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Outsourcing reality checks to private organizations is a serious problem with 21st century America. The Southern Poverty Law Center is another similar org that

Outsourcing reality checks to private organizations is a serious problem with 21st century America. The Southern Poverty Law Center is another similar org that is treated as authoritative yet has zero safeguards or unbiased processes.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
PayPal recently partnered with the ADL to ban accounts and prevent the wrong people from making transactions. Should be beyond concerning that not only they did that, but celebrated themselves for it. The ADL has ever widening definition of “problematic“ that extends to political topics far outside of their mission statement. I would really have to think about who is less biased, the SPLC or the ADL.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  PayPal is pretty embedded in the institutional power matrix, so it’s not really that surprising. They want to be a bank, if they aren’t already one.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    They want to be as much like a bank as possible but without any of the regulation.
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  To me the biggest promise of cryptocurrency is the hope of an "uncensorable" form of commerce.
rootusrootus 5y ago
What is your solution? Every single source of news, every last one, will have perhaps 1/3 or more of the population calling it fake news.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Anything that isn’t a large donor-funded private organization would be an improvement. The wiki model seems alright to me. It just needs a better way to view changes.
- encoderer 5y ago
  Worth remembering that the term “fake news” did not exist in the mainstream until 6 years ago. It used to be called “liberal bias in the media” but fake news is a political slogan like Death Tax or Cancel Culture and like political slogans of previous generations I am optimistic we will not be stuck here forever.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    "Fake news" was a phrase originating from the Clinton camp. Trump's political history has many examples of him taking Clinton's ideas that were getting a little traction and turning them on her. They were very close at one point. The best defense against it is good journalism, honesty, clarity, and disclosure.
    - parineum 5y ago
      While on the topic, I remember reading articles during the 2016 election where journalists were doing legit work to track down the sources of those original "fake news" articles and the trail led to basically a business model that could be successful in poorer eastern european countries that just replied on clicks and they posted anything that'd garner a click. I even read an interview with one of them. Then, when the narrative shifted to it being Russian intelligence, I never heard anything like my previous story again. I'm really unclear what actually happened. Was that a progression of events, was it always Russian, was it never Russian?
  - pram 5y ago
    “Fake news” emerged literally minutes after Trump won the election, in a seemingly coordinated way on most cable news. They were saying it in their most serious journalist voice, to imply that Trump voters were duped into voting for him. Then shortly after it was appropriated by Trump himself, and everyone wanted to disavow the phrase, which was deeply hilarious.
comrh 5y ago
Newspapers have been a thing for hundreds of years
toast0 5y ago
Who/what is the propery authority on reality? It certainly isn't government sources, and it's not traditional news sources, and big technology isn't a good choice either. Snopes used to be a pretty good place to link to dispute clearly bullshit stuff that idiots would forward around the internet as if it had any chance of being true, but at some point there was just too much of that. And they also seemed to expand their scope into things that were more nuanced and easier to get wrong.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  So if there is no clear authority on reality, that means that a single private site is? How does that argument make any sense? The solution is the same as it’s always been: read multiple sources that have different viewpoints.
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
The Department of Truth would most certainly be worse.

SV_BubbleTime 5y ago

PayPal recently partnered with the ADL to ban accounts and prevent the wrong people from making transactions. Should be beyond concerning that not only they did that, but celebrated themselves for it. The ADL has ever widening definition of “problematic“ that extends to political topics far outside of their mission statement. I would really have to think about who is less biased, the SPLC or the ADL.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
PayPal is pretty embedded in the institutional power matrix, so it’s not really that surprising. They want to be a bank, if they aren’t already one.
- shadilay 5y ago
  They want to be as much like a bank as possible but without any of the regulation.
commandlinefan 5y ago
To me the biggest promise of cryptocurrency is the hope of an "uncensorable" form of commerce.

rootusrootus 5y ago

What is your solution? Every single source of news, every last one, will have perhaps 1/3 or more of the population calling it fake news.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
Anything that isn’t a large donor-funded private organization would be an improvement. The wiki model seems alright to me. It just needs a better way to view changes.
encoderer 5y ago
Worth remembering that the term “fake news” did not exist in the mainstream until 6 years ago. It used to be called “liberal bias in the media” but fake news is a political slogan like Death Tax or Cancel Culture and like political slogans of previous generations I am optimistic we will not be stuck here forever.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  "Fake news" was a phrase originating from the Clinton camp. Trump's political history has many examples of him taking Clinton's ideas that were getting a little traction and turning them on her. They were very close at one point. The best defense against it is good journalism, honesty, clarity, and disclosure.
  - parineum 5y ago
    While on the topic, I remember reading articles during the 2016 election where journalists were doing legit work to track down the sources of those original "fake news" articles and the trail led to basically a business model that could be successful in poorer eastern european countries that just replied on clicks and they posted anything that'd garner a click. I even read an interview with one of them. Then, when the narrative shifted to it being Russian intelligence, I never heard anything like my previous story again. I'm really unclear what actually happened. Was that a progression of events, was it always Russian, was it never Russian?
- pram 5y ago
  “Fake news” emerged literally minutes after Trump won the election, in a seemingly coordinated way on most cable news. They were saying it in their most serious journalist voice, to imply that Trump voters were duped into voting for him. Then shortly after it was appropriated by Trump himself, and everyone wanted to disavow the phrase, which was deeply hilarious.

comrh 5y ago

Newspapers have been a thing for hundreds of years

toast0 5y ago

Who/what is the propery authority on reality? It certainly isn't government sources, and it's not traditional news sources, and big technology isn't a good choice either. Snopes used to be a pretty good place to link to dispute clearly bullshit stuff that idiots would forward around the internet as if it had any chance of being true, but at some point there was just too much of that. And they also seemed to expand their scope into things that were more nuanced and easier to get wrong.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
So if there is no clear authority on reality, that means that a single private site is? How does that argument make any sense? The solution is the same as it’s always been: read multiple sources that have different viewpoints.

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

The Department of Truth would most certainly be worse.