21 ms·
Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
- ameminator 5y agoIronic that this is from the New York Times, which has (in)famously had several years of poor or biased reporting.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoCurious, Are there earlier examples of negligence, prior to the episode of "weapons of mass destruction"? When did the decline really start?
- GranularRecipe 5y agocf Noam Chomsky: Manufacturing Consent (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent_(film))
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y agoDoes he cite specific examples? I dont reject the thesis but im curious about the evidence.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- kevinschumacher 5y agoYes, for about 400 pages.
- radmuzom 5y agoThis book was life changing for me. I also watched '12 Angry Men' around the same time as I read the book. I sometimes joke that these should be required reading or watching before someone is allowed to post an internet comment.
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThe answer probably depends on the specific geographic and political distance of the commenter related to the New York Times. Here's one critique in the form of a song: https://slate.com/culture/2018/02/i-am-the-very-model-of-a-new-york-times-contrarian.amp https://slate.com/culture/2018/02/i-am-the-very-model-of-a-n...
- elliekelly 5y agoI recently watched “How to Become a Tyrant” and they mentioned a NYT reporter in the 30s, the Moscow bureau chief IIRC, who was more or less bribed by Stalin* to write articles denying people were starving in Ukraine. He even won a pulitzer for the “reporting”. I don’t know that it was the start of “the decline” of the New York Times (and full disclosure: I subscribe) but the WMDs weren’t the first egregiously wrong reporting. Searching for anything relating to NYT and Ukraine obviously gives a lot of more recent results but I found this Huffington Post article[1] that I think has enough background to point you in the right direction if you’re curious to learn more. And I think this[2] is the journalist’s wikipedia article. Edit: It was Stalin he had a very friendly relationship with, not Lenin. [1]https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a15c588e4b0f401dfa7ecce https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a15c588e4b0f401dfa7ecce [2]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Clubber 5y agoThey recently did a movie on this: Mr. Jones. It was really good. You can probably catch it on Netflix or something similar. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6828390/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6828390/
- ameminator 5y agoThere have been some noticeable stinkers that I have been aware of for maybe 20 years, up to and including the Jason Blair affair. However, I have seen a steep decline in quality since 2010-2012.
- dharmaturtle 5y agoMy opinion of the NYT plummeted when they doxxed Scott Alexander https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-times-article https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...
- dahart 5y agoA personal favorite example of mine was the article “Recycling is Garbage” from 1996 that is chock full of misinformation and continues to do damage today. I wouldn’t be surprised if the article was sponsored by the plastics industry. (I’m speculating with zero proof, it just feels and smells like paid propaganda and corporate interests.) The online version has had orders of magnitude more readers than the excellent rebuttal at the time by the Environmental Defense Fund, but the NYT gave the author another platform to reprise his anti-environmental rants again six years ago, where he repeated the untrue talking points. There are a lot of real problems with recycling, some of them stemming from lack of buy-in and participation, and these NYT articles are fueling the anti-recycling sentiment with myths, undermining the will to improve the situation. The article’s pushing and glorifying of throwing things away is even doing damage to the idea that we should reduce consumption of single use plastic packaging, which is far more important than trying to recycle plastic.
- mc32 5y agoAh, the pot getting jealous of losing influence and calling the kettle black. As someone pointed out upthread, these media take money from foreign interests (China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and quite a umber of others) and it's all good according to them, because they apparently are "good" by self-definition. They are part of the problem!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rschoultz 5y agoEven credible news sources are bound to have an implicit bias, to a certain degree. There is, however, quite a few other types of media sources ranging from media bias, to fake news, misinformation, disinformation etc. I recommend reading the Cornell university library guides to learn about how to distinguish one from the other.
- shadowgovt 5y agoAs a useful rule of thumb, the New York Times prints retractions. If your news source never prints retractions, it's not to be trusted.
- rbanffy 5y ago> As a useful rule of thumb, the New York Times prints retractions. And, yet, a lot of the US public opinion is shaped by Fox News...
- giantg2 5y agoDo other tv/cable news networks print retractions? I can't remember any, but maybe they have a specific webpage you have to go to in order to see it? I doubt any of the non-news programs on those networks do, and those comprise the majority of the programming. So maybe it's just hard to find for the little bit of actual news.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- grumblenum 5y agoIn 2005 I was in a college dorm that provided the NYT in a common area. I picked up one and the first article I read was a column about Hurricane Katrina. The author interviewed a history professor who bewailed the failings of the president and the United States and how this was "worse than Antitem". In other words the esteemed Grey Lady interviewed an "expert" whose expertise has nothing to do with meteorology or disaster response to get a "Bush sucks, haha!" hot-take. Even as a know-nothing teenager (of strong anti-war sentiment at the time), I recognized that "area man says natural disaster proves Bush sucks" is just pablum. I put the paper down, and I have never picked up an NYT since. Thanks to the hero who provided an archive link, so that I could skim this. This article appears to be NYT heroically defending a corporate sponsor against the vile slander of other content marketers. Still speaking truth to power, I see.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- graycat 5y agoI used to live in New York State and, back before the Internet got very powerful, got frequent offers from the NYT to subscribe. I had long since concluded that the NYT was junk, resented the offers, and wrote a scathing denuciating letter to the Publisher ending with I don't want your work for free. Actually, I was a little too hard on the NYT: On paper it can be used to wrap dead fish heads. My short recommendation for the NYT and the rest of the mainstream media is, first, to get the level of quality of writing and information up to common standards for high school term papers.
- shanecleveland 5y agoYou used the term "column," which insinuates an opinion piece. All news publications have purposely-biased opinion pieces, and in the case of The NY Times, they will be limited to the clearly-marked op-ed section. And they also offer countering views, in many cases. Very different from news.
- JCVI-syn10 5y ago> the first article I read was a column A column is a personal opinion piece, not a news story. > how this was "worse than Antitem [sic]" I can't find any columns that mention Antietam from NYT published in 2005. Is there any reason to believe what you're describing actually happened?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- afpx 5y agoThe NYT reporting seems pretty reliable to me. Could you give a few notable examples at least to support that claim?
- the-dude 5y agohttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-new-york-times-wmd-coverage https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-new-york-times-wmd-cov...
- chewmieser 5y agoFair but that also stemmed from their own reporting that their own coverage was flawed... It makes me trust them more since they're auditing themselves like that. Shows high journalistic integrity.
- the-dude 5y agoWhat do you mean? They did not uncover themselves that the WMDs did not exist.
- dd36 5y agoThey shared it with their audience. The standard isn’t always be right, it’s have integrity.
- the-dude 5y agoEverybody shared it with 'the audience'. The WMDs were obviously not there, were they? Hard to keep it up.
- colinmhayes 5y agoEveryone in the government was saying they were there. Not reporting that would be negligent. Should NYT have been faster at reporting the truth? Of course. But when the president says there are weapons of mass destruction you report as much. The NYT retracted the story, which is pretty much all I can hope for in a situation like this.
- chewmieser 5y agoBias is in every source (although I'd give Reuters an AP a general pass there). Being biased is not a "bad thing" just because it doesn't fit your world view, it expands horizons if you allow other views into your narrow view. And poor? Laughable. NYTimes is a high quality source on-par with WSJ.
- ameminator 5y agoBias is in every news source, but let's not pretend it's a "good thing" - I would rather everyone be less biased and more open in their reporting. I still do occasionally read the New York Times, but I find that reporting from Axios and local news sources is usually superior, because they have less of this bias and seem to stick to clear, direct facts.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 5y ago"Nobody is perfect" is always true, but also a common intellectual defence mechanism that is only applied to your ingroup. When the outgroup shows their imperfections, a whole other set of cognitive tools are used.
- fortuna86 5y agoIf your side "owns a mistake" and the other side doubles down on a lie, that's not the same thing. You can't both sides that.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y agoI read both for a while and consider WSJ more reliable and far far less sensationalist than NYT (as of maybe 5 years ago).
- colinmhayes 5y agoI still read both and consider them two of the most reliable sources of domestic journalism. Their non editorial sections are of very similar qualities. Their editorial sections are both political hackery.
- Lendal 5y agoThis story is about shady companies funded by government propaganda agencies around the world, and which cease operating as soon as you start investigating them. The New York Times has been doing business continuously since 1851, is one of the cornerstones of democracy, a recognized leader in journalism schools across the globe, and to this day regularly fires journalists who are caught lying in a story. Anyone is free to literally walk into its offices at any time without being followed or shot. It's safe to say there is no comparison here.
- LocalChapter 5y agoSorry I don't care how long they have been in business. Generally, "You are as good as your last performance." The New York Times (along with many other news outlets) has been known in recent years to be biased and untrustworthy to anyone that has been paying attention. So while it is nice they have been around since the mid-19th century they should not be bestowed trust just because in the past they have may have had good reporting.
- refurb 5y agoNo. The story is about disinformation. Whether someone does it for money or ideology doesn’t matter, lies are lies and the NYTimes is not an innocent party here. They were a major driver of the Iraq WMD theory and thus the Iraq War if you want one solid example.
- 84thryu 5y agoThat is a "one solid example", it is so. It was a bad practice of them. Does there have ANY others? This one example gets pulled out every time the NYT is mention and never have I seen other, not any.
- zepto 5y ago> fires journalists who are caught lying in a story No good misinformation or politically biased piece includes lies.
- dharmaturtle 5y ago
- omgwtfbbq 5y agoBiased reporting != misinformation. By conflating the two I think you tip your hand and reveal yourself to be interested in propagating the latter.
- Sander_Marechal 5y agohttps://archive.is/XggON https://archive.is/XggON
- tester34 5y agoEhh, I don't like current state of the Internet In last months I've started wondering why do I even pay my internet bills 60% of the reason I still do it is that I need internet for my job the rest is HN, two or three subreddits, music and some video games, wiki/google/maps and the fact that I still need to learn a lot in order to advance in career. It's insanely hard to avoid that main stream media content (celebrities, dramas, dramas, dramas and $bad_stuff/propaganda) that affects the mood, even when I don't use "normal" social medias.
- MisterTea 5y agoInternet is just a big IP network. I use it to talk to certain servers like email, my vps, or my personal home server. The other servers I talk to I dont own so I spend as little time sending them requests as possible. If you stop sending strange servers requests for unwanted data you'll feel much better :-)
- haswell 5y agoWhat you’re saying absolutely makes sense. The difficult part is that it requires intentional habit changes and quite honestly, a grieving process at the same time. As someone who grew up while the Internet was just getting off the ground (mid 30s), I remember the absolute joy of exploring the net, and for the most part, it could feed me as much interesting content as I could stand. I felt this reverence for it, like I did for great libraries. It’s not really possible to use the Internet that way any more, and that sucks. Yes, it’s still a gigantic library, but the ability to explore unbounded is no more, at least if you want to avoid the problematic parts. And this is where the grieving part comes in. Your advice to use the net more carefully/intentionally is good, but is also a stark contrast to the way things were. It makes me sad.
- gabereiser 5y agoAhh the good old days of web rings and IRC chatrooms and such. Now it's a bazaar of monopolies, disinformation, vanity, and photo-sharing. The issue is we no longer rely on some server in some guys basement. A BBS out of a college dorm closet. Or a network of like-minded individuals for the sake of learning off each other. Everything is owned by a select few companies that add tracking cookies to advertise to you. It's become a giant mall for the minds of the world.
- Cybotron5000 5y agoThis is so messed up. If you’re reading this and are in this ‘business’, or associated with it/supporting it, please, for the sake of yourself, your families, humanity and the planet we live on, get out if you have any choice! It’s been bad enough with state actors, lobbyists etc etc. for years anyhow - don’t make it worse for the sake of a quick buck!
- throwaway316943 5y agoI don’t know how to break this to you… but you’re about 80 years late.
- solarengineer 5y agoWhat was accepted as the norm earlier and even now, needn't necessarily continue. We could actually beseech people to cease contributing to overall harm. We've seen this in so many social improvements over the past decades.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eggsmediumrare 5y agoThere are a lot of industries like this and a lot of people on HN who need to reevaluate their career choices.
- mrspeaker 5y agoPeople are very good at justifying what they are doing if their livelihood is at stake. I know many programmers - nice people - working as the digital equivalent of seal-clubbers... but there's good money to be made clubbing seals, and if they don't do it somebody else will, and the seals have a choice not be clubbed, and they need the experience, and they only indirectly club the seals, and remember that time when that "good" guy did a bad thing for seals, and also there's WAY worse industries, and there's this one study that suggests clubbing seals is actually good for society... etc etc!
- ttctciyf 5y agoIt's not really a new phenomenon is it? > Cambridge Analytica, the British political consultancy caught up in a huge scandal over its use of Facebook data, has boasted that they ran the successful campaigns of President Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2013 and 2017 Kenyan elections. In a secretly filmed video, Mark Turnbull, a managing director for Cambridge Analytica and sister company SCL Elections, told a Channel 4 News’ undercover investigative reporting team that his firm secretly stage-managed Kenyatta’s hotly contested campaigns. [...] > Cambridge Analytica boasts of manipulating voters’ deepest fears and worries. Last year’s Kenyan election was dogged by vicious online propaganda targeting opposition leader Raila Odinga, with images and films playing on people’s concerns about everything from terrorism to spiralling disease. No-one knows who produced the material. Cambridge Analytica denies involvement with these toxic videos – a claim that is hard to square with the company’s boast that they “staged the whole thing.” - https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/03/cambridge-analytica-facebook-elections-africa-kenya https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/03/cambridge-analyti... > An explosive new report reveals how the U.S. government paid a British public relations company linked to right-wing politics and repressive regimes more than $500 million from American taxpayers to spearhead a top-secret propaganda campaign in Iraq. > Bell Pottinger, a London-based P.R. firm, created fake videos that appeared to be the work of al-Qaida, the Islamist extremist group formerly headed by Osama bin Laden. It also created news stories that looked as though they were produced by Arab media outlets, and distributed them through Middle Eastern news networks. - https://www.salon.com/2016/10/03/u-s-paid-p-r-firm-540-million-to-make-fake-al-qaida-videos-in-iraq-propaganda-program/ https://www.salon.com/2016/10/03/u-s-paid-p-r-firm-540-milli... > The IRD... played a major role in Western news and cultural media from 1948-1977. It financed a publishing house ‘Ampersand’ and at one time employed a staff of 300. A secret Foreign Office memo in February 1948 described the establishment of the IRD as a response to the “developing communist threat to the whole fabric of Western civilization”. The origins of the IRD lie in the recommendations in a paper put up by the Imperial Defence College. > In their book on the IRD, Lashmar and Oliver note that “the vast IRD enterprise had one sole aim: To spread its ceaseless propaganda output (i.e. a mixture of outright lies and distorted facts) among top-ranking journalists who worked for major agencies, papers and magazines, including Reuters and the BBC, as well as every other available channel. It worked abroad to discredit communist parties in Western Europe which might gain a share of power by entirely democratic means, and at home to discredit the British Left”. > IRD fed information and propaganda on 'communists' within the labour movement through confidential recipients of its briefings one of whom is now known to be the late Vic Feather into the media, and into the Labour Party's policing units, the National Agent's Department and the Organisation Subcommittee. - https://powerbase.info/index.php/Information_Research_Department https://powerbase.info/index.php/Information_Research_Depart... Etc., etc. There've been paid liars and propagandists since people got the idea that voting was a thing. Probably before.
- sneak 5y agoI wonder how much of that is a result of the largest misinformation peddlers not having to pay taxes on income.
- bad_username 5y agoI have a hard time to take seriously any disinformation talk from the political and media establishment after the lab leak theory twist, where it had been shameful disinformation, until it suddenly wasn't. I have to be doubting publications even from reputable sources, after "The Lancet" fiasco, where the organizer of the open letter that condemned the lab leak theory was discovered to have ties with the lab in question, and some signatories confessed they'd signed it only because Trump had been promoting the theory. I can't help feeling that the recent war on "disinformation" is not waged in good faith. And since I have not so much trust in the alternative media either, I feel as a reasonable person I am easentially left in the dark.
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y agoIt's a hard one. Trump was promoting it when there was not enough evidence and was acting as it it was obvious. As a scientist you need to be much more careful and precise in what you say. As far as I can tell, what we have now are some very strong cues, but still no definitive proof (that might be impossible to have without the cooperation of the Chinese government).
- loonster 5y agoI would expect the president of the united states to have much more information available to him than the rest of the country. IIRC, Trump didn't start blaming China until China started blaming the USA for the spread during the military games that happened during the fall.
- knownjorbist 5y agoTrump clearly is inconsistent on this front, since the entire IC was warning him about russian interference and that Putin specifically was doing everything in his power(while still maintaining plausible deniability) to get him into office. I think we can safely discard the notion that Trump would be reporting on anything the IC tells him.
- Cybotron5000 5y ago
- khawkins 5y agoInstead of constantly hand-wringing about "disinformation" from the shadows, they should be desperately addressing their own plummeting credibility: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gallup-american-trust-in-media-plummets-only-congress-less-trusted-among-major-us-institutions/ar-AAMbOr0 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gallup-american-trus... People would be less susceptible to disinformation if they could actually trust mainstream sources like the NYT.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Cybotron5000 5y agoWhy though? What is it that has changed their business model or people’s minds? Ask yourself that. What is it that is particularly biased? Opinion pieces and ‘advertorials’ etc. that they are forced to adopt because of falling revenues and fragmented attentions are bound to be biased.
- fallingknife 5y agoThe NYT is actually doing great financially. They lost their credibility because they did the one thing that a journalist can never do, lost their neutrality. They let Trump get under their skin, lost all skepticism, and started printing anything negative about him even if it was only a rumor. It's basically an organ of the Democratic party now.
- tclancy 5y agoOh for the love of Buttigeig, if the Democratic Party had an organ, I would hope it would do a better job of stating policy and sticking to it. If The Times is your idea of a lefty boogie man, life must be pretty easy.
- leereeves 5y agoYou should read more. Everything fallingknife said is backed up by statements from insiders. As one wrote: > Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. ... > But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm. > What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets. https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
- chewmieser 5y agoNon paywall link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/europe/disinformation-social-media.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohkT1UZBibKWsIjolqLmOLI2LF7in7lLS6bTixHxvgUBI7F4EDGZKNnIt4-0zWSAt9dNbtlDNpD8thiBW0_AQ-5vsnD350fPyQ-rY_0Djo71M7GBu99q2CzYCzkd-olgezv4xvDbTbtXKLVhCInIgxvsoIlIQ_xoQEAz6rEGuR_09Bsj7x2Vt0hG2B2NGTdtOLoCh59JNyDchrYjwE2UOxTUj3R9sWOv_NCKE4BTAKbEw4spDo0-9heO9sIPafgLh5GeMH2hLQZDmQAP57otd1uADNvmHx5BB9iM0_N&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/world/europe/disinformati...
- rahulbshrestha 5y agoThanks! How did you do this?
- chewmieser 5y agoNYTimes subscribers can share article up to 10 articles directly by using the little gift icon on an article. The links you share are unlimited for 14 days (https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060848652 https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060848652).
- giantg2 5y agoThere's a somewhat interesting movie called The Hater. Obviously dramatized and all, but makes one consider how far some people might go.
- shrubble 5y agoPot, kettle, etc. 'The new disclosure revealed that the Post and the Journal each received more than $100,000 per month to run print versions of Chinese propaganda articles. The Times received $50,000 in 2018 to place the propaganda on its website, presumably a small fraction of the revenue it made selling print space to China Daily. The new disclosures also showed that China Daily paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and other large regional newspapers to print copies of the China Daily for local distribution.' https://freebeacon.com/media/nyt-quietly-scrubs-chinese-propaganda/ https://freebeacon.com/media/nyt-quietly-scrubs-chinese-prop...
- justanotherguy0 5y agoRoasted. Media is broken.
- antattack 5y agoArticle does not claim that it did not exist, only that they are loosing the monopoly status :)
- Aperocky 5y agoWhat is the said propaganda? The article does not articulate but I do remember one of which came up in an earlier discussion being a tourist promotion.
- flavius29663 5y agoA tactic used in some almost autocratic countries is to pay for lots of ads in the press, ensuring that the press stays friendly to the payer. It's legal, it passes first scrutiny, and it's effective. NYT wouldn't want to lose a big client, so they will be thinking twice before publishing a damaging article. I don't think 100k a month can break NYT journalism integrity (their revenue is 1.7 billions), but not because it's too cheap, they became a propaganda mouthpiece anyway. A high quality one, that makes you believe they're not actually propaganda, which makes it so much more effective. It's easy to see Fox as propaganda, so much harder to see NYT; and they are at roughly the same levels.
- happy_path 5y agoDisinformation/narratives' control has always been present: There are some examples I can think of: - Manifest Destiny. - Spanish American 1989 war because (Maine sinking). - The gulf of Tokin incident. - The Nayirah testimony. - Irak's WMD. I think the issue here is that the some western governments are failing to control information, and their citizens are now being preyed by other governments' disinformation campaigns (Russia, China). Does this worries me? Yes, of course. The level of fracture in some societies (USA, UK, for example) is increasing. How could we enact some defenses against them? Don't know.
- f38zf5vdt 5y agoScope social media usage to residents using group attribution technologies that are government verified. You can demonstrate membership in a group without revealing your individual identity. Then have who the user is from displayed to all other users, or limit access based on that. Japan does this with Line, to get access to Japanese chat rooms you need a Japan telephone number, which usually requires a Japanese ID somewhere down the line. China is similar, but much more extreme, in that you need a Chinese phone number to use virtually any online service.
- XnoiVeX 5y agoAdd MK Ultra to that list. The Internet and social media have made it so much easier to run disinformation campaigns. The only defense is to teach people critical thinking. It's almost impossible to police the content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIf the data available to you are 90% carefully crafted lies, it's not that easy for critical thinking to save you. Correct reasoning based on faulty information will not produce good results. I mean, critical thinking can cut through a bunch of the garbage, but it won't help with the well-done disinformation - not if there's enough of it.
- TurkishPoptart 5y ago
- Hokusai 5y ago> In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal. A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it. But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. If any foreign power wants to destabilize a country this is a good way to go. Each time that there it's any stressful event create opposite sides and make them fight. Of course, there is a degree of 'fallout' where the influence can reach the attacking country. So, the destabilization creates ripples around the world. And all because 'influencers' seem to operate outside any industry self-regulation or state rules. And many people is unprepared to fight against messages send by, otherwise, producers of quite innocuous content. And the comments, and opinions do not need to make sense, just need to create enough noise so the general population does not know who to trust anymore. Want country inn that state will be debilitated and open for further foreign interference. I think they many people is learning to see the noise, to see the people screaming nobody can be trusted, but it will take time until we're have good social mechanisms to fight misinformation.
- golemotron 5y agoClickbait title. I thought the NYT was offering their rate card.
- CountDrewku 5y agoI love how the NYT tries to pretend they're not involved in pedaling disinformation as well.
- dimitrios1 5y agoAs opposed to our establishment media meddling in elections right in front of everyone's faces. These media giants are just mad they are losing their monopoly status on propaganda.
- grouphugs 5y agoi would not call this quiet
- upofadown 5y agoWhat a strange and wonderful world we live in where you can get paid for trolling... Back in my day trolls worked for free!
- jessaustin 5y agoThe best trolls still do!
- runbathtime 5y agoThis requires being the truth police. Everything should be allowed to be printed, even for a price. Everything is potentially incorrect or not truth. Everything is propaganda or motivated to be printed for some purpose and benefit of someone. The solution is to teach people to be independent thinkers, not invoke the thought police. In our fascist mixed economy it is every gang against every other gang. I can't blame the gangs in the society we have built.
- moistrobot 5y agoClassic projection from mainstream news. With the amount of disinformation put out by NYTimes, it's easier to point the finger elsewhere. If you want to block NYTimes and all contributors on your account, try this: https://www.blocknyt.com/ https://www.blocknyt.com/
- tvirosi 5y agoThat app seems to ask for way more permissions than it needs to to do its job.
- fortuna86 5y agoWhat is an example of something published by the NYT, that has been proven false, that hasn't been retracted and removed?
- fortuna86 5y agoAny example at all?
- knownjorbist 5y agoGive a tangible example of the NYT putting out purposeful disinformation that's even in the same sort of ballpark of the kinds of sources that millions of people are consuming on a daily basis via Facebook & Twitter. It's not even close. Stop with the false equivalencies.
- txtx7 5y agoThat asks for LOTS of permissions. It's closed source too? The website itself has two trackers installed. What could go wrong?
- dj_gitmo 5y agoIMO most of the problems with news stem from how it is funded. Advertising and back-room deals are not a good way to fund journalism. Cable news producers get ratings updates every 5 minutes and adjust their content according to what keeps people watching.
- tacocataco 5y agoWasn't the news part of the deal to broadcast? They get to broadcast, we get news.
- dj_gitmo 5y agoOh I did not know that that was a part of the Fairness Doctrine. The balance requirement was much more well know. > The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine Either way, it's no longer a requirement.
- bequanna 5y agoThere shouldn't be any legal description of "disinformation" in a country with free speech protections. ALL skepticism is crucial. Even ridiculous viewpoints should see the light of day to allow them to be investigated or dismissed. The push to suppress opposing views is really only coming from one direction right now. If someone supports limiting free speech, I can probably guess which political party they identify with. Like every other attack on rights, the stated goals are always very noble: "limit hate speech", "stop disinformation", etc. Cute. But behind those reasons, we're all aware of the real goal: silence anyone who opposes your views.
- NeoLaval 5y agoTo defend free speech you need to fight propaganda. Propaganda is literally the opposite of free speech. People being paid to say this or that is not free speech.
- bequanna 5y agoOf course it is. Just because you don’t like it or find it distasteful doesn’t mean it isn’t free speech. How about people who are compensated to promote COVID vaccinations? Should that be disallowed? The problem is who determines what is “truth” or allowable speech. Do you really want to live in a country where the party in power gets to decide this?
- slibhb 5y agoThe opposite of free speech is censorship, not propaganda. Lying is not illegal.
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- urmish 5y agoAre they worried about their monopoly in this space? With opinion pieces, click bait and hit pieces on selective topics and sides, they've successfully managed to portray any image of politics and society they want.
- andyxor 5y agoAs long as WaPo, CNN and NYT continue to spread disinformation social media is of a lesser concern
- OhWellLol 5y agoWait until you find out how many of these services post comments on HN.
- fny 5y agoSomething I struggle to understand is why this is considered a recent phenomenon. All of the tools required to run disinformation campaigns have existed for at least the last two decades and social media was easily mature enough by the late ‘00s early ‘10s. Are we really at such a different place or is this something we’ve quietly ignored until now?