23 ms·

We’re losing the information war

221 points by dthal 10y ago

eveningcoffee 10y ago
It started with the Boston marathon bombing, four years ago. University of Washington professor Kate Starbird was sifting through thousands of tweets sent in the aftermath and noticed something strange. “There was a significant volume of social-media traffic that blamed the Navy SEALs for the bombing,” ... Same thing after the mass shooting that killed nine at Umpqua Community College in Oregon: a burst of social-media activity calling the massacre a fake, a stage play by “crisis actors” for political purposes. I have noticed that infowars.com, when I have checked, has aligned with the Russian narrative. I have observed it casually but it has been too noticeable to just ignore it.
- colemickens 10y ago
  And keep in mind that our President has appeared on Alex Jones's (infowar) show, showers him with praise, and talks to him with some frequency [1]. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-alex-jones-calls-phone-advice-infowars-conspiracy-theorist-far-right-sandy-hook-a7595136.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum...
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Our President made his name in Reality TV! That's no worse than The Gipper, I know. But somehow "Death Valley Days" doesn't seem so bad.
    - justaman 10y ago
      This isnt true. He was very popular before reality tv was a thing.
    - tzs 10y ago
      Reagan was governor of California for eight years between his acting career and becoming President. That gives considerable relevant experience for the Presidency. Trump's got nothing like that in his background.
      - giardini 10y ago
        So his years as a business executive count for nothing?
        tptacek 10y ago
        They count for experience in business.
        tzs 10y ago
        Being governor of a state, especially a state with a very large economy that spans most sectors, a large and diverse population, and a very diverse geography gives direct experience in a large fraction of what a President does. All that is really missing is commanding a military and making agreements with foreign governments. Being a businessman doesn't give anywhere near that level of relevant experience.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Being governor of a state, especially a state with a very large economy that spans most sectors, a large and diverse population, and a very diverse geography gives direct experience in a large fraction of what a President does. All that is really missing is commanding a military and making agreements with foreign governments. Well, except that governors make agreements with foreign governments [0] and command militaries [1]. [0] http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ln-climate-change-agreement-mexico-california-jerry-brown-signs-20140728-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ln-climate-chan... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Military_Department https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Military_Departme...
        giardini 10y ago
        So is there no businessman whom you would consider suitable for President of the USA? And would _any_ past governor of California be a good candidate for President of the USA? What states would you consider suitable training-grounds for governors who wish to transition to POTUS? Is there _any_ job, civilian or military, other than state governor, that you would consider as suitable preparation for POTUS? As a reference point: "I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University." - William F. Buckley, Jr.
- fwn 10y ago
  That must mean they are evil spies, no? ...or just idiots. Not all unfortunate behavior is an intentional attempt to manipulate.
  - hubert123 10y ago
    or maybe the russian narrative happens to be right. I know, UNTHINKABLE! How can russians ever be right on any topic on anything?
    - mirimir 10y ago
      Well, Russia has been repeatedly invaded. Overrun by the Mongols. The French, the Germans, the British, the Germans again. And threatened with nuclear attack by the US, after Japan surrendered. So they're paranoid, perhaps understandably.
      - varjag 10y ago
        About every nation in Europe has been repeatedly invaded, this is hardly unique with Russia. At least they didn't lose their statehood for a couple centuries like Poland or got a third of population exterminated like Belarus or got starved off into cannibalism like much of Ukraine.
        rijrjrgyg 10y ago
        Russia lost 20 million people in WWII you dumb fuck, a loss they've never really recoverd from. How many people died in your country during world war 2? Fuck HN and their shit commenters.
        giardini 10y ago
        rijrjrgyg says: "Russia lost 20 million people in WWII." While rudely stated, The factual content of rijrjrgyg's post is an undeniable outrage of history "Losing statehood" would, in comparison, be a walk in the park. "World War II casualties of the Soviet Union": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the...
- geowwy 10y ago
  Infowars is anti-globalist. The Russian state is anti-globalist. Not really surprising that they'd have similar talking points. Peter Hitchens does a good job of explaining why conservative anti-globalists like Russia – "Why I Like Vladimir Putin" https://youtu.be/UeO44STvnJw https://youtu.be/UeO44STvnJw
  - giardini 10y ago
    And What is "anti-globalist"? Paul Samuelson's paper shows that the simple models free trade and globalism are based on are both incorrect and especially not all sunshine and flowers for the USA: "Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization" by Paul A. Samuelson http://www2.hawaii.edu/~noy/362texts/samuelson.pdf http://www2.hawaii.edu/~noy/362texts/samuelson.pdf from the paper: "Act II, however, deals some weighty blows against economists’ oversimple complacencies about globalization. It shifts focus to a new and different kind of Chinese technical innovation. In Act II, China’s progress takes place (by imitation or home ingenuity or . . . ) in good 1, in which the United States has previously had a comparative advantage. (High I.Q. secondary school graduates in South Dakota, who had been receiving from my New York Bank wages one-and-a-half times the U.S. minimum wage for handling phone calls about my credit card, have been laid off since 1990; a Bombay outsourcing unit has come to handle my inquiries. Their Bombay wage rate falls far short of South Dakota’s, but in India their wage far exceeds what their uncles and aunts used to earn.) What does Ricardo-Mill arithmetic tell us about realistic U.S. long-run effects from such outsourcings? In Act II, the new Ricardian productivities imply that, this invention abroad that gives to China some of the comparative advantage that had belonged to the United States can induce for the United States permanent lost per capita real income—an Act II loss even equal to all of Act I(a)’s 100 percent gain over autarky. And, mind well, this would not be a short run impact effect. Ceteris paribus it can be a permanent hurt." That phrase, "...an Act II loss even equal to all of Act I(a)’s 100 percent gain... " is haunting.
  - seppin 10y ago
    > The Russian state is anti-globalist lol they are anti-globalist in that they can't play a significant role globally anymore, so they want to bring down everyone that does / can.
- imron 10y ago
  > I have noticed that infowars.com, when I have checked, has aligned with the Russian narrative Damn ruskies are everywhere! > but it has been too noticeable to just ignore it. Just like US spending on science, space, and technology correlates almost identically with suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
- bordercases 10y ago
  It's worth comprehending that there are other adversaries to the US other than the Russians. US OpSec sucks, it's punctured by not just the Russians but the Chinese, Israelis, Saudi Arabians, Syrians, Scientologists, Mormons, American communists and anarchists... the media is liable to focus on Russia because it's an easy target, not because it's the real one (or ones).
bordercases 10y ago
One thing I kind of wonder is why is there an expectation that the political game at large is supposed to be interpretable or legible? In other words, why shouldn't politics be strange? In most adversarial games we're bound to encounter sabotage and misinformation, with circumstantial evidence being the only kind you can encounter. So full out dismissal of conspiracies just because they "seem like tin-foil hat stuff" seems naive. It's hard work to dismiss bullshit but equivocally easy to dismiss what might otherwise be viable paths of inquiry. It is possible to take a rational approach. http://www.collativelearning.com/conspiracy%20theories%20-%20chapter%208.html http://www.collativelearning.com/conspiracy%20theories%20-%2...
- pizza 10y ago
  Just watched a short video by one of my favorite podcasters, Doug Lain, on Althusser's concept of ideology [0]. To Althusser, there are two ways to make a society think a certain way: via repression (military force, economic force, etc) or ideology (why a pine tree in your house during Christmas, anyway?). What you're saying seems to me like using dismissal as a repressive force (by forfeit of social accord/klout/capital) for the sustenance of ideology (in this case, that things are as they seem without need of intricate/conspiracy theories) [0] What is an ideology? (or Althusser was crazy?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4NNDZ4X63I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4NNDZ4X63I
  - bordercases 10y ago
    p much yo
    - pizza 10y ago
      word
- erikb 10y ago
  I think most people just don't know that the political game is a strategical, competitive game. Most people believe the common narrative that politics is the service(!) that should make your life comfortable on a city-wide, country-wide and global level which you pay for with taxes. E.g., $10/month to netflix for that I can watch tv shows. $400/month to government for that I don't get robbed by barbarian hordes from other countries. It's not the smartest point of view, but it's very common.
mirimir 10y ago
There's nothing new about lulz. I mean, look at 4chan/b/, LiveJournal, Encyclopedia Dramatica, the 8chan boards, etc. What's new is Twitter blasting it to the masses. And various players figuring out how to automate and monetize.
- ycombinete 10y ago
  The difference between "lulz" and this is that the lulz is trollish; this seeks to be taken seriously, and, horrifically, often takes itself seriously.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    It might seem that way. But lulz always seeks to be taken seriously. And the fact that some people take it seriously, or at least seriously enough to get upset about it, is what makes it so lulzy. To those who get that, it's just lulz. What's new is that Twitter brought lulz to defenseless masses.
    - dukeluke 10y ago
      Don't group everyone together like that. I used to frequent 4chan, and eventually joined in the trolly lulz threads. It was all just for fun. What made the site fun for me was the recognition of a foreign culture, the assimilation period where I began recognizing what made the site's culture unique, then a sense of being because I recognized the mentality the site formed. Like many things, it all had to do with our tribal evolution. Some may take lulz seriously, but don't assume everyone does.
  - seppin 10y ago
    > The difference between "lulz" and this is that the lulz is trollish; this seeks to be taken seriously, and, horrifically, often takes itself seriously. Lolz was not backed by a state, with specific geo-political goals.
    - mirimir 10y ago
shubhamjain 10y ago
> The mainstream press periodically waded into this swamp, but it only backfired. Its occasional fact checks got circulated as further evidence: If the media is trying to debunk it, then the conspiracy must be true. To what extent, then, is fake news culpable? If people are hell-bent on rebuffing the facts, how significant of an effect could targeting fake news websites have? I have seen similar thing happen in India, particularly forums with right-wing majority. Anything that sounds remotely critical is quickly shot down as a product of biased media. Every decision centric to right-wing view, no matter how damaging, is regarded as unassailable and they would fight to death to defend it. Arguing with facts is almost a lost cause . It's been a long time since I was regular part of those forums, but, I do occasionally get to see their views on social media. No change whatsoever in their adverse opinions. I have a feeling that changing views of people for the most part is an uphill battle. Most people quickly associate their identity to a view and absolutely refuse to budge.
- intended 10y ago
  >To what extent, then, is fake news culpable? Definitions first, fake news is not bad headlines, or bad reporting. Fake news is specifically the creation of websites that look like legitimate news sites, with what look like legitimate articles, in order to generate click and ad revenue. SO a concrete example is the creation of a site called "Mercury Sun reviewer", with articles talking about how Hillary is about to be indicted. Its not really news, its fiction presented with a Headline and a byline. --- For India, we've not really been dealing with Fake news in this manner, aside from maybe whatsapp forwards and propaganda. The creation of masses of website just in order to convert people to click bots, doesnt happen. Internet penetration isnt high enough to afford it. --- So fake news IS an issue, BECAUSE people will believe it without checking. Its a monetization scheme which callously targets politics and power. The definition has been bent out of shape since it got mainstream. I think for the HN crowd, this definition should work and stick --- And I think I know those forums.
  - fwn 10y ago
    So, according to this definition, standard news sites are incapable of ever producing fake news since their website also serve as legitimate news site? That does little more then raising the costs of implementing manipulative falsehoods by making the traditional news a gatekeeper.
zigzigzag 10y ago
"News at 11: Humanities professor shocked to discover many people disagree with mainstream academic & globalist groupthink" (and no, I don't think social science is a real science) You don't need to study this stuff professionally to see what's going on here. 1) Trust in institutions has been falling steadily for a long time. That's because modern institutions are not trustworthy. Vast conspiracies were posited, laughed off as tin-foil-hattery, and later exposed as true (Snowden being the canonical example). Large federal governments like the US Federal Govt and the EU became more and more opaque, with ever larger and more byzantine bureaucracies and regulatory frameworks that seemed to create a game of tails we win, heads you lose. Judges interpret the law to suit their political preferences, not what a plain reading or common sense would seem to imply. And so on. 2) Whilst trust in institutions has been falling steadily for a long time, trust in the mainstream media has collapsed dramatically in relatively recent times. This too is fully deserved: people don't trust the traditional news outlets (in the USA) because they lie a lot and are nakedly biased. The difficulty of finding any national newspapers that supported Trump and the practice of outlets that had never declared before in their history declaring for the 100% globalist/liberal-elite-style Clinton, summed this phenomenon up. The subsequent artificial mass hysteria over Russia and the (dubious at best) Russian "hacking" of the election reinforced this idea: the media is as locked in a form of groupthink as Washington itself is. You can't repeatedly teach people that there are no reliable sources of information, and that conspiracy theories are sometimes real, and then act surprised when large numbers of people start seeking out alternative sources of information that more frequently support conspiracy theories.
- endtime 10y ago
  Whoever downvoted this: Downvoting should be for comments that are low quality or don't contribute to the conversation, not perfectly fine comments with which you disagree.
  - fwn 10y ago
    I don't necessarily disagree with everything the parent wrote, nor did I downvote, but maybe "I don't think social science is a real science" is not the greatest starting point for making a genuinely social point. It's like saying "I don't think physics actually exists, but here's my take on gravity."
deleted 10y ago
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bsaul 10y ago
I think it shouldn't be forgotten that all this craze have a much easier time spreading since the western states did spread a lot of lies through the media in the second half of the 20th century. One example i've actually lived, is when tchernobyl exploded, french media showed maps of the radioactive cloud stopping at the borders (due to winds) and never going in. This was of course a huge lie that e everybody now admits. Then, we had the false testimonies at the UN of various sorts ( koweitien poor lady in the first gulf war that was in fact a member of the royal family), and colin powell for the second one. And if i go back in time, JFK is the mother of all conspiracy theory, since no true investigation clearly explained what happened, and so the only explanation we have is the one of a lone crazy guy ( which remains unconvincing to many people). So, all in all, i would say this trend of systematically questionning the official explanation is a very healthy one. It just needs to become more mature, and maybe be one day a new form of investigative journalism.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- veli_joza 10y ago
  This is not a "trend of systematically questioning the official explanation". This is blatantly and aggressively pushing out propaganda using conspiracy theories as medium. This shit won't teach people to critical thinking, it only generates more noise to defend against. People will learn to ignore news even more than they do now. Maybe they build a twitter and facebook spam-filter to help with noise. So we isolate ourselves into bubbles that no new idea can penetrate. Basically, the reverse from systematically questioning the information.
  - bsaul 10y ago
    I disagree. The premise for someone to believe all this BS, isn't that they're convinced by the new theory, but that everything the conventional media or the government say is probably false, and made to hide some hidden agenda. That's the root upon which all the additional propaganda can prosper. And the embarrassing truth than conventional media and politics refuse to admit is that there are good reasons for people not to believe them anymore.
hubert123 10y ago
"we kind of laughed at it" The lazy traditional mass media thinks it can just ignore any nefarious angle or pretend that it doesn't exist and that it cannot exist. The best example is the Sandy Hook conspiracy. I have no stake in this game, but I'm as interested as anybody to hear both sides and it turns out that CNN will not ever provide the other side of the story while infowars will. It's that easy: Infowars does its actual journalistic job and questions everything. That's what CNN is supposed to be doing. That's what the are all supposed to be doing as journalists, you should be JUMPING at the option of Sandy Hook being a false flag. If it isnt, that's even better. But I want to hear all angles about it. There is no value in being blindly trusting of the government. I'm not an american but I'm pretty sure that one core value is to distrust the government, to be ready for it to turn evil. I listen to Alex Jones for many hours every week and he is definitely hyperbolic (which can be funny and this is often the goal -partly) and he sometimes gets things wrong too. But he provides much more value than reading the equivalent of a machine generated press release on CNN.com.
- empath75 10y ago
  Don't let your mind be so open that it falls out.
- phaed 10y ago
  Reporting is about facts. Reporters should question, based on factual evidence. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones start with the conclusion and then try to find ways to bend news stories into it, ignoring things that don't fit.
  - hubert123 10y ago
    Alex Jones is basically a journalist that mostly does opinion pieces. There is nothing wrong with that. If I were you, I would use the word "fact" a little less confidently, facts are only facts until disproven and they are always tied to other facts which can in turn be disproven.
    - exodust 10y ago
phaed 10y ago
Does anyone have the list of the 81 source sites that Starbird cataloged?
losteverything 10y ago
<<"If we think of this as a virus, I wouldn’t know how to vaccinate for it.” Stop reading that stuff. Take responsibility of your own media health Just like you did when you quit smoking. I am not responsible for my neighbor smoking and I am not responsible for my neighbor reading NAtional Enquirer or Twitter or domestic Com
uncle_d 10y ago
This lady talks as if false flag state-sponsored terrorism for political purposes does not exist. As evidence that it most certainly does, I would suggest the work of Dr. Daniele Ganser (University of Basel, Switzerland) on Operation Gladio - NATO-sponsored terrorism in post-WW2 Europe, a notable example of which is the Bologna rail staion massacre, which killed 85. https://www.danieleganser.ch/assets/files/Inhalte/Interviews/Zeitungsinterviews/GlobalResearch%20(2016)%20-%20NATOs%20Secret%20Armies.pdf https://www.danieleganser.ch/assets/files/Inhalte/Interviews... He also did an interesting lecture on 9/11, examining the evidence on the tenth anniversary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUT7XgLiTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUT7XgLiTY
Mendenhall 10y ago
Its because of things like "russians hacked election" I see people say it and repeat it everywhere and on many news sites. Now when I look at the evidence with a critical eye based only on facts, what I see is "DNC hacked". Now you may go on to say it may have effected election etc but there is no proof whatsoever that the actual "election" was hacked. Huge distinction to me. Lot of it boils down to incentive to get clicks. "Russians hack election" will get more clicks than "DNC hacked". Waits for downvotes from people who believe russians actually hacked the election!
- lr4444lr 10y ago
  Not to mention, taken on the word - no evidence declassified - from the intelligence agencies most of these people were howling about after the Edward Snowden revelations.
- gipp 10y ago
  Nobody, in any significant numbers, has ever claimed or believed that there were direct manipulations of vote counts. This is a pure strawman. Saying the Russians "hacked the election" is just a sloppy shorthand for the, at this point well-established, attacks on the process that did occur. Nobody is intending it to mean vote-count changes.
  - rhino369 10y ago
    It's sloppy biased shorthand. How you summarize things has huge consequences to how people think about things. "Hacked the election" makes it seem like the results are illegitimate. Informed people know the difference, but the average person is watching like 5 minutes of a news a day and reads the headlines and maybe the lead. For a profession that is so cautious it'll throw the world "alleged" before someone who is caught on camera murdering someone, I think it's a pretty big sign of some bias. I'm sure the right wing bias'd papers have found a term that minimizes the hacking too.
    - falcolas 10y ago
      I have to ask - if the information presented to the public about the election candidates was false, how can we expect that the public made a reasonably informed choice about those candidates? Strikes me as a perfectly valid definition of a hack; a social engineering hack, but a hack all the same. We see those all the time in our own life; we call it fraud or failure when it succeeds, and attempt to roll back to a known good state. Why is an election different?
ryanmarsh 10y ago
There seems to be a lot of people who cannot handle the possibility of the NY Times being wrong enough to be skeptical about. They get very upset and worried about what happens when people loose faith in such institutions. They then delegitimize the distrust others have for traditionally trusted news orgs and reduce people who read alt sources (left or right) to fools. You can call them idiots all you want but in my adult memory there have been several scandals at the Times that have challenged my trust. Until you can empathize with someone who reads infowars you're never going to solve the problem of fake news.
- goalieca 10y ago
  So let's keep score. NYT. Wins: too many to count. Losses: 3 I don't quite see your point.
  - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
    >>There seems to be a lot of people who cannot handle the possibility of the NY Times being wrong enough to be skeptical about. >NYT. Wins: too many to count. Losses: 3. I don't quite see your point. You're illustrating it.
    - throwaway91111 10y ago
      Ok, but compare it to most any other news source. What's your point? You're not making it.
      - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
        >To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false. -Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell 14 June 1807 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_spe...
camperman 10y ago
If you're suspicious of Sandy Hook then I suggest watching this lecture by Sofia Smallstorm here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJYQihoNNuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJYQihoNNuQ The inescapable conclusion for any reasonable person when presented with all the facts is that the whole thing was staged. Is that outrageous? Does sharing this make me a lunatic conspiracy theorist? Not really. It just means the US mainstream media isn't doing its job.
- FiatLuxDave 10y ago
  I'm the last person to say that the US mainstream media is doing a good job. That said, I see you've been on HN long enough to not be surprised that all kinds of people can be found on here. It turns out that at least one person here was a personal friend of one of the Sandy Hook parents back in high school. Who played D&D with him, talked about Commodore computers with him, and who remembers when his roommate got mad and put peanut butter in his floppy drive. It's bad enough that my old DM lost his child in a senseless tragedy. But when people try to insist that his greatest pain was all a hoax, that the child he lost maybe didn't even exist, that's just beyond the pale. Maybe it's easier for me to have all the facts because I know people affected. But thousands of people know these families - have you considered talking to someone who knows them? No matter how bad the media is, some stories are about real people, who can hurt. Please consider that when you spread bullshit online.
  - alikoneko 10y ago
    A tenured professor at the university I attended was fired for continuously harassing Sandy Hook families for death certificates of their children. It was a terrible cry for attention for his blog. I'm not capable of doing the mental gymnastics that makes his actions okay.
  - camperman 10y ago
    > That said, I see you've been on HN long enough to not be surprised that all kinds of people can be found on here. Well, quite. For example, I am a coder, an investigative journalist and a digital forensics consultant with a scarily good track record over the last 25 years even if I do say so myself. > It's bad enough that my old DM lost his child in a senseless tragedy. But when people try to insist that his greatest pain was all a hoax, that the child he lost maybe didn't even exist, that's just beyond the pale. Maybe it's easier for me to have all the facts because I know people affected. You have some facts? Great. What are they? Because so far you haven't given me any, just a second-hand sob story which may or may not be true. What's this guy's name? Where can I check out his details? Does he even exist? Because there isn't a single scrap of evidence to prove that Adam Lanza even existed, just for starters, let alone how this 120 pound kid with development problems managed to carry such a heavy arsenal into the school and kill so many people in under a minute. Where are the crime scene photos? Just one will do. Why isn't there any video or camera evidence of the shooter? Who cleaned up the blood? There are strict federal laws governing that. Not a single photo of a body. Not the shooter. Not his mother. Not one child. Not one teacher. Nothing. All kids were ruled dead at the scene. Which if you've ever talked to an EMT you never rule a person dead at the scene unless they've been decapitated. You can get shot in the head and a doctor can revive you. But no, everyone was ruled dead at the scene and there are no pictures of any blood, bodies, shell casings, anything. > No matter how bad the media is, some stories are about real people, who can hurt. Please consider that when you spread bullshit online. Yeah I'm deeply moved. Not.
jordanpg 10y ago
Yes, the prominent center, center-left, and leftish new outlets (NYT, WSJ, Economist, WP, etc.) have some bias in their writing. However, most of the authors and staff at those organizations are extremely professional and take their mandate to report and analyze very seriously. To me, this is self-evident 95% of the time. To the extent that there is bias, it is slight and subtle. Opinion is labeled as such. Pointing to specific counter-examples is like identifying NASA with the failures of the Challenger -- it completely misses the forest for the trees. What there is not is a serious right-leaning counter-weight to this, and that is the vacuum into which the manifestly untrue and unserious outlets stream. Why this is true is an interesting and controversial discussion in its own right.
- bb101 10y ago
  Here in the UK, we have the Spectator magazine, whose writers are very professional and generally support a conservative position.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  WSJ is at least center-right.
  - dude01 10y ago
    That's true, but their opinion/editorial pages are extreme right-leaning, they're different teams.
    - tomhoward 10y ago
      “Extreme right”? Some proportionality would be good. “Extreme” when used in the context of political ideology implies some form of totalitarianism; i.e., Nazism, Fascism (extreme right), Stalinism, Maoism (extreme left). The WSJ, from the little of it I read, tends to adopt generally classical liberal or libertarian positions; i.e, moderately right-leaning economically, moderately liberal on social issues, generally in favour of more liberty across the board, and thus opposed to authoritarianism. There's a valid debate to be had about the merits of these positions, but to describe the WSJ as “extreme right” does an injustice to the many who've suffered and died – and who continue to do so to this day – due to genuinely extreme political ideologies.
rrggrr 10y ago
Contributing factor: Point of view by editors and producers of mainstream media. The Podesta emails reveals much dissonance provoking coziness between the media and the political establishment. Audiences want muckrakers and are not getting it.
uptownJimmy 10y ago
"Until you can empathize with someone who reads infowars..." Absurdity defined.
- jerf 10y ago
  Empathize != agree with. That is a modern perversion of the term.
  - 1_2__3 10y ago
    Be careful staring into the abyss.
  - uptownJimmy 10y ago
    I do not empathize with, nor do I agree with, people who wilfully wallow in paranoia and stupidity. Does that clarify my position sufficiently?
- dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002997 and marked it off-topic.
codingmyway 10y ago
This is a particularly american problem. It's not Alex Jones or Breitbart or Hannity or Limbaugh it's the fact that profits come before truth and making money by appealing to human nature through click bait, fear mongering, exaggeration, conspiracy theories is the only thing that matters. The internet killed the profitability of real journalism and free press and might take down democracy with it.
- justaman 10y ago
  If you dont get your news from PBS/NPR first, _then_ major ad driven media as supplemental in the US, I honestly think you are doing yourself a disservice. People like their own echo chambers over being challenged to think analytically. *not to imply PBS/NPR isnt slightly bias
  - problems 10y ago
    I'm a big fan of a lot of the work NPR does, but I disagree. I think applying this to the general population is a recipe for bias and disaster. Those agencies have their own slew of motivations which differ from others. Consider them as a source, certainly, but no less fallible than others. If you hold a certain set of opinions then NPR/PBS doesn't "challenge" you much at all. I'm generally a lefty but I started reading libertarian slanted articles and I have to admit they've got some interesting points of view on things that I hadn't considered before - that's the sort of challenge you want. If you want to be challenged, look to the other side of the spectrum.
    - codingmyway 10y ago
      I should add that the profit motive isn't unique to the right, the left just gain viewers through either comedy and satire or mainstream consumerism, which is more acceptable but still doesn't necessarily incentivize the truth, especially if that truth clashes with a sponsor/advertiser. The BBC definitely has a political bias and I certainly wouldn't rely on it and swallow their coverage, or more often lack of coverage, like my parents would anymore than I would RT but not being puppets of advertisers gives a different view that the US lacks given that NPR is almost a token service that is kept subdued and out of the view of those who don't specifically go to it and is seen as boring instead of hard hitting journalism. I like free speech advocates on both sides. YouTube has Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, Sam Seeder and others and the types of guests they have provide a larger view of things. I wish there were more with a less US centric view but the libertarian scene seems much stronger in the US, maybe as a reaction to all the crap.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
Good article. I thought the statement ""The true common denominator, she found, is anti-globalism"" makes a lot of sense. For those of us who like to maintain national sovernty (thus dislike 'trade' deals) and mistrust globalists, the news media does seem biased. I am in my 60s, and most of my life I could be considered a slightly conservative democrat, but in the last decade I have embraced a philosophy of 'small is better' and 'distributed is better than centralized.' It was an eye opener for me how much the news media favored Clinton and in general treated Sanders unfairly. Anyway, living through last year really made me believe that the news media is just a tool for the financial elite.
- griffinmmahon 10y ago
  A question only intended as such: could you explain what you mean by the word "globalists"? Thanks! e: I should clarify that I'm not being sarcastic or snarky and am genuinely interested in what "globalists" means -- I've never read it or used it, I am hesitant to look it up because I feel it might not get a fair shake in whatever I read, and was wondering how this user uses it.
  - steamer25 10y ago
    I'll try to do both sides justice although I'm sure there are people representing either side that could correct me on many aspects... I think of 'globalist' as being something of a perjorative/having at least a slight negative connotation. It describes a perspective where all humans are part of a global community/family. You could contrast it with 'nationalism' (which has it's own negative connotations--the two sides provide derision against each other) in which nations should be independent and sovereign. Critics of globalism argue that it centralizes too much control, planning, finances and government, leaving locals with less autonomy. Nationalists are not fans of e.g., the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, etc. Critics of nationalism argue that international cooperation brings many benefits and that nationalists are merely racist or xenophobic. It's harder to list organizations that globalists are not a fan of because most nations have at least one nationalist movement. Brexit would be a good example in the Anglosphere.
kingkawn 10y ago
Either it feels like something and therefore is believable, or it is rote repetition of cultural mores that once upon a time felt like something, and is in the end not believable. The fate of all systems of knowledge that prize conformist structural adherence over emotional breadth is failure.
RockyMcNuts 10y ago
Some arenas devolve into full-blown contests of self-interest and strategic game-playing. Politics, stock markets are pretty important so it's not too surprising that it happens. But as humans we don't spend all our lives trying to mislead others and scraping for small edges. People contribute to this forum, and contribute to open source, and vote, and contribute to their communities. We are tribal, and hierarchical, and violent, but we are above all social. Somehow we figure out social structures that work, that help people arrive at more or less objective truths and common ground. Obviously, if a lot of people want to tear everything down, democracy and most social activities don't work. In the words of Madison "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." Cooperative social activities only work to the extent people believe the social institutions that coordinate them are legitimate. People only devote their lives to build, and risk their lives to defend, organizations and systems they see as legitimate. HN has a pervasive community ethic and ‘pay it forward’ karma and reputation ecosystem that rewards people for sharing quality and burying fake news and garbage. It's also a lot of work from dang and the HN team. The question HNers can be asking, is there a market design and technical affordances that can restore legitimacy to news? Tools to let people signal quality and build credibility and fight the noise machines? Or is the current market design the best we can do, and are we going to constantly see successful hijacks from all sides?
debacle 10y ago
The "mainstream" media (reddit, twitter included) is no longer trusted. The loss was voluntary. For someone who wants real news, it's left to the reader to consume their news from comment threads, several sources with different flavors of bias (some of them truly opaque), and try and piece together reality from that. Time will tell whether this current trust drought is an ebb or a permanent change.
rebootthesystem 10y ago
I believe the real problem boils down to competition for clicks. The business of news has become a business of clicks. And competition is brutal. It's a fight for survival because there are only so many people who will click through, visit your site and cause revenue to be generated. In looking for ways to generate more clicks all of these outfits engage in pinging the audience to find a set of resonant frequencies they can use with some reliability to get a large enough portion of the audience to provide them with these much-needed clicks. How? You segment the audience and appeal to the kinds of human emotional reactions that result in action. This generally means negativity, criticism, wild fabrication, etc. Anger and indignation are far more powerful motivators than an invitation for intellectual engagement. If resonance is easier and stronger on the left, why waste time pinging the center, center-right or right? Objectively speaking, that would be a terrible business decision. You go where ROI is greatest. There's plenty of historical evidence to show that masses are far easier to manipulate at all levels with leftist messaging. The entire history of Latin America, every country south of the US border, demonstrates this in absolute terms. As a business who needs clicks to earn a buck and survive it is probably far easier and more profitable to make the audience go into resonance with articles that provide stimulus left of center to varying degrees. And so, in the search for clicks we have lost depth, intellectual honesty, objectivity, truth, fairness and even reality in both the producers of news and the consumers of their product. The goal is no longer truthful reporting of news, it's gossip and fabrication for clicks. Due to this we end-up with lazy hack-job "journalists" producing outrageous click bait for lazy ignorant who would rather read 140 characters and react with a click than take the time to research, learn, study and apply one ounce of thought to what they are being fed. Pavlovian raw stimulus-response at scale. In other words, despite all of this technology the masses are being driven, herded and exploited as mindless digital cave-men. And they reward their digital shepherds with clicks, lots of them.
dmalvarado 10y ago
Danger aside, I think the psychological revelations that have come out of this phenomenon are fascinating. We are surely all on some spectrum of mental soundness, and likewise are all vulnerable to some channels of psychological manipulation. What's shocking is just how many can be manipulated and the extremes to which they are. You'd probably never guess that someone you know or work closely with scrolls through InfoWars, or whatever the radical left equivalent is, during couch-time after work. Hell, maybe it's you...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Paul-ish 10y ago
One part of the article caught my attention > Starbird says she’s concluded, provocatively, that we may be headed toward “the menace of unreality — which is that nobody believes anything anymore.” I think a cynical and distrustful populace is a threat to effective and functioning national institutions. As an example, I was talking to someone I worked with who is from Iran about roads and driving. He was telling me that in Iran the roads can be very dangerous, because drivers don't follow the rules of the road, or the rules themselves are inadequate. In fact, Iran is in the top 10 countries for most dangerous roads[1]. I was shocked by what he was saying, surely if so many people were harmed, there should be some public outcry that something so simple as poor traffic policy and enforcement is leading to deaths. Where are the bereaved family members? Everyone benefits from safer roads. This isn't something that would fall across idealogical lines either. This seems cut and dried. When I asked him why people aren't protesting or demanding change, he laughed and said if there was some sort of mass movement to reduce traffic fatalities, the first thing that would spring to peoples minds would be something along the lines of "What is really behind this movement, who stands to gain politically from this?". It is a degree of distrust and cynicism that leads people to organize into the smallest family units, because they don't trust any larger institution. I think the United States could end up down this path as well, where we are all so cynical that we withdraw our participation and input from the larger institutions. Rather than try to improve a flawed system we would rather say "It only looks out for itself, so I will look out for myself." [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/07/a-map-of-the-countries-with-the-most-dangerous-roads/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/07...
- millermp12 10y ago
  "which is that nobody believes anything anymore" The left will regret the full frontal attack on religion when they see what will fill that void (e.g. racial identitarianism).
MK999 10y ago
Media is an military operations domain, like land, air, sea, space and cyber. Few actors, and none of the MSM, have truth as their principle objective.
erikpukinskis 10y ago
Random thought: What if we (educated, academically minded people) are modeling this, and the conspiracy theorists are just copying us? Think about it: We write and say things using obscure language, about topics that are totally foreign to most people, and when they don't understand, we laugh at them and call them stupid for not having the language background knowledge to parse what we are talking about. That's exactly what these conspiracy groups are doing. Of course the "facts" they are cataloging are just made up, as opposed to being peer reviewed in journals, but the mode of discourse is exactly the same as scientists and academics use: Ignore people who don't understand you, distribute ideas amongst your immediate peers, and judge your validity based on your ability to be understood by only them. I've tried to stop making fun of political adversaries for saying stupid things because of this.
- tjalfi 10y ago
  This reminds me of Richard Feynman's classic Cargo Cult Science speech. (http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)

221 points by dthal 10y ago

It started with the Boston marathon bombing, four years ago. University of Washington professor Kate Starbird was sifting through thousands of tweets sent in the aftermath and noticed something strange. “There was a significant volume of social-media traffic that blamed the Navy SEALs for the bombing,” ... Same thing after the mass shooting that killed nine at Umpqua Community College in Oregon: a burst of social-media activity calling the massacre a fake, a stage play by “crisis actors” for political purposes. I have noticed that infowars.com, when I have checked, has aligned with the Russian narrative. I have observed it casually but it has been too noticeable to just ignore it.

colemickens 10y ago
And keep in mind that our President has appeared on Alex Jones's (infowar) show, showers him with praise, and talks to him with some frequency [1]. [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-alex-jones-calls-phone-advice-infowars-conspiracy-theorist-far-right-sandy-hook-a7595136.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trum...
- mirimir 10y ago
  Our President made his name in Reality TV! That's no worse than The Gipper, I know. But somehow "Death Valley Days" doesn't seem so bad.
  - justaman 10y ago
    This isnt true. He was very popular before reality tv was a thing.
  - tzs 10y ago
    Reagan was governor of California for eight years between his acting career and becoming President. That gives considerable relevant experience for the Presidency. Trump's got nothing like that in his background.
    - giardini 10y ago
      So his years as a business executive count for nothing?
      - tptacek 10y ago
        They count for experience in business.
      - tzs 10y ago
        Being governor of a state, especially a state with a very large economy that spans most sectors, a large and diverse population, and a very diverse geography gives direct experience in a large fraction of what a President does. All that is really missing is commanding a military and making agreements with foreign governments. Being a businessman doesn't give anywhere near that level of relevant experience.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > Being governor of a state, especially a state with a very large economy that spans most sectors, a large and diverse population, and a very diverse geography gives direct experience in a large fraction of what a President does. All that is really missing is commanding a military and making agreements with foreign governments. Well, except that governors make agreements with foreign governments [0] and command militaries [1]. [0] http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ln-climate-change-agreement-mexico-california-jerry-brown-signs-20140728-story.html http://www.latimes.com/local/political/la-me-ln-climate-chan... [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Military_Department https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Military_Departme...
        giardini 10y ago
        So is there no businessman whom you would consider suitable for President of the USA? And would _any_ past governor of California be a good candidate for President of the USA? What states would you consider suitable training-grounds for governors who wish to transition to POTUS? Is there _any_ job, civilian or military, other than state governor, that you would consider as suitable preparation for POTUS? As a reference point: "I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University." - William F. Buckley, Jr.
fwn 10y ago
That must mean they are evil spies, no? ...or just idiots. Not all unfortunate behavior is an intentional attempt to manipulate.
- hubert123 10y ago
  or maybe the russian narrative happens to be right. I know, UNTHINKABLE! How can russians ever be right on any topic on anything?
  - mirimir 10y ago
    Well, Russia has been repeatedly invaded. Overrun by the Mongols. The French, the Germans, the British, the Germans again. And threatened with nuclear attack by the US, after Japan surrendered. So they're paranoid, perhaps understandably.
    - varjag 10y ago
      About every nation in Europe has been repeatedly invaded, this is hardly unique with Russia. At least they didn't lose their statehood for a couple centuries like Poland or got a third of population exterminated like Belarus or got starved off into cannibalism like much of Ukraine.
      - rijrjrgyg 10y ago
        Russia lost 20 million people in WWII you dumb fuck, a loss they've never really recoverd from. How many people died in your country during world war 2? Fuck HN and their shit commenters.
      - giardini 10y ago
        rijrjrgyg says: "Russia lost 20 million people in WWII." While rudely stated, The factual content of rijrjrgyg's post is an undeniable outrage of history "Losing statehood" would, in comparison, be a walk in the park. "World War II casualties of the Soviet Union": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the...
geowwy 10y ago
Infowars is anti-globalist. The Russian state is anti-globalist. Not really surprising that they'd have similar talking points. Peter Hitchens does a good job of explaining why conservative anti-globalists like Russia – "Why I Like Vladimir Putin" https://youtu.be/UeO44STvnJw https://youtu.be/UeO44STvnJw
- giardini 10y ago
  And What is "anti-globalist"? Paul Samuelson's paper shows that the simple models free trade and globalism are based on are both incorrect and especially not all sunshine and flowers for the USA: "Where Ricardo and Mill Rebut and Confirm Arguments of Mainstream Economists Supporting Globalization" by Paul A. Samuelson http://www2.hawaii.edu/~noy/362texts/samuelson.pdf http://www2.hawaii.edu/~noy/362texts/samuelson.pdf from the paper: "Act II, however, deals some weighty blows against economists’ oversimple complacencies about globalization. It shifts focus to a new and different kind of Chinese technical innovation. In Act II, China’s progress takes place (by imitation or home ingenuity or . . . ) in good 1, in which the United States has previously had a comparative advantage. (High I.Q. secondary school graduates in South Dakota, who had been receiving from my New York Bank wages one-and-a-half times the U.S. minimum wage for handling phone calls about my credit card, have been laid off since 1990; a Bombay outsourcing unit has come to handle my inquiries. Their Bombay wage rate falls far short of South Dakota’s, but in India their wage far exceeds what their uncles and aunts used to earn.) What does Ricardo-Mill arithmetic tell us about realistic U.S. long-run effects from such outsourcings? In Act II, the new Ricardian productivities imply that, this invention abroad that gives to China some of the comparative advantage that had belonged to the United States can induce for the United States permanent lost per capita real income—an Act II loss even equal to all of Act I(a)’s 100 percent gain over autarky. And, mind well, this would not be a short run impact effect. Ceteris paribus it can be a permanent hurt." That phrase, "...an Act II loss even equal to all of Act I(a)’s 100 percent gain... " is haunting.
- seppin 10y ago
  > The Russian state is anti-globalist lol they are anti-globalist in that they can't play a significant role globally anymore, so they want to bring down everyone that does / can.
imron 10y ago
> I have noticed that infowars.com, when I have checked, has aligned with the Russian narrative Damn ruskies are everywhere! > but it has been too noticeable to just ignore it. Just like US spending on science, space, and technology correlates almost identically with suicides by hanging, strangulation and suffocation: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
bordercases 10y ago
It's worth comprehending that there are other adversaries to the US other than the Russians. US OpSec sucks, it's punctured by not just the Russians but the Chinese, Israelis, Saudi Arabians, Syrians, Scientologists, Mormons, American communists and anarchists... the media is liable to focus on Russia because it's an easy target, not because it's the real one (or ones).

bordercases 10y ago

One thing I kind of wonder is why is there an expectation that the political game at large is supposed to be interpretable or legible? In other words, why shouldn't politics be strange? In most adversarial games we're bound to encounter sabotage and misinformation, with circumstantial evidence being the only kind you can encounter. So full out dismissal of conspiracies just because they "seem like tin-foil hat stuff" seems naive. It's hard work to dismiss bullshit but equivocally easy to dismiss what might otherwise be viable paths of inquiry. It is possible to take a rational approach. http://www.collativelearning.com/conspiracy%20theories%20-%20chapter%208.html http://www.collativelearning.com/conspiracy%20theories%20-%2...

pizza 10y ago
Just watched a short video by one of my favorite podcasters, Doug Lain, on Althusser's concept of ideology [0]. To Althusser, there are two ways to make a society think a certain way: via repression (military force, economic force, etc) or ideology (why a pine tree in your house during Christmas, anyway?). What you're saying seems to me like using dismissal as a repressive force (by forfeit of social accord/klout/capital) for the sustenance of ideology (in this case, that things are as they seem without need of intricate/conspiracy theories) [0] What is an ideology? (or Althusser was crazy?) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4NNDZ4X63I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4NNDZ4X63I
- bordercases 10y ago
  p much yo
  - pizza 10y ago
    word
erikb 10y ago
I think most people just don't know that the political game is a strategical, competitive game. Most people believe the common narrative that politics is the service(!) that should make your life comfortable on a city-wide, country-wide and global level which you pay for with taxes. E.g., $10/month to netflix for that I can watch tv shows. $400/month to government for that I don't get robbed by barbarian hordes from other countries. It's not the smartest point of view, but it's very common.

mirimir 10y ago

There's nothing new about lulz. I mean, look at 4chan/b/, LiveJournal, Encyclopedia Dramatica, the 8chan boards, etc. What's new is Twitter blasting it to the masses. And various players figuring out how to automate and monetize.

ycombinete 10y ago
The difference between "lulz" and this is that the lulz is trollish; this seeks to be taken seriously, and, horrifically, often takes itself seriously.
- mirimir 10y ago
  It might seem that way. But lulz always seeks to be taken seriously. And the fact that some people take it seriously, or at least seriously enough to get upset about it, is what makes it so lulzy. To those who get that, it's just lulz. What's new is that Twitter brought lulz to defenseless masses.
  - dukeluke 10y ago
    Don't group everyone together like that. I used to frequent 4chan, and eventually joined in the trolly lulz threads. It was all just for fun. What made the site fun for me was the recognition of a foreign culture, the assimilation period where I began recognizing what made the site's culture unique, then a sense of being because I recognized the mentality the site formed. Like many things, it all had to do with our tribal evolution. Some may take lulz seriously, but don't assume everyone does.
- seppin 10y ago
  > The difference between "lulz" and this is that the lulz is trollish; this seeks to be taken seriously, and, horrifically, often takes itself seriously. Lolz was not backed by a state, with specific geo-political goals.
  - mirimir 10y ago

shubhamjain 10y ago

> The mainstream press periodically waded into this swamp, but it only backfired. Its occasional fact checks got circulated as further evidence: If the media is trying to debunk it, then the conspiracy must be true. To what extent, then, is fake news culpable? If people are hell-bent on rebuffing the facts, how significant of an effect could targeting fake news websites have? I have seen similar thing happen in India, particularly forums with right-wing majority. Anything that sounds remotely critical is quickly shot down as a product of biased media. Every decision centric to right-wing view, no matter how damaging, is regarded as unassailable and they would fight to death to defend it. Arguing with facts is almost a lost cause . It's been a long time since I was regular part of those forums, but, I do occasionally get to see their views on social media. No change whatsoever in their adverse opinions. I have a feeling that changing views of people for the most part is an uphill battle. Most people quickly associate their identity to a view and absolutely refuse to budge.

intended 10y ago
>To what extent, then, is fake news culpable? Definitions first, fake news is not bad headlines, or bad reporting. Fake news is specifically the creation of websites that look like legitimate news sites, with what look like legitimate articles, in order to generate click and ad revenue. SO a concrete example is the creation of a site called "Mercury Sun reviewer", with articles talking about how Hillary is about to be indicted. Its not really news, its fiction presented with a Headline and a byline. --- For India, we've not really been dealing with Fake news in this manner, aside from maybe whatsapp forwards and propaganda. The creation of masses of website just in order to convert people to click bots, doesnt happen. Internet penetration isnt high enough to afford it. --- So fake news IS an issue, BECAUSE people will believe it without checking. Its a monetization scheme which callously targets politics and power. The definition has been bent out of shape since it got mainstream. I think for the HN crowd, this definition should work and stick --- And I think I know those forums.
- fwn 10y ago
  So, according to this definition, standard news sites are incapable of ever producing fake news since their website also serve as legitimate news site? That does little more then raising the costs of implementing manipulative falsehoods by making the traditional news a gatekeeper.

zigzigzag 10y ago

"News at 11: Humanities professor shocked to discover many people disagree with mainstream academic & globalist groupthink" (and no, I don't think social science is a real science) You don't need to study this stuff professionally to see what's going on here. 1) Trust in institutions has been falling steadily for a long time. That's because modern institutions are not trustworthy. Vast conspiracies were posited, laughed off as tin-foil-hattery, and later exposed as true (Snowden being the canonical example). Large federal governments like the US Federal Govt and the EU became more and more opaque, with ever larger and more byzantine bureaucracies and regulatory frameworks that seemed to create a game of tails we win, heads you lose. Judges interpret the law to suit their political preferences, not what a plain reading or common sense would seem to imply. And so on. 2) Whilst trust in institutions has been falling steadily for a long time, trust in the mainstream media has collapsed dramatically in relatively recent times. This too is fully deserved: people don't trust the traditional news outlets (in the USA) because they lie a lot and are nakedly biased. The difficulty of finding any national newspapers that supported Trump and the practice of outlets that had never declared before in their history declaring for the 100% globalist/liberal-elite-style Clinton, summed this phenomenon up. The subsequent artificial mass hysteria over Russia and the (dubious at best) Russian "hacking" of the election reinforced this idea: the media is as locked in a form of groupthink as Washington itself is. You can't repeatedly teach people that there are no reliable sources of information, and that conspiracy theories are sometimes real, and then act surprised when large numbers of people start seeking out alternative sources of information that more frequently support conspiracy theories.

endtime 10y ago
Whoever downvoted this: Downvoting should be for comments that are low quality or don't contribute to the conversation, not perfectly fine comments with which you disagree.
- fwn 10y ago
  I don't necessarily disagree with everything the parent wrote, nor did I downvote, but maybe "I don't think social science is a real science" is not the greatest starting point for making a genuinely social point. It's like saying "I don't think physics actually exists, but here's my take on gravity."

deleted 10y ago

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bsaul 10y ago

I think it shouldn't be forgotten that all this craze have a much easier time spreading since the western states did spread a lot of lies through the media in the second half of the 20th century. One example i've actually lived, is when tchernobyl exploded, french media showed maps of the radioactive cloud stopping at the borders (due to winds) and never going in. This was of course a huge lie that e everybody now admits. Then, we had the false testimonies at the UN of various sorts ( koweitien poor lady in the first gulf war that was in fact a member of the royal family), and colin powell for the second one. And if i go back in time, JFK is the mother of all conspiracy theory, since no true investigation clearly explained what happened, and so the only explanation we have is the one of a lone crazy guy ( which remains unconvincing to many people). So, all in all, i would say this trend of systematically questionning the official explanation is a very healthy one. It just needs to become more mature, and maybe be one day a new form of investigative journalism.

deleted 10y ago
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veli_joza 10y ago
This is not a "trend of systematically questioning the official explanation". This is blatantly and aggressively pushing out propaganda using conspiracy theories as medium. This shit won't teach people to critical thinking, it only generates more noise to defend against. People will learn to ignore news even more than they do now. Maybe they build a twitter and facebook spam-filter to help with noise. So we isolate ourselves into bubbles that no new idea can penetrate. Basically, the reverse from systematically questioning the information.
- bsaul 10y ago
  I disagree. The premise for someone to believe all this BS, isn't that they're convinced by the new theory, but that everything the conventional media or the government say is probably false, and made to hide some hidden agenda. That's the root upon which all the additional propaganda can prosper. And the embarrassing truth than conventional media and politics refuse to admit is that there are good reasons for people not to believe them anymore.

hubert123 10y ago

"we kind of laughed at it" The lazy traditional mass media thinks it can just ignore any nefarious angle or pretend that it doesn't exist and that it cannot exist. The best example is the Sandy Hook conspiracy. I have no stake in this game, but I'm as interested as anybody to hear both sides and it turns out that CNN will not ever provide the other side of the story while infowars will. It's that easy: Infowars does its actual journalistic job and questions everything. That's what CNN is supposed to be doing. That's what the are all supposed to be doing as journalists, you should be JUMPING at the option of Sandy Hook being a false flag. If it isnt, that's even better. But I want to hear all angles about it. There is no value in being blindly trusting of the government. I'm not an american but I'm pretty sure that one core value is to distrust the government, to be ready for it to turn evil. I listen to Alex Jones for many hours every week and he is definitely hyperbolic (which can be funny and this is often the goal -partly) and he sometimes gets things wrong too. But he provides much more value than reading the equivalent of a machine generated press release on CNN.com.

empath75 10y ago
Don't let your mind be so open that it falls out.
phaed 10y ago
Reporting is about facts. Reporters should question, based on factual evidence. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones start with the conclusion and then try to find ways to bend news stories into it, ignoring things that don't fit.
- hubert123 10y ago
  Alex Jones is basically a journalist that mostly does opinion pieces. There is nothing wrong with that. If I were you, I would use the word "fact" a little less confidently, facts are only facts until disproven and they are always tied to other facts which can in turn be disproven.
  - exodust 10y ago

phaed 10y ago

Does anyone have the list of the 81 source sites that Starbird cataloged?

losteverything 10y ago

<<"If we think of this as a virus, I wouldn’t know how to vaccinate for it.” Stop reading that stuff. Take responsibility of your own media health Just like you did when you quit smoking. I am not responsible for my neighbor smoking and I am not responsible for my neighbor reading NAtional Enquirer or Twitter or domestic Com

uncle_d 10y ago

This lady talks as if false flag state-sponsored terrorism for political purposes does not exist. As evidence that it most certainly does, I would suggest the work of Dr. Daniele Ganser (University of Basel, Switzerland) on Operation Gladio - NATO-sponsored terrorism in post-WW2 Europe, a notable example of which is the Bologna rail staion massacre, which killed 85. https://www.danieleganser.ch/assets/files/Inhalte/Interviews/Zeitungsinterviews/GlobalResearch%20(2016)%20-%20NATOs%20Secret%20Armies.pdf https://www.danieleganser.ch/assets/files/Inhalte/Interviews... He also did an interesting lecture on 9/11, examining the evidence on the tenth anniversary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUT7XgLiTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fUT7XgLiTY

Mendenhall 10y ago

Its because of things like "russians hacked election" I see people say it and repeat it everywhere and on many news sites. Now when I look at the evidence with a critical eye based only on facts, what I see is "DNC hacked". Now you may go on to say it may have effected election etc but there is no proof whatsoever that the actual "election" was hacked. Huge distinction to me. Lot of it boils down to incentive to get clicks. "Russians hack election" will get more clicks than "DNC hacked". Waits for downvotes from people who believe russians actually hacked the election!

lr4444lr 10y ago
Not to mention, taken on the word - no evidence declassified - from the intelligence agencies most of these people were howling about after the Edward Snowden revelations.
gipp 10y ago
Nobody, in any significant numbers, has ever claimed or believed that there were direct manipulations of vote counts. This is a pure strawman. Saying the Russians "hacked the election" is just a sloppy shorthand for the, at this point well-established, attacks on the process that did occur. Nobody is intending it to mean vote-count changes.
- rhino369 10y ago
  It's sloppy biased shorthand. How you summarize things has huge consequences to how people think about things. "Hacked the election" makes it seem like the results are illegitimate. Informed people know the difference, but the average person is watching like 5 minutes of a news a day and reads the headlines and maybe the lead. For a profession that is so cautious it'll throw the world "alleged" before someone who is caught on camera murdering someone, I think it's a pretty big sign of some bias. I'm sure the right wing bias'd papers have found a term that minimizes the hacking too.
  - falcolas 10y ago
    I have to ask - if the information presented to the public about the election candidates was false, how can we expect that the public made a reasonably informed choice about those candidates? Strikes me as a perfectly valid definition of a hack; a social engineering hack, but a hack all the same. We see those all the time in our own life; we call it fraud or failure when it succeeds, and attempt to roll back to a known good state. Why is an election different?

ryanmarsh 10y ago

There seems to be a lot of people who cannot handle the possibility of the NY Times being wrong enough to be skeptical about. They get very upset and worried about what happens when people loose faith in such institutions. They then delegitimize the distrust others have for traditionally trusted news orgs and reduce people who read alt sources (left or right) to fools. You can call them idiots all you want but in my adult memory there have been several scandals at the Times that have challenged my trust. Until you can empathize with someone who reads infowars you're never going to solve the problem of fake news.

goalieca 10y ago
So let's keep score. NYT. Wins: too many to count. Losses: 3 I don't quite see your point.
- wu-ikkyu 10y ago
  >>There seems to be a lot of people who cannot handle the possibility of the NY Times being wrong enough to be skeptical about. >NYT. Wins: too many to count. Losses: 3. I don't quite see your point. You're illustrating it.
  - throwaway91111 10y ago
    Ok, but compare it to most any other news source. What's your point? You're not making it.
    - wu-ikkyu 10y ago
      >To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false. -Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell 14 June 1807 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_spe...

camperman 10y ago

If you're suspicious of Sandy Hook then I suggest watching this lecture by Sofia Smallstorm here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJYQihoNNuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJYQihoNNuQ The inescapable conclusion for any reasonable person when presented with all the facts is that the whole thing was staged. Is that outrageous? Does sharing this make me a lunatic conspiracy theorist? Not really. It just means the US mainstream media isn't doing its job.

FiatLuxDave 10y ago
I'm the last person to say that the US mainstream media is doing a good job. That said, I see you've been on HN long enough to not be surprised that all kinds of people can be found on here. It turns out that at least one person here was a personal friend of one of the Sandy Hook parents back in high school. Who played D&D with him, talked about Commodore computers with him, and who remembers when his roommate got mad and put peanut butter in his floppy drive. It's bad enough that my old DM lost his child in a senseless tragedy. But when people try to insist that his greatest pain was all a hoax, that the child he lost maybe didn't even exist, that's just beyond the pale. Maybe it's easier for me to have all the facts because I know people affected. But thousands of people know these families - have you considered talking to someone who knows them? No matter how bad the media is, some stories are about real people, who can hurt. Please consider that when you spread bullshit online.
- alikoneko 10y ago
  A tenured professor at the university I attended was fired for continuously harassing Sandy Hook families for death certificates of their children. It was a terrible cry for attention for his blog. I'm not capable of doing the mental gymnastics that makes his actions okay.
- camperman 10y ago
  > That said, I see you've been on HN long enough to not be surprised that all kinds of people can be found on here. Well, quite. For example, I am a coder, an investigative journalist and a digital forensics consultant with a scarily good track record over the last 25 years even if I do say so myself. > It's bad enough that my old DM lost his child in a senseless tragedy. But when people try to insist that his greatest pain was all a hoax, that the child he lost maybe didn't even exist, that's just beyond the pale. Maybe it's easier for me to have all the facts because I know people affected. You have some facts? Great. What are they? Because so far you haven't given me any, just a second-hand sob story which may or may not be true. What's this guy's name? Where can I check out his details? Does he even exist? Because there isn't a single scrap of evidence to prove that Adam Lanza even existed, just for starters, let alone how this 120 pound kid with development problems managed to carry such a heavy arsenal into the school and kill so many people in under a minute. Where are the crime scene photos? Just one will do. Why isn't there any video or camera evidence of the shooter? Who cleaned up the blood? There are strict federal laws governing that. Not a single photo of a body. Not the shooter. Not his mother. Not one child. Not one teacher. Nothing. All kids were ruled dead at the scene. Which if you've ever talked to an EMT you never rule a person dead at the scene unless they've been decapitated. You can get shot in the head and a doctor can revive you. But no, everyone was ruled dead at the scene and there are no pictures of any blood, bodies, shell casings, anything. > No matter how bad the media is, some stories are about real people, who can hurt. Please consider that when you spread bullshit online. Yeah I'm deeply moved. Not.

jordanpg 10y ago

Yes, the prominent center, center-left, and leftish new outlets (NYT, WSJ, Economist, WP, etc.) have some bias in their writing. However, most of the authors and staff at those organizations are extremely professional and take their mandate to report and analyze very seriously. To me, this is self-evident 95% of the time. To the extent that there is bias, it is slight and subtle. Opinion is labeled as such. Pointing to specific counter-examples is like identifying NASA with the failures of the Challenger -- it completely misses the forest for the trees. What there is not is a serious right-leaning counter-weight to this, and that is the vacuum into which the manifestly untrue and unserious outlets stream. Why this is true is an interesting and controversial discussion in its own right.

bb101 10y ago
Here in the UK, we have the Spectator magazine, whose writers are very professional and generally support a conservative position.
maxerickson 10y ago
WSJ is at least center-right.
- dude01 10y ago
  That's true, but their opinion/editorial pages are extreme right-leaning, they're different teams.
  - tomhoward 10y ago
    “Extreme right”? Some proportionality would be good. “Extreme” when used in the context of political ideology implies some form of totalitarianism; i.e., Nazism, Fascism (extreme right), Stalinism, Maoism (extreme left). The WSJ, from the little of it I read, tends to adopt generally classical liberal or libertarian positions; i.e, moderately right-leaning economically, moderately liberal on social issues, generally in favour of more liberty across the board, and thus opposed to authoritarianism. There's a valid debate to be had about the merits of these positions, but to describe the WSJ as “extreme right” does an injustice to the many who've suffered and died – and who continue to do so to this day – due to genuinely extreme political ideologies.

rrggrr 10y ago

Contributing factor: Point of view by editors and producers of mainstream media. The Podesta emails reveals much dissonance provoking coziness between the media and the political establishment. Audiences want muckrakers and are not getting it.

uptownJimmy 10y ago

"Until you can empathize with someone who reads infowars..." Absurdity defined.

jerf 10y ago
Empathize != agree with. That is a modern perversion of the term.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  Be careful staring into the abyss.
- uptownJimmy 10y ago
  I do not empathize with, nor do I agree with, people who wilfully wallow in paranoia and stupidity. Does that clarify my position sufficiently?
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002997 and marked it off-topic.

codingmyway 10y ago

This is a particularly american problem. It's not Alex Jones or Breitbart or Hannity or Limbaugh it's the fact that profits come before truth and making money by appealing to human nature through click bait, fear mongering, exaggeration, conspiracy theories is the only thing that matters. The internet killed the profitability of real journalism and free press and might take down democracy with it.

justaman 10y ago
If you dont get your news from PBS/NPR first, _then_ major ad driven media as supplemental in the US, I honestly think you are doing yourself a disservice. People like their own echo chambers over being challenged to think analytically. *not to imply PBS/NPR isnt slightly bias
- problems 10y ago
  I'm a big fan of a lot of the work NPR does, but I disagree. I think applying this to the general population is a recipe for bias and disaster. Those agencies have their own slew of motivations which differ from others. Consider them as a source, certainly, but no less fallible than others. If you hold a certain set of opinions then NPR/PBS doesn't "challenge" you much at all. I'm generally a lefty but I started reading libertarian slanted articles and I have to admit they've got some interesting points of view on things that I hadn't considered before - that's the sort of challenge you want. If you want to be challenged, look to the other side of the spectrum.
  - codingmyway 10y ago
    I should add that the profit motive isn't unique to the right, the left just gain viewers through either comedy and satire or mainstream consumerism, which is more acceptable but still doesn't necessarily incentivize the truth, especially if that truth clashes with a sponsor/advertiser. The BBC definitely has a political bias and I certainly wouldn't rely on it and swallow their coverage, or more often lack of coverage, like my parents would anymore than I would RT but not being puppets of advertisers gives a different view that the US lacks given that NPR is almost a token service that is kept subdued and out of the view of those who don't specifically go to it and is seen as boring instead of hard hitting journalism. I like free speech advocates on both sides. YouTube has Dave Rubin, Steven Crowder, Sam Seeder and others and the types of guests they have provide a larger view of things. I wish there were more with a less US centric view but the libertarian scene seems much stronger in the US, maybe as a reaction to all the crap.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

Good article. I thought the statement ""The true common denominator, she found, is anti-globalism"" makes a lot of sense. For those of us who like to maintain national sovernty (thus dislike 'trade' deals) and mistrust globalists, the news media does seem biased. I am in my 60s, and most of my life I could be considered a slightly conservative democrat, but in the last decade I have embraced a philosophy of 'small is better' and 'distributed is better than centralized.' It was an eye opener for me how much the news media favored Clinton and in general treated Sanders unfairly. Anyway, living through last year really made me believe that the news media is just a tool for the financial elite.

griffinmmahon 10y ago
A question only intended as such: could you explain what you mean by the word "globalists"? Thanks! e: I should clarify that I'm not being sarcastic or snarky and am genuinely interested in what "globalists" means -- I've never read it or used it, I am hesitant to look it up because I feel it might not get a fair shake in whatever I read, and was wondering how this user uses it.
- steamer25 10y ago
  I'll try to do both sides justice although I'm sure there are people representing either side that could correct me on many aspects... I think of 'globalist' as being something of a perjorative/having at least a slight negative connotation. It describes a perspective where all humans are part of a global community/family. You could contrast it with 'nationalism' (which has it's own negative connotations--the two sides provide derision against each other) in which nations should be independent and sovereign. Critics of globalism argue that it centralizes too much control, planning, finances and government, leaving locals with less autonomy. Nationalists are not fans of e.g., the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, etc. Critics of nationalism argue that international cooperation brings many benefits and that nationalists are merely racist or xenophobic. It's harder to list organizations that globalists are not a fan of because most nations have at least one nationalist movement. Brexit would be a good example in the Anglosphere.

kingkawn 10y ago

Either it feels like something and therefore is believable, or it is rote repetition of cultural mores that once upon a time felt like something, and is in the end not believable. The fate of all systems of knowledge that prize conformist structural adherence over emotional breadth is failure.

RockyMcNuts 10y ago

Some arenas devolve into full-blown contests of self-interest and strategic game-playing. Politics, stock markets are pretty important so it's not too surprising that it happens. But as humans we don't spend all our lives trying to mislead others and scraping for small edges. People contribute to this forum, and contribute to open source, and vote, and contribute to their communities. We are tribal, and hierarchical, and violent, but we are above all social. Somehow we figure out social structures that work, that help people arrive at more or less objective truths and common ground. Obviously, if a lot of people want to tear everything down, democracy and most social activities don't work. In the words of Madison "To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea." Cooperative social activities only work to the extent people believe the social institutions that coordinate them are legitimate. People only devote their lives to build, and risk their lives to defend, organizations and systems they see as legitimate. HN has a pervasive community ethic and ‘pay it forward’ karma and reputation ecosystem that rewards people for sharing quality and burying fake news and garbage. It's also a lot of work from dang and the HN team. The question HNers can be asking, is there a market design and technical affordances that can restore legitimacy to news? Tools to let people signal quality and build credibility and fight the noise machines? Or is the current market design the best we can do, and are we going to constantly see successful hijacks from all sides?

debacle 10y ago

The "mainstream" media (reddit, twitter included) is no longer trusted. The loss was voluntary. For someone who wants real news, it's left to the reader to consume their news from comment threads, several sources with different flavors of bias (some of them truly opaque), and try and piece together reality from that. Time will tell whether this current trust drought is an ebb or a permanent change.

rebootthesystem 10y ago

I believe the real problem boils down to competition for clicks. The business of news has become a business of clicks. And competition is brutal. It's a fight for survival because there are only so many people who will click through, visit your site and cause revenue to be generated. In looking for ways to generate more clicks all of these outfits engage in pinging the audience to find a set of resonant frequencies they can use with some reliability to get a large enough portion of the audience to provide them with these much-needed clicks. How? You segment the audience and appeal to the kinds of human emotional reactions that result in action. This generally means negativity, criticism, wild fabrication, etc. Anger and indignation are far more powerful motivators than an invitation for intellectual engagement. If resonance is easier and stronger on the left, why waste time pinging the center, center-right or right? Objectively speaking, that would be a terrible business decision. You go where ROI is greatest. There's plenty of historical evidence to show that masses are far easier to manipulate at all levels with leftist messaging. The entire history of Latin America, every country south of the US border, demonstrates this in absolute terms. As a business who needs clicks to earn a buck and survive it is probably far easier and more profitable to make the audience go into resonance with articles that provide stimulus left of center to varying degrees. And so, in the search for clicks we have lost depth, intellectual honesty, objectivity, truth, fairness and even reality in both the producers of news and the consumers of their product. The goal is no longer truthful reporting of news, it's gossip and fabrication for clicks. Due to this we end-up with lazy hack-job "journalists" producing outrageous click bait for lazy ignorant who would rather read 140 characters and react with a click than take the time to research, learn, study and apply one ounce of thought to what they are being fed. Pavlovian raw stimulus-response at scale. In other words, despite all of this technology the masses are being driven, herded and exploited as mindless digital cave-men. And they reward their digital shepherds with clicks, lots of them.

dmalvarado 10y ago

Danger aside, I think the psychological revelations that have come out of this phenomenon are fascinating. We are surely all on some spectrum of mental soundness, and likewise are all vulnerable to some channels of psychological manipulation. What's shocking is just how many can be manipulated and the extremes to which they are. You'd probably never guess that someone you know or work closely with scrolls through InfoWars, or whatever the radical left equivalent is, during couch-time after work. Hell, maybe it's you...

deleted 10y ago

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Paul-ish 10y ago

One part of the article caught my attention > Starbird says she’s concluded, provocatively, that we may be headed toward “the menace of unreality — which is that nobody believes anything anymore.” I think a cynical and distrustful populace is a threat to effective and functioning national institutions. As an example, I was talking to someone I worked with who is from Iran about roads and driving. He was telling me that in Iran the roads can be very dangerous, because drivers don't follow the rules of the road, or the rules themselves are inadequate. In fact, Iran is in the top 10 countries for most dangerous roads[1]. I was shocked by what he was saying, surely if so many people were harmed, there should be some public outcry that something so simple as poor traffic policy and enforcement is leading to deaths. Where are the bereaved family members? Everyone benefits from safer roads. This isn't something that would fall across idealogical lines either. This seems cut and dried. When I asked him why people aren't protesting or demanding change, he laughed and said if there was some sort of mass movement to reduce traffic fatalities, the first thing that would spring to peoples minds would be something along the lines of "What is really behind this movement, who stands to gain politically from this?". It is a degree of distrust and cynicism that leads people to organize into the smallest family units, because they don't trust any larger institution. I think the United States could end up down this path as well, where we are all so cynical that we withdraw our participation and input from the larger institutions. Rather than try to improve a flawed system we would rather say "It only looks out for itself, so I will look out for myself." [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/07/a-map-of-the-countries-with-the-most-dangerous-roads/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/07...

millermp12 10y ago
"which is that nobody believes anything anymore" The left will regret the full frontal attack on religion when they see what will fill that void (e.g. racial identitarianism).

MK999 10y ago

Media is an military operations domain, like land, air, sea, space and cyber. Few actors, and none of the MSM, have truth as their principle objective.

erikpukinskis 10y ago

Random thought: What if we (educated, academically minded people) are modeling this, and the conspiracy theorists are just copying us? Think about it: We write and say things using obscure language, about topics that are totally foreign to most people, and when they don't understand, we laugh at them and call them stupid for not having the language background knowledge to parse what we are talking about. That's exactly what these conspiracy groups are doing. Of course the "facts" they are cataloging are just made up, as opposed to being peer reviewed in journals, but the mode of discourse is exactly the same as scientists and academics use: Ignore people who don't understand you, distribute ideas amongst your immediate peers, and judge your validity based on your ability to be understood by only them. I've tried to stop making fun of political adversaries for saying stupid things because of this.

tjalfi 10y ago
This reminds me of Richard Feynman's classic Cargo Cult Science speech. (http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm)