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The issue with fake accounts is they can help skew popular opinion. It's not a defence to say "yeah, there's fake accounts, but popular opinion agrees with the
by Lazare 9y ago
The issue with fake accounts is they can help skew popular opinion. It's not a defence to say "yeah, there's fake accounts, but popular opinion agrees with them". All that means is they (might be) working.
> The article calls out fake profile pictures on facebook as some indication of an artificial message.
It did not; it called out fake profiles. Nowhere in the article did it suggest that a fake profile picture was itself evidence of a fake profile.
> The article also says they have collected a database of facebook accounts that post pro-Duterte messages as if this is somehow an indictment.
It's a database of (mostly real) accounts that post messages that originate with fake accounts; it's a way of measuring the scale of the problem. If millions of real accounts echo these fake messages, it does't mean that there isn't a problem, it means the problem is really big.
> For many in western countries, this kind of feeling is unknown because you've likely never walked the streets expecting to be killed at any moment - you have working police and institutions that keep you safe.
The homicide rate in the Philippines isn't that high; it's comparable to where the US was 20 years ago. That's obviously not ideal, but there are countries where when expecting death when you walk down the street is reasonable. Honduras has a murder rate of 90 per 100k people; El Salvador is 70 per 100k people. The Philippines is 9 per 100k.
> The article tries to associate this as something bad and fake. But it's not, it's real and genuine.
You're talking about a "sense of safety" and "feelings", and then discounting claims of fake stories as if those stories couldn't possibly influence these feelings. Nobody is claiming that Duterte isn't popular; we're discussing why he's popular. Maybe he's popular because of stories spread by fake Facebook accounts that made people feel safer, even though the fundamentals haven't changed?
Plus, if you look at the actual numbers, in Duterte's first year in office, according the the Philippine National Police, murders actually increased by 22.75%.
> everyone on the street supports Duterte because he's given them a sense of safety again
You don't see any issues here?
- RyanZAG 9y agoThe article gives zero proof of any kind of fake accounts aside from fake profile pictures, and calls Facebook out for not removing the accounts, even thought Facebook says they have removed the fake ones. So clearly Facebook does not feel that those particular accounts are fake either. Calling someone you don't like a "fake account" (as someone has already hinted about me in this very comment section!), does not suddenly turn it into a fake account. It's a real account until you provide absolute proof - especially when the supposed fake account has the same opinion as 80mil+ people in a country. Sorry. The rest of your argument hinges on the idea that 80mil people are terribly stupid and can't tell fake accounts from real accounts - even though they live in the country - and have fallen for a ruse. While you, in your great wisdom - who has probably never been in the Philippines? - know them all to be fake without any evidence. That's a fairly poor argument in my opinion.
- Lazare 9y agoAs we've learned to our sorrow people in first world countries (eg, Americans, Germans, etc.) can't reliably detect fake accounts or fake news stories. Why should Filipinos be uniquely able to do so?
- RyanZAG 9y agoI don't believe that is true. You want it to be true, and so you've fallen for it. The only kind of fake news stories anybody falls for are fake news stories that support their own biases. Such as this article, but that goes without saying.
- yorwba 9y ago> The only kind of fake news stories anybody falls for are fake news stories that support their own biases. I'd rather say that people only fall for fake news stories that don't run counter to their own biases. I.e. when someone is completely ignorant about a topic, and the first story they read about it is fake news, they might believe it. In any case, you seem to be agreeing that people fall for fake news that supports their own biases, hence: >> people in first world countries (eg, Americans, Germans, etc.) can't reliably detect fake accounts or fake news stories. They can reliably detect whether something does or does not agree with their preexisting knowledge/biases, but that doesn't always help with detecting fake accounts or fake news.
- RyanZAG 9y agoThe article itself provides no proof that the people they are calling fake are indeed fake. That counts as being deliberately malicious in my book, but I'd think it would count as being 'biased' in anybody's book. That's all I wanted to bring to people's attention. Often just pointing it out to people is enough to help sway them away from making a mistake, and trusting this article as being on the level would be a terrible mistake for anyone to make.
- veidr 9y agoYou are utterly wrong about that, and it is easily proven. (People not only believe the fake news stories, some of them even arm themselves and storm pizza parlors to rescue the innocent children Hillary Clinton is trafficking as sex slaves, or refuse to vaccinate their kids and thereby put their own children and others at risk, etc etc etc etc etc). But it's interesting you are getting so worked up defending this idea — why is that? What cognitive bruise are you protecting?