19 ms·

Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts

173 points by jimschley 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
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jfoutz 8y ago
I'm really happy to have my freedom of speech. I don't think i would do well under the classic Puritan model. I do sometimes wonder if there's room for a special class of formal speech for journalism. Grant rights perhaps formalizing protecting a source. But also require some responsibilities. Not sure what the standard should be, but we do the same thing for lawyers and doctors. Also "pernicious to the publick weal" is an amusing phrase.
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  For what its worth, we did do this though it is in part a sort of detente between prosecutors and journalists. This wall has been eroded, with some of the most striking erosion happening around the threatened prosecution of James Risen for refusing to disclose a source. https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/ https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-ti...
ralusek 8y ago
This whole "fake news" thing is absolutely ridiculous. What's interesting to me is that I very very rarely hear a fact touted by the left OR right that is just outright incorrect. The problem is much less to do with facts, and much more to do with implications or conclusions, which many news sources dish out handily.
- Zak 8y ago
  The original meaning was literally something that looks like a news report, but reports as fact something that didn't actually happen and isn't obviously satire. As an example, "Pope Francis endorses Donald Trump". That was, in fact a fake news story. The fact it asserted had no basis in reality.
- guelo 8y ago
  That's weird, I constantly see friends spreading outright incorrect, political trolling from clickbait factories like "Daily World Upate" or "America’s Last Line of Defense".
- KC8ZKF 8y ago
  "Fake news" has become a cure for cognitive dissonance, but it started out as "pizzagate" and its ilk. That certainly was fake, somewhat effective, and toxic. It's still around. Check out qanon, spirtcooking, etc.
  - dmix 8y ago
    > but it started out as "pizzagate" and its ilk. Funny seeing such a local and current political tribe-based perspective in a discussion on the history of fake news. As if they just happened to be witness to the spawning of some new phenomenon which also happens to be caused by their pet political opponents. Meanwhile in reality it's really been one of the oldest products of human-fallible mass media consumption (see: low investment content targeting emotion driven responses) used by every political ideology who happens to have influence over particular media sources. That may have been your introduction, of a popular/easy punching-bag demographic pushing their own politically convenient narrative. But this particular story hardly extends beyond a niche of extremists (or at most a sizeable group of hopelessly low-education voters) on Reddit/Twitter. Notably these days including a large percentage of trolls who know better but will happily push it because they enjoy getting reactions. I find it interesting to see how this type of misrepresentation and FUD is spawned by otherwise smart people. Beyond simply being young and naive by thinking everything you recently discovered is a new phenomenon. And ultimately I believe it has to do with their exposure to media within their small bubble of content sources, followed by a mass extrapolation to the wider public who identify with their adversarial political party. So they legitimately think it's an important problem and feature of x group, instead of almost every group a) by dumb subset after certain scale or b) the ideas of an entirely fringe group. But usually it's just a vocal minority of a niche forum gets applied to the wider public. If outrage and reactionary politics was scaled to the actual influence and power of the groups they see as a threat the world would be a far more boring and stable place. But that doesn't sell Buzzfeed pageviews, or any newspaper commercially incentivized exaggerated narratives, nor does it translate well to 2-3 sentence long comments on social media sites. Pandering, oversimplification, and snarky soundbites is what sells on reddit. It's the perfect platform for overblown FUD to spread. Which is iornic given how Redditors love to attack TV shows, targeting the emotions of the lowest common denominators, for doing the same.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Fake news used to refer to “Hillary Clinton has a body double” or stuff you’d find in the Enquirer. And now the term has been hijacked to mean any new you disagree with.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    I was quite fond of the Weekly World News, particularly their article on how there was a gate to Hell in North Dakota and the Governor sending a tactical team to try to kill the devil.
  - gowld 8y ago
    The Enquirer is real (gossip/trash) news, at least at the level of carefully worded exaggerated rumor that some real person claimed to have observed. Weekly World News is fictional satire about aliens.
- drzaiusapelord 8y ago
  >I very very rarely hear a fact touted by the left OR right that is just outright incorrect. The right absolutely makes up stories: https://www.snopes.com/tag/breitbart/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/breitbart/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/fox-news/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/fox-news/ Lots and lots of false statements here.
  - deadmetheny 8y ago
    Snopes isn't made up of experts and isn't an unbiased source. It mystifies me that so many people treat it as reliable, let alone infallible. (sorry for pointing this out, but downvoting me doesn't change that it's true)
    - deleted 8y ago
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    - drzaiusapelord 8y ago
      You're welcome to challenge their items on a line by line basis. Type it out, I'll wait. There are also lots of other sources. I think playing up a 'no true scotsman' just empowers the liars because at a certain point you're just arguing that truth cannot be verified by anyone.
      - deadmetheny 8y ago
        They have no valid credentials other than having been on the Internet a long time and having an interest in researching urban legends as laymen. One of the founders, David Mikkelson, couldn't answer questions about fact-checking due to legal issues[1]. If you really want to play the "HN says the names of logical fallacies" game, then I'll do you one better and say that challenging me to refute every single line item is an appeal to authority and we should just trust them because everyone says we should. There's no reason to believe them any more than there's a reason to believe much of anything published on somebody's personal website. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...
- trgv 8y ago
  I don't think it was ridiculous to begin with (neither was "terrorism") but it's ridiculous now. I would define "fake news" as news published by people who know what they're publishing is false. My feeling is that either there were more of those kinds of articles floating around this past election or they were more visible. You might just call it clickbait, but "fake news" didn't seem like an inapt descriptor until it started being applied to everything someone disagrees with.
  - karmelapple 8y ago
    Would you also consider it news the publisher knows mislead, even if there’s a grain of truth?
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > I very very rarely hear a fact touted by the left OR right that is just outright incorrect Go look at donald trump's twitter feed. It's full of outright incorrect statements being presented as fact.
  - ralusek 8y ago
    Donald Trump is not a news source, he's a moron.
- jccalhoun 8y ago
  There are certainly "facts" that I have heard people say or spread online that were clearly false like millions of illegals voted in the last election (when in reality one article claimed that and had lots of rebuttals and now has a disclaimer at the top of the article) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrants-2008-election/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrants-2008-el... or that Hillary Clinton only won 57 counties in the 2016 election https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-won-3084-of-3141-counties-clinton-won-57/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-won-3084-of-3141-cou... However, the fact stands that there are also a lot more cases of wildly different interpretations of the same fact. We can look at poverty rates or crime rates and draw very different conclusions about the causes or solutions to those problems based on the same information.
  - deleted 8y ago
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- ixtli 8y ago
  Its a concerted effort to discredit expert opinion which the shorter term goal of allowing people to equate their own laymen's understanding with that of someone versed in a subject.
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    Nate Silver = election expert Me = not an expert on elections Yet, at almost every turn along the path of the 2016 election, I was far more accurate than Nate Silver. Is Nate Silver's expert opinion still more valuable than mine? Is expert opinion valuable even if it is right no more often than coin flipping?
    - jonbarker 8y ago
      Disclosure: I am a Nate Silver fan. Nate's expert opinion is only valuable if you accept the premise, which is that prediction science involves a range of possible outcomes. If you accept that premise, which I do, his opinion on the 2016 election, in which he stated several times that the odds of a Trump presidency were actually higher than most of the polls suggested, was arguably a more valuable opinion than either a coin toss, or most of the individual polls.
      - null0pointer 8y ago
        Yeah this seems to be the disconnect. A lot of people will intuitively think (myself included) something like this. "You said Hillary had 90% chance to win, but Trump won. Therefore your prediction was WRONG". It actually takes a little more thought to understand that a Trump victory was a possibility in the model all along. And that you cannot say whether or not a prediction model is accurate based on a SINGLE result.
        aninhumer 8y ago
        Moreover, if someone makes a lot of predictions of people having "90% chance to win" and all of them win, that is a less accurate prediction than if roughly 10% of them lose.
- at-fates-hands 8y ago
  I'll just give you a few just from January and February of this year after Trump's inauguration: 1. Spike in Transgender Suicide Rates following the election results. Twitterverse and Facebook exploded after Out editor-at-large Zach Stafford tweeted the rumor. No evidence to date has been found to support this story. 2. Tri-state hacking conspiracy. Gabriel Sherman posted a bombshell report at New York Magazine claiming that “a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers” were demanding a recount in three separate states because of “persuasive evidence that [the election] results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.” The evidence? Apparently, “in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. By the time Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight explained it was actually just demographics, the damage had already been done. 3. The MLK bust removal Time reporter Zeke Miller wrote that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the White House. When in fact, it had simply been moved. However, Miller didn't even ask anybody and the story went viral before Miller issued his correction. 4. Betsy Davos Grizzly comment Davos was asked whether schools should have guns on their campus. Her reply? "As NBC News reported, DeVos felt it was “best left to locales and states to decide.” She pointed out that one school in Wyoming had a fence around it to protect the students from wildlife. “I would imagine,” she said, “that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies." Different states, different needs, she merely stated there isn't a one sized fits all strategy. How did the media run with it? By lying through their teeth. “Betsy DeVos Says Guns Should Be Allowed in Schools. They Might Be Needed to Shoot Grizzlies” (Slate). “Betsy DeVos: Schools May Need Guns to Fight Off Bears” (The Daily Beast). “Citing grizzlies, education nominee says states should determine school gun policies” (CNN). “Betsy DeVos says guns in schools may be necessary to protect students from grizzly bears” (ThinkProgress.) “Betsy DeVos says guns shouldn’t be banned in schools … because grizzly bears” (Vox) 5. The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” This resignation, according to Rogin, was “part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.” These resignations happened “suddenly” and “unexpectedly.” He styled it as a shocking shake-up of administrative protocol in the State Department, a kind of ad-hoc protest of the Trump administration. Totally fake and untrue. As is the custom, all politically appointed officers submit a letter of resignation when the new administration comes in. Rogin's story was misleading and totally fake. 6. The Travel Ban Lie On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” This resignation, according to Rogin, was “part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.” These resignations happened “suddenly” and “unexpectedly.” He styled it as a shocking shake-up of administrative protocol in the State Department, a kind of ad-hoc protest of the Trump administration. The story spread so far because it gratified all the biases of the liberal media elite: it proved that Trump’s “Muslim ban” was an evil, racist Hitler-esque mother-killer of an executive order. Just one problem? It was a total lie. The man had lied about when his mother died. Nobody did any research, they just took the story and ran with it. I could go on and on, but you get the point. These are not just "oops, the headline was poorly written." These are purposely fake and misleading stories meant to create a certain narrative and these people bank on the fact people are lazy and will simply run with it until it gets called out. Keep in mind these are JUST FROM TWO MONTHS, imagine the amount of stories I could dig up if I actually wanted to put in the time and vetted all of the MSM's articles? It's obvious this is a protracted, deliberate attempt to push negative stories about Trump and his administration, there's no other way to spin this.
- JoshCole 8y ago
  Bombs hit Syria vs bombs intercepted. Gassing by Syria vs false flag by Britain. Clearly, we do run into situations where multiple sets of facts are put forward. So fake news is not a ridiculous thing that never happens. Suggesting that it is because not all news is intentionally fake is like saying there is no such thing as war because we don't often see people killing each other. Moving away from extreme cases, things are still wrong enough to cause trouble. False information is inherently surprising when presented as true, because it isn't expected. It follows that false information lends itself better to clickbait titles. This in turn leads to false information having better click through and sharing metrics. Sharing metrics and engagement metrics are used to power recommendation systems. So it follows that recommendation systems are biased toward recommending false information. Compounding the issue, content producers know this. They optimize their content for an environment which promotes false information, which biases content in a way that generates the sort of speculative conclusions you mention. As a natural consequence of the flawed environment, this flawed content is then seen by a greater number of people. That out news system isn't as good as would like is just true. I still remember the TED talk when I found out about how much better the world was doing by most metrics. All those educated and rich people who could afford to attend a TED talk and yet the majority had no idea as to the true state of the world. If the news wasn't biased such that it presents a false narrative, then why such glaring ignorance among the educated?
- BookmarkSaver 8y ago
  There is an entire world of straight-up fabricated "journalism" disguised as reputable reporting which gets immense circulation on social media networks. It is very easy to not experience this sort of thing, using fairly basic but overall uncommon steps. For instance, I don't use Twitter and I've filtered all my random acquaintances (e.g. random people I knew in high school) from my FB feed years ago. But there are patently false links being passed around at an enormous rate on these sites, and people that don't personally invest themselves into that sort of social media, or simply don't discriminate between who they see stuff from, get exposed to it a lot.
- soundwave106 8y ago
  The definition of "fake news" when I first heard the term more or less dealt with sites parroting outright falsehoods. It didn't necessarily have to be explicitly political. False gossip sites, outrage-inducing headlines to the wild side of the tabloids, fake business news (http://fortune.com/2017/05/30/fake-news-sites-local-businesses/ http://fortune.com/2017/05/30/fake-news-sites-local-business...), troll-ish article sites (ala the National Report), homeopathy woo (ala Natural News), and other conspiracy oriented venues (eg GlobalResearch, Infowars) were among the many types of "fake news" out there. The political angle it has taken is unfortunate -- due to the prominence of "fake news" in the last US election; the net effect has been a devolution of the word into a snarl word for "I don't like your particular political point of view". IMHO what you are describing -- a news organization has a bias or opinion (strong or not), but still tries to maintain some degree of connection with factual data -- is not fake news.
- deleted 8y ago
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rsync 8y ago
"Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts" Thankfully, we've learned a few things since then and liberal (classic definition, not American definition), democratic minded people know how dangerous government defined truth (no matter how simple or well accepted) is. There is a cost to this, of course - the citizenry is required to have a level of sophistication and erudition and they will be forced to make nuanced and complicated judgements about the state of their world. If you find that too high a bar to cross, a "ministry of truth" may sound attractive. Please grow up and resist that urge. It may help to read about twentieth century dictatorships and the history of modern, repressive regimes in general.
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  Unfortunately, there are voices in the foreign policy establishment that are openly advocating for a "ministry of truth" https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/atlantic-council-explains-why-we-need-to-be-propagandized-for-our-own-good-fd3470254ea5 https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/atlantic-council-explains...
  - kristianc 8y ago
    Caitlyn Johnstone is a 9/11 truther, and not representative of any 'foreign policy establishment', imagined or otherwise.
    - jadedhacker 8y ago
      Fwiw, she is criticizing someone advocating this policy if you read the article. EDIT: I should mention I do not necessarily endorse her views with respect to 9/11.
      - kristianc 8y ago
        Her views on the Douma gas attack and the Skripal poisoning (she takes the Kremlin line on both), are also well outside the political mainstream. As a UK citizen, the implication that Britain was involved in poisoning its own citizens is not unlike how many Americans feel about '9/11 was a false flag'.
jccalhoun 8y ago
Interestingly enough in the 18th century Benjamin Franklin wrote tons of fake news stories https://www.hudson.org/research/13133-benjamin-franklin-and-fake-news https://www.hudson.org/research/13133-benjamin-franklin-and-...
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  I suppose if you consider The Onion fake news...
  - jccalhoun 8y ago
    One of the sites I love to visit every few months is http://literallyunbelievable.org/ http://literallyunbelievable.org/ which has screen caps of people that don't know what The Onion is.
lopmotr 8y ago
The term only became popular after Trump's win [1], not while it was happening, which is forever (I once read in a real paper newspaper about an amputee who had donkey's legs attached in place of his own). This suggests people don't like it because they went looking for something to blame for his winning. It's entirely a partisan political concern, not a fundamental one. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=fake%20news https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...
- wilsonnb 8y ago
  It became popular after he won because he started using the term incorrectly and labeling everything he disagrees with as fake news. People weren't looking for something to blame his winning on. That's a loaded statement. They were looking for reasons that he won. That's a reasonable thing to do. We've never had a President like him. Our polling methods in the 2016 election didn't predict him winning. Obviously people missed something that was a factor in this election and fake news is one of the things they looked into. Had Trump not butchered the term I doubt we would still be talking about it much in the public forum.
  - ixtli 8y ago
    I'm not sure why either of these comments is being downvoted. They're both true at the same time, though I agree with you that the parent comment overstates what Trump actually did which was weaponize the critique into something to generally dismiss expert opinion.
    - frabbit 8y ago
      I think you're seeing liberals and conservatives being even-handedly "triggered". Or maybe people are telling themselve that they are sick of politics being discussed, yet they keep coming back to it and lapping it up.
  - makomk 8y ago
    You're reversing cause and effect. Trump latched onto the term after the entire press started blaming his victory on "fake news" - that's where he got the idea from. (A lot of his ideas seem to just be whatever's been in the press last, actually.)
geggam 8y ago
People also used to do duels over insults and this was considered OK. We should bring that back. Get triggered demand a duel :) Enough PC
- ixtli 8y ago
  I find that the phrase "political correctness" can almost always be replaced with "treating people with respect."
  - geggam 8y ago
    Respect is earned, not given. Giving something away demeans it and makes it worthless.
    - mabramo 8y ago
      Disagree. Respect is given and removed if proven undeserving.
      - geggam 8y ago
        That is your choice. To force it on society is to remove freedom from society. That is not a choice. That is a consequence and it has consequences.
        Frondo 8y ago
        You're not going to be jailed for being disrespectful (or "un-pc" if you like); but other people might not want to spend time around you anymore...
        geggam 8y ago
        I find more people are sick of PC than are a fan of it. You might have different peers though.
protomyth 8y ago
I wonder where the government of Massachusetts stance on witches and their accusers fits into the "Fake news was illegal" narrative.
- frabbit 8y ago
  That was the first thing that popped into my mind. Now you could subsitute "The Russians" or "Paedophiles" or "Terrorists" for that part in the narrative.
ixtli 8y ago
This is cool and interesting however I believe it's worth noting that the more pernicious issue is that the phrase "fake news" is used to discredit expert opinion that doesn't line up with one's preconceived notions. We replicate this by using the term at our own peril.
- gowld 8y ago
  That perils applies to every single synonym for "false", including "level", "slander", "lie", "troll", etc. You can't police the dictionary as strategy to stop falsehood and false claims about falsehood.
  - ixtli 8y ago
    "You can't police the dictionary as strategy to stop falsehood and false claims about falsehood." This is a beautiful way to explain this that I'm going to appropriate :)
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CompanionCuuube 8y ago
As was witchcraft. Social scapegoating as an American institution.
threepipeproblm 8y ago
They also banned Christmas, and most sports.
- frabbit 8y ago
  And committed genocide against the original inhabitants and wiped out vast numbers of species. So, yeah, laws against Fake News as defined by a bunch of religious maniacs are great.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
    [citation needed] The "genocide" of native Americans was a result of European diseases, not barbarism.[1] As the people had no idea of germ theory, it is impossible to claim this was intentional. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#Impact_on_population_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...
    - threepipeproblm 8y ago
      Well that's an oversimplification. Diseases wiped out 90% before they ever saw a soldier. BUT... 'Instead, when the Indians were ready to leave, Trent wrote: "Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."' -- http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring04/warfare.cfm http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring04/warfare.c... More commonly rumored to be used by British against Americans, though.
      - Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
        How is it an oversimplification if 90% of the population decrease was because of initial contact, not overt actions by the Europeans against the natives?
ppod 8y ago
Thou shalt not bear false witness
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I've been reading a lot about pamphleteering in the 1600s. 'Mass media' fake news has been around for quite a while; Cromwell and the Puritans were particularly adept at it.
myf01d 8y ago
But fake news didn't mean "news that liberals and leftists don't like" back then
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
In case anyone forgot, the other five states in New England don't exist because MA was a welcoming place where the powers that be kept it's nose out of the business of the people. MA has always been the kind of place where you need to watch what you say about the people/groups in charge. It doesn't surprise me at all that speaking out in a provably false way was on the books as a crime in colonial MA.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
This bit is so ironic to the point that I feel they must be trying to convey a message that is not directly stated. 17th century colonial Massachusetts. Doesn't that ring a bell for anybody else? Salem Witch Trials. In 17th century Massachusetts the just arbiters of truth, naturally being the Massachusetts Government, would soon fall to frenzied lust in pursuit and prosecution of 'witches' for which they tried, convicted, and executed numerous individuals. The same body behind this is the one that was also responsible for judging what was true and what was false and doling out punishment accordingly...

173 points by jimschley 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

I'm really happy to have my freedom of speech. I don't think i would do well under the classic Puritan model. I do sometimes wonder if there's room for a special class of formal speech for journalism. Grant rights perhaps formalizing protecting a source. But also require some responsibilities. Not sure what the standard should be, but we do the same thing for lawyers and doctors. Also "pernicious to the publick weal" is an amusing phrase.

jadedhacker 8y ago
For what its worth, we did do this though it is in part a sort of detente between prosecutors and journalists. This wall has been eroded, with some of the most striking erosion happening around the threatened prosecution of James Risen for refusing to disclose a source. https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-times-reporter-in-the-shadow-of-the-war-on-terror/ https://theintercept.com/2018/01/03/my-life-as-a-new-york-ti...

ralusek 8y ago

This whole "fake news" thing is absolutely ridiculous. What's interesting to me is that I very very rarely hear a fact touted by the left OR right that is just outright incorrect. The problem is much less to do with facts, and much more to do with implications or conclusions, which many news sources dish out handily.

Zak 8y ago
The original meaning was literally something that looks like a news report, but reports as fact something that didn't actually happen and isn't obviously satire. As an example, "Pope Francis endorses Donald Trump". That was, in fact a fake news story. The fact it asserted had no basis in reality.
guelo 8y ago
That's weird, I constantly see friends spreading outright incorrect, political trolling from clickbait factories like "Daily World Upate" or "America’s Last Line of Defense".
KC8ZKF 8y ago
"Fake news" has become a cure for cognitive dissonance, but it started out as "pizzagate" and its ilk. That certainly was fake, somewhat effective, and toxic. It's still around. Check out qanon, spirtcooking, etc.
- dmix 8y ago
  > but it started out as "pizzagate" and its ilk. Funny seeing such a local and current political tribe-based perspective in a discussion on the history of fake news. As if they just happened to be witness to the spawning of some new phenomenon which also happens to be caused by their pet political opponents. Meanwhile in reality it's really been one of the oldest products of human-fallible mass media consumption (see: low investment content targeting emotion driven responses) used by every political ideology who happens to have influence over particular media sources. That may have been your introduction, of a popular/easy punching-bag demographic pushing their own politically convenient narrative. But this particular story hardly extends beyond a niche of extremists (or at most a sizeable group of hopelessly low-education voters) on Reddit/Twitter. Notably these days including a large percentage of trolls who know better but will happily push it because they enjoy getting reactions. I find it interesting to see how this type of misrepresentation and FUD is spawned by otherwise smart people. Beyond simply being young and naive by thinking everything you recently discovered is a new phenomenon. And ultimately I believe it has to do with their exposure to media within their small bubble of content sources, followed by a mass extrapolation to the wider public who identify with their adversarial political party. So they legitimately think it's an important problem and feature of x group, instead of almost every group a) by dumb subset after certain scale or b) the ideas of an entirely fringe group. But usually it's just a vocal minority of a niche forum gets applied to the wider public. If outrage and reactionary politics was scaled to the actual influence and power of the groups they see as a threat the world would be a far more boring and stable place. But that doesn't sell Buzzfeed pageviews, or any newspaper commercially incentivized exaggerated narratives, nor does it translate well to 2-3 sentence long comments on social media sites. Pandering, oversimplification, and snarky soundbites is what sells on reddit. It's the perfect platform for overblown FUD to spread. Which is iornic given how Redditors love to attack TV shows, targeting the emotions of the lowest common denominators, for doing the same.
EGreg 8y ago
Fake news used to refer to “Hillary Clinton has a body double” or stuff you’d find in the Enquirer. And now the term has been hijacked to mean any new you disagree with.
- protomyth 8y ago
  I was quite fond of the Weekly World News, particularly their article on how there was a gate to Hell in North Dakota and the Governor sending a tactical team to try to kill the devil.
- gowld 8y ago
  The Enquirer is real (gossip/trash) news, at least at the level of carefully worded exaggerated rumor that some real person claimed to have observed. Weekly World News is fictional satire about aliens.
drzaiusapelord 8y ago
>I very very rarely hear a fact touted by the left OR right that is just outright incorrect. The right absolutely makes up stories: https://www.snopes.com/tag/breitbart/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/breitbart/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/fox-news/ https://www.snopes.com/tag/fox-news/ Lots and lots of false statements here.
- deadmetheny 8y ago
  Snopes isn't made up of experts and isn't an unbiased source. It mystifies me that so many people treat it as reliable, let alone infallible. (sorry for pointing this out, but downvoting me doesn't change that it's true)
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - drzaiusapelord 8y ago
    You're welcome to challenge their items on a line by line basis. Type it out, I'll wait. There are also lots of other sources. I think playing up a 'no true scotsman' just empowers the liars because at a certain point you're just arguing that truth cannot be verified by anyone.
    - deadmetheny 8y ago
      They have no valid credentials other than having been on the Internet a long time and having an interest in researching urban legends as laymen. One of the founders, David Mikkelson, couldn't answer questions about fact-checking due to legal issues[1]. If you really want to play the "HN says the names of logical fallacies" game, then I'll do you one better and say that challenging me to refute every single line item is an appeal to authority and we should just trust them because everyone says we should. There's no reason to believe them any more than there's a reason to believe much of anything published on somebody's personal website. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-daily-mail-snopes-story-and-fact-checking-the-fact-checkers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2016/12/22/the-dai...
trgv 8y ago
I don't think it was ridiculous to begin with (neither was "terrorism") but it's ridiculous now. I would define "fake news" as news published by people who know what they're publishing is false. My feeling is that either there were more of those kinds of articles floating around this past election or they were more visible. You might just call it clickbait, but "fake news" didn't seem like an inapt descriptor until it started being applied to everything someone disagrees with.
- karmelapple 8y ago
  Would you also consider it news the publisher knows mislead, even if there’s a grain of truth?
craftyguy 8y ago
> I very very rarely hear a fact touted by the left OR right that is just outright incorrect Go look at donald trump's twitter feed. It's full of outright incorrect statements being presented as fact.
- ralusek 8y ago
  Donald Trump is not a news source, he's a moron.
jccalhoun 8y ago
There are certainly "facts" that I have heard people say or spread online that were clearly false like millions of illegals voted in the last election (when in reality one article claimed that and had lots of rebuttals and now has a disclaimer at the top of the article) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrants-2008-election/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/illegal-immigrants-2008-el... or that Hillary Clinton only won 57 counties in the 2016 election https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-won-3084-of-3141-counties-clinton-won-57/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-won-3084-of-3141-cou... However, the fact stands that there are also a lot more cases of wildly different interpretations of the same fact. We can look at poverty rates or crime rates and draw very different conclusions about the causes or solutions to those problems based on the same information.
- deleted 8y ago
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ixtli 8y ago
Its a concerted effort to discredit expert opinion which the shorter term goal of allowing people to equate their own laymen's understanding with that of someone versed in a subject.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  Nate Silver = election expert Me = not an expert on elections Yet, at almost every turn along the path of the 2016 election, I was far more accurate than Nate Silver. Is Nate Silver's expert opinion still more valuable than mine? Is expert opinion valuable even if it is right no more often than coin flipping?
  - jonbarker 8y ago
    Disclosure: I am a Nate Silver fan. Nate's expert opinion is only valuable if you accept the premise, which is that prediction science involves a range of possible outcomes. If you accept that premise, which I do, his opinion on the 2016 election, in which he stated several times that the odds of a Trump presidency were actually higher than most of the polls suggested, was arguably a more valuable opinion than either a coin toss, or most of the individual polls.
    - null0pointer 8y ago
      Yeah this seems to be the disconnect. A lot of people will intuitively think (myself included) something like this. "You said Hillary had 90% chance to win, but Trump won. Therefore your prediction was WRONG". It actually takes a little more thought to understand that a Trump victory was a possibility in the model all along. And that you cannot say whether or not a prediction model is accurate based on a SINGLE result.
      - aninhumer 8y ago
        Moreover, if someone makes a lot of predictions of people having "90% chance to win" and all of them win, that is a less accurate prediction than if roughly 10% of them lose.
at-fates-hands 8y ago
I'll just give you a few just from January and February of this year after Trump's inauguration: 1. Spike in Transgender Suicide Rates following the election results. Twitterverse and Facebook exploded after Out editor-at-large Zach Stafford tweeted the rumor. No evidence to date has been found to support this story. 2. Tri-state hacking conspiracy. Gabriel Sherman posted a bombshell report at New York Magazine claiming that “a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers” were demanding a recount in three separate states because of “persuasive evidence that [the election] results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.” The evidence? Apparently, “in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. By the time Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight explained it was actually just demographics, the damage had already been done. 3. The MLK bust removal Time reporter Zeke Miller wrote that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the White House. When in fact, it had simply been moved. However, Miller didn't even ask anybody and the story went viral before Miller issued his correction. 4. Betsy Davos Grizzly comment Davos was asked whether schools should have guns on their campus. Her reply? "As NBC News reported, DeVos felt it was “best left to locales and states to decide.” She pointed out that one school in Wyoming had a fence around it to protect the students from wildlife. “I would imagine,” she said, “that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies." Different states, different needs, she merely stated there isn't a one sized fits all strategy. How did the media run with it? By lying through their teeth. “Betsy DeVos Says Guns Should Be Allowed in Schools. They Might Be Needed to Shoot Grizzlies” (Slate). “Betsy DeVos: Schools May Need Guns to Fight Off Bears” (The Daily Beast). “Citing grizzlies, education nominee says states should determine school gun policies” (CNN). “Betsy DeVos says guns in schools may be necessary to protect students from grizzly bears” (ThinkProgress.) “Betsy DeVos says guns shouldn’t be banned in schools … because grizzly bears” (Vox) 5. The ‘Resignations’ At the State Department On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” This resignation, according to Rogin, was “part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.” These resignations happened “suddenly” and “unexpectedly.” He styled it as a shocking shake-up of administrative protocol in the State Department, a kind of ad-hoc protest of the Trump administration. Totally fake and untrue. As is the custom, all politically appointed officers submit a letter of resignation when the new administration comes in. Rogin's story was misleading and totally fake. 6. The Travel Ban Lie On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.” This resignation, according to Rogin, was “part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.” These resignations happened “suddenly” and “unexpectedly.” He styled it as a shocking shake-up of administrative protocol in the State Department, a kind of ad-hoc protest of the Trump administration. The story spread so far because it gratified all the biases of the liberal media elite: it proved that Trump’s “Muslim ban” was an evil, racist Hitler-esque mother-killer of an executive order. Just one problem? It was a total lie. The man had lied about when his mother died. Nobody did any research, they just took the story and ran with it. I could go on and on, but you get the point. These are not just "oops, the headline was poorly written." These are purposely fake and misleading stories meant to create a certain narrative and these people bank on the fact people are lazy and will simply run with it until it gets called out. Keep in mind these are JUST FROM TWO MONTHS, imagine the amount of stories I could dig up if I actually wanted to put in the time and vetted all of the MSM's articles? It's obvious this is a protracted, deliberate attempt to push negative stories about Trump and his administration, there's no other way to spin this.
JoshCole 8y ago
Bombs hit Syria vs bombs intercepted. Gassing by Syria vs false flag by Britain. Clearly, we do run into situations where multiple sets of facts are put forward. So fake news is not a ridiculous thing that never happens. Suggesting that it is because not all news is intentionally fake is like saying there is no such thing as war because we don't often see people killing each other. Moving away from extreme cases, things are still wrong enough to cause trouble. False information is inherently surprising when presented as true, because it isn't expected. It follows that false information lends itself better to clickbait titles. This in turn leads to false information having better click through and sharing metrics. Sharing metrics and engagement metrics are used to power recommendation systems. So it follows that recommendation systems are biased toward recommending false information. Compounding the issue, content producers know this. They optimize their content for an environment which promotes false information, which biases content in a way that generates the sort of speculative conclusions you mention. As a natural consequence of the flawed environment, this flawed content is then seen by a greater number of people. That out news system isn't as good as would like is just true. I still remember the TED talk when I found out about how much better the world was doing by most metrics. All those educated and rich people who could afford to attend a TED talk and yet the majority had no idea as to the true state of the world. If the news wasn't biased such that it presents a false narrative, then why such glaring ignorance among the educated?
BookmarkSaver 8y ago
There is an entire world of straight-up fabricated "journalism" disguised as reputable reporting which gets immense circulation on social media networks. It is very easy to not experience this sort of thing, using fairly basic but overall uncommon steps. For instance, I don't use Twitter and I've filtered all my random acquaintances (e.g. random people I knew in high school) from my FB feed years ago. But there are patently false links being passed around at an enormous rate on these sites, and people that don't personally invest themselves into that sort of social media, or simply don't discriminate between who they see stuff from, get exposed to it a lot.
soundwave106 8y ago
The definition of "fake news" when I first heard the term more or less dealt with sites parroting outright falsehoods. It didn't necessarily have to be explicitly political. False gossip sites, outrage-inducing headlines to the wild side of the tabloids, fake business news (http://fortune.com/2017/05/30/fake-news-sites-local-businesses/ http://fortune.com/2017/05/30/fake-news-sites-local-business...), troll-ish article sites (ala the National Report), homeopathy woo (ala Natural News), and other conspiracy oriented venues (eg GlobalResearch, Infowars) were among the many types of "fake news" out there. The political angle it has taken is unfortunate -- due to the prominence of "fake news" in the last US election; the net effect has been a devolution of the word into a snarl word for "I don't like your particular political point of view". IMHO what you are describing -- a news organization has a bias or opinion (strong or not), but still tries to maintain some degree of connection with factual data -- is not fake news.
deleted 8y ago
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rsync 8y ago

"Fake news was illegal in 17th century colonial Massachusetts" Thankfully, we've learned a few things since then and liberal (classic definition, not American definition), democratic minded people know how dangerous government defined truth (no matter how simple or well accepted) is. There is a cost to this, of course - the citizenry is required to have a level of sophistication and erudition and they will be forced to make nuanced and complicated judgements about the state of their world. If you find that too high a bar to cross, a "ministry of truth" may sound attractive. Please grow up and resist that urge. It may help to read about twentieth century dictatorships and the history of modern, repressive regimes in general.

jadedhacker 8y ago
Unfortunately, there are voices in the foreign policy establishment that are openly advocating for a "ministry of truth" https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/atlantic-council-explains-why-we-need-to-be-propagandized-for-our-own-good-fd3470254ea5 https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/atlantic-council-explains...
- kristianc 8y ago
  Caitlyn Johnstone is a 9/11 truther, and not representative of any 'foreign policy establishment', imagined or otherwise.
  - jadedhacker 8y ago
    Fwiw, she is criticizing someone advocating this policy if you read the article. EDIT: I should mention I do not necessarily endorse her views with respect to 9/11.
    - kristianc 8y ago
      Her views on the Douma gas attack and the Skripal poisoning (she takes the Kremlin line on both), are also well outside the political mainstream. As a UK citizen, the implication that Britain was involved in poisoning its own citizens is not unlike how many Americans feel about '9/11 was a false flag'.

jccalhoun 8y ago

Interestingly enough in the 18th century Benjamin Franklin wrote tons of fake news stories https://www.hudson.org/research/13133-benjamin-franklin-and-fake-news https://www.hudson.org/research/13133-benjamin-franklin-and-...

throwawayjava 8y ago
I suppose if you consider The Onion fake news...
- jccalhoun 8y ago
  One of the sites I love to visit every few months is http://literallyunbelievable.org/ http://literallyunbelievable.org/ which has screen caps of people that don't know what The Onion is.

lopmotr 8y ago

The term only became popular after Trump's win [1], not while it was happening, which is forever (I once read in a real paper newspaper about an amputee who had donkey's legs attached in place of his own). This suggests people don't like it because they went looking for something to blame for his winning. It's entirely a partisan political concern, not a fundamental one. [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=fake%20news https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...

wilsonnb 8y ago
It became popular after he won because he started using the term incorrectly and labeling everything he disagrees with as fake news. People weren't looking for something to blame his winning on. That's a loaded statement. They were looking for reasons that he won. That's a reasonable thing to do. We've never had a President like him. Our polling methods in the 2016 election didn't predict him winning. Obviously people missed something that was a factor in this election and fake news is one of the things they looked into. Had Trump not butchered the term I doubt we would still be talking about it much in the public forum.
- ixtli 8y ago
  I'm not sure why either of these comments is being downvoted. They're both true at the same time, though I agree with you that the parent comment overstates what Trump actually did which was weaponize the critique into something to generally dismiss expert opinion.
  - frabbit 8y ago
    I think you're seeing liberals and conservatives being even-handedly "triggered". Or maybe people are telling themselve that they are sick of politics being discussed, yet they keep coming back to it and lapping it up.
- makomk 8y ago
  You're reversing cause and effect. Trump latched onto the term after the entire press started blaming his victory on "fake news" - that's where he got the idea from. (A lot of his ideas seem to just be whatever's been in the press last, actually.)

geggam 8y ago

People also used to do duels over insults and this was considered OK. We should bring that back. Get triggered demand a duel :) Enough PC

ixtli 8y ago
I find that the phrase "political correctness" can almost always be replaced with "treating people with respect."
- geggam 8y ago
  Respect is earned, not given. Giving something away demeans it and makes it worthless.
  - mabramo 8y ago
    Disagree. Respect is given and removed if proven undeserving.
    - geggam 8y ago
      That is your choice. To force it on society is to remove freedom from society. That is not a choice. That is a consequence and it has consequences.
      - Frondo 8y ago
        You're not going to be jailed for being disrespectful (or "un-pc" if you like); but other people might not want to spend time around you anymore...
        geggam 8y ago
        I find more people are sick of PC than are a fan of it. You might have different peers though.

protomyth 8y ago

I wonder where the government of Massachusetts stance on witches and their accusers fits into the "Fake news was illegal" narrative.

frabbit 8y ago
That was the first thing that popped into my mind. Now you could subsitute "The Russians" or "Paedophiles" or "Terrorists" for that part in the narrative.

ixtli 8y ago

This is cool and interesting however I believe it's worth noting that the more pernicious issue is that the phrase "fake news" is used to discredit expert opinion that doesn't line up with one's preconceived notions. We replicate this by using the term at our own peril.

gowld 8y ago
That perils applies to every single synonym for "false", including "level", "slander", "lie", "troll", etc. You can't police the dictionary as strategy to stop falsehood and false claims about falsehood.
- ixtli 8y ago
  "You can't police the dictionary as strategy to stop falsehood and false claims about falsehood." This is a beautiful way to explain this that I'm going to appropriate :)

deleted 8y ago

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CompanionCuuube 8y ago

As was witchcraft. Social scapegoating as an American institution.

threepipeproblm 8y ago

They also banned Christmas, and most sports.

frabbit 8y ago
And committed genocide against the original inhabitants and wiped out vast numbers of species. So, yeah, laws against Fake News as defined by a bunch of religious maniacs are great.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
  [citation needed] The "genocide" of native Americans was a result of European diseases, not barbarism.[1] As the people had no idea of germ theory, it is impossible to claim this was intentional. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_epidemics#Impact_on_population_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_disease_and_ep...
  - threepipeproblm 8y ago
    Well that's an oversimplification. Diseases wiped out 90% before they ever saw a soldier. BUT... 'Instead, when the Indians were ready to leave, Trent wrote: "Out of our regard for them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."' -- http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring04/warfare.cfm http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring04/warfare.c... More commonly rumored to be used by British against Americans, though.
    - Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
      How is it an oversimplification if 90% of the population decrease was because of initial contact, not overt actions by the Europeans against the natives?

ppod 8y ago

Thou shalt not bear false witness

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

I've been reading a lot about pamphleteering in the 1600s. 'Mass media' fake news has been around for quite a while; Cromwell and the Puritans were particularly adept at it.

myf01d 8y ago

But fake news didn't mean "news that liberals and leftists don't like" back then

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

In case anyone forgot, the other five states in New England don't exist because MA was a welcoming place where the powers that be kept it's nose out of the business of the people. MA has always been the kind of place where you need to watch what you say about the people/groups in charge. It doesn't surprise me at all that speaking out in a provably false way was on the books as a crime in colonial MA.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

This bit is so ironic to the point that I feel they must be trying to convey a message that is not directly stated. 17th century colonial Massachusetts. Doesn't that ring a bell for anybody else? Salem Witch Trials. In 17th century Massachusetts the just arbiters of truth, naturally being the Massachusetts Government, would soon fall to frenzied lust in pursuit and prosecution of 'witches' for which they tried, convicted, and executed numerous individuals. The same body behind this is the one that was also responsible for judging what was true and what was false and doling out punishment accordingly...