5 ms·

Thanks, I removed fake news because I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people, here in Italy it's the current government that is the master of

Thanks, I removed fake news because I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people, here in Italy it's the current government that is the master of fake news and is used by our left-wings to criticize what they do. In the doubt I changed the wording. I did not expect the term to be political.

js2 8y ago
Thank you.
DanielGee 8y ago
> Thanks, I removed fake news because I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people It's a term used by both the left and the right. By politicians and the media. > In the doubt I changed the wording. I did not expect the term to be political. You shouldn't have. Who cares if it is political. You are the author and you should express yourself the way you want.
- digitaLandscape 8y ago
  He cares, because he wasn't trying to be political. You could try being literate.
  - dang 8y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  Of course, because sdfjhzhawrnzhj zsfdjhisf ZSDHJyief. (Closed captions: "you should express yourself any way you want - if you don't care about anybody understanding your message." That is actually the opposite of communication: mumbling to yourself in a one-person language about nobody taking the effort to understand you.)
protomyth 8y ago
I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people No, both sides love using the term about anything the other side says.
- radus 8y ago
  And in removing the reference, he removed any association to "sides" in US politics.. don't really need that especially when dealing with a PR issue such as this.
- antirez 8y ago
  Ok, good reason to avoid this term. Indeed here it's happening as well... instead of understanding that the point is always to verify the information and their sources, "fake news" is becoming a quick way to dismiss what other people are saying, without actually bringing any more source.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Its actually getting pretty hard to write anything these days without someone getting offended (witness the message you are replying to). In a lot of ways, I really don't blame the current political climate, because the US has seen way worse (read up on the US 1800 Presidential Election). I actually blame poor applications of algorithms to what folks view. The bias caused not only by the beliefs of the person training the box and the professional poster's ability to learn how to manipulate the results (the next generation of SEO) has increasingly made twitter and facebook painful to use. Add a large bit of tribalism that is baked right into humanity and you have a lot of fun. Further strain through the idea that a lot of companies won't even just let the users pick accounts they always want to see regardless of the beliefs of the provider, and you get a added bit of helpless feeling in the populace. Which makes writing a pain. I've seen some folks take offense at grant applications that are basically some of the most dry reading you will find. It once was a don't use this era's forbidden words (e.g. the word "empower" had a very strange evolution in grants). Now its memes.
- zeveb 8y ago
  Yup — and in fact I recall that it was used very shortly after the 2016 presidential election as the Left, stunned at its loss, was searching for reasons why the election didn't go their way, and latched on to the idea that it was 'fake news,' basically people confusing Onion stories for real life (well, not just Onion-level satire but also carefully-crafted non-satirical false-fact sites). I think the term was then picked up by the Administration shortly after the inauguration. I think at the moment it tends to be used mostly by the Administration, but the term itself seems to have some currency in industry as well, although it may be dying a bit at this point. Regardless, the term 'fake news' is IMHO itself kinda fake news.
krn 8y ago
Even though this comment got downvoted for being overly political, antirez is right, that "fake news" holds completely different associations across the world, depending on who uses this term in a particular country.
geofft 8y ago
The history of the term is a little funny. It had two distinct meanings during the course of the US 2016 election, shortly before it escaped to the rest of the world. The first was the brief phenomenon of websites actually spoofing real news sites with confusing URLs and similar styles - think phishing for news. One example of this was "abcnews.com.co": see e.g. https://timesofsandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Fake-News.jpg https://timesofsandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Fake-... They would generally publish intentionally false stories with the goal of getting social media clicks and/or influencing public opinion, and usually in the direction of influencing public opinion in favor of US right-wing politics. The second is the accusation of US right-wing politicians that mainstream journalism (the real ABC, etc.) is publishing intentionally false stories on their actual sites. This use of the term "fake news" pretty efficiently displaced the previous meaning, and left us with no real term to talk about that phenomenon. It generally implies that stories are being made up out of whole cloth with the intent of lying to the public. At some point, thanks to repeated use of that phrase by the country that dominates the worldwide media, it escaped to the rest of the world - apparently to left-wing folks in Italy as well as to dictators across the globe. Assad has complained about living in a "fake news era". An official in Myanmar has called the very existence of the Rohingya people "fake news." There has been a phenomenon, for probably as long as recorded human history has been around, where storytellers and journalists get things wrong because of human fallibility and not malicious intent. I think it's easy to understand why people would misread the announcement, and no accusation of malice is required.
ksec 8y ago
The lessons learned here is don't use any word that is being used by US politicians. As Americans are extremely sensitive to politics. Although I do understand your frustration with news media and the echo chambers echoing precisely the wrong thing without making any attempt in correction.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I removed fake news because I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people It was adopted by right-wing (specifically, pro-Trump) people in the US specifically to drown out its earlier use to describe pro-Trump propaganda that followed what RAND Corp had described as the “firehose of falsehoods” propaganda approach used by Russia in other contexts (and which, it is increasingly evident, did so because it was in fact, often engineered by the same people who engineered the Russian propaganda that that label described.)
jim_bailie 8y ago
Antirez, don't worry about it! It's a very effective and accurate phrase that inflames a small minority of overly vocal folks who are irritated that the double standard in left-leaning western media is now becoming better understood. Anyway, enough of that, thanks again for your incredible contribution to humanity.

js2 8y ago

Thank you.

DanielGee 8y ago

> Thanks, I removed fake news because I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people It's a term used by both the left and the right. By politicians and the media. > In the doubt I changed the wording. I did not expect the term to be political. You shouldn't have. Who cares if it is political. You are the author and you should express yourself the way you want.

digitaLandscape 8y ago
He cares, because he wasn't trying to be political. You could try being literate.
- dang 8y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Piskvorrr 8y ago
Of course, because sdfjhzhawrnzhj zsfdjhisf ZSDHJyief. (Closed captions: "you should express yourself any way you want - if you don't care about anybody understanding your message." That is actually the opposite of communication: mumbling to yourself in a one-person language about nobody taking the effort to understand you.)

protomyth 8y ago

I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people No, both sides love using the term about anything the other side says.

radus 8y ago
And in removing the reference, he removed any association to "sides" in US politics.. don't really need that especially when dealing with a PR issue such as this.
antirez 8y ago
Ok, good reason to avoid this term. Indeed here it's happening as well... instead of understanding that the point is always to verify the information and their sources, "fake news" is becoming a quick way to dismiss what other people are saying, without actually bringing any more source.
- protomyth 8y ago
  Its actually getting pretty hard to write anything these days without someone getting offended (witness the message you are replying to). In a lot of ways, I really don't blame the current political climate, because the US has seen way worse (read up on the US 1800 Presidential Election). I actually blame poor applications of algorithms to what folks view. The bias caused not only by the beliefs of the person training the box and the professional poster's ability to learn how to manipulate the results (the next generation of SEO) has increasingly made twitter and facebook painful to use. Add a large bit of tribalism that is baked right into humanity and you have a lot of fun. Further strain through the idea that a lot of companies won't even just let the users pick accounts they always want to see regardless of the beliefs of the provider, and you get a added bit of helpless feeling in the populace. Which makes writing a pain. I've seen some folks take offense at grant applications that are basically some of the most dry reading you will find. It once was a don't use this era's forbidden words (e.g. the word "empower" had a very strange evolution in grants). Now its memes.
zeveb 8y ago
Yup — and in fact I recall that it was used very shortly after the 2016 presidential election as the Left, stunned at its loss, was searching for reasons why the election didn't go their way, and latched on to the idea that it was 'fake news,' basically people confusing Onion stories for real life (well, not just Onion-level satire but also carefully-crafted non-satirical false-fact sites). I think the term was then picked up by the Administration shortly after the inauguration. I think at the moment it tends to be used mostly by the Administration, but the term itself seems to have some currency in industry as well, although it may be dying a bit at this point. Regardless, the term 'fake news' is IMHO itself kinda fake news.

krn 8y ago

Even though this comment got downvoted for being overly political, antirez is right, that "fake news" holds completely different associations across the world, depending on who uses this term in a particular country.

geofft 8y ago

The history of the term is a little funny. It had two distinct meanings during the course of the US 2016 election, shortly before it escaped to the rest of the world. The first was the brief phenomenon of websites actually spoofing real news sites with confusing URLs and similar styles - think phishing for news. One example of this was "abcnews.com.co": see e.g. https://timesofsandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Fake-News.jpg https://timesofsandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Fake-... They would generally publish intentionally false stories with the goal of getting social media clicks and/or influencing public opinion, and usually in the direction of influencing public opinion in favor of US right-wing politics. The second is the accusation of US right-wing politicians that mainstream journalism (the real ABC, etc.) is publishing intentionally false stories on their actual sites. This use of the term "fake news" pretty efficiently displaced the previous meaning, and left us with no real term to talk about that phenomenon. It generally implies that stories are being made up out of whole cloth with the intent of lying to the public. At some point, thanks to repeated use of that phrase by the country that dominates the worldwide media, it escaped to the rest of the world - apparently to left-wing folks in Italy as well as to dictators across the globe. Assad has complained about living in a "fake news era". An official in Myanmar has called the very existence of the Rohingya people "fake news." There has been a phenomenon, for probably as long as recorded human history has been around, where storytellers and journalists get things wrong because of human fallibility and not malicious intent. I think it's easy to understand why people would misread the announcement, and no accusation of malice is required.

ksec 8y ago

The lessons learned here is don't use any word that is being used by US politicians. As Americans are extremely sensitive to politics. Although I do understand your frustration with news media and the echo chambers echoing precisely the wrong thing without making any attempt in correction.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> I removed fake news because I've the feeling that in US it is used by right-wing people It was adopted by right-wing (specifically, pro-Trump) people in the US specifically to drown out its earlier use to describe pro-Trump propaganda that followed what RAND Corp had described as the “firehose of falsehoods” propaganda approach used by Russia in other contexts (and which, it is increasingly evident, did so because it was in fact, often engineered by the same people who engineered the Russian propaganda that that label described.)

jim_bailie 8y ago

Antirez, don't worry about it! It's a very effective and accurate phrase that inflames a small minority of overly vocal folks who are irritated that the double standard in left-leaning western media is now becoming better understood. Anyway, enough of that, thanks again for your incredible contribution to humanity.