9 ms·

It's almost as if web services that let people post whatever they want at any time, vulnerable to whatever security flaws may be present, shouldn't be used as a

It's almost as if web services that let people post whatever they want at any time, vulnerable to whatever security flaws may be present, shouldn't be used as a reliable source for up-to-the-minute information about literally anything important at all.

djmetzle 6y ago
This. We've entered a world where the lowest common denominator of information is being used as primary source for current events. That's asinine.
- phs318u 6y ago
  But is that really new? Other than scale and reach (quantitative difference), how is that any different qualitatively from the old grapevine/gossip network? "My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said..."
  - gameswithgo 6y ago
    the scale and reach
  - buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
    “My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said...” doesn’t reach the whole world instantaneously
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      It does now.
  - mc32 6y ago
    That didn't get disseminated and diffused to tens of millions. If something was published they'd look for official sources or corroborating sources and or secondary evidence. If AP, EFE, UPI, Kyodo, Interfax etc all get their news from one source [Twitter] that's just laziness.
    - baddox 6y ago
      “ A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” has been a cliche for a hundred years. I don’t think internet social networks are a difference in kind, but they probably are a difference in degree.
    - phs318u 6y ago
      Agreed but I said "apart from scale and reach". The point I was trying to make was that people have always found it fairly easy to believe non-credible sources. In this sense, social media is not qualitatively different. Only quantitatively different.
      - ergl 6y ago
        A large quantitative change is indistinguishable from a qualitative change: what's the difference between light rain and a flood, between some small waves and a tsunami?
        phs318u 6y ago
        What I meant, is that in the eyes/ears of those RECEIVING the information (and believing it uncritically), there's no difference. People have always had a predisposition to uncritically accepting information from those "in the tribe", whether that be extended family, or an internet echo chamber. Presumably this was a survival optimisation. Trust those "close", and distrust "others".
- mansion7 6y ago
  That's partially because the sources formally seen as primary, at least in the US, have started to be viewed as biased and unreliable. This is largely through their own actions. Examples are legion, but a recent one is debacle at NYT over an op-ed. The news-consuming public was able to view the shenanigans of NYT reporters and staffers, which would formerly been done being the scenes. Many eyes were opened, and I'm certain I wasn't the only one thinking "These are the people in supposed to be trusting for my news and analysis?"
  - blisseyGo 6y ago
    I agree. I have been following the rule of not trusting any such significant news for 48 hours and sometimes even a week because often, news gets debunked or more info comes out.
  - ihsw 6y ago
    > viewed as biased and unreliable That's because they are.
  - SyneRyder 6y ago
    >That's partially because the sources formally seen as primary... Newspapers and news outlets aren't actually "primary source". If you read a quoted tweet from Obama in the New York Times, the NYT isn't the "primary source" - Obama is. The NYT is a secondary source that is quoting from primary source. In that sense, Twitter is actually primary source, because Obama wrote the tweet. Well, except when Twitter is hacked, which is what makes this such a significant event. (But I agree with your general comment, especially having been interviewed a few times and seen how most reporters work. There are a handful of good ones out there though.)
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    I must have missed the example you mention, could you elaborate?
  - bosswipe 6y ago
    > This is largely through their own actions. Or it could be the result of a decades long effort to attack credible authoritative institutions by forces that take a dim view of transparency and accountability.
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  I don't think this is new though. The same thing happens on the radio too - and radio can be hacked too.
- ergl 6y ago
  >is being used as primary source for current events Is it though? According to Pew, only 20% of US adults use Twitter: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-... In comparison, Fox news is used as a source by 40% of the US population: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/08/five-facts-about-fox-news/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/08/five-facts-... The share is bigger for Facebook, though (69%)
  - heresie-dabord 6y ago
    This is a catastrophic failure in education and in US democracy.
dwd 6y ago
The same could be said for radio, whether Orson Wells "Alien Invasion" broadcast or the multitude of April 1st jokes that got out of hand.
- zymhan 6y ago
  tl;dr don't rely on a single source
  - Frost1x 6y ago
    Bingo. Information should always be confirmed with at least one other (hopefully) independent source. The more sources, the merrier. If there aren't independent sources then don't jump to conclusions.
- akira2501 6y ago
  > The same could be said for radio Yes, except the FCC can forcefully suspend the operations of a radio station.
  - logicprog 6y ago
    Is there any limit on their ability to do this?
  - jrumbut 6y ago
    I think radio is probably a better source than Twitter as a whole, however they did air (still air?) Coast to Coast AM for decades. Though Art Bell said the show was "pure entertainment", anyone who tuned in without that context heard what sounded like a serious news talk program about aliens, crystal healing, reptilians, etc, etc.
- mc32 6y ago
  Apparently the "fallout" was an exaggeration that Orson went along with because it gave him more publicity. From the Wikipedia: >"The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. ... Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted." and "Welles later embraced the story as part of his personal myth. "Houses were emptying, churches were filling up; from Nashville to Minneapolis there was wailing in the streets and the rending of garments," he told Peter Bogdanovich years later." "CBS, too, found reports ultimately useful in promoting the strength of its influence. radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted."
aahhahahaaa 6y ago
It shouldn't be, but the bleeding edge of markets have always relied on having the latest data from anywhere that can indicate a shift and I don't expect it to change anytime soon.
- judge2020 6y ago
  Exactly. Twitter only succeeds because it's an authoritative source for who a tweet is from. It'll surely be questioned in the future since this is huge, but any other platform getting hacked like YouTube or Facebook would have similar consequences.
ilaksh 6y ago
Its almost as if we shouldn't centralize such communication in a single giant private corporation.
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  While I am 10000% onboard with decentralizing communication, I am not sure if that would help in cases like this though. Back in 2013, only a single news outlet AP's twitter was hacked and had similar consequences. Decentralizing wouldn't have helped there I think.
  - westmeal 6y ago
    Signing the message would be but who uses that nonsense right
    - dividedbyzero 6y ago
      Then you need to make sure people cannot under any circumstances be sloppy with securing private keys, since once they can, some important people will, and then such things happen again, any maybe they'll have actual consequences, people die, markets collapse, economies collapse, wars break out ... And then? Doing damage control on a fake post by the CEO of Supercorp saying they're faltering financially, or whatever, when it has that green badge of crypto-authenticity, and you've spun your marketing in such a way to tell people "if that's there, it is 100% authentic, just look for that badge" ... that would be a nightmare. It's an issue with "verified" already, but cryptography is essentially magic; many in tech believe they get the nuances but don't really, and most outside of tech don't even begin to get the nuances. Would that damage people's trust in cryptography in general? Maybe? After all, most people don't know, understand and/or care that their Whatsapp E2E is effectively broken for police and similar actors when they enable backups, because most people care about the details of these things about as much as I care about the exact things my hairdresser does to make my hair look good, which is pretty much not at all unless they want to use a chainsaw or something. If that were to be abused in a major way, that'd probably make big headlines. I don't think that, at this point, cryptography is even generally helpful with fundamentally social problems like these, because it tends to be incredibly hard to build a product and UX around it that works for everyone and fails in a way that is somewhat understandable and actionable – the amount of work that HTTPS has required and still requires to mostly get there has been and still is huge.
rm445 6y ago
What you're saying makes some sense - a television broadcast, say, requires effort from a lot of people to produce - and, previously, expensive special equipment to broadcast, though now TV content is often streamed over the web - so it has a level of credibility, the TV news at least can't be spoofed by one person in their bedroom on the other side of the world. (Note that deepfakes may be changing this). But the world we live in is full of "web services that let people post whatever they want at any time". News from Twitter may be weird but many people want to get their news from the BBC website, or the New York Times, or Reuters or whatever. Or their own government's websites. Just web services that people post from - presumably with levels of editing and checking but all presumably with security flaws that could bypass them. It's not clear exactly what you're asking for. A technological solution involving careful checking of cryptographic signatures? Or some sort of super-expensive-to-spoof source of all important news?
eternalban 6y ago
Remedy is painfully obvious: make an example of Twitter and pass laws that holds platform operators liable. That should fix all sorts of security problems.
- eternalban 6y ago
  This is my line of reasoning: Company X presents the public with communications of known public figure. Company X assures the public, via a blue checkmark, that said communications are from a "verified" account. Shouldn't company X be liable if someone other than the known figure is making public statements? It seems logical, fair, and a societal 'good thing', that company X should either let go of the pretense of "verified" communications, or get its act together, or pay the legal price.
50ckpuppet 6y ago
bingo, except america is a nation of jittery anxious monkeys pumped full of unregulated oxycontin and anti-depressants.
- heresie-dabord 6y ago
  This is unfair. You are talking about a nation of 330 million people. But it is fair to say that there is no sane channel of information. The channels of public discourse in the US, once controlled by a few "loyal, patriotic" corporate owners fed by advertising revenue, are now channels controlled by unprincipled corporatism that supports a two-party system of untalented puppets. And the un-talent pool is bigger than ever.
heresie-dabord 6y ago
Nay, Sir, our brave corporations that regularly sell themselves out to low-cost labour markets will surely defend democracy here and around the world when we call upon them! Not.

djmetzle 6y ago

This. We've entered a world where the lowest common denominator of information is being used as primary source for current events. That's asinine.

phs318u 6y ago
But is that really new? Other than scale and reach (quantitative difference), how is that any different qualitatively from the old grapevine/gossip network? "My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said..."
- gameswithgo 6y ago
  the scale and reach
- buzzerbetrayed 6y ago
  “My dad's co-worker's, girlfriend's uncle works at ... and said...” doesn’t reach the whole world instantaneously
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    It does now.
- mc32 6y ago
  That didn't get disseminated and diffused to tens of millions. If something was published they'd look for official sources or corroborating sources and or secondary evidence. If AP, EFE, UPI, Kyodo, Interfax etc all get their news from one source [Twitter] that's just laziness.
  - baddox 6y ago
    “ A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on” has been a cliche for a hundred years. I don’t think internet social networks are a difference in kind, but they probably are a difference in degree.
  - phs318u 6y ago
    Agreed but I said "apart from scale and reach". The point I was trying to make was that people have always found it fairly easy to believe non-credible sources. In this sense, social media is not qualitatively different. Only quantitatively different.
    - ergl 6y ago
      A large quantitative change is indistinguishable from a qualitative change: what's the difference between light rain and a flood, between some small waves and a tsunami?
      - phs318u 6y ago
        What I meant, is that in the eyes/ears of those RECEIVING the information (and believing it uncritically), there's no difference. People have always had a predisposition to uncritically accepting information from those "in the tribe", whether that be extended family, or an internet echo chamber. Presumably this was a survival optimisation. Trust those "close", and distrust "others".
mansion7 6y ago
That's partially because the sources formally seen as primary, at least in the US, have started to be viewed as biased and unreliable. This is largely through their own actions. Examples are legion, but a recent one is debacle at NYT over an op-ed. The news-consuming public was able to view the shenanigans of NYT reporters and staffers, which would formerly been done being the scenes. Many eyes were opened, and I'm certain I wasn't the only one thinking "These are the people in supposed to be trusting for my news and analysis?"
- blisseyGo 6y ago
  I agree. I have been following the rule of not trusting any such significant news for 48 hours and sometimes even a week because often, news gets debunked or more info comes out.
- ihsw 6y ago
  > viewed as biased and unreliable That's because they are.
- SyneRyder 6y ago
  >That's partially because the sources formally seen as primary... Newspapers and news outlets aren't actually "primary source". If you read a quoted tweet from Obama in the New York Times, the NYT isn't the "primary source" - Obama is. The NYT is a secondary source that is quoting from primary source. In that sense, Twitter is actually primary source, because Obama wrote the tweet. Well, except when Twitter is hacked, which is what makes this such a significant event. (But I agree with your general comment, especially having been interviewed a few times and seen how most reporters work. There are a handful of good ones out there though.)
- dividedbyzero 6y ago
  I must have missed the example you mention, could you elaborate?
- bosswipe 6y ago
  > This is largely through their own actions. Or it could be the result of a decades long effort to attack credible authoritative institutions by forces that take a dim view of transparency and accountability.
blisseyGo 6y ago
I don't think this is new though. The same thing happens on the radio too - and radio can be hacked too.
ergl 6y ago
>is being used as primary source for current events Is it though? According to Pew, only 20% of US adults use Twitter: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-s-adults-using-social-media-including-facebook-is-mostly-unchanged-since-2018/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/10/share-of-u-... In comparison, Fox news is used as a source by 40% of the US population: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/08/five-facts-about-fox-news/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/08/five-facts-... The share is bigger for Facebook, though (69%)
- heresie-dabord 6y ago
  This is a catastrophic failure in education and in US democracy.

dwd 6y ago

The same could be said for radio, whether Orson Wells "Alien Invasion" broadcast or the multitude of April 1st jokes that got out of hand.

zymhan 6y ago
tl;dr don't rely on a single source
- Frost1x 6y ago
  Bingo. Information should always be confirmed with at least one other (hopefully) independent source. The more sources, the merrier. If there aren't independent sources then don't jump to conclusions.
akira2501 6y ago
> The same could be said for radio Yes, except the FCC can forcefully suspend the operations of a radio station.
- logicprog 6y ago
  Is there any limit on their ability to do this?
- jrumbut 6y ago
  I think radio is probably a better source than Twitter as a whole, however they did air (still air?) Coast to Coast AM for decades. Though Art Bell said the show was "pure entertainment", anyone who tuned in without that context heard what sounded like a serious news talk program about aliens, crystal healing, reptilians, etc, etc.
mc32 6y ago
Apparently the "fallout" was an exaggeration that Orson went along with because it gave him more publicity. From the Wikipedia: >"The supposed panic was so tiny as to be practically immeasurable on the night of the broadcast. ... Radio had siphoned off advertising revenue from print during the Depression, badly damaging the newspaper industry. So the papers seized the opportunity presented by Welles’ program to discredit radio as a source of news. The newspaper industry sensationalized the panic to prove to advertisers, and regulators, that radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted." and "Welles later embraced the story as part of his personal myth. "Houses were emptying, churches were filling up; from Nashville to Minneapolis there was wailing in the streets and the rending of garments," he told Peter Bogdanovich years later." "CBS, too, found reports ultimately useful in promoting the strength of its influence. radio management was irresponsible and not to be trusted."

aahhahahaaa 6y ago

It shouldn't be, but the bleeding edge of markets have always relied on having the latest data from anywhere that can indicate a shift and I don't expect it to change anytime soon.

judge2020 6y ago
Exactly. Twitter only succeeds because it's an authoritative source for who a tweet is from. It'll surely be questioned in the future since this is huge, but any other platform getting hacked like YouTube or Facebook would have similar consequences.

ilaksh 6y ago

Its almost as if we shouldn't centralize such communication in a single giant private corporation.

blisseyGo 6y ago
While I am 10000% onboard with decentralizing communication, I am not sure if that would help in cases like this though. Back in 2013, only a single news outlet AP's twitter was hacked and had similar consequences. Decentralizing wouldn't have helped there I think.
- westmeal 6y ago
  Signing the message would be but who uses that nonsense right
  - dividedbyzero 6y ago
    Then you need to make sure people cannot under any circumstances be sloppy with securing private keys, since once they can, some important people will, and then such things happen again, any maybe they'll have actual consequences, people die, markets collapse, economies collapse, wars break out ... And then? Doing damage control on a fake post by the CEO of Supercorp saying they're faltering financially, or whatever, when it has that green badge of crypto-authenticity, and you've spun your marketing in such a way to tell people "if that's there, it is 100% authentic, just look for that badge" ... that would be a nightmare. It's an issue with "verified" already, but cryptography is essentially magic; many in tech believe they get the nuances but don't really, and most outside of tech don't even begin to get the nuances. Would that damage people's trust in cryptography in general? Maybe? After all, most people don't know, understand and/or care that their Whatsapp E2E is effectively broken for police and similar actors when they enable backups, because most people care about the details of these things about as much as I care about the exact things my hairdresser does to make my hair look good, which is pretty much not at all unless they want to use a chainsaw or something. If that were to be abused in a major way, that'd probably make big headlines. I don't think that, at this point, cryptography is even generally helpful with fundamentally social problems like these, because it tends to be incredibly hard to build a product and UX around it that works for everyone and fails in a way that is somewhat understandable and actionable – the amount of work that HTTPS has required and still requires to mostly get there has been and still is huge.

rm445 6y ago

What you're saying makes some sense - a television broadcast, say, requires effort from a lot of people to produce - and, previously, expensive special equipment to broadcast, though now TV content is often streamed over the web - so it has a level of credibility, the TV news at least can't be spoofed by one person in their bedroom on the other side of the world. (Note that deepfakes may be changing this). But the world we live in is full of "web services that let people post whatever they want at any time". News from Twitter may be weird but many people want to get their news from the BBC website, or the New York Times, or Reuters or whatever. Or their own government's websites. Just web services that people post from - presumably with levels of editing and checking but all presumably with security flaws that could bypass them. It's not clear exactly what you're asking for. A technological solution involving careful checking of cryptographic signatures? Or some sort of super-expensive-to-spoof source of all important news?

eternalban 6y ago

Remedy is painfully obvious: make an example of Twitter and pass laws that holds platform operators liable. That should fix all sorts of security problems.

eternalban 6y ago
This is my line of reasoning: Company X presents the public with communications of known public figure. Company X assures the public, via a blue checkmark, that said communications are from a "verified" account. Shouldn't company X be liable if someone other than the known figure is making public statements? It seems logical, fair, and a societal 'good thing', that company X should either let go of the pretense of "verified" communications, or get its act together, or pay the legal price.

50ckpuppet 6y ago

bingo, except america is a nation of jittery anxious monkeys pumped full of unregulated oxycontin and anti-depressants.

heresie-dabord 6y ago
This is unfair. You are talking about a nation of 330 million people. But it is fair to say that there is no sane channel of information. The channels of public discourse in the US, once controlled by a few "loyal, patriotic" corporate owners fed by advertising revenue, are now channels controlled by unprincipled corporatism that supports a two-party system of untalented puppets. And the un-talent pool is bigger than ever.

heresie-dabord 6y ago

Nay, Sir, our brave corporations that regularly sell themselves out to low-cost labour markets will surely defend democracy here and around the world when we call upon them! Not.