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How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Rumour mongering is as old as society itself, global p

by throw2016 9y ago

How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Rumour mongering is as old as society itself, global platforms amplify impact. This kind of paranoia about 'fake news' ends up in the 'ministry of truth'. There is no other alternative.

krapp 9y ago
>How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Fake news has a well defined, explicitly understood meaning - the presentation of falsehood as legitimate news, and its virality on the web, particularly in social media. Merely biased news isn't fake news, nor is news for which the facts are initially misunderstood at the time of reporting fake news.
- tqi 9y ago
  Agree there are lots of clear cut cases. But, for example, would you consider articles that are talk about climate change (either for or against it's existence) fake or biased news?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattferderer 9y ago
    Not the perfect solution but I would prefer one like Wikipedia & others use. Allow flagging by users if a news story lacks citations or credible references. Uphold all journalism to a higher standard. For the most popular stories on Facebook have a trained employee from Facebook research it or crowd base it with users you trust. Show users a message that says whether the news article has been marked as false, questionable or verified. Facebook could even charge money for instant review & verification to news outlets. As machine learning gets better & has more use cases to look at, they could possibly offload the work from humans as well.
  - krapp 9y ago
    To me, unless there is outright fabrication or an intent to deceive on the part of the original reporting source, it isn't fake news.
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    Climate change might not have been the best example as its a closed and shut case from a scientific perspective. Maybe the merits of doing anything about it would be a better example?
    - ams6110 9y ago
      "Closed and shut" seems to me to be exactly NOT the point of view of science. If someone came along with another theory that fit observations better than current theories do, would you want science to reject it because that particular subject is considered "closed and shut?"
      - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
        You knew what I meant as well as would anyone else that reads HN, no need to be pedantic.
    - tqi 9y ago
      Actually I chose that specifically because I think that it is a "closed and shut case". Yet many right leaning outlets like Fox News or National Review routinely cast doubt on this. Do you think they should be considered Fake News? Who gets to make that call?
      - mrguyorama 9y ago
        "Fake News"ness can have article level granularity. Fox can have perfectly accurate reporting of an event, and then still be considered fake when they incorrectly state that there is "controversy" over global warming
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
At a hackathon my team wrote an api for aggregating data on publications/journalists. We set it up to collect 'tags' that were descriptive of qualities that individual articles presented such as "no sources", "anonymous sources", "click-bait", "well-sourced", "professional", etc. The idea was that given enough time and submitted entries you could get a picture of how accurate a journalist/publication was over time. We were planning on having this database be curated a la Wikipedia/StackOverflow and allow for people to go back and check the veracity of claims attributed to anonymous sources to get a picture of how good a journalist/publication's anonymous sources tended to be.
ams6110 9y ago
My "fake news" alarm goes off when I hear the same phraseology or specific keywords used in multiple sources in the same news cycle. This indicates to me that an agenda is being pushed, rather than news being reported objectively. I consider "fake news" to be any news being reported with an unstated agenda or bias, not just outright lies. Editorializing is fine, if it's clearly identified as such.

krapp 9y ago

>How does one check for 'fake news'? Its easy to throw around these words but they lack meaning and value. Fake news has a well defined, explicitly understood meaning - the presentation of falsehood as legitimate news, and its virality on the web, particularly in social media. Merely biased news isn't fake news, nor is news for which the facts are initially misunderstood at the time of reporting fake news.

tqi 9y ago
Agree there are lots of clear cut cases. But, for example, would you consider articles that are talk about climate change (either for or against it's existence) fake or biased news?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mattferderer 9y ago
  Not the perfect solution but I would prefer one like Wikipedia & others use. Allow flagging by users if a news story lacks citations or credible references. Uphold all journalism to a higher standard. For the most popular stories on Facebook have a trained employee from Facebook research it or crowd base it with users you trust. Show users a message that says whether the news article has been marked as false, questionable or verified. Facebook could even charge money for instant review & verification to news outlets. As machine learning gets better & has more use cases to look at, they could possibly offload the work from humans as well.
- krapp 9y ago
  To me, unless there is outright fabrication or an intent to deceive on the part of the original reporting source, it isn't fake news.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  Climate change might not have been the best example as its a closed and shut case from a scientific perspective. Maybe the merits of doing anything about it would be a better example?
  - ams6110 9y ago
    "Closed and shut" seems to me to be exactly NOT the point of view of science. If someone came along with another theory that fit observations better than current theories do, would you want science to reject it because that particular subject is considered "closed and shut?"
    - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
      You knew what I meant as well as would anyone else that reads HN, no need to be pedantic.
  - tqi 9y ago
    Actually I chose that specifically because I think that it is a "closed and shut case". Yet many right leaning outlets like Fox News or National Review routinely cast doubt on this. Do you think they should be considered Fake News? Who gets to make that call?
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      "Fake News"ness can have article level granularity. Fox can have perfectly accurate reporting of an event, and then still be considered fake when they incorrectly state that there is "controversy" over global warming
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago

At a hackathon my team wrote an api for aggregating data on publications/journalists. We set it up to collect 'tags' that were descriptive of qualities that individual articles presented such as "no sources", "anonymous sources", "click-bait", "well-sourced", "professional", etc. The idea was that given enough time and submitted entries you could get a picture of how accurate a journalist/publication was over time. We were planning on having this database be curated a la Wikipedia/StackOverflow and allow for people to go back and check the veracity of claims attributed to anonymous sources to get a picture of how good a journalist/publication's anonymous sources tended to be.

ams6110 9y ago

My "fake news" alarm goes off when I hear the same phraseology or specific keywords used in multiple sources in the same news cycle. This indicates to me that an agenda is being pushed, rather than news being reported objectively. I consider "fake news" to be any news being reported with an unstated agenda or bias, not just outright lies. Editorializing is fine, if it's clearly identified as such.