4 ms·

After Las Vegas Shooting, Fake News Regains Its Megaphone

Ibethewalrus 9y ago
paywalled
QAPereo 9y ago
On one hand, it is worrying, but on the other... There is also a labeling issue. A Facebook user looking for news about the Las Vegas shooting on Monday morning, or a Google user searching for information about the wrongfully accused shooter, would have found posts from 4Chan and Sputnik alongside articles by established news organizations like CNN and NBC News, with no obvious cues to indicate which ones came from reliable sources. ...it’s 4Chan... is that not a clue? Where is the line betweeen attempts to deceive, and just dealing with the human LCD?
- ianai 9y ago
  My step sister is repeating this stuff as fact. Clearly there are deeper issues than which website the spam comes from originally.
  - aaronbrethorst 9y ago
    How old is she, out of curiosity?
    - ianai 9y ago
      30s
      - QAPereo 9y ago
        Wow... you must have to exercise the patience of a saint!
        ianai 9y ago
        Many people remark on my patience. She definitely contributed.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  I observed people making posts including specific technical details of the firearms used (like magazine capacity and rate of fire), and when pressed to explain where they got the numbers since they were unrealistically high, they admitted that it was all inferred from a few brief video clips. Unless it turns out that the shooter was using a literal belt-fed machine gun (and one with an impressively high rate of fire at that), people were simply drawing dumb conclusions from the raw footage and some headlines because they assumed it painted a complete picture. That's not a fake news problem, but it is a problem.
soneil 9y ago
Ironically, I've half convinced this is a problem the "mainstream media" helped create. I think the endless race to get the news out first, has trained us to expect so much information in the first minutes or hours - and created this problem of what happens when "information" appears before facts do. Nature abhors a vacuum, and I believe the pressure for instant news is creating one. We really can't act surprised when the vacuum is filled. It's a tough nut to crack though. I'm not sure I fancy the idea of google & facebook becoming arbiters of facts - but neither do I want to see them doing nothing.

paywalled

On one hand, it is worrying, but on the other... There is also a labeling issue. A Facebook user looking for news about the Las Vegas shooting on Monday morning, or a Google user searching for information about the wrongfully accused shooter, would have found posts from 4Chan and Sputnik alongside articles by established news organizations like CNN and NBC News, with no obvious cues to indicate which ones came from reliable sources. ...it’s 4Chan... is that not a clue? Where is the line betweeen attempts to deceive, and just dealing with the human LCD?

ianai 9y ago
My step sister is repeating this stuff as fact. Clearly there are deeper issues than which website the spam comes from originally.
- aaronbrethorst 9y ago
  How old is she, out of curiosity?
  - ianai 9y ago
    30s
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      Wow... you must have to exercise the patience of a saint!
      - ianai 9y ago
        Many people remark on my patience. She definitely contributed.
TallGuyShort 9y ago
I observed people making posts including specific technical details of the firearms used (like magazine capacity and rate of fire), and when pressed to explain where they got the numbers since they were unrealistically high, they admitted that it was all inferred from a few brief video clips. Unless it turns out that the shooter was using a literal belt-fed machine gun (and one with an impressively high rate of fire at that), people were simply drawing dumb conclusions from the raw footage and some headlines because they assumed it painted a complete picture. That's not a fake news problem, but it is a problem.

soneil 9y ago

Ironically, I've half convinced this is a problem the "mainstream media" helped create. I think the endless race to get the news out first, has trained us to expect so much information in the first minutes or hours - and created this problem of what happens when "information" appears before facts do. Nature abhors a vacuum, and I believe the pressure for instant news is creating one. We really can't act surprised when the vacuum is filled. It's a tough nut to crack though. I'm not sure I fancy the idea of google & facebook becoming arbiters of facts - but neither do I want to see them doing nothing.