11 ms·

Fake news gives an advantage to parties who are unconcerned about the truth. This will only remain an advantage as long as we expect messages to contain verifi

Fake news gives an advantage to parties who are unconcerned about the truth. This will only remain an advantage as long as we expect messages to contain verifiable facts. We are in a transition period right now, and seem to be headed towards a post truth era, one where we will no longer agree upon a set of basic facts about the world, and where everything is merely opinion. Once this transition is complete, then there will be no such thing as fake news, because all news will have become spin.

pjc50 7y ago
This is very likely, but it's a disaster for democracy as it's no longer possible for the public to make informed decisions.
darkpuma 7y ago
> "This will only remain an advantage as long as we expect messages to contain verifiable facts." In a way, many traditional reputable news organizations are guilty of perpetuating this lack of expectations among readers. It's still common, in this age of hypertext, to see major news organizations publishing stories online that don't have hyperlinks to the source documents. Presumably this is motivated by money; they don't want to send people away from their site, or an old newspaper mentality where hyperlinks didn't exist at all, but it's inexcusable in the modern digital era. When reputable news organizations neglect to link to source documents, it provides cover for fake news organizations who also don't link to source documents by normalizing the appearance of articles that do not link to sources. Here is a counterexample, of the NYTs actually doing the right thing: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-court-precedent-vote.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-court... In the first sentence you have a hyperlink to the pdf on supremecourt.gov. This should be the standard for modern reporting, but it seems to still be the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand here you've got a New Yorker article talking about the same SCOTUS decision that contains no hyperlink to supremecourt.gov: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-abortion-fight-and-the-pretense-of-precedent https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-abortion-f... Arguably in this case it's because they're stuck in a print mindset, but frankly I don't think that's a good excuse.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  The New Yorker is a magazine, and not a news outlet. By definition they are an analysis publication—that means their articles are essentially opinion pieces. They have no journalistic obligation to post sources. Your positing that its about money might be correct, but for different reasons than you suggest. News and magazine publications often do link to a number of different documents. Many articles published are written pretty quickly and cheaply these days due to the demands of "no paywalls" and advertising that doesn't pay enough. The situation isn't so black and white.
  - darkpuma 7y ago
    That's just the "print mentality" excuse. There is no good reason for a 'magazine' to not hyperlink the documents they're talking about.
    - gerbilly 7y ago
      In the end you have to decide to trust someone. Who says the link might not be to some sock puppet websites? See: https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html
      - darkpuma 7y ago
        Trust in The New Yorker is not in question. The matter of concern is reputable news sources, of which The New Yorker is only one example of many, behaving in ways that makes it easier for fake news sites to emulate their appearance. Whether you trust the compiler your browser was built with is also not a serious consideration; pull your head out of the clouds.
        gerbilly 7y ago
        > pull your head out of the clouds. Wow, that's uncalled for, but moving on. I actually know a lot of journalists, so I'm familiar with the way they work. Even though they don't include hyperlinks, most of them go to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of what they write about. Also it's a bit naive of you to assume every piece of source data has (or even could have) a URI. While this is not a bad idea, it's not possible for a variety of reasons from the purely technical to the practical.
Amezarak 7y ago
It was never any different. Fake news and internationally driven propaganda are as old as time. The reason modern actors are suddenly so upset about it is that the state-media complex in Western countries had, briefly, an unusual amount of control and wherewithal to spread their preferred propaganda thanks to the consolidation of media networks and television. Go back to the Constitutional Convention and a major concern was rumors spread by ‘designing men’ who were subverting the government, and they had real-world examples there were referring to. Go back to Rome, where fake news sometimes got a lot of people killed, and changed the whole course of history. Go back to the 1940s when the British government spent a lot of time in money on a massive, secret campaign to crush US isolationism in our elections and spread propaganda that would ensure US intervention in WWII. This is not a new justification for censorship. It’s a very, very old one.

pjc50 7y ago

This is very likely, but it's a disaster for democracy as it's no longer possible for the public to make informed decisions.

darkpuma 7y ago

> "This will only remain an advantage as long as we expect messages to contain verifiable facts." In a way, many traditional reputable news organizations are guilty of perpetuating this lack of expectations among readers. It's still common, in this age of hypertext, to see major news organizations publishing stories online that don't have hyperlinks to the source documents. Presumably this is motivated by money; they don't want to send people away from their site, or an old newspaper mentality where hyperlinks didn't exist at all, but it's inexcusable in the modern digital era. When reputable news organizations neglect to link to source documents, it provides cover for fake news organizations who also don't link to source documents by normalizing the appearance of articles that do not link to sources. Here is a counterexample, of the NYTs actually doing the right thing: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-court-precedent-vote.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/us/politics/supreme-court... In the first sentence you have a hyperlink to the pdf on supremecourt.gov. This should be the standard for modern reporting, but it seems to still be the exception rather than the rule. On the other hand here you've got a New Yorker article talking about the same SCOTUS decision that contains no hyperlink to supremecourt.gov: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-abortion-fight-and-the-pretense-of-precedent https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-abortion-f... Arguably in this case it's because they're stuck in a print mindset, but frankly I don't think that's a good excuse.

52-6F-62 7y ago
The New Yorker is a magazine, and not a news outlet. By definition they are an analysis publication—that means their articles are essentially opinion pieces. They have no journalistic obligation to post sources. Your positing that its about money might be correct, but for different reasons than you suggest. News and magazine publications often do link to a number of different documents. Many articles published are written pretty quickly and cheaply these days due to the demands of "no paywalls" and advertising that doesn't pay enough. The situation isn't so black and white.
- darkpuma 7y ago
  That's just the "print mentality" excuse. There is no good reason for a 'magazine' to not hyperlink the documents they're talking about.
  - gerbilly 7y ago
    In the end you have to decide to trust someone. Who says the link might not be to some sock puppet websites? See: https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html
    - darkpuma 7y ago
      Trust in The New Yorker is not in question. The matter of concern is reputable news sources, of which The New Yorker is only one example of many, behaving in ways that makes it easier for fake news sites to emulate their appearance. Whether you trust the compiler your browser was built with is also not a serious consideration; pull your head out of the clouds.
      - gerbilly 7y ago
        > pull your head out of the clouds. Wow, that's uncalled for, but moving on. I actually know a lot of journalists, so I'm familiar with the way they work. Even though they don't include hyperlinks, most of them go to great lengths to ensure the accuracy of what they write about. Also it's a bit naive of you to assume every piece of source data has (or even could have) a URI. While this is not a bad idea, it's not possible for a variety of reasons from the purely technical to the practical.

Amezarak 7y ago

It was never any different. Fake news and internationally driven propaganda are as old as time. The reason modern actors are suddenly so upset about it is that the state-media complex in Western countries had, briefly, an unusual amount of control and wherewithal to spread their preferred propaganda thanks to the consolidation of media networks and television. Go back to the Constitutional Convention and a major concern was rumors spread by ‘designing men’ who were subverting the government, and they had real-world examples there were referring to. Go back to Rome, where fake news sometimes got a lot of people killed, and changed the whole course of history. Go back to the 1940s when the British government spent a lot of time in money on a massive, secret campaign to crush US isolationism in our elections and spread propaganda that would ensure US intervention in WWII. This is not a new justification for censorship. It’s a very, very old one.