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I guess that depends on whether you think appealing to outrage and fear through lies and disinformation is good for Democracy. When a candidate/politician tell

by nrb 8y ago

I guess that depends on whether you think appealing to outrage and fear through lies and disinformation is good for Democracy. When a candidate/politician tells a lie, they can be called out on it and are (until recently) accountable to their words and actions. However, fake news purveyors can practically anonymously blanket the internet to such a degree that mass manipulation can occur with no real way to counter it.

smsm42 8y ago
> I guess that depends on whether you think appealing to outrage and fear through lies and disinformation is good for Democracy Given how much it is done by top politicians, and they are still getting elected and re-elected for decades, I think most of the electorate is OK with that. > When a candidate/politician tells a lie, they can be called out on it and are (until recently) accountable to their words and actions. Or not. But I don't see how it is related to the topic under discussion. You said the main effect of fake news is getting people to vote. But getting people to vote is considered to be a good thing, so what is the bad thing then? That they are lies? Politician lie all the time, nothing changed. Democracy survived it. > However, fake news purveyors can practically anonymously blanket the internet Do you realize the size of the modern internet? Nobody can "blanket" it. > to such a degree that mass manipulation can occur with no real way to counter it. So we're back to the original question - is there any evidence of mass manipulation actually occurring, and if so - who is being manipulated and to do what? So far the hypothesis was that the people are manipulated to vote more - but, as I noted, people are manipulated to vote on every election, this has nothing to do with "fake news", literally everybody is trying to manipulate their supporters to vote more (and their opponents to vote less). Is there any data that fake news makes a noticeable effect on this? I certainly haven't seen any, and neither of the MSM articles mentioning this as an obvious fact that everybody knows is happening provides any. It looks more like the routine moral panic than something factual.
- nrb 8y ago
  You keep glossing over the fact that they are convincing people to vote entirely through deceit. Do the ends justify the means to you? Re: blanketing the internet, an estimated 126 million Americans were exposed to this kind of content just on Facebook - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-google-russia.amp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-googl...
  - smsm42 8y ago
    > You keep glossing over the fact that they are convincing people to vote entirely through deceit So what? First of all, politicians routinely use deceit to reach their goals, and aren't even ashamed about it. Second, if voting is always good, why achieving it through deceit is so bad? Let's say I know you have a bad diet, and I could through deceit convince you to eat healthier and add 5 years to your lifespan. Would you think it's a bad thing and it'd be better for you to be undeceived but die 5 years earlier? > an estimated 126 million Americans were exposed to this kind of content just on Facebook "Exposed" is a weasel word. They are just taking entire US audience of Facebook, and saying since any of those people could have seen this content, let's imply they all did and by implication were influenced by it. But it's baloney. If you take a moment to think, how likely it is that there are 136 million voters in the US, and almost every single one of them was influenced by Facebook? Moreover, you claim that main influence of the fake news is convincing people to vote. Do you imply that absent fake news, only about 10 million people would vote? That's clearly nonsense. So if we believed your hypothesis and NYT numbers, it would be obvious that there's no noticeable influence - we don't have sudden spike of voter turnout comparable to the number of 126 million, if fact we don't have any noticeable spike at all. So either 126 million number is nonsense, or voting turnout hypothesis is nonsense - I think likely both. And all that for a campaign with a whopping $100K budget? If that were true, why politicians spend billions on their campaigns at all? If you want some more realistic numbers, look here: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1257/jep.31.2.211 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1257/jep.31.2.211 - it's in hundredth of a percent. So, about 10-20 thousand people out of hundred millions. That's the likely size of the influence of this phenomenon, and maybe even less since this assumes fake news are as effective as fine-tuned political ads (and they are usually not, if you seen Russian fake news, they're utter crap). So probably around a thousand or so is the real size.

by nrb 8y ago

smsm42 8y ago

> I guess that depends on whether you think appealing to outrage and fear through lies and disinformation is good for Democracy Given how much it is done by top politicians, and they are still getting elected and re-elected for decades, I think most of the electorate is OK with that. > When a candidate/politician tells a lie, they can be called out on it and are (until recently) accountable to their words and actions. Or not. But I don't see how it is related to the topic under discussion. You said the main effect of fake news is getting people to vote. But getting people to vote is considered to be a good thing, so what is the bad thing then? That they are lies? Politician lie all the time, nothing changed. Democracy survived it. > However, fake news purveyors can practically anonymously blanket the internet Do you realize the size of the modern internet? Nobody can "blanket" it. > to such a degree that mass manipulation can occur with no real way to counter it. So we're back to the original question - is there any evidence of mass manipulation actually occurring, and if so - who is being manipulated and to do what? So far the hypothesis was that the people are manipulated to vote more - but, as I noted, people are manipulated to vote on every election, this has nothing to do with "fake news", literally everybody is trying to manipulate their supporters to vote more (and their opponents to vote less). Is there any data that fake news makes a noticeable effect on this? I certainly haven't seen any, and neither of the MSM articles mentioning this as an obvious fact that everybody knows is happening provides any. It looks more like the routine moral panic than something factual.

nrb 8y ago
You keep glossing over the fact that they are convincing people to vote entirely through deceit. Do the ends justify the means to you? Re: blanketing the internet, an estimated 126 million Americans were exposed to this kind of content just on Facebook - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-google-russia.amp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-googl...
- smsm42 8y ago
  > You keep glossing over the fact that they are convincing people to vote entirely through deceit So what? First of all, politicians routinely use deceit to reach their goals, and aren't even ashamed about it. Second, if voting is always good, why achieving it through deceit is so bad? Let's say I know you have a bad diet, and I could through deceit convince you to eat healthier and add 5 years to your lifespan. Would you think it's a bad thing and it'd be better for you to be undeceived but die 5 years earlier? > an estimated 126 million Americans were exposed to this kind of content just on Facebook "Exposed" is a weasel word. They are just taking entire US audience of Facebook, and saying since any of those people could have seen this content, let's imply they all did and by implication were influenced by it. But it's baloney. If you take a moment to think, how likely it is that there are 136 million voters in the US, and almost every single one of them was influenced by Facebook? Moreover, you claim that main influence of the fake news is convincing people to vote. Do you imply that absent fake news, only about 10 million people would vote? That's clearly nonsense. So if we believed your hypothesis and NYT numbers, it would be obvious that there's no noticeable influence - we don't have sudden spike of voter turnout comparable to the number of 126 million, if fact we don't have any noticeable spike at all. So either 126 million number is nonsense, or voting turnout hypothesis is nonsense - I think likely both. And all that for a campaign with a whopping $100K budget? If that were true, why politicians spend billions on their campaigns at all? If you want some more realistic numbers, look here: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1257/jep.31.2.211 https://sci-hub.tw/10.1257/jep.31.2.211 - it's in hundredth of a percent. So, about 10-20 thousand people out of hundred millions. That's the likely size of the influence of this phenomenon, and maybe even less since this assumes fake news are as effective as fine-tuned political ads (and they are usually not, if you seen Russian fake news, they're utter crap). So probably around a thousand or so is the real size.