because it reaches so many people these days. The Internet™ was — to a layman — seen as ubiquitous with truth and objectivity... and now that it suddenly (well, duh) transpires that our social network feeds are chock-full of misleading content from untrustworthy sources — everyone's going nuts about it. [0] - http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/noam-chomsky-you-cant-educate-yourself-by-looking-things-up-online_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/noam-chomsky-you-cant-educat... --Edit, added Chomsky source, as proof-of-cringe
- dragontamer 10y ago
  > I recently help but couldn't feel confused why 'fake news' is a new concept to people; why is everyone going on about it when (as you say) we've been subject to propaganda for as long as we can remember? See "Yellow Journalism" for the late 1890s as an example. This country has literally been dealing with "fake news" since the invention of the printing press.
- codingmyway 10y ago
  Propaganda has always been around, along with sensationalism by MSM as anybody who's ever read about themselves in a paper can tell you. What is new is Clickbait news, which has different motivations and different effects. After seeing the virality of memes clickbait is now being used as propaganda to blur the truth by burying it and that is what I'd call fake news.
PJDK 10y ago
I was under the impression that "fake news" was originally referring to the phenomenon of "satire" websites that would publish click bait headlines with semi-convincing stories. "Obama signs executive order banning handguns" that sort of thing. The motivation to do so seemed to be financial but there could be social impacts to. It seems to have been rapidly adopted as a term to also include "opinions/interpretations I disagree with" - or in some cases "accurate things I wish weren't true". I think lies, misinformation and propaganda underplay the essentially chaotic nature of a lot of this stuff. An evil mastermind at work is seductive as an idea because the solution is just punching. I don't see any evidence that that is the truth though.
- milesrout 10y ago
  >I was under the impression that "fake news" was originally referring to the phenomenon of "satire" websites that would publish click bait headlines with semi-convincing stories. "Obama signs executive order banning handguns" that sort of thing. The motivation to do so seemed to be financial but there could be social impacts to. Kind of. Before it became (for lack of a better word) a meme, it essentially meant literally what it says: news website that published fake articles. This is what the British tabloids have been doing for decades, for what it's worth. After the US presidential election, it quickly became a buzzword referring to the sorts of websites that posted articles that aren't just misleading but are actively made up and are presented as being true. These were mostly very, very right-wing Trump-supporting websites. >It seems to have been rapidly adopted as a term to also include "opinions/interpretations I disagree with" - or in some cases "accurate things I wish weren't true". By the alt-right, yes. Trump and his supporters immediately co-opted the term to mean 'things I don't like', which Trump regularly applies to CNN, which is certainly not fake news by any reasonable definition. I don't really think that fake news is particularly chaotic. It's intentionally misleading, intentionally biased, intentionally targeted towards peoples' rasher emotions.
  - concernedmale 10y ago
    The Left seems to have bought into it too, with their utter incomprehension of how their anointed one could have lost the election.
Cephlin 10y ago
I thought 'fake news' was just comedy?
ThomPete 10y ago
Problem, especially in politics is that lies, misinformation and propaganda are often ment as facts, information and of interest to the public. The primary thing which defines what they are is ones political view.
jasode 10y ago
>Call them what they are. You're overlooking a phenomenon in living language where people want to label something specific and the existing term is too general. People want the extra connotations[1] in the more specific term. - too general: "lies" (could mean anything from a child's "fib" about eating a cookie or advertiser's false claims about their product) - more specific: "fake news" (which is a subset of "lies") The "fake news" has extra connotation of transmission via media (news, social websites, etc). If we all decided to always use the word "lies" to describe every variation of lies, we'd end up with cumbersome noun phrases and/or hyphenated combinations. E.g. "social-newsfeed-lies" or "news media for profit lies". Maybe some people really prefer to have the taxonomy of language embedded in the noun phrases (a linguistic form of Hungarian Notation?!?). Consider the wiki page on "fake news"[2]. Should the wiki editors delete that entire page and simply redirect all search queries of "fake news" to the main page titled "Lie"?[3] If so, a shade of meaning that was embedded in the term "fake news" would be lost in the process. (If you move the "fake news" from having it's own separate wiki to a subordinate heading within "Lie" article, that still acknowledges that "fake news" is a term with wide currency.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie
notadoc 10y ago
But those are big words and they sound so harsh!
espeed 10y ago
"As any sorcerer will tell you, if you know the name of a spirit, you have power over it" -- Gerry Sussman, SICP * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlbMuv-jix8#t=12m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlbMuv-jix8#t=12m50s Many/most of the general population seem to think "propaganda" only happens to other people, somewhere else, under a dictatorship, in Russia or North Korea for example. In contrast, many/most think the TV/media outlets they watch/consume (and most closely identify with) are the real news -- the true/fair/balanced/accurate news -- while the "other news" channels are "extreme" (MSNBC vs FOX NEWS) or "fake" (now ascribed to CNN). It's supposed to be illegal for the USG to use propaganda against its own citizens. Curiously the "Lobbying Restriction" in the US tax code for IRS 501(c)(3) describes lobbying as "carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation": http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/501.shtml http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/501.shtml. Call it propaganda, lies, manipulation, population control, fake news, the matrix, whatever -- I think the significance here is the general population now has a name for it. It resonates. It's gone viral. And now that it's entered the general lexicon and has become a real, legitimate topic of conversation, people will begin to see what's been hiding in plain sight. As the idea propagates through the system and gains strength, the veil will lose power as the curtain fades away. The question to ask is: What happens next?
eternalban 10y ago
Because calling them by their actual name takes the axle out of the hitched policy wagon for top down control of information systems.

srean 10y ago

Indeed and most news is mostly fake/manufactured anyway. Distinctions lie in degree and intent only.

milesrout 10y ago
'Most news is mostly fake'? What?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rbanffy 10y ago
  That campaign is working.
  - seppin 10y ago
    Exactly, propaganda is from the last century. Why try to convince when you can discourage and confuse?
- srean 10y ago
  I seem to have forgotten the place where they discovered the much feared Saddam's WMDs that we went to an expensive war for. Surely you can help.

thedonkeycometh 10y ago

hmmm... Misinterpreted Satire (Colbert Report, et al) has come under the shadow of being "fake" where it certainly isn't. But if someone believes a mock story as true, is that fake? This seems an impossible result of irony based humour that simply can't be squared.

sarreph 10y ago

I agree, and I can't imagine how much Chomsky is cringing about it right now[0]. But the sad truth is that psychological phenomena only become identifiable by the general public once they've entered our lexicon under catchy names, i.e. 'fake news'. I recently help but couldn't feel confused why 'fake news' is a new concept to people; why is everyone going on about it when (as you say) we've been subject to propaganda for as long as we can remember? I think it largely comes down to social media and how (as other commenters have pointed out) its utterly widespread use only now warrants the spread of misinformation as 'propaganda' — because it reaches so many people these days. The Internet™ was — to a layman — seen as ubiquitous with truth and objectivity... and now that it suddenly (well, duh) transpires that our social network feeds are chock-full of misleading content from untrustworthy sources — everyone's going nuts about it. [0] - http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/noam-chomsky-you-cant-educate-yourself-by-looking-things-up-online_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2017/01/03/noam-chomsky-you-cant-educat... --Edit, added Chomsky source, as proof-of-cringe

dragontamer 10y ago
> I recently help but couldn't feel confused why 'fake news' is a new concept to people; why is everyone going on about it when (as you say) we've been subject to propaganda for as long as we can remember? See "Yellow Journalism" for the late 1890s as an example. This country has literally been dealing with "fake news" since the invention of the printing press.
codingmyway 10y ago
Propaganda has always been around, along with sensationalism by MSM as anybody who's ever read about themselves in a paper can tell you. What is new is Clickbait news, which has different motivations and different effects. After seeing the virality of memes clickbait is now being used as propaganda to blur the truth by burying it and that is what I'd call fake news.

PJDK 10y ago

I was under the impression that "fake news" was originally referring to the phenomenon of "satire" websites that would publish click bait headlines with semi-convincing stories. "Obama signs executive order banning handguns" that sort of thing. The motivation to do so seemed to be financial but there could be social impacts to. It seems to have been rapidly adopted as a term to also include "opinions/interpretations I disagree with" - or in some cases "accurate things I wish weren't true". I think lies, misinformation and propaganda underplay the essentially chaotic nature of a lot of this stuff. An evil mastermind at work is seductive as an idea because the solution is just punching. I don't see any evidence that that is the truth though.

milesrout 10y ago
>I was under the impression that "fake news" was originally referring to the phenomenon of "satire" websites that would publish click bait headlines with semi-convincing stories. "Obama signs executive order banning handguns" that sort of thing. The motivation to do so seemed to be financial but there could be social impacts to. Kind of. Before it became (for lack of a better word) a meme, it essentially meant literally what it says: news website that published fake articles. This is what the British tabloids have been doing for decades, for what it's worth. After the US presidential election, it quickly became a buzzword referring to the sorts of websites that posted articles that aren't just misleading but are actively made up and are presented as being true. These were mostly very, very right-wing Trump-supporting websites. >It seems to have been rapidly adopted as a term to also include "opinions/interpretations I disagree with" - or in some cases "accurate things I wish weren't true". By the alt-right, yes. Trump and his supporters immediately co-opted the term to mean 'things I don't like', which Trump regularly applies to CNN, which is certainly not fake news by any reasonable definition. I don't really think that fake news is particularly chaotic. It's intentionally misleading, intentionally biased, intentionally targeted towards peoples' rasher emotions.
- concernedmale 10y ago
  The Left seems to have bought into it too, with their utter incomprehension of how their anointed one could have lost the election.

Cephlin 10y ago

I thought 'fake news' was just comedy?

ThomPete 10y ago

Problem, especially in politics is that lies, misinformation and propaganda are often ment as facts, information and of interest to the public. The primary thing which defines what they are is ones political view.

jasode 10y ago

>Call them what they are. You're overlooking a phenomenon in living language where people want to label something specific and the existing term is too general. People want the extra connotations[1] in the more specific term. - too general: "lies" (could mean anything from a child's "fib" about eating a cookie or advertiser's false claims about their product) - more specific: "fake news" (which is a subset of "lies") The "fake news" has extra connotation of transmission via media (news, social websites, etc). If we all decided to always use the word "lies" to describe every variation of lies, we'd end up with cumbersome noun phrases and/or hyphenated combinations. E.g. "social-newsfeed-lies" or "news media for profit lies". Maybe some people really prefer to have the taxonomy of language embedded in the noun phrases (a linguistic form of Hungarian Notation?!?). Consider the wiki page on "fake news"[2]. Should the wiki editors delete that entire page and simply redirect all search queries of "fake news" to the main page titled "Lie"?[3] If so, a shade of meaning that was embedded in the term "fake news" would be lost in the process. (If you move the "fake news" from having it's own separate wiki to a subordinate heading within "Lie" article, that still acknowledges that "fake news" is a term with wide currency.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connotation [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

notadoc 10y ago

But those are big words and they sound so harsh!

espeed 10y ago

"As any sorcerer will tell you, if you know the name of a spirit, you have power over it" -- Gerry Sussman, SICP * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlbMuv-jix8#t=12m50s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlbMuv-jix8#t=12m50s Many/most of the general population seem to think "propaganda" only happens to other people, somewhere else, under a dictatorship, in Russia or North Korea for example. In contrast, many/most think the TV/media outlets they watch/consume (and most closely identify with) are the real news -- the true/fair/balanced/accurate news -- while the "other news" channels are "extreme" (MSNBC vs FOX NEWS) or "fake" (now ascribed to CNN). It's supposed to be illegal for the USG to use propaganda against its own citizens. Curiously the "Lobbying Restriction" in the US tax code for IRS 501(c)(3) describes lobbying as "carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation": http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/501.shtml http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/501.shtml. Call it propaganda, lies, manipulation, population control, fake news, the matrix, whatever -- I think the significance here is the general population now has a name for it. It resonates. It's gone viral. And now that it's entered the general lexicon and has become a real, legitimate topic of conversation, people will begin to see what's been hiding in plain sight. As the idea propagates through the system and gains strength, the veil will lose power as the curtain fades away. The question to ask is: What happens next?

eternalban 10y ago

Because calling them by their actual name takes the axle out of the hitched policy wagon for top down control of information systems.