4 ms·

> It's people who would not allow opinions different from their own to exist. So called "fact-checkers" were subverted by partisan propaganda in mere months. M

by comex 10y ago

> It's people who would not allow opinions different from their own to exist. So called "fact-checkers" were subverted by partisan propaganda in mere months. Months since when, exactly? Most popular fact checkers existed long before the "fake news" meme brought them to newfound attention.

smsm42 10y ago
> Months since when, exactly? Since they gained widespread popularity as a watchdogs and arbiters over the "regular media". This was long before last US elections which has triggered the "fake news" panic (well, triggered may be not the best word here, "involved" may be better, but I don't want to digress too much). Well, I realize it's hard for me to give specific times here, mostly because I don't remember neither when exactly I started reading fact-checking sites, nor when exactly I started noticing propaganda showing up. Maybe some of them held for a year or two, and maybe some of them worked in relative obscurity for a while and managed to keep a clean record before they gained popularity that allowed prominent politicians to cite them as a proof, and thus became a target for subversion. And maybe there are others who I didn't know about and who have much better record (bad luck for me). The underlying point is that what I observed is that once some outlet becomes widely known as arbiter of truth in any political context, and it does not have very strong independent filtering mechanism, propaganda shows up very soon. If it does have one, propaganda shows up too (e.g. there are tons of biased articles on Wikipedia and there is a lot of shoddy and biased research in scientific journals) but a bit slower.
- makomk 10y ago
  It certainly predated the 2012 presidential election, since there was that embarrassing incident where the PolitiFact 2012 Lie of the Year turned out to be true and the press came up with some truly bizarre contortions to pretend otherwise.
  - yohui 10y ago
    Context: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/romney-jeep-and-china-a-case-study-in-americas-fact-checking-fetish/273378/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/romney-... > Key line: "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China." Romney's wording of this statement in a prior speech was even stronger: "I saw a story today, that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China." > The claim originated in a Bloomberg News story, which the conservative Washington Examiner construed to mean that Jeep was struggling and considering moving some or all manufacturing from the U.S. to China as a result. When the Romney campaign was questioned about this statement, aides conspicuously stuck to it. > In an important way it is the opposite of the truth. Between the 2009 bankruptcy filing and 2012, Jeep had robust growth. Its manufacturing in the U.S. was expanding and it was hiring workers. Its overseas sales also picked up, and it was considering re-opening shuttered factories in China. These facilities were not going to replace domestic manufacturing -- they were for making certain models of compact SUVs specifically tailored to the Chinese market, which are impractical to import from the U.S. So the statement, "Jeep is doing poorly and so will move manufacturing to China," is false, while "Jeep is doing well and may resume manufacturing in China," is true. (Furthermore, the deal that left Fiat with a controlling share of Chrysler emerged from talks begun before Obama was president.)
- backpropaganda 10y ago
  This happens because of funding. If poltifact and others were funded by donations or subscriptions, this might not happened. If they are left to advertisers or rent-seekers, they WILL devolve to regular lying/biased media.
  - rustynails 10y ago
    I'm inclined to strongly agree with smsm42. There is something deeper than funding journalists. Ideologies (special interest groups) are far too powerful and connected through other means to simply disappear. They will collaborate and infiltrate anything that has visibility and a reputation. Will Wikipedia shut out these ideologies? Of course not. It will favour some ideologies over others and you at straight back to where we are now. This was well summarised in the article about WWIII yesterday on HN. The crux of the WWIII article covered all forms of bias, but ideologies still equally applied to the pitfalls identified. Let's say for a minute the Wikimedia board put one of each ideologist type on the board (1 for each religion, sex, ethnicity, colour of skin, sexual orientation, etc). It would exclude some ideologies (eg. ISIS) and favour others (eg. Christianity). Subgroups would form among the wider group and political correctness would kick in (especially if it stroked the preferences of editors, founders, lead sponsors, vocal readers, etc). As somebody else mentioned here, Wikipedia is a basket case on anything controversial. Often, one side of a topic is watered down by mods with an agenda and the opposing view is given carte blanche. I read the comments by editors after I saw how extreme some of the articles were. Editors for one side were exasperated at the lack of impartiality. I don't have an answer. Simplisticly, you could start with egalitarianism and exclude special interest groups. Reject political correctness. If it is divisive (eg. Special interest groups), then block them all. However, this isn't tenable and limits some worthy/essential discussion. As soon as you allow divisiveness (eg. Special interest groups), you are destined to fail. Even if egalitarianism won out (ie. no divisiveness), the authors would still inject their own prejudices. I believe wired tries to be egalitarian, but, the authors who support certain ideologies still slip in one-sided comments frequently. They do this sufficiently frequently that I can usually pick the ideologies supported by their staff. To their credit, they are very mild compared to most other outlets. There are conflicting needs, too many politicised groups, too much to gain/lose. Unless the wikimedia leadership has a plan to stop the failures inherent in Wikipedia, this will fail too. Power struggles and division will ultimately (I suspect quickly) corrupt wikimedia. It will become a war of numbers (as somebody else said). They will also follow the funding.
- Angostura 10y ago
  I note that you're not mentioning the actual fact checking sites that you believe to be subverted, nor specific stories that serve as examples of this subversion. I've seen criticism of Snopes, for example - but apart from one or two examples of cock-ups that they corrected, I've never seen any evidence of subversion - so which sites are you talking about?
  - Clanan 10y ago
    A simple google search will provide you with numerous examples, even of Snopes in particular. Here's one[0] by Snopes where the True/False statements don't even match the claim. It's obvious the "fact checker" (i.e. journalist) contorted the argument to reach a desired conclusion. [0] http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed-about-it/ http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-lau...
    - Angostura 10y ago
      So I've just had a look at that. The True/False statements seem to match the claim pretty closely - which elements in particular make you think otherwise?
  - smsm42 10y ago
    Snopes is one of them, surely, that I've seen lots of partisan propaganda, especially on political topics (of course, it's hard to put propaganda into a topic like "did a woman in Florida marry an alligator and gave birth to alligator-headed twins?" so it's in political topics). But I purposedly didn't name specific one because they are all like that - snopes, politifact, fatcheck, you name it. I'm not talking about specific screwup of specific outlet, you can always explain it away, I'm talking about how things are developing (at least how it looks to me) in general.
    - Angostura 10y ago
      So again - you're neglecting to actually post any links to this "partisan propganda" on Snopes - come now, you say there's lot of it, so show us some.

by comex 10y ago

smsm42 10y ago

> Months since when, exactly? Since they gained widespread popularity as a watchdogs and arbiters over the "regular media". This was long before last US elections which has triggered the "fake news" panic (well, triggered may be not the best word here, "involved" may be better, but I don't want to digress too much). Well, I realize it's hard for me to give specific times here, mostly because I don't remember neither when exactly I started reading fact-checking sites, nor when exactly I started noticing propaganda showing up. Maybe some of them held for a year or two, and maybe some of them worked in relative obscurity for a while and managed to keep a clean record before they gained popularity that allowed prominent politicians to cite them as a proof, and thus became a target for subversion. And maybe there are others who I didn't know about and who have much better record (bad luck for me). The underlying point is that what I observed is that once some outlet becomes widely known as arbiter of truth in any political context, and it does not have very strong independent filtering mechanism, propaganda shows up very soon. If it does have one, propaganda shows up too (e.g. there are tons of biased articles on Wikipedia and there is a lot of shoddy and biased research in scientific journals) but a bit slower.

makomk 10y ago
It certainly predated the 2012 presidential election, since there was that embarrassing incident where the PolitiFact 2012 Lie of the Year turned out to be true and the press came up with some truly bizarre contortions to pretend otherwise.
- yohui 10y ago
  Context: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/romney-jeep-and-china-a-case-study-in-americas-fact-checking-fetish/273378/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/02/romney-... > Key line: "Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China." Romney's wording of this statement in a prior speech was even stronger: "I saw a story today, that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep, now owned by the Italians, is thinking of moving all production to China." > The claim originated in a Bloomberg News story, which the conservative Washington Examiner construed to mean that Jeep was struggling and considering moving some or all manufacturing from the U.S. to China as a result. When the Romney campaign was questioned about this statement, aides conspicuously stuck to it. > In an important way it is the opposite of the truth. Between the 2009 bankruptcy filing and 2012, Jeep had robust growth. Its manufacturing in the U.S. was expanding and it was hiring workers. Its overseas sales also picked up, and it was considering re-opening shuttered factories in China. These facilities were not going to replace domestic manufacturing -- they were for making certain models of compact SUVs specifically tailored to the Chinese market, which are impractical to import from the U.S. So the statement, "Jeep is doing poorly and so will move manufacturing to China," is false, while "Jeep is doing well and may resume manufacturing in China," is true. (Furthermore, the deal that left Fiat with a controlling share of Chrysler emerged from talks begun before Obama was president.)
backpropaganda 10y ago
This happens because of funding. If poltifact and others were funded by donations or subscriptions, this might not happened. If they are left to advertisers or rent-seekers, they WILL devolve to regular lying/biased media.
- rustynails 10y ago
  I'm inclined to strongly agree with smsm42. There is something deeper than funding journalists. Ideologies (special interest groups) are far too powerful and connected through other means to simply disappear. They will collaborate and infiltrate anything that has visibility and a reputation. Will Wikipedia shut out these ideologies? Of course not. It will favour some ideologies over others and you at straight back to where we are now. This was well summarised in the article about WWIII yesterday on HN. The crux of the WWIII article covered all forms of bias, but ideologies still equally applied to the pitfalls identified. Let's say for a minute the Wikimedia board put one of each ideologist type on the board (1 for each religion, sex, ethnicity, colour of skin, sexual orientation, etc). It would exclude some ideologies (eg. ISIS) and favour others (eg. Christianity). Subgroups would form among the wider group and political correctness would kick in (especially if it stroked the preferences of editors, founders, lead sponsors, vocal readers, etc). As somebody else mentioned here, Wikipedia is a basket case on anything controversial. Often, one side of a topic is watered down by mods with an agenda and the opposing view is given carte blanche. I read the comments by editors after I saw how extreme some of the articles were. Editors for one side were exasperated at the lack of impartiality. I don't have an answer. Simplisticly, you could start with egalitarianism and exclude special interest groups. Reject political correctness. If it is divisive (eg. Special interest groups), then block them all. However, this isn't tenable and limits some worthy/essential discussion. As soon as you allow divisiveness (eg. Special interest groups), you are destined to fail. Even if egalitarianism won out (ie. no divisiveness), the authors would still inject their own prejudices. I believe wired tries to be egalitarian, but, the authors who support certain ideologies still slip in one-sided comments frequently. They do this sufficiently frequently that I can usually pick the ideologies supported by their staff. To their credit, they are very mild compared to most other outlets. There are conflicting needs, too many politicised groups, too much to gain/lose. Unless the wikimedia leadership has a plan to stop the failures inherent in Wikipedia, this will fail too. Power struggles and division will ultimately (I suspect quickly) corrupt wikimedia. It will become a war of numbers (as somebody else said). They will also follow the funding.
Angostura 10y ago
I note that you're not mentioning the actual fact checking sites that you believe to be subverted, nor specific stories that serve as examples of this subversion. I've seen criticism of Snopes, for example - but apart from one or two examples of cock-ups that they corrected, I've never seen any evidence of subversion - so which sites are you talking about?
- Clanan 10y ago
  A simple google search will provide you with numerous examples, even of Snopes in particular. Here's one[0] by Snopes where the True/False statements don't even match the claim. It's obvious the "fact checker" (i.e. journalist) contorted the argument to reach a desired conclusion. [0] http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-laughed-about-it/ http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-freed-child-rapist-lau...
  - Angostura 10y ago
    So I've just had a look at that. The True/False statements seem to match the claim pretty closely - which elements in particular make you think otherwise?
- smsm42 10y ago
  Snopes is one of them, surely, that I've seen lots of partisan propaganda, especially on political topics (of course, it's hard to put propaganda into a topic like "did a woman in Florida marry an alligator and gave birth to alligator-headed twins?" so it's in political topics). But I purposedly didn't name specific one because they are all like that - snopes, politifact, fatcheck, you name it. I'm not talking about specific screwup of specific outlet, you can always explain it away, I'm talking about how things are developing (at least how it looks to me) in general.
  - Angostura 10y ago
    So again - you're neglecting to actually post any links to this "partisan propganda" on Snopes - come now, you say there's lot of it, so show us some.