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Fake news isn't the biggest issue with media. It's obvious and can be easily taken down or discredited. The selective editing of facts by individuals with pers

by jsonne 7y ago

Fake news isn't the biggest issue with media. It's obvious and can be easily taken down or discredited. The selective editing of facts by individuals with personal bias inside large organizations that are supposed to be trustworthy to push narratives and frame thinking in a self serving and incorrect way is much more insidious imho. It's also a way harder problem to solve.

chupa-chups 7y ago
It is an issue, especially if spreaded by trustworthy organizations. Maybe you can see through it, but your neighbor probably not, or your mother, or your child.
- iagovar 7y ago
  > especially if spreaded by trustworthy organizations They not only spread, but they also create them. Media nowadays is in a pretty blatant exercise of framing conversations and not mentioning contrarian evidence for the agenda they are, most of the times very clearly, trying to push. I always say the same. If you see a news piece that stinks propaganda, follow the author and go through his history or his twitter. Most of the times you'll discover a guy who has no shame, has not even the slightest intention of bringing you a reality that you have no direct experience of, and giving you the clues of what might be the truth. An this people many times is not working for a no-name organization, but the WSJ, NYT, BBC, you name it. In Spain this is so blatant and palpable that makes most media basically worthless. You're just reading opinions on events that they may not even made the exercise to check some sources or talk to somebody who has direct experience about. You have to look for who's the author and filter around it. Know their names. There's no other way around it. IMO we are not even talking about bias here, it's like because journalists told themselves that knowing the objetive truth is impossible, then full swing the other way and be lazy, have no objections to blatant propaganda, and so on. So reading, watching or hearing them is only useful as an exercise of know what they want people to think about. If you want to have any insight you really need to filter through names, and if you're lucky reach specialized media, which tends to be another totally different story, because obviously people who has direct experience of something is way harder to convince of some BS. Edit: This may be useful for some people. I decided to use a custom CSS extension to highlight the authors that I did the painful process of checking their background and analyzer their reports. I can't do for everyone but it improved my experience in a few news sites, since remembering all names is difficult.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  I loathe the "But a baby can't chew steak!" line of arguements. We will get nowhere assuming universal incompetence and feebleness, certainly not competence and strength with such expectations holding us back.
mistermann 7y ago
It's also extremely psychologically difficult to protect oneself from. Even noticing when it's happening to you is far from easy, in no small part because the person writing is 100 percent sincere and well intentioned. I wish this perspective would be included in more of these fake news articles, but I suspect the phenomenon is largely unknown.
Zenst 7y ago
The rewriting of history or bending it, is and always has been an issue, often done innocently and jumped on by others with agenda and fueled from there. Education is the only way to solve that, but then, that solves many issues in which we focus upon the fire instead of cutting of the fuel.
blackflame 7y ago
It's really not that obvious as pretty much every news outlet feels the need to make their point. Biased news is fake news because it sensationalizes issues to be bigger than they appear.
slg 7y ago
Which is part of the controversy surrounding Facebook. Facebook is justifiable in arguing that moderating against biases is incredibly difficult and it may very well cause huge downstream problems like they claim. However there is little justification for allowing fabricated video (EDIT: see comment below, I originally also referenced deep fakes which Facebook apparently banned last week while still allowing other manipulated video). In my opinion, the refusal to crack down on those means they can't use the difficulty of moderating bias as a defense because they refuse to even start with the easy thing.
- jadbox 7y ago
  Didn't facebook just ban deep fakes? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/06/facebook-ban-deepfakes-sources-say-new-policy-may-not-cover-controversial-pelosi-video/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/06/faceboo...
  - slg 7y ago
    It appears I was a week behind their specific policy on deep fakes, but like that article mention it doesn't cover video doctored in other ways that are still objectively false.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      Is there an objective boundary between videos/images doctored for comedic effect and those doctored to be deceptive? If I photoshop Putin to be three feet tall (https://i.imgur.com/8b3kg8l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/8b3kg8l.jpg) and post it on facebook for my friends to laugh at, would that count as a video that's been 'doctored and objectively false'? 'Objectively true or false' is easier than 'objectively comedic or deceptive', and I'm not sure the former is really what you want.
      - slg 7y ago
        Is there an objective boundary? No. Is it possible to look at an individual doctored video/image and know? Yes. This feeds back into my original point. You shouldn't be able to use that potential gray area as an excuse when you refuse to act against cases that are cut and dry. Facebook doesn't need to solve this entire issue to take steps to reduce the dangers that misinformation can present.
usefulcat 7y ago
People naturally have a strong preference for ideas they agree with and strong aversion to ideas they disagree with. Coupled with an enormous diversity of information sources, people now can effectively do their own editing of facts. Now one may argue that news sources have some obligation to be balanced, fair, objective, whatever. Ok, sure--I wouldn't disagree with that. The problem is simply that that's not what most people actually want, so there's a huge market for biased news.
- catalogia 7y ago
  On the internet just about anybody can find the 'truth' they prefer. This leads to a fracturing of consensus. Be it algorithmic feeds that expose you to information the algorithm thinks you'll find agreeable or moderated forums where opposing viewpoints are suppressed, the result is the same. Metal Gear Solid 2 described this back in 2001: > "You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth." I see two general approaches to this problem: 1: Curate the internet so that only appropriate 'truths' can be found. 2: Force people who disagree with each other to interact with each other, so they're exposed to ideas they disagree with, and let consensus emerge from the fray.
  - bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
    > This leads to a fracturing of consensus. But is it necessarily a bad thing? I think whether the outcomes are good or bad is going to be highly subjective and debated ad infinitum. I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlord. There are two interesting articles on this topic, I strongly recommend everyone to read them. Gwern's article has interesting observations about politics, subculture, Unicode, and programming languages. David Perell examines the effect of the Internet in a bigger framework of world's politics, education, and commerce. * The Melancholy of Subculture Society, by gwern https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society * What the Hell is Going On?, by David Perell (has a playful foreword, if it annoys you, ignore it and continue reading). https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on -- My perspective of the issue is, under the previous centralized system, the entire nation is subject to the identical propaganda. The effect of the system can already be seen from the extensive propaganda during Mexican–American War of the 1840s - nearly 200 years ago. > You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war. And during the World War II, and later the Cold War, the power of state propaganda reached its height, and I'd say this system is responsible for the massive thought manipulation and greatest violence in the human history. But there are good sides as well - information authority, good writings, and strong consensus. > We have had Edward R. Murrow talking straight at us and gripping the whole nation's attention, we have had Thomas Paine standing in the street, telling us common sense that changes our lives, we've had shots heard round the world, revelations shocking the whole nation at once. - said Shii, a early and influential 4chan moderator, also a major contributor of English Wikipedia. Then came the Internet revolution. Sure, under this system, the absolute notion of truth is deteriorated. There would be Holocaust deniers, anti-vaccine activists, flat-Earthers, moon-landing truthers, foreign propagandists, wild populism, among other groups - heck, even a Facebook poster can start an absurd national hate movement (see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012564). But simultaneously, it's a feature as well, the same system also gave voice and self-determination to those who didn't have - although not in a totally egalitarianist manner, but at least a positive contribution, and brought democratization of communication, which ended, or greatly reduced the power of centralized propaganda. > Getting your views on not just politics, but also physics, biology, economics and who-to-burn-at-the-stake from your local religious official. This was the default for most of human history. I’d much rather have flat earthers than the Spanish inquisition, thank you very much. - An author's response to the concern of Fake News and disinformation, who is working on replicating GPT-2. It disintegrates physical and national barriers and identities. The horror of nationalistic violence had seen it better days, e.g. "the country I live in now is the best country in the world for people like me; I would be terribly unhappy if I was exiled", and now, it's something like, "‘Why, what’s so special about the USA? It’s not particularly economically or politically free, it’s not the only civilized English-speaking country, it’s not the wealthiest..." And the subcultures rule. and in a sense, liberates individuals by giving one the option to opt-out. I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlord. As gwern said, > If I’m a programmer, I don’t need to be competing with 7 billion people, and the few hundred billionaires, for self-esteem. I can just consider the computing community. Better yet, I might only have to consider the functional programming community, or perhaps just the Haskell programming community. Or to take another example: if I decide to commit to the English Wikipedia subculture, as it were, instead of American culture, I am no longer mentally dealing with 300 million competitors and threats; I am dealing with just a few thousand. It is a more manageable tribe. It’s closer to the Dunbar number, which still applies online. Even if I’m on the bottom of the Wikipedia heap, that’s fine. As long as I know where I am! I don’t have to be a rich elite to be happy; a master craftsman is content, and “a cat may look at a king”. > Leaving a culture, and joining a subculture, is a way for the monkey mind to cope with the modern world. But from another perspective, it's also harmful in some ways. It was once possible to leave or escape from one's tribe by physically moving, but now it's an iron cage that nearly impossible to escape. It may intensity the world's geopolitical conflict, as everything has been balkanized. On the other hand, perhaps the society can be better off by learning to operate without a strong consensus. -- To start fresh and frame the topic differently, we can use decentralized systems as an analogy, the traditional mass media is like the Certificate Authority model. It guarantees absolute truth on whether a public key is real by providing a central consensus, but on the other hand, when things go wrong, the entire public key infrastructure is vulnerable to rogue actors, especially state actors. In comparison, we have the PGP web-of-trust model - although the actual implementation turned out to be a total failure due to legacy code and design issues, but the ideas remain valid - that iut derives the trust not from an authority, but from the collective opinion of a group of people in a community you know. The good thing is that anyone is free to make one's own judgements, and the system is resistant from a central rogue actor, the bad thing is that there is only localized consensus, not centralized consensus, you cannot surf the web using this model. Recently, there was a chaotic argument online about on how to scale a Bitcoin-like decentralized, P2P protocol. Two authors purposed the DCS theorem an an analogy of the CAP theorem. It's not really a theorem or a research paper, I'd say it's just a personal opinion, but somewhat interesting [0]. Basically it says, a decentralized system cannot simultaneously satisfies the three properties: (1) Decentralization, (2) Consensus, and (3) Scale. A traditional bank is C & S: having a global consensus and no scaling difficulty, but it's centralized. The original Bitcoin achieves D & C: decentralization and global consensus. Everyone knows every transaction - by running a blockchain, but it must come with an extremely high cost. On the other hand, Layer-2 solutions bypasses the blockchain, thus it achieves D & S: decentralization and scale, by avoiding to broadcast the transaction to the blockchain and use P2P communication instead, thus abolish global consensus. Using the same line of thinking, I think this conclusion can be applied to a lot of other systems, not only blockchains, for example, the Certificate Authority is C & S, and the web-of-trust is D & S. The mass media is C & S, the Internet is D & S. Doing D & C requires everyone knows everything, which is simply not the Internet. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the pros and cons are inherent in each paradigm, you cannot both have your cake and eat it, and whether the outcomes are good or bad is going to be highly subjective. And back to the issue of biases of mass media, one possible idea is to impose some limitations on the freedom of the press to the mass media as a counterweight to the freedom of speech: In the age when everyone can say everything online, perhaps the mass media establishment should be forced to engage in a journalism with a higher standard, serving as a reliable reference source. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04335 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04335
swiley 7y ago
The solution is for people to study philosophy and math. My impression is that most people think decently well for themselves, especially after this and the general consensus now seems to be that average people are much more intelligent than most people thought during the 20th century.
- dangoor 7y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by "intelligent" specifically, especially as it relates to the topic at hand. People are vulnerable to all sorts of cognitive biases, somewhat independent of "intelligence".
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  how would studying philosophy and math help combat the ever growing frequency of people coming into impression of intentionally misleading content on the internet lmao Ive heard the "study logic!" line from so many people and they miss the point of marketing/propaganda
- rabidrat 7y ago
  Okay, let's say that's the solution. A) people en masse haven't studied those topics adequately so far (empirically), so even if all students were to have adequate education in philosophy and math, there would be a multi-generation lag between today's problem and the solution taking effect. B) Any plan that requires everyone ("people") to do something is a non-starter. Okay so let's say it doesn't have to be everyone, but some critical mass. Maybe enough people such that a simple majority become effective fake-detectors, and then their skills would be a social filter for the ones who don't have that skill. How do we keep the other 30%, say, from being taken in by a charismatic huckster and becoming an isolated faction with their own fork of factual reality? Asking for a friend.
blackflame 7y ago
Why are liberals so concerned with censoring and hiding ideas? You guys create these enemies in your head, volunteer yourself as the heroic arbiter of truth, and antagonize everyone who disagrees because your issues are too important for disagreement. Nevermind that they are capable of making their own decisions, you are far smarter and know better. After all, you live in once of the most expensive places in the world. You can make any issue life or death but it doesn't mean it should be. The best part about Trump is that he's forced the media and keyboard warriors alike for their utter patheticness. Liberals' hypocrisy will be their undoing. Cry wolf more.
- dang 7y ago
  Would you please stop using HN for ideological flamewar? It's not what we want on this site, regardless of which ideology you're for or against. That and flamebait like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22069349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22069349 are not ok here. Your substantive comments are fine. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
konschubert 7y ago
Fake news are not obvious. Let me take a quote from this article: https://www.google.de/amp/s/bigthink.com/surprising-science/netflix-binge-watching-makes-climate-change-worse.amp.html https://www.google.de/amp/s/bigthink.com/surprising-science/... > The emissions generated by watching a half hour of Netflix is the same as from driving almost 4 miles. That’s a lie, it uses at least an order of magnitude less energy. But it’s not immediately obvious and many critical thinkers will have believed this wildly-shared story.
- C14L 7y ago
  Neither of you two provided a source, so I would tend to not believe either statement. I think society will learn to handle fake news in precisely this way. Worrying, however, is when the academic research that is given as a source, is guided by ideology rather than by empiric research. And there seem to be more and more such cases.
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    What source would you trust, though? People will just go after that source, to get their misinformation validated there.
  - toss1 7y ago
    True, but merely by noticing your vocabulary choices, and evident familiarity with scientific research & standards, (& just that you are here) it is obvious that you are a massive outlier. Most people do not even begin to think so clearly. Which is why it it such a massive problem
    - etrabroline 7y ago
      I think his point is that false newspaper reports are not new, educated people generally wait for credible sources, and it is not a massive problem compared to the increasing trend of what should be credible sources self censoring for political reasons.
belorn 7y ago
Can I add that the problem of selective editing of facts is significant worse when the news organization is itself giving funds and money to a political party, to a point where the distinction of being owned by the political party or supporting by them is a blurred line. We sometimes talk about news as being the court of public opinion. If we use that analogy, imagine the judge giving millions to one side during a court case in order to help them win.
AlexCoventry 7y ago
A great recent example of this is Ronan Farrow's account in Catch and Kill of the pressure he faced to back off from the Weinstein story, and then to refrain from implicating his employer, NBC news, in the cover-up. Interestingly, though, it was Rachel Maddow who got him to open up about the pressure from NBC, on her MSNBC show.
grabbalacious 7y ago
There are no pure and totally reliable sources of information but suppose we could somehow 'debias' and purify an existing source. Suppose we then listened only to it and ignored all the other sources. We could still be led astray because it would generate errors from time to time due to the fact that we are all fallible. And these errors would be harder to spot because we would be ignoring sources of countervailing ideas. There is no substitute for reading critically. If we take responsibility and read critically we can learn things even from flaky or fake sources.
h2odragon 7y ago
> supposed to be trustworthy why is it they're "supposed to be" trustworthy? who told you that they were worth trusting? What previous examples do you have where these organizations acted in your interest or at least to your benefit? How is it that you expect anyone on this planet to be "trust" worthy? what exactly is it you expect from them? that they tell you the truth as they believe it? that the beliefs they hold are totally accurate and reproduce-able? that your experiences will not diverge from their to the point their advice no longer accurate for you? that you will understand the efforts someone make to communicate to the point that their thought becomes yours? Incoherent rant; but i hope to make the point that we assign a lot of responsibility to others that we cannot reasonably expect them to be aware of, much less fulfill, here.
- datashow 7y ago
  I think different people have different criteria on "trustworthy". Most are only looking for confirmation. There are a few are looking for nonpartisan, unbiased reports. For those who are interested in nonpartisan, unbiased reports. I highly recommend https://thedispatch.com/ https://thedispatch.com/ . Yes, they clearly state they are conservative leaning, but I found their reports are very good. I also would like to know any liberal leaning website like this .
  - etrabroline 7y ago
    >David French Senior editor of The Dispatch. This is a neocon publication, and unsurprisingly their current headline is criticizing trump for trying to end the war in Afghanistan. If you are a neocon I'm sure you'll find it as good as National Review or the Weekly Standard, but to call it nonpartisan or unbiased is not credible.
    - datashow 7y ago
      I don't know I am a neocon. I just found that report makes good points. Are you saying all the evidence provided in the article are false and we can firmly trust the Taliban, or we should just pull troops out?
spookthesunset 7y ago
> It's obvious and can be easily taken down or discredited. If you think that is true, I have a bridge to sell you. Even you, the esteemed 10x hacker news rockstar, have probably fallen for fake news.
Meekro 7y ago
Out of the millions of (completely true) things the media could tell you each day, who decides which 20 or so we have time for? Whose interest is being served by that choice? This isn't just newspapers and TV; there is a similar kind of choice being made on every social media platform, and it's seldom the people themselves making it.
keanzu 7y ago
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. New organizations commonly write stores about completely alien subjects while simultaneously needing to appear as authoritative sources. The Verge is a perfect example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2Scfj4FZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2Scfj4FZk
seppin 7y ago
People are not robots, everything you read has been edited and formatted by someone with a bias. You need to recognize this and adjust for it. Straight up lying is a worse problem.
elfexec 7y ago
> Fake news isn't the biggest issue with media. It's obvious and can be easily taken down or discredited. Fake news can be a big problem. Especially in the short term when it comes to major issues like war. The last two major wars was peddled to the american public with fake news - iraq war 1 ( Nayirah testimony ) and iraq war 2 ( yellowcake ). We know that major PR firms, news agencies and government officials intentionally lied and created fake news which led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Not a single PR person, news person or government employee has been charged. Think about that. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children are dead because of intentional lies ( some in front of congress ) and nobody got prosecuted or sent to prison. > The selective editing of facts by individuals with personal bias inside large organizations that are supposed to be trustworthy The is the biggest problem with news is that people actually think they were or are supposed to be trustworth. What I think should be taught in high school/colleges is the "History of News". I think it will be eye opening to anyone. Who created these news organizations, why did they create it, how it was created, etc. From the BBC, reuters, AP, NYTimes, WaPo, etc, you wouldn't label a single on as reliable or trustworthy if you understood their histories. The ultimate problem is that people trust news organizations. Historically, nobody trusted news. News was maligned as nonsense ( yellow journalism ). It was only recently ( post ww2 ) when PR nonsense like "The most trusted name in news"/etc brainwashed people into trusting news. The best we can do is do look at a variety of competing news sources. This way, they'll expose what the other side is lying about and you can judge for yourself. Especially when it comes to geopolitics or important news, they all lie, so your only hope is competing news sources.
woutr_be 7y ago
Currently living in Hong Kong, a city that's going through a big crisis right now, it's amazing how different news organizations portray what's going on. I don't think there's a single one that's actually neutral, and just says what's happening. But I don't even think that's the biggest issue, the biggest one is social media, there's a constant stream of carefully edited photos or videos, or some armchair detectives who push out completely made up theories about what happened. The scariest part is that people just look at it, and take it as the truth, without actually checking it.

by jsonne 7y ago

chupa-chups 7y ago

It is an issue, especially if spreaded by trustworthy organizations. Maybe you can see through it, but your neighbor probably not, or your mother, or your child.

iagovar 7y ago
> especially if spreaded by trustworthy organizations They not only spread, but they also create them. Media nowadays is in a pretty blatant exercise of framing conversations and not mentioning contrarian evidence for the agenda they are, most of the times very clearly, trying to push. I always say the same. If you see a news piece that stinks propaganda, follow the author and go through his history or his twitter. Most of the times you'll discover a guy who has no shame, has not even the slightest intention of bringing you a reality that you have no direct experience of, and giving you the clues of what might be the truth. An this people many times is not working for a no-name organization, but the WSJ, NYT, BBC, you name it. In Spain this is so blatant and palpable that makes most media basically worthless. You're just reading opinions on events that they may not even made the exercise to check some sources or talk to somebody who has direct experience about. You have to look for who's the author and filter around it. Know their names. There's no other way around it. IMO we are not even talking about bias here, it's like because journalists told themselves that knowing the objetive truth is impossible, then full swing the other way and be lazy, have no objections to blatant propaganda, and so on. So reading, watching or hearing them is only useful as an exercise of know what they want people to think about. If you want to have any insight you really need to filter through names, and if you're lucky reach specialized media, which tends to be another totally different story, because obviously people who has direct experience of something is way harder to convince of some BS. Edit: This may be useful for some people. I decided to use a custom CSS extension to highlight the authors that I did the painful process of checking their background and analyzer their reports. I can't do for everyone but it improved my experience in a few news sites, since remembering all names is difficult.
Nasrudith 7y ago
I loathe the "But a baby can't chew steak!" line of arguements. We will get nowhere assuming universal incompetence and feebleness, certainly not competence and strength with such expectations holding us back.

mistermann 7y ago

It's also extremely psychologically difficult to protect oneself from. Even noticing when it's happening to you is far from easy, in no small part because the person writing is 100 percent sincere and well intentioned. I wish this perspective would be included in more of these fake news articles, but I suspect the phenomenon is largely unknown.

Zenst 7y ago

The rewriting of history or bending it, is and always has been an issue, often done innocently and jumped on by others with agenda and fueled from there. Education is the only way to solve that, but then, that solves many issues in which we focus upon the fire instead of cutting of the fuel.

blackflame 7y ago

It's really not that obvious as pretty much every news outlet feels the need to make their point. Biased news is fake news because it sensationalizes issues to be bigger than they appear.

slg 7y ago

Which is part of the controversy surrounding Facebook. Facebook is justifiable in arguing that moderating against biases is incredibly difficult and it may very well cause huge downstream problems like they claim. However there is little justification for allowing fabricated video (EDIT: see comment below, I originally also referenced deep fakes which Facebook apparently banned last week while still allowing other manipulated video). In my opinion, the refusal to crack down on those means they can't use the difficulty of moderating bias as a defense because they refuse to even start with the easy thing.

jadbox 7y ago
Didn't facebook just ban deep fakes? https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/06/facebook-ban-deepfakes-sources-say-new-policy-may-not-cover-controversial-pelosi-video/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/06/faceboo...
- slg 7y ago
  It appears I was a week behind their specific policy on deep fakes, but like that article mention it doesn't cover video doctored in other ways that are still objectively false.
  - catalogia 7y ago
    Is there an objective boundary between videos/images doctored for comedic effect and those doctored to be deceptive? If I photoshop Putin to be three feet tall (https://i.imgur.com/8b3kg8l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/8b3kg8l.jpg) and post it on facebook for my friends to laugh at, would that count as a video that's been 'doctored and objectively false'? 'Objectively true or false' is easier than 'objectively comedic or deceptive', and I'm not sure the former is really what you want.
    - slg 7y ago
      Is there an objective boundary? No. Is it possible to look at an individual doctored video/image and know? Yes. This feeds back into my original point. You shouldn't be able to use that potential gray area as an excuse when you refuse to act against cases that are cut and dry. Facebook doesn't need to solve this entire issue to take steps to reduce the dangers that misinformation can present.

usefulcat 7y ago

People naturally have a strong preference for ideas they agree with and strong aversion to ideas they disagree with. Coupled with an enormous diversity of information sources, people now can effectively do their own editing of facts. Now one may argue that news sources have some obligation to be balanced, fair, objective, whatever. Ok, sure--I wouldn't disagree with that. The problem is simply that that's not what most people actually want, so there's a huge market for biased news.

catalogia 7y ago
On the internet just about anybody can find the 'truth' they prefer. This leads to a fracturing of consensus. Be it algorithmic feeds that expose you to information the algorithm thinks you'll find agreeable or moderated forums where opposing viewpoints are suppressed, the result is the same. Metal Gear Solid 2 described this back in 2001: > "You exercise your right to "freedom" and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds, leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth." I see two general approaches to this problem: 1: Curate the internet so that only appropriate 'truths' can be found. 2: Force people who disagree with each other to interact with each other, so they're exposed to ideas they disagree with, and let consensus emerge from the fray.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  > This leads to a fracturing of consensus. But is it necessarily a bad thing? I think whether the outcomes are good or bad is going to be highly subjective and debated ad infinitum. I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlord. There are two interesting articles on this topic, I strongly recommend everyone to read them. Gwern's article has interesting observations about politics, subculture, Unicode, and programming languages. David Perell examines the effect of the Internet in a bigger framework of world's politics, education, and commerce. * The Melancholy of Subculture Society, by gwern https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society https://www.gwern.net/The-Melancholy-of-Subculture-Society * What the Hell is Going On?, by David Perell (has a playful foreword, if it annoys you, ignore it and continue reading). https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on https://www.perell.com/blog/what-the-hell-is-going-on -- My perspective of the issue is, under the previous centralized system, the entire nation is subject to the identical propaganda. The effect of the system can already be seen from the extensive propaganda during Mexican–American War of the 1840s - nearly 200 years ago. > You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war. And during the World War II, and later the Cold War, the power of state propaganda reached its height, and I'd say this system is responsible for the massive thought manipulation and greatest violence in the human history. But there are good sides as well - information authority, good writings, and strong consensus. > We have had Edward R. Murrow talking straight at us and gripping the whole nation's attention, we have had Thomas Paine standing in the street, telling us common sense that changes our lives, we've had shots heard round the world, revelations shocking the whole nation at once. - said Shii, a early and influential 4chan moderator, also a major contributor of English Wikipedia. Then came the Internet revolution. Sure, under this system, the absolute notion of truth is deteriorated. There would be Holocaust deniers, anti-vaccine activists, flat-Earthers, moon-landing truthers, foreign propagandists, wild populism, among other groups - heck, even a Facebook poster can start an absurd national hate movement (see my comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012564 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20012564). But simultaneously, it's a feature as well, the same system also gave voice and self-determination to those who didn't have - although not in a totally egalitarianist manner, but at least a positive contribution, and brought democratization of communication, which ended, or greatly reduced the power of centralized propaganda. > Getting your views on not just politics, but also physics, biology, economics and who-to-burn-at-the-stake from your local religious official. This was the default for most of human history. I’d much rather have flat earthers than the Spanish inquisition, thank you very much. - An author's response to the concern of Fake News and disinformation, who is working on replicating GPT-2. It disintegrates physical and national barriers and identities. The horror of nationalistic violence had seen it better days, e.g. "the country I live in now is the best country in the world for people like me; I would be terribly unhappy if I was exiled", and now, it's something like, "‘Why, what’s so special about the USA? It’s not particularly economically or politically free, it’s not the only civilized English-speaking country, it’s not the wealthiest..." And the subcultures rule. and in a sense, liberates individuals by giving one the option to opt-out. I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlord. As gwern said, > If I’m a programmer, I don’t need to be competing with 7 billion people, and the few hundred billionaires, for self-esteem. I can just consider the computing community. Better yet, I might only have to consider the functional programming community, or perhaps just the Haskell programming community. Or to take another example: if I decide to commit to the English Wikipedia subculture, as it were, instead of American culture, I am no longer mentally dealing with 300 million competitors and threats; I am dealing with just a few thousand. It is a more manageable tribe. It’s closer to the Dunbar number, which still applies online. Even if I’m on the bottom of the Wikipedia heap, that’s fine. As long as I know where I am! I don’t have to be a rich elite to be happy; a master craftsman is content, and “a cat may look at a king”. > Leaving a culture, and joining a subculture, is a way for the monkey mind to cope with the modern world. But from another perspective, it's also harmful in some ways. It was once possible to leave or escape from one's tribe by physically moving, but now it's an iron cage that nearly impossible to escape. It may intensity the world's geopolitical conflict, as everything has been balkanized. On the other hand, perhaps the society can be better off by learning to operate without a strong consensus. -- To start fresh and frame the topic differently, we can use decentralized systems as an analogy, the traditional mass media is like the Certificate Authority model. It guarantees absolute truth on whether a public key is real by providing a central consensus, but on the other hand, when things go wrong, the entire public key infrastructure is vulnerable to rogue actors, especially state actors. In comparison, we have the PGP web-of-trust model - although the actual implementation turned out to be a total failure due to legacy code and design issues, but the ideas remain valid - that iut derives the trust not from an authority, but from the collective opinion of a group of people in a community you know. The good thing is that anyone is free to make one's own judgements, and the system is resistant from a central rogue actor, the bad thing is that there is only localized consensus, not centralized consensus, you cannot surf the web using this model. Recently, there was a chaotic argument online about on how to scale a Bitcoin-like decentralized, P2P protocol. Two authors purposed the DCS theorem an an analogy of the CAP theorem. It's not really a theorem or a research paper, I'd say it's just a personal opinion, but somewhat interesting [0]. Basically it says, a decentralized system cannot simultaneously satisfies the three properties: (1) Decentralization, (2) Consensus, and (3) Scale. A traditional bank is C & S: having a global consensus and no scaling difficulty, but it's centralized. The original Bitcoin achieves D & C: decentralization and global consensus. Everyone knows every transaction - by running a blockchain, but it must come with an extremely high cost. On the other hand, Layer-2 solutions bypasses the blockchain, thus it achieves D & S: decentralization and scale, by avoiding to broadcast the transaction to the blockchain and use P2P communication instead, thus abolish global consensus. Using the same line of thinking, I think this conclusion can be applied to a lot of other systems, not only blockchains, for example, the Certificate Authority is C & S, and the web-of-trust is D & S. The mass media is C & S, the Internet is D & S. Doing D & C requires everyone knows everything, which is simply not the Internet. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the pros and cons are inherent in each paradigm, you cannot both have your cake and eat it, and whether the outcomes are good or bad is going to be highly subjective. And back to the issue of biases of mass media, one possible idea is to impose some limitations on the freedom of the press to the mass media as a counterweight to the freedom of speech: In the age when everyone can say everything online, perhaps the mass media establishment should be forced to engage in a journalism with a higher standard, serving as a reliable reference source. [0] https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04335 https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.04335

swiley 7y ago

The solution is for people to study philosophy and math. My impression is that most people think decently well for themselves, especially after this and the general consensus now seems to be that average people are much more intelligent than most people thought during the 20th century.

dangoor 7y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by "intelligent" specifically, especially as it relates to the topic at hand. People are vulnerable to all sorts of cognitive biases, somewhat independent of "intelligence".
hi5eyes 7y ago
how would studying philosophy and math help combat the ever growing frequency of people coming into impression of intentionally misleading content on the internet lmao Ive heard the "study logic!" line from so many people and they miss the point of marketing/propaganda
rabidrat 7y ago
Okay, let's say that's the solution. A) people en masse haven't studied those topics adequately so far (empirically), so even if all students were to have adequate education in philosophy and math, there would be a multi-generation lag between today's problem and the solution taking effect. B) Any plan that requires everyone ("people") to do something is a non-starter. Okay so let's say it doesn't have to be everyone, but some critical mass. Maybe enough people such that a simple majority become effective fake-detectors, and then their skills would be a social filter for the ones who don't have that skill. How do we keep the other 30%, say, from being taken in by a charismatic huckster and becoming an isolated faction with their own fork of factual reality? Asking for a friend.

blackflame 7y ago

Why are liberals so concerned with censoring and hiding ideas? You guys create these enemies in your head, volunteer yourself as the heroic arbiter of truth, and antagonize everyone who disagrees because your issues are too important for disagreement. Nevermind that they are capable of making their own decisions, you are far smarter and know better. After all, you live in once of the most expensive places in the world. You can make any issue life or death but it doesn't mean it should be. The best part about Trump is that he's forced the media and keyboard warriors alike for their utter patheticness. Liberals' hypocrisy will be their undoing. Cry wolf more.

dang 7y ago
Would you please stop using HN for ideological flamewar? It's not what we want on this site, regardless of which ideology you're for or against. That and flamebait like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22069349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22069349 are not ok here. Your substantive comments are fine. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

konschubert 7y ago

Fake news are not obvious. Let me take a quote from this article: https://www.google.de/amp/s/bigthink.com/surprising-science/netflix-binge-watching-makes-climate-change-worse.amp.html https://www.google.de/amp/s/bigthink.com/surprising-science/... > The emissions generated by watching a half hour of Netflix is the same as from driving almost 4 miles. That’s a lie, it uses at least an order of magnitude less energy. But it’s not immediately obvious and many critical thinkers will have believed this wildly-shared story.

C14L 7y ago
Neither of you two provided a source, so I would tend to not believe either statement. I think society will learn to handle fake news in precisely this way. Worrying, however, is when the academic research that is given as a source, is guided by ideology rather than by empiric research. And there seem to be more and more such cases.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  What source would you trust, though? People will just go after that source, to get their misinformation validated there.
- toss1 7y ago
  True, but merely by noticing your vocabulary choices, and evident familiarity with scientific research & standards, (& just that you are here) it is obvious that you are a massive outlier. Most people do not even begin to think so clearly. Which is why it it such a massive problem
  - etrabroline 7y ago
    I think his point is that false newspaper reports are not new, educated people generally wait for credible sources, and it is not a massive problem compared to the increasing trend of what should be credible sources self censoring for political reasons.

belorn 7y ago

Can I add that the problem of selective editing of facts is significant worse when the news organization is itself giving funds and money to a political party, to a point where the distinction of being owned by the political party or supporting by them is a blurred line. We sometimes talk about news as being the court of public opinion. If we use that analogy, imagine the judge giving millions to one side during a court case in order to help them win.

AlexCoventry 7y ago

A great recent example of this is Ronan Farrow's account in Catch and Kill of the pressure he faced to back off from the Weinstein story, and then to refrain from implicating his employer, NBC news, in the cover-up. Interestingly, though, it was Rachel Maddow who got him to open up about the pressure from NBC, on her MSNBC show.

grabbalacious 7y ago

There are no pure and totally reliable sources of information but suppose we could somehow 'debias' and purify an existing source. Suppose we then listened only to it and ignored all the other sources. We could still be led astray because it would generate errors from time to time due to the fact that we are all fallible. And these errors would be harder to spot because we would be ignoring sources of countervailing ideas. There is no substitute for reading critically. If we take responsibility and read critically we can learn things even from flaky or fake sources.

h2odragon 7y ago

> supposed to be trustworthy why is it they're "supposed to be" trustworthy? who told you that they were worth trusting? What previous examples do you have where these organizations acted in your interest or at least to your benefit? How is it that you expect anyone on this planet to be "trust" worthy? what exactly is it you expect from them? that they tell you the truth as they believe it? that the beliefs they hold are totally accurate and reproduce-able? that your experiences will not diverge from their to the point their advice no longer accurate for you? that you will understand the efforts someone make to communicate to the point that their thought becomes yours? Incoherent rant; but i hope to make the point that we assign a lot of responsibility to others that we cannot reasonably expect them to be aware of, much less fulfill, here.

datashow 7y ago
I think different people have different criteria on "trustworthy". Most are only looking for confirmation. There are a few are looking for nonpartisan, unbiased reports. For those who are interested in nonpartisan, unbiased reports. I highly recommend https://thedispatch.com/ https://thedispatch.com/ . Yes, they clearly state they are conservative leaning, but I found their reports are very good. I also would like to know any liberal leaning website like this .
- etrabroline 7y ago
  >David French Senior editor of The Dispatch. This is a neocon publication, and unsurprisingly their current headline is criticizing trump for trying to end the war in Afghanistan. If you are a neocon I'm sure you'll find it as good as National Review or the Weekly Standard, but to call it nonpartisan or unbiased is not credible.
  - datashow 7y ago
    I don't know I am a neocon. I just found that report makes good points. Are you saying all the evidence provided in the article are false and we can firmly trust the Taliban, or we should just pull troops out?

spookthesunset 7y ago

> It's obvious and can be easily taken down or discredited. If you think that is true, I have a bridge to sell you. Even you, the esteemed 10x hacker news rockstar, have probably fallen for fake news.

Meekro 7y ago

Out of the millions of (completely true) things the media could tell you each day, who decides which 20 or so we have time for? Whose interest is being served by that choice? This isn't just newspapers and TV; there is a similar kind of choice being made on every social media platform, and it's seldom the people themselves making it.

keanzu 7y ago

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. New organizations commonly write stores about completely alien subjects while simultaneously needing to appear as authoritative sources. The Verge is a perfect example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2Scfj4FZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2Scfj4FZk

seppin 7y ago

People are not robots, everything you read has been edited and formatted by someone with a bias. You need to recognize this and adjust for it. Straight up lying is a worse problem.

elfexec 7y ago

> Fake news isn't the biggest issue with media. It's obvious and can be easily taken down or discredited. Fake news can be a big problem. Especially in the short term when it comes to major issues like war. The last two major wars was peddled to the american public with fake news - iraq war 1 ( Nayirah testimony ) and iraq war 2 ( yellowcake ). We know that major PR firms, news agencies and government officials intentionally lied and created fake news which led to the death of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Not a single PR person, news person or government employee has been charged. Think about that. Hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children are dead because of intentional lies ( some in front of congress ) and nobody got prosecuted or sent to prison. > The selective editing of facts by individuals with personal bias inside large organizations that are supposed to be trustworthy The is the biggest problem with news is that people actually think they were or are supposed to be trustworth. What I think should be taught in high school/colleges is the "History of News". I think it will be eye opening to anyone. Who created these news organizations, why did they create it, how it was created, etc. From the BBC, reuters, AP, NYTimes, WaPo, etc, you wouldn't label a single on as reliable or trustworthy if you understood their histories. The ultimate problem is that people trust news organizations. Historically, nobody trusted news. News was maligned as nonsense ( yellow journalism ). It was only recently ( post ww2 ) when PR nonsense like "The most trusted name in news"/etc brainwashed people into trusting news. The best we can do is do look at a variety of competing news sources. This way, they'll expose what the other side is lying about and you can judge for yourself. Especially when it comes to geopolitics or important news, they all lie, so your only hope is competing news sources.

woutr_be 7y ago

Currently living in Hong Kong, a city that's going through a big crisis right now, it's amazing how different news organizations portray what's going on. I don't think there's a single one that's actually neutral, and just says what's happening. But I don't even think that's the biggest issue, the biggest one is social media, there's a constant stream of carefully edited photos or videos, or some armchair detectives who push out completely made up theories about what happened. The scariest part is that people just look at it, and take it as the truth, without actually checking it.