3 ms·

The mainstream media is fake because enough people believed it to be so? Are you serious? Fake news is made up, it has no evidence to support it and can often

The mainstream media is fake because enough people believed it to be so? Are you serious? Fake news is made up, it has no evidence to support it and can often be proven to be false very easily but it can (and is) produced in enough quantities that it can't be disprove fast enough. You can believe the MSM is biased or trying to control the narrative but if you choose to live in your own reality where you can simply decide what is true without any corroborating information don't try to pretend that you are vindicated simply by the outcome of an election. Hitler was elected, does that make everything he said true because people believed it? Would you allow this kind of reasoning in any other areas? Would you accept courts that worked this way or business decisions made like this? What would happen if science and engineering worked on the same principals? I would cite sources but I think that would be a waste of time for both of us.

cookiecaper 9y ago
>The mainstream media is fake because enough people believed it to be so? Are you serious? Uh, no? I didn't say this. Insofar as they were reporting on the people's will during the 2016 election, the reality they painted was disastrously inaccurate and it was colorfully and blatantly disproven on election night. It's hard to believe that honest people could've gotten it so wrong. The MSM lost huge amounts of credibility, and the "fake news" crusade is their attempt to salvage some by pointing the finger somewhere else. When the subject of the report is the aggregate state of the people's will, then yes, the people's will, the real state of that variable, is the determinate factor in its accuracy. >Hitler was elected, does that make everything he said true because people believed it? I have to congratulate you on a seriously hyperextended invocation of Godwin's Law. The media is supposed to be a neutral entity that gives "just the facts" and allows the reader to make up his mind. The veracity of any political arguments are immaterial to the quality of the reporting. The MSM all but guaranteed a Clinton victory on election night. They sold it hard. They thought there was no way Trump could win and dedicated much airtime and page real estate to discussing this. The NYTimes Election Map started out with Clinton at a 99% likelihood of victory -- leaving the marginal 1% chance only for plausible deniability. The MSM was blatantly, absolutely wrong, and you cannot get around that no matter how often you try to shoehorn a long-dead dictator into the dialog. Now they believe they have the authority to label which news is "fake". >Would you accept courts that worked this way or business decisions made like this? Courts DO work like media should. An impartial forum gives both sides the opportunity to make their case, cross-examine witnesses, etc. etc. In the end, after a fair hearing, the jury makes their determination. The MSM plays the role of the "court" in this analogy, and it failed disastrously. >What would happen if science and engineering worked on the same principals? It'd work fine. If you're reporting on the will of the people, and the will of the people is not anywhere close to what your reports said, you should lose credibility. Unfortunately, far too often science and engineering don't work this way, because people want to believe certain things instead of believing the true things that the data bares out. This is what we see when people try to insist that it's someone else's fault the MSM was ridiculously incorrect, and that we should allow them to dictate truth arbitrarily so that they're not bitter anymore.
- aswanson 9y ago
  So, with the msm thoroughly discredited for all eternity by the events of early November, should infowars be afforded a higher degree of trust than say, the nytimes, reuters, etc?
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    The thread is kind of off-topic since we're talking about the overarching propaganda narrative here, not cherry-picked publications. I'm not looking to assign a trust rating to anyone in particular. I'm sure every outlet has strengths and weaknesses. The core issue is that Google's behavior indicates they no longer view themselves as a neutral, merit-driven internet index willing to accept the public's aggregate credibility sentiment. They now see themselves as a supervisor, an entity whose role is to ensure that the "wrong" things are not given publicity, despite the actual, reflected sentiment of Google users. There are surely pros and cons to that, but it's a diversion from Google's original mission, and it's reasonable to be skeptical about it.
    - aswanson 9y ago
      Googles stated mission is "to make the world's information universally useful and accessible." By definition, this would mean to filter out disinformation. Your interpretation of this as an "aggregate credibility index" is demonstrably antithetical to the mission of spreading information. If the entire planet placed credibility in "1+1=7", the google calculator should not be rewritten to reflect global credibility scores.
      - cookiecaper 9y ago
        PageRank counted the number of inbound links to a page under the theory that the resources people were organically electing to point to were superior than others. This was and is the foundation of Google's search, and it's what allowed them to succeed against massive incumbents like Yahoo. The concept that the general public can tell what's worthwhile is the fundamental component of Google's success (as well as the theory behind news aggregators like reddit and this very platform). The theory was that most people would intrinsically reject falsehoods like 1+1=7 and that they would intrinsically gravitate towards facts like 1+1=2. It was an investment in the wisdom of crowds, in democracy. Perhaps this concept is no longer useful, but top-down editorialism is a departure from what most people perceive Google to be about, whether you agree that it's a good direction or not.

cookiecaper 9y ago

>The mainstream media is fake because enough people believed it to be so? Are you serious? Uh, no? I didn't say this. Insofar as they were reporting on the people's will during the 2016 election, the reality they painted was disastrously inaccurate and it was colorfully and blatantly disproven on election night. It's hard to believe that honest people could've gotten it so wrong. The MSM lost huge amounts of credibility, and the "fake news" crusade is their attempt to salvage some by pointing the finger somewhere else. When the subject of the report is the aggregate state of the people's will, then yes, the people's will, the real state of that variable, is the determinate factor in its accuracy. >Hitler was elected, does that make everything he said true because people believed it? I have to congratulate you on a seriously hyperextended invocation of Godwin's Law. The media is supposed to be a neutral entity that gives "just the facts" and allows the reader to make up his mind. The veracity of any political arguments are immaterial to the quality of the reporting. The MSM all but guaranteed a Clinton victory on election night. They sold it hard. They thought there was no way Trump could win and dedicated much airtime and page real estate to discussing this. The NYTimes Election Map started out with Clinton at a 99% likelihood of victory -- leaving the marginal 1% chance only for plausible deniability. The MSM was blatantly, absolutely wrong, and you cannot get around that no matter how often you try to shoehorn a long-dead dictator into the dialog. Now they believe they have the authority to label which news is "fake". >Would you accept courts that worked this way or business decisions made like this? Courts DO work like media should. An impartial forum gives both sides the opportunity to make their case, cross-examine witnesses, etc. etc. In the end, after a fair hearing, the jury makes their determination. The MSM plays the role of the "court" in this analogy, and it failed disastrously. >What would happen if science and engineering worked on the same principals? It'd work fine. If you're reporting on the will of the people, and the will of the people is not anywhere close to what your reports said, you should lose credibility. Unfortunately, far too often science and engineering don't work this way, because people want to believe certain things instead of believing the true things that the data bares out. This is what we see when people try to insist that it's someone else's fault the MSM was ridiculously incorrect, and that we should allow them to dictate truth arbitrarily so that they're not bitter anymore.

aswanson 9y ago
So, with the msm thoroughly discredited for all eternity by the events of early November, should infowars be afforded a higher degree of trust than say, the nytimes, reuters, etc?
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  The thread is kind of off-topic since we're talking about the overarching propaganda narrative here, not cherry-picked publications. I'm not looking to assign a trust rating to anyone in particular. I'm sure every outlet has strengths and weaknesses. The core issue is that Google's behavior indicates they no longer view themselves as a neutral, merit-driven internet index willing to accept the public's aggregate credibility sentiment. They now see themselves as a supervisor, an entity whose role is to ensure that the "wrong" things are not given publicity, despite the actual, reflected sentiment of Google users. There are surely pros and cons to that, but it's a diversion from Google's original mission, and it's reasonable to be skeptical about it.
  - aswanson 9y ago
    Googles stated mission is "to make the world's information universally useful and accessible." By definition, this would mean to filter out disinformation. Your interpretation of this as an "aggregate credibility index" is demonstrably antithetical to the mission of spreading information. If the entire planet placed credibility in "1+1=7", the google calculator should not be rewritten to reflect global credibility scores.
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      PageRank counted the number of inbound links to a page under the theory that the resources people were organically electing to point to were superior than others. This was and is the foundation of Google's search, and it's what allowed them to succeed against massive incumbents like Yahoo. The concept that the general public can tell what's worthwhile is the fundamental component of Google's success (as well as the theory behind news aggregators like reddit and this very platform). The theory was that most people would intrinsically reject falsehoods like 1+1=7 and that they would intrinsically gravitate towards facts like 1+1=2. It was an investment in the wisdom of crowds, in democracy. Perhaps this concept is no longer useful, but top-down editorialism is a departure from what most people perceive Google to be about, whether you agree that it's a good direction or not.