4 ms·
Pointing out that satire is, in fact, not a correct recounting of events makes them less credible?
by mikeash 9y ago
Pointing out that satire is, in fact, not a correct recounting of events makes them less credible?
- norikki 9y ago>what you say Facebook did: "Pointing out satire" >what facebook actualy said: "Repeat offenses will see their distribution reduced and their ability to monetize and advertise removed" So facebook censors conservatives for the 10,000th time this year, and you poo poo it because its just "pointing out satire". It's pretty undeniable at this point that there is a culture war going on, and you have picked a side.
- jdminhbg 9y agoYes? Treating obvious satire as worthy of correction makes you look clueless. The linked Snopes fact-check says that some readers took the idea that CNN literally puts "news" in an industrial washing machine, which I find... difficult to believe.
- marshray 9y agoIf there's one thing we've learned in the last two years it's that what's obviously silly to anyone with broad sources of information and critical thinking skills may be considered plausible by a shocking number of people. I would prefer that Snopes error on the side of stating the obvious.
- Turing_Machine 9y agoI would prefer that people stop taking the word of Snopes about anything. They have zero qualifications, credentials, or expertise to pass judgment on any of the subjects they opine upon. It's a real mystery how they managed to get so many people to consider them infallible. "Snopes said (whatever)" has exactly as much credibility as "Some random guy said (whatever)", i.e., none whatsoever. Edit: in response to some of the comments below, there's a lengthy discussion of some of the problems with Snopes here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/#2024e828227f https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...
- mikeash 9y agoThey always explain their sources and reasoning, so you can easily check for yourself.
- jdminhbg 9y agoThey didn't exactly source their claim that "some readers took the story seriously."
- eridius 9y agoI think the source for that is the fact that some readers reported the story to Facebook. The whole reason Snopes even fact-checked it is because they were asked to.
- jdminhbg 9y agoI think that's backwards. Facebook is using Snopes as a source for detecting fake news, so once this showed up on Snopes as "False," FB flagged it as fake.
- eridius 9y agoFrom the article: > What more likely happened is that some trigger-happy activists who don't appreciate Christian and conservative satire reported The Babylon Bee to Facebook, setting off an investigation by Snopes. Obviously not a definitive answer as to what happened, but it seems plausible. Surely Snopes doesn't proactively fact-check every single article posted to Facebook, they wouldn't have the manpower to do that. It makes sense that they'd fact-check only after people report the story to Facebook.
- jdminhbg 9y agoAha, I missed that, thanks. So it looks like it's a two-way street for reporting/flagging. Could've been either one, but I think your explanation makes more sense.
- mikeash 9y agoI’m surprised at this notion that nobody would have actually believed the story. Have you met people? A lot of them are really dumb.
- jdminhbg 9y agoThis isn't "of course this is implausible," this is "there is not any actual physical way to conceive of this happening." This is kind of why "fact-checking" this hurts Snopes' credibility. The only reason to fact-check this article is to take a snide shot at putative stupid people who think it's possible somehow to literally wash news in a washing machine.
- mikeash 9y agoPeople believe all sorts of inconceivable things.
- s73v3r_ 9y agoGiven how many people mistake The Onion for being real, that service is needed.
- makomk 9y agoI've seen worse. PolitiFact managed to fact check an article from military satire site DuffelBlog and just didn't seem to grasp that it was satire, at all. They wrote, in excruciating detail, about all the increasingly silly and implausible claims and at no point did it occur to them that maybe they should take them as a hint that the whole thing was a joke, an incredibly unsubtle humorous reference to actual events: http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/nov/16/duffel-blog/no-bowe-bergdahl-didnt-wander-during-court/ http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2017/nov/16/...
- mikeash 9y agoDid you read to the end? They clearly know it’s satire and have a thorough discussion of that.
- makomk 9y agoYes, I did read to the end, and no they don't. They treated it as though it's one of the many actual fake news sites that builds its business model around tricking people but hides away a disclaimer somewhere claiming to be a satire site in order to dodge complaints, describing it as though that disclaimer was the only thing tipping readers off that the article wasn't true. None of the DuffelBlog articles are exactly subtle, including that one.
- mikeash 9y agoThey’re just stating the facts. Your claim that it never occurred to them that it’s satire is clearly wrong.
- ng12 9y agoJust because it's technically correct doesn't mean it's not a stupid/dangerous thing to do. For further reading, my favorite tweet of the election: https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/785299709342654465?lang=en https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/785299709342654465?lang=e...
- mikeash 9y agoI don’t see why this is so bad. If it was anybody else, it would be obvious that it was a metaphor, but this is the same guy who said Obama literally founded ISIS.
- mizzack 9y agoBecause they took the truth of statement, i.e. HRC deleted emails from her private email server, and labeled it a falsehood using meaningless semantics as justfication. Acid washed vs. bleachbit has nothing to do with the thesis of the statement. How is that not bad?
- mikeash 9y agoA key part of the statement was that acid washing is very expensive and that proves bad intent or something like that. It was not a casual metaphor. https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/trump-pence-acid-wash-facts/ https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/trump-pence-acid-wash-fact...
- mizzack 9y agoStill ignoring the underlying point that the emails were irrecoverably destroyed and summarizing with 'Claims Hillary Clinton "had her emails — 33,000 emails — acid washed ... a very expensive process' and a reductive "FALSE" rubber stamp. The vast majority of people won't read past the summary (or NBC's tweet). They will see the FALSE rating, and take from that that no emails were destroyed, which the wrong conclusion.
- 9y ago
- cryptonector 9y agoYes. They took satire seriously. That's very funny, but they clearly missed some clues.
- mikeash 9y ago“Although it should have been obvious that the Babylon Bee piece was just a spoof....” They didn’t take it seriously. They fact-checked it on the basis that someone else might take it seriously.
- cryptonector 9y agoYou can't be serious. "CNN uses washer machine to spin ..." sounds utterly ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It can only be satire. Who would ever say such a thing and mean it? Answer: only mentally disabled people. And who would take them seriously? Unless you think most people are so disabled, there's no point "debunking" obvious satire, and if so many people were so disabled, then there'd be no point debunking anything anyways.
- mikeash 9y agoIt’s about as ridiculous as “Obama founded ISIS” and yet our President apparently believed that one.