5 ms·

Although I'm willing to believe this kind of low-latency news-mining tech may be quite robust against noise, it seems like it would be difficult or impossible t

by pinko 8y ago

Although I'm willing to believe this kind of low-latency news-mining tech may be quite robust against noise, it seems like it would be difficult or impossible to filter real news from intentional, hostile, targeted false news injected by people who understand the basic principles upon which the tech is based.

neffy 8y ago
That could though, also be said about the existing human based media, which isn't exactly robust against noise or false news either.
notahacker 8y ago
Judging from the article, it relies mostly on "trusted accounts" who often tweet things they hear before they substantiate and file articles on them (but can certainly be fooled themselves) and can pick up some image-driven false stories by identifying the same image in earlier contexts (which presumably has some issues with stock images too...)
- bobthepanda 8y ago
  Presumably if an event is real, there is at least a handful of articles or tweets with new, unique images of the event.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    Some events can't be photographed (either for legal reasons, access reasons or because they happen on computers). Stock Pictures of relevant people, buildings and logos get used instead. It's a bit more likely to be fake news if the pictures are supposed to be "protests" or "bombing" from different dates and geographical contexts but those stories see people posting stock photos of locations and repost vaguely relevant memes too...
mc32 8y ago
If you take that approach and add Musk's source truthfulness rating[1], then perhaps we'll have something. Something's gotta give. Right now, it's all hard about narrative. It's not information, it's all shaping and characterization these days. Of course Trump doesn't help the cause, but to watch the news contort itself in an effort to "counter" has lead to its demise as a semi trusted fourth estate. [1]money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/technology/elon-musk-media/index.html
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  "...If you take that approach and add Musk's source truthfulness rating[1]..." Not sure resurrecting Pravda is the best way to ascertain the veracity of facts with authority. Pravda was a joke. That said, the unfortunate reality is that ALL of these proposals are predicated on trust. Do you trust whatever news source you are consuming? Do you trust whatever news source rating platform you are consuming? Etc etc. Nowadays, it's probably best just to accept that every article or comment you see on the internet is possibly part of a well tuned professional manipulation campaign. This goes DOUBLY for any article or comment that is even remotely political. Including this comment, your comment, and every other comment on this thread. That's just the nature of the world in which we currently live. A sad reality is that, in the end, we'll all be effectively choosing the sources, the data and the stories we wish to believe. And those choices will be largely informed by our pre-existing biases.
  - mc32 8y ago
    Sure, I think he's frustrated with the media's reporting on him. And obvs the Pravda moniker was a tongue in cheek dig at them. Still, I'm intrigued by the idea of a news source rating system --like a seller's rating on Amazon, eBay. Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. From the reaction from some journos, it's clear some don't like the idea being accountable for their reporting.
    - notahacker 8y ago
      > Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. Why? Surely what you'll actually get is one political faction dominating [parts of] the site and doing their utmost to downvote anything that contradicts their worldview to oblivion and (to a somewhat lesser extent) upvote probably false stuff that happens to support it. It's very much a winner-takes-all battle, because people that just want to read stuff or fact check aren't going to stick around if it obviously skews alt-right or far-left, and probably not even if it has an allegiance to one relatively moderate political coalition or another. If you want to know what a particular faction thinks are the important news stories of the day it probably has a subreddit anyway. The alternative to winner-takes-all is top-down curation, which is basically what the media does anyway, usually being more open about their partisanship, and I'm not sure write less unfavourable stuff about Elon Musk companies is the best starting point for curation. And if your site is started with the premise that the media cannot be trusted, there's a good chance the people that choose to spend most of their time there will be those with even less regard for truth and objectivity. (Case in point: As soon as Elon posted about "who owns the press", his timeline became dominated by people arguing that he meant "the Jews" who certainly had the numbers to drown out any useful observations Elon might actually have wanted make on the subject)

by pinko 8y ago

neffy 8y ago

That could though, also be said about the existing human based media, which isn't exactly robust against noise or false news either.

notahacker 8y ago

Judging from the article, it relies mostly on "trusted accounts" who often tweet things they hear before they substantiate and file articles on them (but can certainly be fooled themselves) and can pick up some image-driven false stories by identifying the same image in earlier contexts (which presumably has some issues with stock images too...)

bobthepanda 8y ago
Presumably if an event is real, there is at least a handful of articles or tweets with new, unique images of the event.
- notahacker 8y ago
  Some events can't be photographed (either for legal reasons, access reasons or because they happen on computers). Stock Pictures of relevant people, buildings and logos get used instead. It's a bit more likely to be fake news if the pictures are supposed to be "protests" or "bombing" from different dates and geographical contexts but those stories see people posting stock photos of locations and repost vaguely relevant memes too...

mc32 8y ago

If you take that approach and add Musk's source truthfulness rating[1], then perhaps we'll have something. Something's gotta give. Right now, it's all hard about narrative. It's not information, it's all shaping and characterization these days. Of course Trump doesn't help the cause, but to watch the news contort itself in an effort to "counter" has lead to its demise as a semi trusted fourth estate. [1]money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/technology/elon-musk-media/index.html

bilbo0s 8y ago
"...If you take that approach and add Musk's source truthfulness rating[1]..." Not sure resurrecting Pravda is the best way to ascertain the veracity of facts with authority. Pravda was a joke. That said, the unfortunate reality is that ALL of these proposals are predicated on trust. Do you trust whatever news source you are consuming? Do you trust whatever news source rating platform you are consuming? Etc etc. Nowadays, it's probably best just to accept that every article or comment you see on the internet is possibly part of a well tuned professional manipulation campaign. This goes DOUBLY for any article or comment that is even remotely political. Including this comment, your comment, and every other comment on this thread. That's just the nature of the world in which we currently live. A sad reality is that, in the end, we'll all be effectively choosing the sources, the data and the stories we wish to believe. And those choices will be largely informed by our pre-existing biases.
- mc32 8y ago
  Sure, I think he's frustrated with the media's reporting on him. And obvs the Pravda moniker was a tongue in cheek dig at them. Still, I'm intrigued by the idea of a news source rating system --like a seller's rating on Amazon, eBay. Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. From the reaction from some journos, it's clear some don't like the idea being accountable for their reporting.
  - notahacker 8y ago
    > Obvs those are skewed and unscientific, but something along those lines will be better than what we have today. Why? Surely what you'll actually get is one political faction dominating [parts of] the site and doing their utmost to downvote anything that contradicts their worldview to oblivion and (to a somewhat lesser extent) upvote probably false stuff that happens to support it. It's very much a winner-takes-all battle, because people that just want to read stuff or fact check aren't going to stick around if it obviously skews alt-right or far-left, and probably not even if it has an allegiance to one relatively moderate political coalition or another. If you want to know what a particular faction thinks are the important news stories of the day it probably has a subreddit anyway. The alternative to winner-takes-all is top-down curation, which is basically what the media does anyway, usually being more open about their partisanship, and I'm not sure write less unfavourable stuff about Elon Musk companies is the best starting point for curation. And if your site is started with the premise that the media cannot be trusted, there's a good chance the people that choose to spend most of their time there will be those with even less regard for truth and objectivity. (Case in point: As soon as Elon posted about "who owns the press", his timeline became dominated by people arguing that he meant "the Jews" who certainly had the numbers to drown out any useful observations Elon might actually have wanted make on the subject)