4 ms·

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 t

by 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.

Jeff_Brown 7y ago
Absolutely, that is the job of journalists. But if we face an information apocalypse, it's because many people can't distinguish between good and bad journalism. If the data journalists base their work on was open, I believe we could do better. > 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. Indeed, that's what you should do, given current constraints. You shouldn't verify by repeating the work the journalist did, because you'd never have time for anything else. But you shouldn't have to repeat it -- it could be available. They already did the work; all they'd need to do is encode it in a readable, searchable way. Moreover such a system would let us leverage far more peoples' input. While the barriers for entry have fallen sharply, it's still hard to build a readership, because it takes a while to convince people to trust you. If it were easier to evaluate the output of budding bloggers, they wouldn't have to waste a decade shouting into the void before making a difference. (The death of local news is a big problem. This might help, among other problems, that one.) And, hopefully, through the same mechanism, it would become harder for a propoganda outlet to establish themselves.
turk73 7y ago
You shouldn't, though. The NY Times has been up the statists' ass since its beginning. They have always provided cover to the elites like the Rockefellers, Tammany Hall, all of them, really. They would have been Loyalists during the Revolution, perhaps they are Globalists today, after all. The NY Times is the modern incarnation of the phrase "Yellow Journalism" and notably helped like the US into the Spanish American war, especially in the invasion of Puerto Rico which was done to serve private business interests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism So you see, "fake news" has been going on a long, long time and you are simply historically ignorant. So ignorant in fact, that you probably don't even know how propaganda helped extinguish the lives of millions of Jews--"just get on the train, you are being forcefully re-settled for your own safety" they were told over and over and believed it, despite the rumors, because it came from an official source. Then they were gassed and shoved in mass graves while the gold was extracted from their dead skulls, melted down, and shipped off to Switzerland where it still keeps the same rich families in power today. Only the publicly known bit players got sorted out in that war. The rest are still at large. The entire world as we know it, as we are taught to know it, is a lie.

by Ma8ee 7y ago

Jeff_Brown 7y ago

Absolutely, that is the job of journalists. But if we face an information apocalypse, it's because many people can't distinguish between good and bad journalism. If the data journalists base their work on was open, I believe we could do better. > 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. Indeed, that's what you should do, given current constraints. You shouldn't verify by repeating the work the journalist did, because you'd never have time for anything else. But you shouldn't have to repeat it -- it could be available. They already did the work; all they'd need to do is encode it in a readable, searchable way. Moreover such a system would let us leverage far more peoples' input. While the barriers for entry have fallen sharply, it's still hard to build a readership, because it takes a while to convince people to trust you. If it were easier to evaluate the output of budding bloggers, they wouldn't have to waste a decade shouting into the void before making a difference. (The death of local news is a big problem. This might help, among other problems, that one.) And, hopefully, through the same mechanism, it would become harder for a propoganda outlet to establish themselves.

turk73 7y ago

You shouldn't, though. The NY Times has been up the statists' ass since its beginning. They have always provided cover to the elites like the Rockefellers, Tammany Hall, all of them, really. They would have been Loyalists during the Revolution, perhaps they are Globalists today, after all. The NY Times is the modern incarnation of the phrase "Yellow Journalism" and notably helped like the US into the Spanish American war, especially in the invasion of Puerto Rico which was done to serve private business interests. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism So you see, "fake news" has been going on a long, long time and you are simply historically ignorant. So ignorant in fact, that you probably don't even know how propaganda helped extinguish the lives of millions of Jews--"just get on the train, you are being forcefully re-settled for your own safety" they were told over and over and believed it, despite the rumors, because it came from an official source. Then they were gassed and shoved in mass graves while the gold was extracted from their dead skulls, melted down, and shipped off to Switzerland where it still keeps the same rich families in power today. Only the publicly known bit players got sorted out in that war. The rest are still at large. The entire world as we know it, as we are taught to know it, is a lie.