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Does anyone have a link to the source used to classify some news as fake and other news as real in this paper? Whomever control that definition can shift any co

Does anyone have a link to the source used to classify some news as fake and other news as real in this paper? Whomever control that definition can shift any conclusion, similarly to how hate speech definitions is used to silence speech on platforms such as Patreon [3]. I think we should treat any conclusion made by YouGov with caution because on at least on one occasion YouGov associated themselves with people believing in and adovocating for social justice [1], so maybe they are part of the ongoing effort [2] to re-gain progressive information gateway control in a world where much information dissemination is shifted from traditional media to social networks and streaming. [1] https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/YouGov_CSJ_Polling-Results_2018.pdf https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/core/wp-content/up... [2] https://www.changetheterms.org/ https://www.changetheterms.org/ [3] https://www.businessinsider.com/patreon-crowdfunding-platform-defends-itself-amid-boycott-2018-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/patreon-crowdfunding-platfor...

octernion 8y ago
lmao i love anti social justice warriors. bless your tiny, ice-cold hearts and backwards ways.
- asabjorn 8y ago
  Most of us are proponents of a secular state clearly separated from religious practices, and social justice believers are religious [1] with the extra flair that they seek institutional power to enforce their beliefs in ways that violate this principle. Do you believe we should not have a secular state where people can inhabit all sorts of conflicting beliefs in the religious spehere, while resolving their grievances through the law? [1] https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-the-faith-of-social-justice/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - octernion 8y ago
    i will say that the mental gymnastics necessary to make "being nice" and "not being a shitty racist or misogynist" a "religion", so that you can say "i'm a proponent of a secular state" is just really impressive so congrats on that. really neat stuff.
    - sparkie 8y ago
      The social justice religion is not "being nice" or "not being racist." Most of humanity fits into those categories. (Obviously there are some exceptions). Social justice is about action to force your version of morality or ethics on society, usually by whatever means necessary, or without concern about the collateral damage caused by such actions. It usually manifests as complete hypocrisy. Let's stop hate by being hateful to people who disagree. Let's prevent exclusion of people by excluding those who disagree, etc. It's really just exchanging one form of tribalism for another, but the tribalist tendencies are still loud and clear.
      - octernion 8y ago
        > Most of humanity fits into those categories. [citation needed]. "social justice" is absolutely that "most of humanity" does _not_ fall into those categories and in fact there are massive structural failures with society. it's not "hypocrisy" to deplatform (& socially shun) racists & misogynists, and acknowledge white privilege. if you disagree with those basic tenants than you aren't worthy of being in the discussion, and, reasonable non-shitty people get to make fun of you.
        sparkie 8y ago
        Who draws the line of what these categories are? Let's say for example, you are not racist, nor sexist, but you also do not subscribe to the "positive discrimination" (oxymoron) bullshit, and instead of hiring people to meet diversity quotas, you hire people purely based on their fitness for the role you are hiring for. When you reject certain "unprivileged" individuals because others are more fit for the role, they take a disliking to you and falsely label you as racist for this decision. The hoards of do-gooder SJWs rally behind them and wrongly damage the reputation of your company based on a completely false testimony. Who are the shitty people here? Also, when you classify people based on their skin colour (white), and then use this to make a sweeping generalization, this is called racism. Your hypocrisy is offensive.
- dang 8y ago
  Comments like this will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all, from now on.
  - octernion 8y ago
    that's fair, sorry dang. you do great work. that being said, not really sure why my other comments are flagged (below in thread). seems in bad faith.
soundwave106 8y ago
In the above news article, there is a direct link to the magazine with the study. The direct link to the study is here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586 The study appeared to correlate two sources to determine the nature of fake news: A) The primary source was a list of fake news sites compiled by Buzzfeed Media: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fa... B) The study was cross-checked with a list of sites from a peer reviewed paper (H. Allcott, M. Gentzkow, Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. J. Econ. Perspect. 31, 211–236 (2017)) and according to the paper was similar. There is some additional methodology in the study link.
- asabjorn 8y ago
  Thanks! Buzfeed believes in far-left progressive views and is not known for objective reporting, so using this as a primary source for classifications of fake news would predetermine this outcome. With this in mind I think we can't trust the studys conclusion.
  - octernion 8y ago
    old misogynists sharing "wikileaks CONFIRMS hillary sold weapons to ISIS!!!!" being fake news is absolutely a far-left take on reality, hahaha. how are you so bad at this.
    - soundwave106 8y ago
      I do disagree with the lazy "Buzzfeed is left wing therefore your result are automatically invalid" conclusion of the poster. :) But I do believe that bias could be a genuine concern here. Both the Buzzfeed article and the Stanford article (https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf) seems to focus strictly on political fake news. But Donald Trump fake news is not the only fake news out there. Given that Donald Trump supporter demographics lean older, I am wondering if an exclusive focus on political fake news (most of which was indeed leaning in the Donald Trump direction) is skewing the results towards the conclusion that people older than 65 share the most fake news. Would the study look differently if they included sites propagating non-political fake news -- such as celebrity oriented fake news or health woo? In another case -- Russian disinformation campaigns -- it's well known that they targeted pretty much all sides with divisive Facebook ads on contentious issues or identity politics. Some of the ads certainly are in the "fake news" category (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/russian-ads-facebook-targeting/?utm_term=.c689ba4b7025 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/russia...). The question I would have is whether the same demographics would apply to identity or issues related fake news. I'm not certain here. It's possible that one can include the above data points and still draw the conclusion; in a tangentially related case, age is one of the factors in other forms of susceptibility to fraud (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916958/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916958/), so it's possible that age is a factor in not recognizing fake news as easily. But until then, while the article does make a good case that people older than 65 share the most fake pro-Donald Trump news, I'm not sure I can apply that conclusion to other forms of fake news yet.

octernion 8y ago

lmao i love anti social justice warriors. bless your tiny, ice-cold hearts and backwards ways.

asabjorn 8y ago
Most of us are proponents of a secular state clearly separated from religious practices, and social justice believers are religious [1] with the extra flair that they seek institutional power to enforce their beliefs in ways that violate this principle. Do you believe we should not have a secular state where people can inhabit all sorts of conflicting beliefs in the religious spehere, while resolving their grievances through the law? [1] https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-the-faith-of-social-justice/ https://areomagazine.com/2018/12/18/postmodern-religion-and-...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- octernion 8y ago
  i will say that the mental gymnastics necessary to make "being nice" and "not being a shitty racist or misogynist" a "religion", so that you can say "i'm a proponent of a secular state" is just really impressive so congrats on that. really neat stuff.
  - sparkie 8y ago
    The social justice religion is not "being nice" or "not being racist." Most of humanity fits into those categories. (Obviously there are some exceptions). Social justice is about action to force your version of morality or ethics on society, usually by whatever means necessary, or without concern about the collateral damage caused by such actions. It usually manifests as complete hypocrisy. Let's stop hate by being hateful to people who disagree. Let's prevent exclusion of people by excluding those who disagree, etc. It's really just exchanging one form of tribalism for another, but the tribalist tendencies are still loud and clear.
    - octernion 8y ago
      > Most of humanity fits into those categories. [citation needed]. "social justice" is absolutely that "most of humanity" does _not_ fall into those categories and in fact there are massive structural failures with society. it's not "hypocrisy" to deplatform (& socially shun) racists & misogynists, and acknowledge white privilege. if you disagree with those basic tenants than you aren't worthy of being in the discussion, and, reasonable non-shitty people get to make fun of you.
      - sparkie 8y ago
        Who draws the line of what these categories are? Let's say for example, you are not racist, nor sexist, but you also do not subscribe to the "positive discrimination" (oxymoron) bullshit, and instead of hiring people to meet diversity quotas, you hire people purely based on their fitness for the role you are hiring for. When you reject certain "unprivileged" individuals because others are more fit for the role, they take a disliking to you and falsely label you as racist for this decision. The hoards of do-gooder SJWs rally behind them and wrongly damage the reputation of your company based on a completely false testimony. Who are the shitty people here? Also, when you classify people based on their skin colour (white), and then use this to make a sweeping generalization, this is called racism. Your hypocrisy is offensive.
dang 8y ago
Comments like this will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, or how wrong someone else is. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all, from now on.
- octernion 8y ago
  that's fair, sorry dang. you do great work. that being said, not really sure why my other comments are flagged (below in thread). seems in bad faith.

soundwave106 8y ago

In the above news article, there is a direct link to the magazine with the study. The direct link to the study is here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586 http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586 The study appeared to correlate two sources to determine the nature of fake news: A) The primary source was a list of fake news sites compiled by Buzzfeed Media: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fa... B) The study was cross-checked with a list of sites from a peer reviewed paper (H. Allcott, M. Gentzkow, Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. J. Econ. Perspect. 31, 211–236 (2017)) and according to the paper was similar. There is some additional methodology in the study link.

asabjorn 8y ago
Thanks! Buzfeed believes in far-left progressive views and is not known for objective reporting, so using this as a primary source for classifications of fake news would predetermine this outcome. With this in mind I think we can't trust the studys conclusion.
- octernion 8y ago
  old misogynists sharing "wikileaks CONFIRMS hillary sold weapons to ISIS!!!!" being fake news is absolutely a far-left take on reality, hahaha. how are you so bad at this.
  - soundwave106 8y ago
    I do disagree with the lazy "Buzzfeed is left wing therefore your result are automatically invalid" conclusion of the poster. :) But I do believe that bias could be a genuine concern here. Both the Buzzfeed article and the Stanford article (https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf) seems to focus strictly on political fake news. But Donald Trump fake news is not the only fake news out there. Given that Donald Trump supporter demographics lean older, I am wondering if an exclusive focus on political fake news (most of which was indeed leaning in the Donald Trump direction) is skewing the results towards the conclusion that people older than 65 share the most fake news. Would the study look differently if they included sites propagating non-political fake news -- such as celebrity oriented fake news or health woo? In another case -- Russian disinformation campaigns -- it's well known that they targeted pretty much all sides with divisive Facebook ads on contentious issues or identity politics. Some of the ads certainly are in the "fake news" category (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/russian-ads-facebook-targeting/?utm_term=.c689ba4b7025 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/business/russia...). The question I would have is whether the same demographics would apply to identity or issues related fake news. I'm not certain here. It's possible that one can include the above data points and still draw the conclusion; in a tangentially related case, age is one of the factors in other forms of susceptibility to fraud (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916958/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3916958/), so it's possible that age is a factor in not recognizing fake news as easily. But until then, while the article does make a good case that people older than 65 share the most fake pro-Donald Trump news, I'm not sure I can apply that conclusion to other forms of fake news yet.