12 ms·

The "best" fake news these days is the stuff that doesn't register even to people are read-in on the usual anti-patterns. Subtle framing, selective quotation,

by gfodor 7y ago

The "best" fake news these days is the stuff that doesn't register even to people are read-in on the usual anti-patterns. Subtle framing, selective quotation, anonymous sources, "repeat the lie" techniques, and so on, are the ones that I see happening today that are hard to immunize yourself from. Ironically, the people who fall for these are more likely to self-identify as being aware and clued in on how to avoid fake news.

jrochkind1 7y ago
And so so many people can't even spot the "usual anti-patterns." I gotta believe that starting with the basic stuff will be the first step to getting better at recognizing the less basic stuff. The same techniques could potentially help people recognize the less basic stuff, teach them how to do it. But I think an equal and opposite problem is that these days people don't believe "real" news as much as they believe "fake" news. They accuse anything that they don't like of being 'fake news' and refuse to believe it, no matter how extensively reported. I really don't know what to do about that, but I still gotta think that developing basic 'news literacy' skills anywhere is the foundation for more advanced.
- pault 7y ago
  > But I think an equal and opposite problem is that these days people don't believe "real" news as much as they believe "fake" news. This is the endgame, and the reason fake news exists. There's no better way to destabilize a democracy than to cast doubt upon all journalism. Democracy depends on a well-informed populace, and if all information becomes subjective it cannot continue to function.
eanzenberg 7y ago
Precisely, the subtle "bias" in traditional news is extremely powerful to pull mindshare this way or that. It's not tabloid level shit like spacemen are coming to get you, but wrapped as trustworthy articles vetted by sources, studies or science.
- mwfunk 7y ago
  This is true, but the biggest problem today is people who have gone to the other extreme and have been told to not trust anything that appears to be "trustworthy articles vetted by sources, studies or science". Like, because something cites scientific research, or tries to appear to be credible and informative rather than just straight up telling people how to feel, they disbelieve it because it doesn't feel right to them for some reason. Plenty of examples: anti-vaxxers, Alex Jones listeners, etc. I'm much, much more worried about people these days who say they don't "believe" in science than I am about subtle biases couched in seemingly credible articles, because more often than not people playing the "subtle bias"/"don't trust the mainstream media" card are actually trying to discount the value of science or peer review or expertise, far far more often than they're trying to highlight propaganda hidden in plain sight.
  - iratewizard 7y ago
    It will be hard for the lay people trying to be informed to trust 'the science' while think tanks continually abuse science and statistics.
    - autoexec 7y ago
      exactly. Science shares a fair bit of the blame too. Not enough peer review and verification of results. Corporations can pay scientists for whatever results they want to put out in a press release and there is no shortage of journals that will publish total garbage if you're willing to pay them enough. The lack of integrity and oversight in the scientific community makes it very hard for people to tell what they can safely consider authoritative.
      - genericone 7y ago
        Science is science as long as it is used and examined by scientific minds. Scientific results and studies are indistinguishable from propoganda when used to sway/lead/inform the public. I'm not saying science is propoganda, I'm saying it becomes indistinguishable for those who aren't participating in performing the research or understanding the research methodologies.
deogeo 7y ago
Second best. The best is selective reporting. Even if every story is reported 100% accurately and objectively, by choosing which stories are promoted, and which buried, you can set any agenda you want. Edit: See https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... for an example.
- HSO 7y ago
  Speaking of, I saw a particularly blatant example yesterday: https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184 https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184 I've been following the Andrew Yang campaign since his appearance on the Joe Rogan show and so far as I can tell MSNBC has been at it for months now. The gall still astonishes me: 20 candidates qualified for the debates, he now polls in the top 8 and betting markets even place him in the top five, and they substitute someone who did not even qualify for the debate for him.
  - hanniabu 7y ago
    Yup, I've noticed that too. Unfortunately it seems he's making too much sense and others are trying to bury him by not covering him. It was a breath of fresh air when I discovered him. I'm somebody that absolutely hates politics because everyone's saying what people want to hear just to get votes rather and only talking about issues at surface level. You can sense the sincerity in Yang's voice, he's not a lifetime politician, he comes from a social work background, he's going after real root-cause issues, provides data to back up his arguments, talks about issues instead of trying to gain popularity by demeaning the opponent, etc etc.
  - ch4s3 7y ago
    They didn't replace him in the debate, the mistakenly omitted him from a graphic on screen and later corrected it. He only barely cracked the top 8 as of two weeks ago, and with a paltry 2% with a net favorable of +8 in Monmouth's latest poll, which is not very good. I don't really know much about the guy, but he's not making much of a showing in the polls so I'm not surprised that networks aren't focusing on him.
dev_dull 7y ago
Fake news is less about outright lying and more about controlling and enforcing a certain narrative. That’s a problem especially when 6 companies own almost all of the media. I think the solution is more independent journalism. I’m already seeing a lot of it on Twitter with independent researchers. These people have obvious biases but it’s clear, which makes these sources oddly more useful even if they’re openly partisan but independent.
- giobox 7y ago
  I’d argue the biases of major news institutions are generally more scrutable and predictable than average private individuals on Twitter. The level of effort needed to establish those for someone you just read on Twitter is higher than I think many people who decry “mainstream” media sources like to admit, especially if in a area in which you yourself have no domain expertise.
- newhaus1994 7y ago
  It's... pretty incredible that this comment subtly shifts the blame for fake news from networks of coordinated, decentralized, anti-mainstream actors to the mainstream. It's almost like this comment itself is about "enforcing a certain narrative." Independent "journalists" are the ones causing a lot of the crisis of truth currently underway. Indie YouTube channels garner credibility by pushing an "alternative" viewpoint that invariably means "asserting that the news as covered by all mainstream sources is actually wrong, and that we are the only ones who can provide the Truth." We need more sites and journalists working with the strict controls and regulations placed on those at WashPo, NYTimes, The Atlantic, New Yorker, etc., not less. I'm no fan of consolidation, but it cannot be argued that the core of mainstream jounralism is at fault for fake news. WashPo's ability to head off a scam story pushed by James O'Keefe is one of the best examples of why the MSM is specifically credible, and why indie journalism is far riskier.
  - dev_dull 7y ago
    > Independent "journalists" are the ones causing a lot of the crisis of truth currently underway. Perhaps your viewpoint relates to what you think the “big” risk are with fake news. If the biggest risks to you are antivaxers and flat earthers then I can see where you’re coming from with YouTube. If you think the biggest risks are those that jeopardize democracies then I think the big money goes into the MSM to shape our ideas and control the narrative. It’s made especially dangerous because these MSM outlets are given the gravitas of independence even though the writers are biased, fallible people just like the rest of us. And these news outlets are a commercial enterprise who have owners who themselves have agendas. To pretend otherwise is foolish.
rthomas6 7y ago
This isn't new, it's how subtle bias in the media has always worked. These techniques have been used practically since the beginning of the press.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
TomMckenny 7y ago
I would point out that without anonymous sources, there would be no real way to hold powerful people to account. And while problems like subtle framing are real and problematic, they are long standing and democracy has long been able to cope with them. They are no more effective now than they have been for centuries. And they are insignificant compared to the recent effectiveness of blatant falsehood and fabrication. Often state sponsored.
grawprog 7y ago
My favourite example of fake news came from real life. A friend uploaded a video of him salmon fishing on Haida Gwaii a sea lion came and snatched their fish off the line just as they were about to get it on the boat. He ended up licensing the video out and it ended up on msnbc, some news talk show and a few other news sites. Not a single one gave the correct information. One video said it was in california another got the place right but said he was sturgeon fishing another one said an eagle came and took the fish and didn't give the location. Even a simple fishing video was turned into complete and outright lies. I honestly don't trust anything from anywhere after seeing that.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Errors are not lies. Disinformation is the latter. You should take everything with a grain of salt, but motivation is the critical distinction.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    All of the info was provided both directly to the news companies and was available in the description in the original and videos that were reuploaded by the licensee. There was no excuse for it not to be corrrect.
    - SiempreViernes 7y ago
      Sure, messing up details about a fishing clip is inexcusable, but you still have a long way to go before showing there was an conspiracy that ensured all those details ended up wrong.
      - grawprog 7y ago
        Not a conspiracy. Willful negligence to make their story. They don't care about facts. They care about what they think gets them views. I don't think it's nefarious. The point is if they're willing to change facts to suit their needs for such an insignificant story, chances are it happens regularly with more important things.
colordrops 7y ago
> Subtle framing, selective quotation, anonymous sources, "repeat the lie" techniques, and so on, I can recall this being a part of the news since I was a young child, and I'm in my mid 40s. It's certainly not a new phenomenon. A good documentary about the topic is The Century of Self, a BBC doc about the inception of propaganda and marketing in the US.
tracker1 7y ago
Opinion Piece: "Foo, an alt right X" Later "News" Article: "Foo, who has been associated with the alt-right, ..." Later Opinion Piece: "Foo, who is an alt-right nazi, ..."
GoblinSlayer 7y ago
Immunity is trivial: all media lie, nobody in their right mind blindly trusts them.

by gfodor 7y ago

jrochkind1 7y ago

And so so many people can't even spot the "usual anti-patterns." I gotta believe that starting with the basic stuff will be the first step to getting better at recognizing the less basic stuff. The same techniques could potentially help people recognize the less basic stuff, teach them how to do it. But I think an equal and opposite problem is that these days people don't believe "real" news as much as they believe "fake" news. They accuse anything that they don't like of being 'fake news' and refuse to believe it, no matter how extensively reported. I really don't know what to do about that, but I still gotta think that developing basic 'news literacy' skills anywhere is the foundation for more advanced.

pault 7y ago
> But I think an equal and opposite problem is that these days people don't believe "real" news as much as they believe "fake" news. This is the endgame, and the reason fake news exists. There's no better way to destabilize a democracy than to cast doubt upon all journalism. Democracy depends on a well-informed populace, and if all information becomes subjective it cannot continue to function.

eanzenberg 7y ago

Precisely, the subtle "bias" in traditional news is extremely powerful to pull mindshare this way or that. It's not tabloid level shit like spacemen are coming to get you, but wrapped as trustworthy articles vetted by sources, studies or science.

mwfunk 7y ago
This is true, but the biggest problem today is people who have gone to the other extreme and have been told to not trust anything that appears to be "trustworthy articles vetted by sources, studies or science". Like, because something cites scientific research, or tries to appear to be credible and informative rather than just straight up telling people how to feel, they disbelieve it because it doesn't feel right to them for some reason. Plenty of examples: anti-vaxxers, Alex Jones listeners, etc. I'm much, much more worried about people these days who say they don't "believe" in science than I am about subtle biases couched in seemingly credible articles, because more often than not people playing the "subtle bias"/"don't trust the mainstream media" card are actually trying to discount the value of science or peer review or expertise, far far more often than they're trying to highlight propaganda hidden in plain sight.
- iratewizard 7y ago
  It will be hard for the lay people trying to be informed to trust 'the science' while think tanks continually abuse science and statistics.
  - autoexec 7y ago
    exactly. Science shares a fair bit of the blame too. Not enough peer review and verification of results. Corporations can pay scientists for whatever results they want to put out in a press release and there is no shortage of journals that will publish total garbage if you're willing to pay them enough. The lack of integrity and oversight in the scientific community makes it very hard for people to tell what they can safely consider authoritative.
    - genericone 7y ago
      Science is science as long as it is used and examined by scientific minds. Scientific results and studies are indistinguishable from propoganda when used to sway/lead/inform the public. I'm not saying science is propoganda, I'm saying it becomes indistinguishable for those who aren't participating in performing the research or understanding the research methodologies.

deogeo 7y ago

Second best. The best is selective reporting. Even if every story is reported 100% accurately and objectively, by choosing which stories are promoted, and which buried, you can set any agenda you want. Edit: See https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... for an example.

HSO 7y ago
Speaking of, I saw a particularly blatant example yesterday: https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184 https://twitter.com/scottsantens/status/1142442971922653184 I've been following the Andrew Yang campaign since his appearance on the Joe Rogan show and so far as I can tell MSNBC has been at it for months now. The gall still astonishes me: 20 candidates qualified for the debates, he now polls in the top 8 and betting markets even place him in the top five, and they substitute someone who did not even qualify for the debate for him.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  Yup, I've noticed that too. Unfortunately it seems he's making too much sense and others are trying to bury him by not covering him. It was a breath of fresh air when I discovered him. I'm somebody that absolutely hates politics because everyone's saying what people want to hear just to get votes rather and only talking about issues at surface level. You can sense the sincerity in Yang's voice, he's not a lifetime politician, he comes from a social work background, he's going after real root-cause issues, provides data to back up his arguments, talks about issues instead of trying to gain popularity by demeaning the opponent, etc etc.
- ch4s3 7y ago
  They didn't replace him in the debate, the mistakenly omitted him from a graphic on screen and later corrected it. He only barely cracked the top 8 as of two weeks ago, and with a paltry 2% with a net favorable of +8 in Monmouth's latest poll, which is not very good. I don't really know much about the guy, but he's not making much of a showing in the polls so I'm not surprised that networks aren't focusing on him.

dev_dull 7y ago

Fake news is less about outright lying and more about controlling and enforcing a certain narrative. That’s a problem especially when 6 companies own almost all of the media. I think the solution is more independent journalism. I’m already seeing a lot of it on Twitter with independent researchers. These people have obvious biases but it’s clear, which makes these sources oddly more useful even if they’re openly partisan but independent.

giobox 7y ago
I’d argue the biases of major news institutions are generally more scrutable and predictable than average private individuals on Twitter. The level of effort needed to establish those for someone you just read on Twitter is higher than I think many people who decry “mainstream” media sources like to admit, especially if in a area in which you yourself have no domain expertise.
newhaus1994 7y ago
It's... pretty incredible that this comment subtly shifts the blame for fake news from networks of coordinated, decentralized, anti-mainstream actors to the mainstream. It's almost like this comment itself is about "enforcing a certain narrative." Independent "journalists" are the ones causing a lot of the crisis of truth currently underway. Indie YouTube channels garner credibility by pushing an "alternative" viewpoint that invariably means "asserting that the news as covered by all mainstream sources is actually wrong, and that we are the only ones who can provide the Truth." We need more sites and journalists working with the strict controls and regulations placed on those at WashPo, NYTimes, The Atlantic, New Yorker, etc., not less. I'm no fan of consolidation, but it cannot be argued that the core of mainstream jounralism is at fault for fake news. WashPo's ability to head off a scam story pushed by James O'Keefe is one of the best examples of why the MSM is specifically credible, and why indie journalism is far riskier.
- dev_dull 7y ago
  > Independent "journalists" are the ones causing a lot of the crisis of truth currently underway. Perhaps your viewpoint relates to what you think the “big” risk are with fake news. If the biggest risks to you are antivaxers and flat earthers then I can see where you’re coming from with YouTube. If you think the biggest risks are those that jeopardize democracies then I think the big money goes into the MSM to shape our ideas and control the narrative. It’s made especially dangerous because these MSM outlets are given the gravitas of independence even though the writers are biased, fallible people just like the rest of us. And these news outlets are a commercial enterprise who have owners who themselves have agendas. To pretend otherwise is foolish.

rthomas6 7y ago

This isn't new, it's how subtle bias in the media has always worked. These techniques have been used practically since the beginning of the press.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

TomMckenny 7y ago

I would point out that without anonymous sources, there would be no real way to hold powerful people to account. And while problems like subtle framing are real and problematic, they are long standing and democracy has long been able to cope with them. They are no more effective now than they have been for centuries. And they are insignificant compared to the recent effectiveness of blatant falsehood and fabrication. Often state sponsored.

grawprog 7y ago

My favourite example of fake news came from real life. A friend uploaded a video of him salmon fishing on Haida Gwaii a sea lion came and snatched their fish off the line just as they were about to get it on the boat. He ended up licensing the video out and it ended up on msnbc, some news talk show and a few other news sites. Not a single one gave the correct information. One video said it was in california another got the place right but said he was sturgeon fishing another one said an eagle came and took the fish and didn't give the location. Even a simple fishing video was turned into complete and outright lies. I honestly don't trust anything from anywhere after seeing that.

throwaway5752 7y ago
Errors are not lies. Disinformation is the latter. You should take everything with a grain of salt, but motivation is the critical distinction.
- grawprog 7y ago
  All of the info was provided both directly to the news companies and was available in the description in the original and videos that were reuploaded by the licensee. There was no excuse for it not to be corrrect.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    Sure, messing up details about a fishing clip is inexcusable, but you still have a long way to go before showing there was an conspiracy that ensured all those details ended up wrong.
    - grawprog 7y ago
      Not a conspiracy. Willful negligence to make their story. They don't care about facts. They care about what they think gets them views. I don't think it's nefarious. The point is if they're willing to change facts to suit their needs for such an insignificant story, chances are it happens regularly with more important things.

colordrops 7y ago

> Subtle framing, selective quotation, anonymous sources, "repeat the lie" techniques, and so on, I can recall this being a part of the news since I was a young child, and I'm in my mid 40s. It's certainly not a new phenomenon. A good documentary about the topic is The Century of Self, a BBC doc about the inception of propaganda and marketing in the US.

tracker1 7y ago

Opinion Piece: "Foo, an alt right X" Later "News" Article: "Foo, who has been associated with the alt-right, ..." Later Opinion Piece: "Foo, who is an alt-right nazi, ..."

GoblinSlayer 7y ago

Immunity is trivial: all media lie, nobody in their right mind blindly trusts them.