9 ms·

One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe. Disinformation abounds and lies or lies of omission should be expected from

One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe. Disinformation abounds and lies or lies of omission should be expected from anyone in a position of power and influence.

knownjorbist 5y ago
This is exactly the strategy adopted by the GOP in the runup to 2016 and onwards. The exhaustion is the point. Literally just lie and keep lying until most people tune out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
- conductr 5y ago
  > the GOP True but trending that direction for a long while. I feel like one person in particular really gave them a leap forward and had been a blatant liar his entire life. Anyone care to guess who?
  - beeboop 5y ago
    Hillary Clinton? My point being is that both sides are full of liars. They're politicians, they're famous for it
    - knownjorbist 5y ago
      How can any serious person compare the level of honesty between the two?
    - mbg721 5y ago
      More importantly, in this political environment, people are voting against candidates, not for them. Any view of Republican voters as a personality cult misses that conservatives have spent decades in hold-your-nose-and-vote mode.
    - conductr 5y ago
      If we’re being honest, citizens want them to lie to some extent. The want a visionary president to say they’ll fix all the world problems in a way that is acceptable to their voters. The voters completely ignore than no one person can do much of anything. They will be at the mercy of the government process and the people within. All with competing objectives. But, when asked during a debate, what will you do during your first 100 days in office, you can say “it depends” which would be the honest answer. That said, lying and weaponizing misinformation are two completely different things. Bill Clinton lied about cheating on his wife. Trump lied every single thing. This is the guy that drew over the Hurricane map because he knew better where the hurricane was heading. When you apply that alternate reality to things like questioning the election results and whatnot it’s quite a different level of dishonesty.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  your tribalism is showing
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    Your unwillingness to see that the GOP is in another league than the Democrats on this front is showing. As someone sitting outside both camps, you can't really "both sides" this one.
- wyldfire 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing. I thought this wikipedia article was really interesting and it led me to this other article [1] by Bruce Schneier about how to combat the firehose, and one by RAND [2] (which IIUC is the genesis of this 'firehose' term). [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/toward-information-operations-kill-chain https://www.lawfareblog.com/toward-information-operations-ki... [2] https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
wyldfire 5y ago
> One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe. While I do think that things wrt 'discourse' have gotten worse, I don't think that traditional news agencies are untrustworthy. If they are, then they're as untrustworthy as they've ever been. As long as you avoid sources like opinion-shows-on-'news'-channels and stick to the dreaded "Mainstream Media" you should find trustworthy reporting.
- macinjosh 5y ago
  The contents of reporting by the mainstream is largely accurate. Ask any seasoned journalist and they will tell you that story selection is a big answer for how bias makes its way into any publication especially the respected ones. The only other caveat with the mainstream news is that they often behave like stenographers for “anonymous sources familiar with the matter” who often is an insider with some sort of agenda.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  "Mostly peaceful" killed that for me. I wanted to believe what you're saying, but I can't anymore.
  - slg 5y ago
    You are letting a clumsy chyron that did a bad job summarizing an accurate report sour all of journalism for you?
    - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
      You are structuring your argument as if it was a one off and not a culminating crescendo for some people. News have been getting progressively worse over the past few decades. This just happened to be a very clear and visible sign, because it is just hard to find something so visibly wrong.
      - slg 5y ago
        The other poster was framing it as an inflection point and I was questioning that. Also the chyron wasn't truly wrong, it was summarizing a report about what transpired over 24 hours. The protests were "mostly peaceful" until they weren't. That was all discussed on screen while the chyron was displayed. The only way to be misled by the chyron was if you were watching the channel on mute or you just saw the screenshot flying around the internet being pushed by people who wanted you to think the media is lying. The chyron said "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" and it probably should have said "Mostly peaceful protests after police shooting turn fiery after nightfall" but that is both longer and clunkier. So they went with a more condensed version without thinking of the awful visual it would create when screenshotted. If this is journalism's worst crime, then we are in fantastic shape.
zenithd 5y ago
The union says there's no strike, the airline says there's no strike, no other airlines experienced similar failures despite similar mandates, and there's an alternative explanation that fits all of the available the evidence (and there's a lot of public evidence since these are domestic commercial flights). Additionally, people who want to stir up FUD about vaccine mandates have an incentive to lie. So, one possibility is that there's a fast conspiracy that involves NOAA, the FAA, Miami airport admin, air traffic controllers, Southwest, the pilot's union, etc. The other possibility a few conservative commentators are talking out of their ass. Sorry... this one just isn't that hard.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Agree, but why hasn't anyone asked the pilots?
  - zenithd 5y ago
    The pilot's union is on the list I gave. Aside from the union: because Southwest employs 8,500 pilots and they're not exactly all on linkedin or something.
- kfprt 5y ago
  You're just misinformed and wrong. The union and airline say there's no strike or sick out (job action) because strikes and job actions are illegal under the Federal Railway Labor act. They are unsurprisingly denying doing anything illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board Your Pilot Career and Scope Clauses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE
  - shock-value 5y ago
    That explains why the union would lie. Why does it explain why the airline would also cover (lie) for them?
    - 5y ago
newacct583 5y ago
> One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe That, largely, is the intent. "Some people" know that the more they poison this well the more people like you will then throw up their hands. And, while I'm sure you aren't one of them, most of them will then take that as a license to believe the source they want to believe and not the one telling them the truth. And the frustrating thing, of course, is that the disinformation is largely asymmetric. One "side" of sources is more consistently wrong or misleading, and one mostly gets it right with the occasional mistake. Also, one "side's" thought leaders tend to parrot disinformation[1] more than the other, where you tend to see the worst whoppers primarily among the ground troops only. [1] Ted Cruz pushed this particular meme, for example.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  You have this whole other side where it is obvious both sides are misleading because to have a side means you are determined to spread and grow that side. This president is sharing as much disinformation as the last president as much as China and as much as European and Canadian prime ministers. If you are only seeing the other side doing this you may be too close to one side.
  - scottLobster 5y ago
    How can you look at Trump's former twitter feed and say that with a straight face? If your argument is quantity of disinformation, Trump spread more disinformation on twitter in an average month than Biden has done in the first 10 months of his presidency.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Here is a list of Biden's lies over the last 10 months. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.courier-journal.com/amp/5918848001 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.courier-journal.com/amp/591... Which shows you everyone is lying to you no matter what side you are on. Better than the other guy means you are still being fooled. Rep and Dem are two sides of the same coin. It reminds me of a Simpsons halloween episode where the Rep and Dem candidates are replaced with two Aliens and when the truth is uncovered voters were stuck with a choice between an alien Rep or an alien Dem who would enslave all humans or voting for a human third party candidate. The ending scene shows humanity enslaved with Homer saying he voted for the other alien.
zz865 5y ago
Its also an effect of people getting news from social media and free websites. The journalists used to do this but all got laid off.
redis_mlc 5y ago
Here's the current US media status: - cnn.com - since the Afghanistan bugout (around Sept. 1), cnn.com's reporting is fairly accurate, but not the "analysis" hit pieces. Ignore whatever Don Lemon or Brian S. says. Notably, cnn.com is not reporting on Biden's dementia. They have a ratings crisis since Jan. 20, so expect a lot of turmoil. cnn.com is supporting the DoJ Gestapo tactics against PTA speakers, so cnn.com has completely lost its way morally. Even ex-Chinese dissidents call the DoJ direction "Maoist." - NTD media is chugging along great, despite being partially cancelled by US tech companies. (Their reporting on the WIV lab leak was deleted by YT, and their subscriber counts have been frozen for months. So they have a parallel web site just in case.) - fox.com has always been accurate over the past year. I would call it Liberal. Note that many of their video segments have comments disabled to appease YT. - sky oz has the same owner as fox, but is slightly more to the right. Great coverage of corona and Biden dementia coverups. YT took some action against them for a short while, but they're back online. Note that anytime I mention YT above, it means the channel was reporting the truth and YT punished them for not being a good comrade. I consider Jen Psaki's (WH press secretary) habitual lying to be one of the biggest media problems today.

knownjorbist 5y ago

This is exactly the strategy adopted by the GOP in the runup to 2016 and onwards. The exhaustion is the point. Literally just lie and keep lying until most people tune out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

conductr 5y ago
> the GOP True but trending that direction for a long while. I feel like one person in particular really gave them a leap forward and had been a blatant liar his entire life. Anyone care to guess who?
- beeboop 5y ago
  Hillary Clinton? My point being is that both sides are full of liars. They're politicians, they're famous for it
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    How can any serious person compare the level of honesty between the two?
  - mbg721 5y ago
    More importantly, in this political environment, people are voting against candidates, not for them. Any view of Republican voters as a personality cult misses that conservatives have spent decades in hold-your-nose-and-vote mode.
  - conductr 5y ago
    If we’re being honest, citizens want them to lie to some extent. The want a visionary president to say they’ll fix all the world problems in a way that is acceptable to their voters. The voters completely ignore than no one person can do much of anything. They will be at the mercy of the government process and the people within. All with competing objectives. But, when asked during a debate, what will you do during your first 100 days in office, you can say “it depends” which would be the honest answer. That said, lying and weaponizing misinformation are two completely different things. Bill Clinton lied about cheating on his wife. Trump lied every single thing. This is the guy that drew over the Hurricane map because he knew better where the hurricane was heading. When you apply that alternate reality to things like questioning the election results and whatnot it’s quite a different level of dishonesty.
andrew_ 5y ago
your tribalism is showing
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  Your unwillingness to see that the GOP is in another league than the Democrats on this front is showing. As someone sitting outside both camps, you can't really "both sides" this one.
wyldfire 5y ago
Thanks for sharing. I thought this wikipedia article was really interesting and it led me to this other article [1] by Bruce Schneier about how to combat the firehose, and one by RAND [2] (which IIUC is the genesis of this 'firehose' term). [1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/toward-information-operations-kill-chain https://www.lawfareblog.com/toward-information-operations-ki... [2] https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

wyldfire 5y ago

> One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe. While I do think that things wrt 'discourse' have gotten worse, I don't think that traditional news agencies are untrustworthy. If they are, then they're as untrustworthy as they've ever been. As long as you avoid sources like opinion-shows-on-'news'-channels and stick to the dreaded "Mainstream Media" you should find trustworthy reporting.

macinjosh 5y ago
The contents of reporting by the mainstream is largely accurate. Ask any seasoned journalist and they will tell you that story selection is a big answer for how bias makes its way into any publication especially the respected ones. The only other caveat with the mainstream news is that they often behave like stenographers for “anonymous sources familiar with the matter” who often is an insider with some sort of agenda.
rpmisms 5y ago
"Mostly peaceful" killed that for me. I wanted to believe what you're saying, but I can't anymore.
- slg 5y ago
  You are letting a clumsy chyron that did a bad job summarizing an accurate report sour all of journalism for you?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 5y ago
    You are structuring your argument as if it was a one off and not a culminating crescendo for some people. News have been getting progressively worse over the past few decades. This just happened to be a very clear and visible sign, because it is just hard to find something so visibly wrong.
    - slg 5y ago
      The other poster was framing it as an inflection point and I was questioning that. Also the chyron wasn't truly wrong, it was summarizing a report about what transpired over 24 hours. The protests were "mostly peaceful" until they weren't. That was all discussed on screen while the chyron was displayed. The only way to be misled by the chyron was if you were watching the channel on mute or you just saw the screenshot flying around the internet being pushed by people who wanted you to think the media is lying. The chyron said "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting" and it probably should have said "Mostly peaceful protests after police shooting turn fiery after nightfall" but that is both longer and clunkier. So they went with a more condensed version without thinking of the awful visual it would create when screenshotted. If this is journalism's worst crime, then we are in fantastic shape.

zenithd 5y ago

The union says there's no strike, the airline says there's no strike, no other airlines experienced similar failures despite similar mandates, and there's an alternative explanation that fits all of the available the evidence (and there's a lot of public evidence since these are domestic commercial flights). Additionally, people who want to stir up FUD about vaccine mandates have an incentive to lie. So, one possibility is that there's a fast conspiracy that involves NOAA, the FAA, Miami airport admin, air traffic controllers, Southwest, the pilot's union, etc. The other possibility a few conservative commentators are talking out of their ass. Sorry... this one just isn't that hard.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago
Agree, but why hasn't anyone asked the pilots?
- zenithd 5y ago
  The pilot's union is on the list I gave. Aside from the union: because Southwest employs 8,500 pilots and they're not exactly all on linkedin or something.
kfprt 5y ago
You're just misinformed and wrong. The union and airline say there's no strike or sick out (job action) because strikes and job actions are illegal under the Federal Railway Labor act. They are unsurprisingly denying doing anything illegal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Mediation_Board Your Pilot Career and Scope Clauses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XYpZg0SPCE
- shock-value 5y ago
  That explains why the union would lie. Why does it explain why the airline would also cover (lie) for them?
  - 5y ago

newacct583 5y ago

> One side effect of our toxic national discourse is that I don’t know who to believe That, largely, is the intent. "Some people" know that the more they poison this well the more people like you will then throw up their hands. And, while I'm sure you aren't one of them, most of them will then take that as a license to believe the source they want to believe and not the one telling them the truth. And the frustrating thing, of course, is that the disinformation is largely asymmetric. One "side" of sources is more consistently wrong or misleading, and one mostly gets it right with the occasional mistake. Also, one "side's" thought leaders tend to parrot disinformation[1] more than the other, where you tend to see the worst whoppers primarily among the ground troops only. [1] Ted Cruz pushed this particular meme, for example.

ipaddr 5y ago
You have this whole other side where it is obvious both sides are misleading because to have a side means you are determined to spread and grow that side. This president is sharing as much disinformation as the last president as much as China and as much as European and Canadian prime ministers. If you are only seeing the other side doing this you may be too close to one side.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  How can you look at Trump's former twitter feed and say that with a straight face? If your argument is quantity of disinformation, Trump spread more disinformation on twitter in an average month than Biden has done in the first 10 months of his presidency.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Here is a list of Biden's lies over the last 10 months. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.courier-journal.com/amp/5918848001 https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.courier-journal.com/amp/591... Which shows you everyone is lying to you no matter what side you are on. Better than the other guy means you are still being fooled. Rep and Dem are two sides of the same coin. It reminds me of a Simpsons halloween episode where the Rep and Dem candidates are replaced with two Aliens and when the truth is uncovered voters were stuck with a choice between an alien Rep or an alien Dem who would enslave all humans or voting for a human third party candidate. The ending scene shows humanity enslaved with Homer saying he voted for the other alien.

zz865 5y ago

Its also an effect of people getting news from social media and free websites. The journalists used to do this but all got laid off.

redis_mlc 5y ago

Here's the current US media status: - cnn.com - since the Afghanistan bugout (around Sept. 1), cnn.com's reporting is fairly accurate, but not the "analysis" hit pieces. Ignore whatever Don Lemon or Brian S. says. Notably, cnn.com is not reporting on Biden's dementia. They have a ratings crisis since Jan. 20, so expect a lot of turmoil. cnn.com is supporting the DoJ Gestapo tactics against PTA speakers, so cnn.com has completely lost its way morally. Even ex-Chinese dissidents call the DoJ direction "Maoist." - NTD media is chugging along great, despite being partially cancelled by US tech companies. (Their reporting on the WIV lab leak was deleted by YT, and their subscriber counts have been frozen for months. So they have a parallel web site just in case.) - fox.com has always been accurate over the past year. I would call it Liberal. Note that many of their video segments have comments disabled to appease YT. - sky oz has the same owner as fox, but is slightly more to the right. Great coverage of corona and Biden dementia coverups. YT took some action against them for a short while, but they're back online. Note that anytime I mention YT above, it means the channel was reporting the truth and YT punished them for not being a good comrade. I consider Jen Psaki's (WH press secretary) habitual lying to be one of the biggest media problems today.