4 ms·
> printed newspapers can't change history by making edits in their articles and videos after publishing them That's a bad thing. At least when you are reading
by madspindel 9y ago
> printed newspapers can't change history by making edits in their articles and videos after publishing them
That's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says:
"Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid."
In old media, people would still believe it was russian goverment hacking. Now it backfired in the online world and "fake news".
- einr 9y agoThat's a bad thing. At least when you are reading Washington Posts online article about the russian hack of the US power grid it says: "Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid." The record that a correction was made only exists if all involved parties wants it to. If the publisher/government/Google/ISP etc. has malicious intent, they could make changes silently and pretend as if nothing happened. At least with newspapers, the physical copy of the previous version will always exist (barring the implementation of totalitarian government and 1984-style memory holes, of course).
- gt_ 9y agoThis is a actual use for blockchain that we could put into action pretty much whenever we can decide to.
- mikepurvis 9y agoOr just, you know, a cache.
- dorfsmay 9y agoThis, the ability for people controlling the media to change history, is why archive.org was created. Do think about them when you contribute to "charities", even a few dollars per year goes a long way.
- makomk 9y agoAssuming that sites don't block archiving (Vice and its sub-brands like Motherboard were doing this quite aggressively for a while, so there's basically no public record of what their articles used to say), and assuming the Internet Archive themselves can't be convinced to remove the archived copies.
- acct1771 9y agoDisagree. We're worse off, specifically because of that. Who's following the updates of the articles they read? Very few, much fewer than the already few who are reading in the first place. No, the "mislead and correct after the news cycle" thing is most certainly not an improvement. It might have been different...
- laumars 9y agoFurther to your point, traditional publications used to publish redactions in subsequent publications. Granted they weren't typically in prominent positions; but still more likely to get seen by readers of the original article than online media where readers are unlikely to revisit an article after reading. As for whether we're better or worse off, I don't think we're either. On the one hand people who are interested in the true can more easily investigate it. But on the other hand those that aren't are more easily deceived. Sadly the net average is the latter rather than the former but frankly people will generally sway towards the "truths" that fall more in line with their preconceptions anyway. So the problem could be argued as a wider social / psychological issue rather than one directly related to a change in the way news is consumed.