21 ms·

Twitter, Responsibility, and Accountability

138 points by blopeur 6y ago

Kye 6y ago
Ben Thompson is one of those rare people who can actually do "fair and balanced" in a way that doesn't treat atrocious views as a simple and innocent matter of opinion. I used to be all aboard the "social media is the problem" train, but... >> "The point of this is not to debate whether or not the email story was true, or Hunter Biden’s laptop story. Rather, it’s to establish that while social media publishes everything, from mountains of misinformation and conspiracy theories to critical information about an impending pandemic, making something matter requires more than manufacturing zero marginal cost content. The New York Times has that power by default, while Twitter and Facebook only has that power to the extent they do the opposite of what most expect from them (which is to act as a utility for the conveyance of information)." It really does seem like a long list of Very Serious News Organizations taking it seriously enough to publish hundreds of articles on these things does more harm than it floating out there in the goofball ether. No one should have taken a tabloid seriously. They're still going to, because it's profitable, so the solution is probably not "block it" or "don't write about it." The article has some good ideas. edit: in particular the comparison between responses from Twitter and Facebook. Facebook slowed rather than blocked. That gave fact checkers time to warm up without dumping go juice into the conspiracy loop. I haven't heard the same apoplectic screaming about Facebook.
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  > No one should have taken a tabloid seriously In an ideal world, which we do not live in. > They're still going to ... and that's what makes the question of the role of Twitter and Facebook in modern society so dang complicated.
  - idiocrat 6y ago
    How can only the masses survive without Nanny Facebook?
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      One would assume the same way they survived in the era without any Facebook. Now, in a world where Facebook exists, we should probably consider the effect that its particular flow of information has on society. Keep in mind: this is the same company caught running A/B tests on its users without their knowledge on whether running "happy" or "sad" stories had effect on their observable behavior. The public should probably care about what effect Facebook has on it, because Facebook cares about what effect it has on the public.
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  > No one should have taken a tabloid seriously. Are there any non tabloids left? All of the major news organizations have ideologically and clickbait driven debacles in the last few years.
  - dazc 6y ago
    Couldn't agree more. The non-tabloid paragon of virtue in the UK, AKA The Guardian, is full of made up click bait and poorly researched articles but because they are generally left-leaning it's all fine and dandy.
    - hardlianotion 6y ago
      The graun is a tabloid these days.
  - overtonwhy 6y ago
    Reuters, Associated Press, NPR, New York Times, PBS, BBC, CBS, ABC. There are many more journalistic outlets with excellent reputations but a bias.
    - ReptileMan 6y ago
      NY times after the 1619 debacle (silent edits to save face) shouldn't be on the list.
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      That bias is just the bias of middle class, well educated people.
      - Kye 6y ago
        Pretty much. The sneering calls from checkmarked writers for some of these on Twitter for genocide of "bad places" (like where I live) is always unnerving. Some might be joking, but some of them really do believe everyone in the southeast is a tea-sipping, noose-making, dog-kicking monster. And those same people will insist they're very pro-LGBTQ and anti-racism as they call for the genocide of every person they claim to be for in those regions. Which is a lot of people.
- ppod 6y ago
  Good points, but I feel like the real test would be if this was an unverified anti-Trump story. Did twitter or facebook put the brakes on any of the Steele dossier stuff? The principle of putting the brakes on unverified stuff is good, but, of course, you have to decide what counts as "unverified", and you have to do that objectively, and quickly. What would the NYT say if there was an unverified anti-Trump story a week before the election, but twitter slowed the spread of it until it could be confirmed?
shadowgovt 6y ago
> If anything Twitter’s actions had the opposite effect: it made the story spread far more widely than it would have otherwise [citation needed]. Streisand Effect is real, but we're comparing it to the relative megaphone that is a traditional media source using the accelerant of Twitter to circulate an under-researched story. Blocking the story on Twitter didn't stop its spread, but perhaps it gave truth some time to get its boots on before letting a lie ride the Twitter train in the good cars for free.
bjt2n3904 6y ago
An excellently written article. I think they really hit the nail on the head here about how censorship backfires. Seeing someone lay the blame on our news organizations instead of some "Russian conspiracy theory" is catharsis. Regrettably, I think the lesson learned here won't be that censorship backfires. I think the lesson will be, "do it better next time". You see, the story still needs to disappear. But instead of making the story disappear in a very public manner, just shadowban it. Throw a few fake likes and retweets on the post to comfort the user, but display it to no one. And if anyone asks, deny everything. This technique is magnificent. The Streisand Effect can't happen if the request to remove the material isn't made public, and the users are duped into believing the material is still there.
draw_down 6y ago
I agree the Dan Rather example is interesting and useful. I also agree that what twitter and FB did to limit the spread of the article is not good. However, I notice a shift from one to the other, from the story being “news outlet presented false info” to “news outlet presented false info, and then something bad happened”. The producer lost their job and Rather retired. Now we just accept the junk the news tells us, Russiagate and all the rest. (Don’t tell me about the Post is a rag etc, Russiagate went far beyond outlets like the Post)
scrbblr 6y ago
The claim that the "story was fabricated" is strange. The source of the material may be unclear and quite possibly not what was originally claimed, but that does not mean the emails are fabrications - and no one from the Biden campaign has claimed that they are.
- throwaways885 6y ago
  There's certainly a ton of circumstantial evidence like Biden's lawyer asking for the hard drive back and nobody denying it's real.
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    I did one Google search to see if this is true, and found a Politico story that says Biden staffers, after reviewing schedules, denied that the events described in the emails took place. So "no one is denying it" seems false. (Feel free to do the search yourself, it's easy.) I imagine the candidate himself is not denying it, because even addressing it to defend himself from a totally false accusation turns it into a headline. Which, given the content of these leaks, is obviously the entire point of them.
    - rhino369 6y ago
      The sources I saw said they denied the meetings were on his "official schedule." Which is a weaselly. Biden himself hasn't denied they occurred. That might be because they don't want to give the story any credence by denying it. But he hasn't.
    - dx87 6y ago
      It says that after reviewing his "official schedule" they concluded no meeting happened. I seriously doubt that an illicit meeting would be included on his "official schedule".
      - zimpenfish 6y ago
        If you follow this kind of logic, you can believe anything about anything that isn't explicitly denied or proved. Which is a daft state of affairs to be in, no? Surely it's a one-way trip down the Conspiracy Cave once you start thinking like this?
ceilingcorner 6y ago
> The story, to be clear, appears to be fabricated, and comically so. Nothing about the CBS article he linked to indicates that the story is fabricated. It's mostly just a series of character assassinations, from Giuliani to the computer repair guy to...the Russians. And that, my friends, is why Facebook and Twitter's actions are not okay and why their insultingly duplicitous attempts to justify them aren't going to work. The story certainly seems fake and the NY Post is a garbage paper, but that shouldn't matter. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-new-york-post-story/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-new-york-po...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mc32 6y ago
  Same. I was looking for the ‘comedy’ but all it is is mostly teasing about how some computer guy says “no comment” to questions. In addition, it appears the director of the DNI is saying this story is not part of a “Russia conspiracy” as a few Democrats are claiming.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    Just caught that interview and it goes further. Rep Adam Schiff is claiming "the Intelligence Community says it's Russian disinformation" and then the DNI says that they haven't passed any reports/briefings to Congress that say that. So Schiff is making claims for the IC without talking with them and they appear to be false. Set aside the topic for a second.. how is any Congressman going to the media and making things up acceptable?
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      > how is any Congressman going to the media and making things up acceptable? For the same reason as all Congressional behavior that is acceptable---voters don't hold them accountable.
      - 6y ago
ericcj 6y ago
It seems like both bad journalism and irresponsible social media spreading of misinformation are problems. We're better served by working each problem than debating which one holds more "responsibility." Also the second sentence of your about page is: Recommended by The New York Times as “one of the most interesting sources of analysis on any subject”
adamsea 6y ago
tl;dr IMHO this is the Hacker News version of a New York Times Op-ed article, in both the good and bad sense. IMHO this article is a lot of very well-argued, rational suppositions and hypotheticals. It's an op-ed piece masquerading as a watertight argument. And it depends on a lot of "what-if's". One assumption depends on the other and in each case it comes down to "this is what I think is logical". Maybe he's right, maybe he's not, but the thinkpiece is riddled with (reasonable) assumptions when there are probably studies or reports that have been done which could have been referred to and cited for a higher degree of certainty. I feel like there are plenty of political scientists, people studying the internet, or just other studies, etc, which at this point have researched in depth the 2016 election, and while citing Nate Silver is a great start, if you want to make an argument for what's true, then that's insufficient. And plenty of people making a serious study of online censorship and freedom of the press.
flaxton 6y ago
Your bias is showing. Good article overall, but you repeatedly state the Hunter Biden laptop story is false. Yet some of those in the email chain have verified authenticity of the emails. And how do you “fake” a whole Mac hard drive contents? I don’t believe it is possible. Plus: * The hard drive wasn’t “stolen” - it was forfeited when the customer didn’t pick it up and pay the bill. That’s called a mechanic’s lien. Try taking your car into the shop and then never pick it up - same thing happens. * So at that point the laptop belongs to the shop. * How is it “stolen”, then? * If I had a laptop like that in my possession, I would be afraid too, and want to hand it off! You’re being disingenuous :-/
- zimpenfish 6y ago
  > Yet some of those in the email chain have verified authenticity of the emails. Do you have a URL for this? I haven't found anything in my searching to indicate anything like this happening?
  - procombo 6y ago
    > I haven't found anything in my searching If this story wasn't about sensorship I wouldn't be laughing.
  - Amezarak 6y ago
    Fox News has claimed to have contacted one of the correspondents on one of the email chains, who verified its authenticity. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-china-email-source-verifies https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-china-email-so...
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      Not exactly a smoking gun, is it? A partisan media outfit owned by the same person as the paper publishing them in the first place using an anonymous source with no information about how they confirmed it to be authentic ... compared to the cast iron proof of the DKIM headers which still remain conspicuously absent.
dilap 6y ago
Is the Biden laptop story really fabricated? As far as I know, the Biden campaign has not denied the veracity of the emails, which it seems like they would immediately do if they were fake.
hackinthebochs 6y ago
All this talk about the Streisand Effect really misses the point. This story was going viral regardless of anyone's actions. What Twitter did was ensure it went viral in the context of the warnings of it being disinformation and Twitters efforts at containing its spread. Disinformation is powerful when the information spreads farther and faster than the facts or mitigating context. Ensuring the information is presented with full context is a significant win. If the goal is to reduce this story's ability to influence the election, then Twitter's actions were successful.
- MR4D 6y ago
  > Ensuring the information is presented with full context... The fact that you are setting that as the standard for a company that has based its entire existence on people sending messages of 140 characters (and now up to 280) is pretty ironic, don’t you think?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- free_rms 6y ago
  There's viral and then there's viral. We're still talking about this story a week later right now, in a media environment where way bigger scandals are forgotten in a day because the President said covid gives you super-speed or something.
- TechBro8615 6y ago
  > If the goal is to reduce this story's ability to influence the election, then Twitter's actions were successful. Following this logic, how was censoring the story not a corporate in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign?
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  I thought about this, and this seems an odd claim to me: Twitter has, and has had for some time, the capability to tag tweets with "this is possibly a bot" or "this is possibly misinformation". As much as I disagree with them even doing that (and reasonable people can disagree with me, it is not a fervently held belief), it seemed odd to me that they chose the nuclear option rather than simply tweet tagging.
cpr 6y ago
One simple fact destroys the whole "Russia disinfo" nonsense: Hunter Biden's lawyer requested the laptop/disk drives back. If it weren't Biden's, why would he do that?
- Kye 6y ago
  If someone said "here are some of your files," I'd want to have a look. Curiosity doesn't mean they're telling the truth.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  The laptop could be Hunter's, that doesn't mean the reported content was.
- jdashg 6y ago
  There is not agreement on the "fact" you propose.
- rhino369 6y ago
  Easy, to do a third party analysis to show if it was fabricated.
chmod775 6y ago
The article touches on this in a more roundabout way, but personally I couldn't help but feel a bit of grim satisfaction at this whole situation. The newspapers who got moderated by Twitter and are now crying foul are the same ones who are the reason Twitter started with their heavy-handed proactive approach to moderation in the first place. Twitter, Facebook, most platforms really, just want to be dumb service providers. But they got bullied by major news organizations who, as always, had no fucking clue what they are asking for, into becoming what they are now. I don't think anything will change though. Within their opinion columns only their inability to reflect upon past mistakes is more chronic than than their inability to think their hot-headed demands to their logical conclusions.
- AlexandrB 6y ago
  > Twitter, Facebook, most platforms really, just want to be dumb service providers. I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. Now it's pretty clear that both Twitter and Facebook want to curate what you see based on criteria and algorithms they choose.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
    > I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. While it's true that algorithmic feeds fundamentally give the platform control over what you see, this is not the type of slam dunk argument you are making it out to be. First of all, the primary reason social media platforms move to algorithmic feeds is to increase engagement (eyeballs, ad revenue etc.), not censorship. And this is because a lot of the content posted by people is crap and not interesting to others, and a purely chronological timeline puts all such content at equal footing. For the longest time FB let you switch to a chronological feed, and for most people, it was absolute crap, because generic posts by your friends, updates about changes they made, social media posts by brands etc. all got exactly the same weightage, and you had to trawl through a lot of crap to find useful stuff on the feed. Left to their own devices (and by that I mean, without traditional media raking them through the coals every single day), these platforms would be happy to keep leftists in their leftist bubbles, rightists in their rightist bubbles, and so on, as long as it kept all these factions individually engaged and happy. Do you think Facebook _enjoys_ dealing with these pointless he-said she-said sort of arguments every day whenever something contentious comes up? They don't. It's a HUGE time and money sink for them, and causes reputational damage no matter what decision they take, because someone will always be upset.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Miner49er 6y ago
I don't understand why Twitter chose to remove it for "hacked materials" rather than saying it was fake. They haven't removed Wikileaks or the Panama Papers or all kinds of other hacked materials. It makes it seem extremely political, to the point that I think they are trying to help Trump win. Which I guess makes sense, I could see how Trump being president is good for business for them.
- _-david-_ 6y ago
  >I don't understand why Twitter chose to remove it for "hacked materials" rather than saying it was fake. Probably because they have no proof it is fake. One of Biden's campaign surragates, Jenna Arnold, said "I don’t think anybody is saying they are inauthentic or not." It seems like the Biden campaign is not even denying it. If they removed this for being fake and it turns out to be accurate they would be called bias for not removing fake things about Trump.
babesh 6y ago
There is nothing to ban and nothing to stop. There has been disinformation since the beginning of time. It was with us even in supposedly fair and balanced eras. It is up to each individual to find sources of information that they trust. If they pick a biased source, then so be it. Many sources of information are springing up that are proving more trustworthy than social media and traditional media. Educate people to be critical thinkers so that they can pick better sources of information.
- pembrook 6y ago
  Bingo, disinformation doesn’t travel as far in other developed countries (ie the nordics for example) because they have better, more accessible education for their citizens. College is free for all and media literacy courses are required. It’s hard to be stupid when being smart is so economically valuable and freely attainable by all.
  - xondono 6y ago
    > disinformation doesn’t travel as far in other developed countries (ie the nordics for example) because they have better, more accessible education for their citizens. I hate to be that guy but, citation needed. I’m willing to bet highly that misinformation travels at the same speed in most western countries, and that to a first order approximation misinformation travels proportionally to bandwith.
  - morsma 6y ago
    Fake news right here! > media literary courses are required Please provide evidence of this, I've never had such course. Also, the media landscape in Denmark are more or less the same from a political point of view, and you're forced to pay for "DR" a public news broadcaster. It goes by "DDR" in right wing circles. The Nordic isn't the paradise you dems believe. I've lived in the states for several years.
    - pembrook 6y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fict...
mesozoic 6y ago
Hopefully FB/Twitter finally see some accountability for their overreach and suppression.
kodah 6y ago
I don't know what the nation's attitude towards this is, but as someone who served on the ground in Afghanistan and had friends separated from the military (losing benefits and other problems) for bringing an ipod into a secured space, it is hard to watch Democrats say things like, "Hillary Clinton would be president today if Comey didn't send that memo." What they're saying out loud IS escaping accountability and they're putting it in moralistic and advocacy forms. If a bunch of enlisted folks who make less than 30k a year get the equivalent (or close to) a felony for their actions, I would expect the Secretary of State to get much more. Obviously it makes it hard to have this discussion in light of someone like Trump who has escaped accountability at every turn, and attempts to do so devolve into a sick game of "which is worse". What I'd like to remind people of is what she did is a felony for most, and the constituents (and her) turned it into a meme to escape accountability. If we're big enough to say Donald Trump is bad, I think we're big enough to stop letting people trivialize this issue to their own ends too.
Karunamon 6y ago
I've put together an "argument map" on the authenticity of the emails, mostly so I could get a handle on all the pros/cons for this (there are many). This may be helpful for anyone looking for a summary: https://www.kialo.com/are-the-hunter-biden-emails-as-released-by-the-new-york-post-authentic-41503 https://www.kialo.com/are-the-hunter-biden-emails-as-release... This is also crowdsourced, and anyone can suggest additional arguments for any given point.
xondono 6y ago
> That post was published the morning of March 11, when COVID-19 was still being mostly ignored. I’m seeing more and more that COVID wasn’t “a thing” until mid-march, and it clashes with my impressions. I have a clear date for when it was “becoming serious” for me, because I pretty much sold my entire stocks portfolio, 24th of Feb, which is almost a month before. Am I the only one with that impression?
- dublinben 6y ago
  I too started preparing for the inevitable in late February, and already felt like I was behind. If you look at when various states first issued stay-at-home orders though, California's March 19 action marks the early point at which COVID was "a thing" among the broader population.[0] It was possible for individuals to be very ahead of the curve of this one, due to the slow reaction time by officials. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_government_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_governmen...
  - vonmoltke 6y ago
    Why are you using the 19MAR stay-at-home order as the threshold rather than the 04MAR emergency declaration? Also, various corporations were already enacting travel-related policies for their employees in mid/late February.
    - dublinben 6y ago
      The stay-at-home orders more closely captured when I saw people's behaviour radically change, instead of the state of emergency declarations. If you're curious for a more objective measure of when mass behaviour started to change, you can look at data like Opentable's seated dining reservations[0] or mobile-device travel data[1]. [0] https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry [1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/california?view=social-distancing&tab=compare https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/cali...
- 6y ago
intended 6y ago
I do not understand something about these articles. They rightly point out that media is the underlying issue in America, but they focus on the NYT. Secondly, the idea that "more information" will deal with misinformation, is often made, despite significant evidence that this is not true. Worse, it is Social media, which is being defended here, which has shown us that even showing people labelled misinformation allows it to stick. What gives? The article argues that this is because of the agenda setting power of the NYT, which links to a 1972 research paper. I took a dive into that realm of study, and its taken me an hour to get no substantiate answer either way. As far as I can tell, Fox has far larger reach, and far larger agenda setting power for its audience. Subscriber figures are given below the line. Secondly, the article lauds the ability of social media to talk fast - in particular communication between experts between Jan and March 2020. And then disapproves of Twitter's handling of the NY Post article, arguing that > > Twitter’s role with regards to the Hunter Biden story should have been to facilitate more information sharing, in this case to disprove the story, not to arbitrarily decide what was or was not true. The first argument ignores the amplification of conspiracies that are unique for social media. Here is a study on the transmission of information between conspiracy networks, and expert networks:https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554 The study says it so : > These results suggest that news assimilation differs according to the categories. Science news is usually assimilated, i.e., it reaches a higher level of diffusion quickly, and a longer lifetime does not correspond to a higher level of interest. Conversely, conspiracy rumors are assimilated more slowly and show a positive relation between lifetime and size. For both science and conspiracy news, we compute the size as a function of the lifetime and confirm that differentiation in the sharing patterns is content-driven, and that for conspiracy there is a positive relation between size and lifetime Which seems to be exactly how COVID misinformation behaved online. Despite the ample evidence against it. That misinformation or confusion, was amplified by a subset of news media channels, with mask wearing becoming a political point. If you hold the first thesis true, then shouldn't there be a discussion on media agenda setting power? And wouldn't that largely implicate one of the largest news networks in America? And on an even broader scale - with people arguing about fixing social media (and this article rightly highlights the problem of content on SM, as opposed to the dynamics around content sharing), is the creation of problematic content not simply an issue of creating content that keeps people on the news channel? As stated here: >Fox is small-town/suburban and populist. Fox competes directly against hundreds of other cable channels and has established a specialized niche in its media ecology. Fox trades in stories about the venality of big government, liberal overreach and little-guy heroes of the heartland. A large share of Fox stories deftly push emotional buttons (lest the viewer push the buttons on his or her remote… Maybe I am missing something large, but as a business model, it seems that news media + attention battles result in a bad outcome for everyone. Not just for the NYT or FOX, but for all channels. In which case, maybe some form of reliable high quality news may be considered a public good, and then funded and protected from interference? ----------------------------- Media impact, News papers vs Television: The article says: "research shows that “fake news” makes up a fraction of American’s media diet; ", which links to this research paper: "Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem" The abstract states that- > First, news consumption of any sort is heavily outweighed by other forms of media consumption, comprising at most 14.2% of Americans’ daily media diets. Second, to the extent that Americans do consume news, it is overwhelmingly from television, which accounts for roughly five times as much as news consumption as online. Third, fake news comprises only 0.15% of Americans’ daily media diet. So the cable news cycle is in effect, and the Agenda setting power of news media is significant. Which brings us to viewership figures: Subscriber base: NYT has 4.3 mn subscribers, as of Q2 2020. This is a relatively dramatic increase, with 3.8 mn subs in Q1, and 2.98 subs in Q2 2019. Fox news, for prime time, had 3.98 mn viewers in Jun 2020, with its core opinion leaders: >With an average total audience of 4.8 million viewers, Hannity finished in first place overall, followed by Tucker Carlson Tonight (4.8 million total viewers). Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2020/06/09/hannity-leads-cable-news-ratings-but-cnn-beats-fox-in-key-demo/#7cac74960f67 https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2020/06/09/hannity-... CNN in contrast has: 2.5 mn prime time viewers for the same period. Agenda setting power is not evenly distributed, and both audiences on the America divide behave differently, and are composed differently - creating different issues both groups are interested in.
Bhilai 6y ago
Haven't senate republicans already investigated Bidens and found nothing? > An election-year investigation by Senate Republicans into corruption allegations against Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter, involving Ukraine found no evidence of improper influence or wrongdoing by the former vice president, closing out an inquiry its leaders had hoped would tarnish the Democratic presidential nominee. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/biden-inquiry-republicans-johnson.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/biden-inquiry...
- bobjordan 6y ago
  Sure they investigated, prior to the new evidence emerging.
  - 8note 6y ago
    In worked in 2016, so it's worth a second try even if the second trip around doesn't pan out to the kid doing anything wrong
recroad 6y ago
Disagree on the criticism of Twitter. Their blocking the story allowed people to view the information with skepticism. That's enough to dim its potentially dangerous effects.

138 points by blopeur 6y ago

Kye 6y ago

Ben Thompson is one of those rare people who can actually do "fair and balanced" in a way that doesn't treat atrocious views as a simple and innocent matter of opinion. I used to be all aboard the "social media is the problem" train, but... >> "The point of this is not to debate whether or not the email story was true, or Hunter Biden’s laptop story. Rather, it’s to establish that while social media publishes everything, from mountains of misinformation and conspiracy theories to critical information about an impending pandemic, making something matter requires more than manufacturing zero marginal cost content. The New York Times has that power by default, while Twitter and Facebook only has that power to the extent they do the opposite of what most expect from them (which is to act as a utility for the conveyance of information)." It really does seem like a long list of Very Serious News Organizations taking it seriously enough to publish hundreds of articles on these things does more harm than it floating out there in the goofball ether. No one should have taken a tabloid seriously. They're still going to, because it's profitable, so the solution is probably not "block it" or "don't write about it." The article has some good ideas. edit: in particular the comparison between responses from Twitter and Facebook. Facebook slowed rather than blocked. That gave fact checkers time to warm up without dumping go juice into the conspiracy loop. I haven't heard the same apoplectic screaming about Facebook.

shadowgovt 6y ago
> No one should have taken a tabloid seriously In an ideal world, which we do not live in. > They're still going to ... and that's what makes the question of the role of Twitter and Facebook in modern society so dang complicated.
- idiocrat 6y ago
  How can only the masses survive without Nanny Facebook?
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    One would assume the same way they survived in the era without any Facebook. Now, in a world where Facebook exists, we should probably consider the effect that its particular flow of information has on society. Keep in mind: this is the same company caught running A/B tests on its users without their knowledge on whether running "happy" or "sad" stories had effect on their observable behavior. The public should probably care about what effect Facebook has on it, because Facebook cares about what effect it has on the public.
ReptileMan 6y ago
> No one should have taken a tabloid seriously. Are there any non tabloids left? All of the major news organizations have ideologically and clickbait driven debacles in the last few years.
- dazc 6y ago
  Couldn't agree more. The non-tabloid paragon of virtue in the UK, AKA The Guardian, is full of made up click bait and poorly researched articles but because they are generally left-leaning it's all fine and dandy.
  - hardlianotion 6y ago
    The graun is a tabloid these days.
- overtonwhy 6y ago
  Reuters, Associated Press, NPR, New York Times, PBS, BBC, CBS, ABC. There are many more journalistic outlets with excellent reputations but a bias.
  - ReptileMan 6y ago
    NY times after the 1619 debacle (silent edits to save face) shouldn't be on the list.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    That bias is just the bias of middle class, well educated people.
    - Kye 6y ago
      Pretty much. The sneering calls from checkmarked writers for some of these on Twitter for genocide of "bad places" (like where I live) is always unnerving. Some might be joking, but some of them really do believe everyone in the southeast is a tea-sipping, noose-making, dog-kicking monster. And those same people will insist they're very pro-LGBTQ and anti-racism as they call for the genocide of every person they claim to be for in those regions. Which is a lot of people.
ppod 6y ago
Good points, but I feel like the real test would be if this was an unverified anti-Trump story. Did twitter or facebook put the brakes on any of the Steele dossier stuff? The principle of putting the brakes on unverified stuff is good, but, of course, you have to decide what counts as "unverified", and you have to do that objectively, and quickly. What would the NYT say if there was an unverified anti-Trump story a week before the election, but twitter slowed the spread of it until it could be confirmed?

shadowgovt 6y ago

> If anything Twitter’s actions had the opposite effect: it made the story spread far more widely than it would have otherwise [citation needed]. Streisand Effect is real, but we're comparing it to the relative megaphone that is a traditional media source using the accelerant of Twitter to circulate an under-researched story. Blocking the story on Twitter didn't stop its spread, but perhaps it gave truth some time to get its boots on before letting a lie ride the Twitter train in the good cars for free.

bjt2n3904 6y ago

An excellently written article. I think they really hit the nail on the head here about how censorship backfires. Seeing someone lay the blame on our news organizations instead of some "Russian conspiracy theory" is catharsis. Regrettably, I think the lesson learned here won't be that censorship backfires. I think the lesson will be, "do it better next time". You see, the story still needs to disappear. But instead of making the story disappear in a very public manner, just shadowban it. Throw a few fake likes and retweets on the post to comfort the user, but display it to no one. And if anyone asks, deny everything. This technique is magnificent. The Streisand Effect can't happen if the request to remove the material isn't made public, and the users are duped into believing the material is still there.

draw_down 6y ago

I agree the Dan Rather example is interesting and useful. I also agree that what twitter and FB did to limit the spread of the article is not good. However, I notice a shift from one to the other, from the story being “news outlet presented false info” to “news outlet presented false info, and then something bad happened”. The producer lost their job and Rather retired. Now we just accept the junk the news tells us, Russiagate and all the rest. (Don’t tell me about the Post is a rag etc, Russiagate went far beyond outlets like the Post)

scrbblr 6y ago

The claim that the "story was fabricated" is strange. The source of the material may be unclear and quite possibly not what was originally claimed, but that does not mean the emails are fabrications - and no one from the Biden campaign has claimed that they are.

throwaways885 6y ago
There's certainly a ton of circumstantial evidence like Biden's lawyer asking for the hard drive back and nobody denying it's real.
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  I did one Google search to see if this is true, and found a Politico story that says Biden staffers, after reviewing schedules, denied that the events described in the emails took place. So "no one is denying it" seems false. (Feel free to do the search yourself, it's easy.) I imagine the candidate himself is not denying it, because even addressing it to defend himself from a totally false accusation turns it into a headline. Which, given the content of these leaks, is obviously the entire point of them.
  - rhino369 6y ago
    The sources I saw said they denied the meetings were on his "official schedule." Which is a weaselly. Biden himself hasn't denied they occurred. That might be because they don't want to give the story any credence by denying it. But he hasn't.
  - dx87 6y ago
    It says that after reviewing his "official schedule" they concluded no meeting happened. I seriously doubt that an illicit meeting would be included on his "official schedule".
    - zimpenfish 6y ago
      If you follow this kind of logic, you can believe anything about anything that isn't explicitly denied or proved. Which is a daft state of affairs to be in, no? Surely it's a one-way trip down the Conspiracy Cave once you start thinking like this?

ceilingcorner 6y ago

> The story, to be clear, appears to be fabricated, and comically so. Nothing about the CBS article he linked to indicates that the story is fabricated. It's mostly just a series of character assassinations, from Giuliani to the computer repair guy to...the Russians. And that, my friends, is why Facebook and Twitter's actions are not okay and why their insultingly duplicitous attempts to justify them aren't going to work. The story certainly seems fake and the NY Post is a garbage paper, but that shouldn't matter. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-new-york-post-story/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-new-york-po...

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mc32 6y ago
Same. I was looking for the ‘comedy’ but all it is is mostly teasing about how some computer guy says “no comment” to questions. In addition, it appears the director of the DNI is saying this story is not part of a “Russia conspiracy” as a few Democrats are claiming.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  Just caught that interview and it goes further. Rep Adam Schiff is claiming "the Intelligence Community says it's Russian disinformation" and then the DNI says that they haven't passed any reports/briefings to Congress that say that. So Schiff is making claims for the IC without talking with them and they appear to be false. Set aside the topic for a second.. how is any Congressman going to the media and making things up acceptable?
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    > how is any Congressman going to the media and making things up acceptable? For the same reason as all Congressional behavior that is acceptable---voters don't hold them accountable.
    - 6y ago

ericcj 6y ago

It seems like both bad journalism and irresponsible social media spreading of misinformation are problems. We're better served by working each problem than debating which one holds more "responsibility." Also the second sentence of your about page is: Recommended by The New York Times as “one of the most interesting sources of analysis on any subject”

adamsea 6y ago

tl;dr IMHO this is the Hacker News version of a New York Times Op-ed article, in both the good and bad sense. IMHO this article is a lot of very well-argued, rational suppositions and hypotheticals. It's an op-ed piece masquerading as a watertight argument. And it depends on a lot of "what-if's". One assumption depends on the other and in each case it comes down to "this is what I think is logical". Maybe he's right, maybe he's not, but the thinkpiece is riddled with (reasonable) assumptions when there are probably studies or reports that have been done which could have been referred to and cited for a higher degree of certainty. I feel like there are plenty of political scientists, people studying the internet, or just other studies, etc, which at this point have researched in depth the 2016 election, and while citing Nate Silver is a great start, if you want to make an argument for what's true, then that's insufficient. And plenty of people making a serious study of online censorship and freedom of the press.

flaxton 6y ago

Your bias is showing. Good article overall, but you repeatedly state the Hunter Biden laptop story is false. Yet some of those in the email chain have verified authenticity of the emails. And how do you “fake” a whole Mac hard drive contents? I don’t believe it is possible. Plus: * The hard drive wasn’t “stolen” - it was forfeited when the customer didn’t pick it up and pay the bill. That’s called a mechanic’s lien. Try taking your car into the shop and then never pick it up - same thing happens. * So at that point the laptop belongs to the shop. * How is it “stolen”, then? * If I had a laptop like that in my possession, I would be afraid too, and want to hand it off! You’re being disingenuous :-/

zimpenfish 6y ago
> Yet some of those in the email chain have verified authenticity of the emails. Do you have a URL for this? I haven't found anything in my searching to indicate anything like this happening?
- procombo 6y ago
  > I haven't found anything in my searching If this story wasn't about sensorship I wouldn't be laughing.
- Amezarak 6y ago
  Fox News has claimed to have contacted one of the correspondents on one of the email chains, who verified its authenticity. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-china-email-source-verifies https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-china-email-so...
  - zimpenfish 6y ago
    Not exactly a smoking gun, is it? A partisan media outfit owned by the same person as the paper publishing them in the first place using an anonymous source with no information about how they confirmed it to be authentic ... compared to the cast iron proof of the DKIM headers which still remain conspicuously absent.

dilap 6y ago

Is the Biden laptop story really fabricated? As far as I know, the Biden campaign has not denied the veracity of the emails, which it seems like they would immediately do if they were fake.

hackinthebochs 6y ago

All this talk about the Streisand Effect really misses the point. This story was going viral regardless of anyone's actions. What Twitter did was ensure it went viral in the context of the warnings of it being disinformation and Twitters efforts at containing its spread. Disinformation is powerful when the information spreads farther and faster than the facts or mitigating context. Ensuring the information is presented with full context is a significant win. If the goal is to reduce this story's ability to influence the election, then Twitter's actions were successful.

MR4D 6y ago
> Ensuring the information is presented with full context... The fact that you are setting that as the standard for a company that has based its entire existence on people sending messages of 140 characters (and now up to 280) is pretty ironic, don’t you think?
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free_rms 6y ago
There's viral and then there's viral. We're still talking about this story a week later right now, in a media environment where way bigger scandals are forgotten in a day because the President said covid gives you super-speed or something.
TechBro8615 6y ago
> If the goal is to reduce this story's ability to influence the election, then Twitter's actions were successful. Following this logic, how was censoring the story not a corporate in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign?
RonanTheGrey 6y ago
I thought about this, and this seems an odd claim to me: Twitter has, and has had for some time, the capability to tag tweets with "this is possibly a bot" or "this is possibly misinformation". As much as I disagree with them even doing that (and reasonable people can disagree with me, it is not a fervently held belief), it seemed odd to me that they chose the nuclear option rather than simply tweet tagging.

cpr 6y ago

One simple fact destroys the whole "Russia disinfo" nonsense: Hunter Biden's lawyer requested the laptop/disk drives back. If it weren't Biden's, why would he do that?

Kye 6y ago
If someone said "here are some of your files," I'd want to have a look. Curiosity doesn't mean they're telling the truth.
TameAntelope 6y ago
The laptop could be Hunter's, that doesn't mean the reported content was.
jdashg 6y ago
There is not agreement on the "fact" you propose.
rhino369 6y ago
Easy, to do a third party analysis to show if it was fabricated.

chmod775 6y ago

The article touches on this in a more roundabout way, but personally I couldn't help but feel a bit of grim satisfaction at this whole situation. The newspapers who got moderated by Twitter and are now crying foul are the same ones who are the reason Twitter started with their heavy-handed proactive approach to moderation in the first place. Twitter, Facebook, most platforms really, just want to be dumb service providers. But they got bullied by major news organizations who, as always, had no fucking clue what they are asking for, into becoming what they are now. I don't think anything will change though. Within their opinion columns only their inability to reflect upon past mistakes is more chronic than than their inability to think their hot-headed demands to their logical conclusions.

AlexandrB 6y ago
> Twitter, Facebook, most platforms really, just want to be dumb service providers. I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. Now it's pretty clear that both Twitter and Facebook want to curate what you see based on criteria and algorithms they choose.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y ago
  > I think this was true before both started pushing algorithmic feeds over chronological ones. While it's true that algorithmic feeds fundamentally give the platform control over what you see, this is not the type of slam dunk argument you are making it out to be. First of all, the primary reason social media platforms move to algorithmic feeds is to increase engagement (eyeballs, ad revenue etc.), not censorship. And this is because a lot of the content posted by people is crap and not interesting to others, and a purely chronological timeline puts all such content at equal footing. For the longest time FB let you switch to a chronological feed, and for most people, it was absolute crap, because generic posts by your friends, updates about changes they made, social media posts by brands etc. all got exactly the same weightage, and you had to trawl through a lot of crap to find useful stuff on the feed. Left to their own devices (and by that I mean, without traditional media raking them through the coals every single day), these platforms would be happy to keep leftists in their leftist bubbles, rightists in their rightist bubbles, and so on, as long as it kept all these factions individually engaged and happy. Do you think Facebook _enjoys_ dealing with these pointless he-said she-said sort of arguments every day whenever something contentious comes up? They don't. It's a HUGE time and money sink for them, and causes reputational damage no matter what decision they take, because someone will always be upset.

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Miner49er 6y ago

I don't understand why Twitter chose to remove it for "hacked materials" rather than saying it was fake. They haven't removed Wikileaks or the Panama Papers or all kinds of other hacked materials. It makes it seem extremely political, to the point that I think they are trying to help Trump win. Which I guess makes sense, I could see how Trump being president is good for business for them.

_-david-_ 6y ago
>I don't understand why Twitter chose to remove it for "hacked materials" rather than saying it was fake. Probably because they have no proof it is fake. One of Biden's campaign surragates, Jenna Arnold, said "I don’t think anybody is saying they are inauthentic or not." It seems like the Biden campaign is not even denying it. If they removed this for being fake and it turns out to be accurate they would be called bias for not removing fake things about Trump.

babesh 6y ago

There is nothing to ban and nothing to stop. There has been disinformation since the beginning of time. It was with us even in supposedly fair and balanced eras. It is up to each individual to find sources of information that they trust. If they pick a biased source, then so be it. Many sources of information are springing up that are proving more trustworthy than social media and traditional media. Educate people to be critical thinkers so that they can pick better sources of information.

pembrook 6y ago
Bingo, disinformation doesn’t travel as far in other developed countries (ie the nordics for example) because they have better, more accessible education for their citizens. College is free for all and media literacy courses are required. It’s hard to be stupid when being smart is so economically valuable and freely attainable by all.
- xondono 6y ago
  > disinformation doesn’t travel as far in other developed countries (ie the nordics for example) because they have better, more accessible education for their citizens. I hate to be that guy but, citation needed. I’m willing to bet highly that misinformation travels at the same speed in most western countries, and that to a first order approximation misinformation travels proportionally to bandwith.
- morsma 6y ago
  Fake news right here! > media literary courses are required Please provide evidence of this, I've never had such course. Also, the media landscape in Denmark are more or less the same from a political point of view, and you're forced to pay for "DR" a public news broadcaster. It goes by "DDR" in right wing circles. The Nordic isn't the paradise you dems believe. I've lived in the states for several years.
  - pembrook 6y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fict...

mesozoic 6y ago

Hopefully FB/Twitter finally see some accountability for their overreach and suppression.

kodah 6y ago

I don't know what the nation's attitude towards this is, but as someone who served on the ground in Afghanistan and had friends separated from the military (losing benefits and other problems) for bringing an ipod into a secured space, it is hard to watch Democrats say things like, "Hillary Clinton would be president today if Comey didn't send that memo." What they're saying out loud IS escaping accountability and they're putting it in moralistic and advocacy forms. If a bunch of enlisted folks who make less than 30k a year get the equivalent (or close to) a felony for their actions, I would expect the Secretary of State to get much more. Obviously it makes it hard to have this discussion in light of someone like Trump who has escaped accountability at every turn, and attempts to do so devolve into a sick game of "which is worse". What I'd like to remind people of is what she did is a felony for most, and the constituents (and her) turned it into a meme to escape accountability. If we're big enough to say Donald Trump is bad, I think we're big enough to stop letting people trivialize this issue to their own ends too.

Karunamon 6y ago

I've put together an "argument map" on the authenticity of the emails, mostly so I could get a handle on all the pros/cons for this (there are many). This may be helpful for anyone looking for a summary: https://www.kialo.com/are-the-hunter-biden-emails-as-released-by-the-new-york-post-authentic-41503 https://www.kialo.com/are-the-hunter-biden-emails-as-release... This is also crowdsourced, and anyone can suggest additional arguments for any given point.

xondono 6y ago

> That post was published the morning of March 11, when COVID-19 was still being mostly ignored. I’m seeing more and more that COVID wasn’t “a thing” until mid-march, and it clashes with my impressions. I have a clear date for when it was “becoming serious” for me, because I pretty much sold my entire stocks portfolio, 24th of Feb, which is almost a month before. Am I the only one with that impression?

dublinben 6y ago
I too started preparing for the inevitable in late February, and already felt like I was behind. If you look at when various states first issued stay-at-home orders though, California's March 19 action marks the early point at which COVID was "a thing" among the broader population.[0] It was possible for individuals to be very ahead of the curve of this one, due to the slow reaction time by officials. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_government_responses_to_the_COVID-19_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_local_governmen...
- vonmoltke 6y ago
  Why are you using the 19MAR stay-at-home order as the threshold rather than the 04MAR emergency declaration? Also, various corporations were already enacting travel-related policies for their employees in mid/late February.
  - dublinben 6y ago
    The stay-at-home orders more closely captured when I saw people's behaviour radically change, instead of the state of emergency declarations. If you're curious for a more objective measure of when mass behaviour started to change, you can look at data like Opentable's seated dining reservations[0] or mobile-device travel data[1]. [0] https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry https://www.opentable.com/state-of-industry [1] https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/california?view=social-distancing&tab=compare https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/cali...
6y ago

intended 6y ago

I do not understand something about these articles. They rightly point out that media is the underlying issue in America, but they focus on the NYT. Secondly, the idea that "more information" will deal with misinformation, is often made, despite significant evidence that this is not true. Worse, it is Social media, which is being defended here, which has shown us that even showing people labelled misinformation allows it to stick. What gives? The article argues that this is because of the agenda setting power of the NYT, which links to a 1972 research paper. I took a dive into that realm of study, and its taken me an hour to get no substantiate answer either way. As far as I can tell, Fox has far larger reach, and far larger agenda setting power for its audience. Subscriber figures are given below the line. Secondly, the article lauds the ability of social media to talk fast - in particular communication between experts between Jan and March 2020. And then disapproves of Twitter's handling of the NY Post article, arguing that > > Twitter’s role with regards to the Hunter Biden story should have been to facilitate more information sharing, in this case to disprove the story, not to arbitrarily decide what was or was not true. The first argument ignores the amplification of conspiracies that are unique for social media. Here is a study on the transmission of information between conspiracy networks, and expert networks:https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554 https://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554 The study says it so : > These results suggest that news assimilation differs according to the categories. Science news is usually assimilated, i.e., it reaches a higher level of diffusion quickly, and a longer lifetime does not correspond to a higher level of interest. Conversely, conspiracy rumors are assimilated more slowly and show a positive relation between lifetime and size. For both science and conspiracy news, we compute the size as a function of the lifetime and confirm that differentiation in the sharing patterns is content-driven, and that for conspiracy there is a positive relation between size and lifetime Which seems to be exactly how COVID misinformation behaved online. Despite the ample evidence against it. That misinformation or confusion, was amplified by a subset of news media channels, with mask wearing becoming a political point. If you hold the first thesis true, then shouldn't there be a discussion on media agenda setting power? And wouldn't that largely implicate one of the largest news networks in America? And on an even broader scale - with people arguing about fixing social media (and this article rightly highlights the problem of content on SM, as opposed to the dynamics around content sharing), is the creation of problematic content not simply an issue of creating content that keeps people on the news channel? As stated here: >Fox is small-town/suburban and populist. Fox competes directly against hundreds of other cable channels and has established a specialized niche in its media ecology. Fox trades in stories about the venality of big government, liberal overreach and little-guy heroes of the heartland. A large share of Fox stories deftly push emotional buttons (lest the viewer push the buttons on his or her remote… Maybe I am missing something large, but as a business model, it seems that news media + attention battles result in a bad outcome for everyone. Not just for the NYT or FOX, but for all channels. In which case, maybe some form of reliable high quality news may be considered a public good, and then funded and protected from interference? ----------------------------- Media impact, News papers vs Television: The article says: "research shows that “fake news” makes up a fraction of American’s media diet; ", which links to this research paper: "Evaluating the fake news problem at the scale of the information ecosystem" The abstract states that- > First, news consumption of any sort is heavily outweighed by other forms of media consumption, comprising at most 14.2% of Americans’ daily media diets. Second, to the extent that Americans do consume news, it is overwhelmingly from television, which accounts for roughly five times as much as news consumption as online. Third, fake news comprises only 0.15% of Americans’ daily media diet. So the cable news cycle is in effect, and the Agenda setting power of news media is significant. Which brings us to viewership figures: Subscriber base: NYT has 4.3 mn subscribers, as of Q2 2020. This is a relatively dramatic increase, with 3.8 mn subs in Q1, and 2.98 subs in Q2 2019. Fox news, for prime time, had 3.98 mn viewers in Jun 2020, with its core opinion leaders: >With an average total audience of 4.8 million viewers, Hannity finished in first place overall, followed by Tucker Carlson Tonight (4.8 million total viewers). Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2020/06/09/hannity-leads-cable-news-ratings-but-cnn-beats-fox-in-key-demo/#7cac74960f67 https://www.forbes.com/sites/markjoyella/2020/06/09/hannity-... CNN in contrast has: 2.5 mn prime time viewers for the same period. Agenda setting power is not evenly distributed, and both audiences on the America divide behave differently, and are composed differently - creating different issues both groups are interested in.

Bhilai 6y ago

Haven't senate republicans already investigated Bidens and found nothing? > An election-year investigation by Senate Republicans into corruption allegations against Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, Hunter, involving Ukraine found no evidence of improper influence or wrongdoing by the former vice president, closing out an inquiry its leaders had hoped would tarnish the Democratic presidential nominee. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/biden-inquiry-republicans-johnson.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/us/politics/biden-inquiry...

bobjordan 6y ago
Sure they investigated, prior to the new evidence emerging.
- 8note 6y ago
  In worked in 2016, so it's worth a second try even if the second trip around doesn't pan out to the kid doing anything wrong

recroad 6y ago

Disagree on the criticism of Twitter. Their blocking the story allowed people to view the information with skepticism. That's enough to dim its potentially dangerous effects.