4 ms·

Fake news didnt start in 2016. I had an entire semester on media manipulation for my sociology degree in 1995. Propaganda has played a major part in democracy

by fergie 7y ago

Fake news didnt start in 2016. I had an entire semester on media manipulation for my sociology degree in 1995. Propaganda has played a major part in democracy since the invention of the printing press. Its good that there is an increased awareness of the need for critical thinking, but to say that we are currently living through a "fake news crisis" is wrong

wickerman 7y ago
The unsaid thing about fake news is that it's manipulation by non-giants. It's not the big media corps/newspapers lying to the people, it's some small website playing up cognitive bias.
- krapp 7y ago
  That's not actually unsaid. Manipulation and falsehood by "news" sites on the web is what the "fake news" phenomenon originally referred to, but the term was successfully co-opted by the Trump campaign to refer instead to the mainstream media, and to discredit any negative reporting on him.
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  Those grassroots lie-factories could be more dangerous than state-directed ones. The state has a single message to push. A market, by contrast, will try every damn thing it can think of, and some of it will work. I don't remember where I read it, but I believe the 2016 Russian disinformation campaign took advantage of a number of conspiracy theories that arose "in the wild".
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    I believe the influence of the Russian disinformation was overstated that it could very well be declared fake news. Which messages? Which groups were targeted? How many people did it hit? It was targeted to increase distrust? On which platform? What historically was regarded as propaganda could very well be dissected afterwards. I don't really see that here or any arguments that this influence cannot be traced. I would be very surprised if Russia didn't try to boost their favorite candidate as a geopolitical rival, but to imply relevant Russian interference is an example of distorting the truth in my opinion. And not a trivial one. Furthermore you are also implying that everyone having a somewhat dissenting opinion about unrelated issues to being manipulated. Some might take issue with that.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  Not sure I agree with that. The difference between CNN and Fox, say, is far larger than the difference between the "big three" was back in, say, the 1970s (the time of Vietnam, and the US government trying very hard to paint a world that was different from reality). What we have now is the major media trying to paint a world, rather than just report it. In any given instance, that's not necessarily "fake news". But by what you choose to cover and what you choose to ignore, you can paint a very different picture. What you say is still true, but it doesn't add up to the truth. It presents a distorted picture of the world.
Ma8ee 7y ago
It is certainly worse since everyone could publish themselves easily and quickly. At the time of paper papers, where you actually needed access to a printing press and physical distribution network, there were much fewer actors, and each of them had to take at least some care of their reputation. Not to mention that they were easy to localize, so they could actually be sued for the most blatant smears. But then of course, propaganda and misinformation are probably as old as mankind. It's just that the scale has changed.
- Jeff_Brown 7y ago
  Could be a tech solution to the reputation problem? Some kind of distributed social media- and wikipedia-like system where information is signed by its author(s), and where people are able to produce metadata rating the factuality of information and authors. Currently people can create such information, of course. But liars routinely deny well-documented things in their past, and those denials are effective to their intended audience. And currently someone can debunk a lie, but there's no systematic way to find everyone who testifies that it's untrue. And while finding all of a claim's supporters and debunkers would be a great first step, a truly good (i.e. skeptical) reader would want to be able to find their arguments, too. I'm skeptical that current AI could automate the job of indexing that information -- understanding controversial arguments seems likely to require true intelligence. I happen to have made a system[1] in which indexing any kind of data or metadata is extremely easy, requiring little more than knowing some natural language. (Deciding what kind of information you want to encode is hard, but once you've decided that, encoding it is easy.) [1] https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode
  - Ma8ee 7y ago
    I don't think the reputation problem is particulary hard or need any fancy technical solutions. If I read something on NYTimes.com I know that the information there is true most of the time (even thought it do happen that they screw up). The job of good journalism is to vet their sources, finding collaborating evidence and listen to those that have different claims. If I read something from a source I don't know anything about, I must keep in mind that what I'm reading just might not be true.
BLKNSLVR 7y ago
Religion has been around a fair whack longer than the printing press.

by fergie 7y ago

wickerman 7y ago

The unsaid thing about fake news is that it's manipulation by non-giants. It's not the big media corps/newspapers lying to the people, it's some small website playing up cognitive bias.

krapp 7y ago
That's not actually unsaid. Manipulation and falsehood by "news" sites on the web is what the "fake news" phenomenon originally referred to, but the term was successfully co-opted by the Trump campaign to refer instead to the mainstream media, and to discredit any negative reporting on him.
Jeff_Brown 7y ago
Those grassroots lie-factories could be more dangerous than state-directed ones. The state has a single message to push. A market, by contrast, will try every damn thing it can think of, and some of it will work. I don't remember where I read it, but I believe the 2016 Russian disinformation campaign took advantage of a number of conspiracy theories that arose "in the wild".
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  I believe the influence of the Russian disinformation was overstated that it could very well be declared fake news. Which messages? Which groups were targeted? How many people did it hit? It was targeted to increase distrust? On which platform? What historically was regarded as propaganda could very well be dissected afterwards. I don't really see that here or any arguments that this influence cannot be traced. I would be very surprised if Russia didn't try to boost their favorite candidate as a geopolitical rival, but to imply relevant Russian interference is an example of distorting the truth in my opinion. And not a trivial one. Furthermore you are also implying that everyone having a somewhat dissenting opinion about unrelated issues to being manipulated. Some might take issue with that.
AnimalMuppet 7y ago
Not sure I agree with that. The difference between CNN and Fox, say, is far larger than the difference between the "big three" was back in, say, the 1970s (the time of Vietnam, and the US government trying very hard to paint a world that was different from reality). What we have now is the major media trying to paint a world, rather than just report it. In any given instance, that's not necessarily "fake news". But by what you choose to cover and what you choose to ignore, you can paint a very different picture. What you say is still true, but it doesn't add up to the truth. It presents a distorted picture of the world.

Ma8ee 7y ago

It is certainly worse since everyone could publish themselves easily and quickly. At the time of paper papers, where you actually needed access to a printing press and physical distribution network, there were much fewer actors, and each of them had to take at least some care of their reputation. Not to mention that they were easy to localize, so they could actually be sued for the most blatant smears. But then of course, propaganda and misinformation are probably as old as mankind. It's just that the scale has changed.

Jeff_Brown 7y ago
Could be a tech solution to the reputation problem? Some kind of distributed social media- and wikipedia-like system where information is signed by its author(s), and where people are able to produce metadata rating the factuality of information and authors. Currently people can create such information, of course. But liars routinely deny well-documented things in their past, and those denials are effective to their intended audience. And currently someone can debunk a lie, but there's no systematic way to find everyone who testifies that it's untrue. And while finding all of a claim's supporters and debunkers would be a great first step, a truly good (i.e. skeptical) reader would want to be able to find their arguments, too. I'm skeptical that current AI could automate the job of indexing that information -- understanding controversial arguments seems likely to require true intelligence. I happen to have made a system[1] in which indexing any kind of data or metadata is extremely easy, requiring little more than knowing some natural language. (Deciding what kind of information you want to encode is hard, but once you've decided that, encoding it is easy.) [1] https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode
- Ma8ee 7y ago
  I don't think the reputation problem is particulary hard or need any fancy technical solutions. If I read something on NYTimes.com I know that the information there is true most of the time (even thought it do happen that they screw up). The job of good journalism is to vet their sources, finding collaborating evidence and listen to those that have different claims. If I read something from a source I don't know anything about, I must keep in mind that what I'm reading just might not be true.

BLKNSLVR 7y ago

Religion has been around a fair whack longer than the printing press.