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One problem with making misinformation a bannable offense on Twitter is that they'd have to ban so many mainstream journalists. (Seriously, it's obnoxious how m
by makomk 8y ago
One problem with making misinformation a bannable offense on Twitter is that they'd have to ban so many mainstream journalists. (Seriously, it's obnoxious how many totally bogus viral claims they start and spread on Twitter; some combination of wide reach, trust, and never bothering to verify anything they post on social media.)
- tptacek 8y agoCite an example of a mainstream journalist propagating a viral claim that any reasonable person should have known was false? That's what misinformation networks do.
- pjc50 8y agoThere's a lot of what we might call "uncritical claim reporting" going on, where a journalist accurately reports that someone said something without any kind of regard for how implausible that is. Lot of this going on in Brexit, for example. The "£350m for the NHS bus" which rested on at least three ludicrous assumptions. Edit: let's have a look at https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1001158920663109632 https://twitter.com/afneil/status/1001158920663109632 - Andrew Neil is Chairman of the Spectator (important "serious" rightwing politics magazine) and a BBC presenter. He's accusing the NYT of "Stalinism". One of these has to be wrong.
- makomk 8y agoThere's that too, of course, but I mean that they can literally - for instance - get tens of thousands of retweets by posting a photoshopped photo on their verified Twitter account tied to their employer that happens to go viral because it confirms people's existing beliefs, and that doesn't hurt their career in the slighest: https://archive.is/vx4z1 https://archive.is/vx4z1 (I've even caught at least one journalist just outright making stuff up on Twitter, though I can't remember who and when off-hand.) Oh, at least ten thousand of those retweets were post-correction, as is usual on Twitter.
- Gatellicited 8y agohttp://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-finished-at-politico-over-obscene-trump-tweet.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-fin... Jewess Julia Ioffe, regular scribbler for The Atlantic and described by the Guardian as "one of America’s top feature writers", whom I trust qualifies as mainstream, made a tweet promoting the false story that Trump was to appoint his daughter to an office conventionally held by the First Lady. Now, this claim seems unreasonable to me, but I can't speak to how the warped Hebraic mind operates. Perhaps you can. https://archive.is/nN00G https://archive.is/nN00G Forbes writer Frances Coppola who has appeared as an authority on BBC's Newsnight floats the nutty theory that "anti-immigration" groups are somehow orchestrating or otherwise inducing the mass rapes committed by so-called refugees in Germany. Now, here's a challenge for you and anyone else brave enough to expose themselves to opposing thoughts: find me one article on Breitbart London or The Daily Stormer, excluding any manifest satire, that is demonstrably, objectively false.
- toxic_ 8y agoVery well. Two examples, by no means the most egregious or significant, that readily come to mind. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-finished-at-politico-over-obscene-trump-tweet.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/12/julia-ioffe-fin... ADL Council member Julia Ioffe, regular scribbler for The Atlantic and described by the Guardian as "one of America’s top feature writers", whom I trust qualifies as mainstream, made a tweet promoting the false story that President Trump was to appoint his daughter to an office conventionally held by the First Lady. The claim seems unreasonable to me, but I can't speak to how the warped Hebraic mind operates. Perhaps you can. https://archive.is/nN00G https://archive.is/nN00G Forbes writer Frances Coppola who has appeared as an authority on BBC's Newsnight floats the quite nutty theory that "anti-immigration" groups are somehow orchestrating or otherwise inducing the mass rapes committed by so-called refugees in Germany. Now, here's a challenge for you and anyone else brave enough to expose themselves to opposing thoughts: find me one article on Breitbart or The Daily Stormer, excluding any manifest satire, that is demonstrably, objectively false.
- heroprotagonist 8y ago> I can't speak to how the warped Hebraic mind operates Was that really necessary? Casual racism completely undermines any point you might be trying to make.
- pvg 8y agoThe point they're trying to make is 'I'm a Nazi'. Should just be nuked offsite.