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Billionaires back new media firm to combat disinformation
- WalterGR 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29002441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29002441
- headsoup 5y agoUm, aren't they already doing this, or are Zuckerberg, Murdoch and co now not billionaires? Or are we now getting into the post-misinformation/disinformation war where truth is redefined again for us? Long shot, but maybe people might start realising that just blinding accepting what powerful groups tell you is disinformation is naive. Also, "fact-based information" then "progressive causes." Nothing political in there to generate bias, not at all...
- rayiner 5y agoBut you don’t know who is a “powerful group.” This money trickles down and funds media organizations of various sizes, activist organizations, etc.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago>Or are we now getting into the post-misinformation/disinformation war where truth is redefined again for us? When has there been a period in history where this has not been true? The difference is only who is doing it...
- ghlax 5y agoSoros ruined the British pound ans now tries to ruin Western democracy. The man loves to see things burn.
- TheGigaChad 5y agoFucking idiot, hang yourself.
- hnlmorg 5y agoCurious if this is actually intended to combat disinformation or if this is intended to help spread their opinions on information. It's been my observation that the super rich are often some of the biggest culprits in spreading disinformation (Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, etc)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bognition 5y agoYeah my thoughts exactly, how are they going to commit to telling the truth when it goes against their economic interests?
- Bombthecat 5y agoSpoiler alert : they won't
- nix23 5y agoIt's kind of ironic even to ask that, i think. The press is to make the world not to document it, that's what good historians are for.
- mikro2nd 5y agoDonald Trump super-rich??? I thought he was mostly living off dangerously, wildly overextended debt.
- juanani 5y agoThey made him into a super-villian. Although my mind immediately included Gates on the list but his PR is top notch lately. Bizarre world though
- sto_hristo 5y agoI've yet to hear Soros spreading conspiracy theories how Soros does everything evil that is happening to my country. All that nonsense comes from random idiots on the internet.
- peanut_worm 5y agoAlternative titles: Billionaires decide they are the arbiters of morality
- pentae 5y agoHow about Billionaires set up 'Ministry of Truth'
- rapsey 5y agoUltra progressive Billionaires set up 'Ministry of Truth'.
- gumby 5y agoThat’s a stretch. There are already plenty of places to find news (many/most backed by billionaires, from FB and Twitter to Murdoch’s empire). These guys just want to stick their oars in too.
- mrfusion 5y agoAnd truth.
- goalieca 5y agoI would not be too surprised if we setup a ministry of truth.
- nix23 5y agoBut for that we need a nato firewall so we cannot compare it to chinese and russian media outlets.
- amelius 5y agoI think we should get a bigger role for academia in society. Now its role is diminishing. If you only look at the crap that is sold in supermarkets, then it's no wonder people lose faith in government and science. But science needs to step up its game as well. Verification/falsification should be a more respected part of science. This means more work and thus more investments in science.
- rayiner 5y agoI’d argue we have too much of a role for academia in society. Take a look at the discourse on race lately. Historically, the racial justice movement was rooted in Christianity. (MLK was a preacher after all.) Today religion has been stripped from it completely, and it’s rooted in post-modern academic theories.
- random314 5y agoOne would think that the standard Republican talking points and deflections about the deaths of George floyd, Ahmed Arbery etc. towards "post modern academic theories" being the root of the problem would have run its course by now. But, apparently, it is still alive and well. Thankfully we have video recordings of both incidents, otherwise there would be no justice like in many other crimes. Meanwhile, Republicans can keep themselves busy sharing videos of a Walmart that got looted during the riots that followed. These post modern academic theories are really ruining the country.
- hagbard_c 5y ago
- nix23 5y agoOh look George Soros who led (indirectly) [1] the private MH17 investigation..now i am happy, everything is fine. Maybe the Atlantic Bridge should be part too of that "media firm"..oh wait, i smell russian hackers ;) [1] Search for Bellingcat, and who s one of the owners/financier of it. https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/bellingcat-die-rechercheure-sind-schneller-als-alle-anderen-ld.1603699?reduced=true https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/bellingcat-die-rechercheure-si... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingcat From Wikipedia: The head of the Netherlands' National Crime Squad, said they officially concluded that the missile that shot down MH17 "is from the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade from Kursk in the Russian Federation".[47] [47] https://web.archive.org/web/20181218102201/https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/investigators-russian-military-missile-downed-flight-mh17/2018/05/24/5b807ac2-5f34-11e8-b656-236c6214ef01_story.html?noredirect=on https://web.archive.org/web/20181218102201/https://www.washi... https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/investigators-russian-military-missile-downed-flight-mh17/2018/05/24/5b807ac2-5f34-11e8-b656-236c6214ef01_story.html?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/investigat... Oh look the article is not there anymore..not even on archive.org ;) Sorry, we can’t find what you are looking for. Take a deep breath. Everything’s going to be okay. Some Founders of Bellincat are: -Cameron Colquhoun -ex-MI5 -Nur Bakr -ex-foreign ministry-UK -Chris Bigger -ex National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Sounds like a lovely and trustfully bunch: https://archive.md/GV7jr#selection-386.0-386.1 https://archive.md/GV7jr#selection-386.0-386.1
- viktorcode 5y agoYou are a good example of why fighting disinformation is important.
- nix23 5y agoAnd you try to frame someone without even give a single proof, you are probably the best case for fighting against disinformation.
- viktorcode 5y agoThe title implies that all billionaires constitute a cabal, which is actually a conspiracy some people wholeheartedly believe in. The next implication of the title: this cabal is trying to control information flow. That's classic. Reality is much less exciting: there's an org launching that intends to fight disinformation in media, and they are disclosing the names of its financial backers.
- codr7 5y agoRight, because they're good people and they want to save the world. Time to wake up?
- viktorcode 5y ago"They", the billionaires, are different people. And some of them would love to see disinformation controlled for gain. Others, having suffered as the result of disinformation, would love to see it stopped. To lump them all together into a single group united in their purpose would require quite a feat of imagination. Perhaps, I'm just don't have enough of it to wake up
- codr7 5y agoYou don't become a billionaire without developing a taste for exploiting and controlling other people.
- hagbard_c 5y agoFirst those zillionaires need to demarcate truth zones on the globe so their private truth zones do not overlap. They'll need to create truth borders which, when crossed, cause the local truth regime to be activated, alternatively they'll need to make it impossible to cross truth zone borders. I suspect the latter will be easier to implement than the former given the large experience gained in this field during earlier attempts to implement similar truth regimes.
- jwond 5y ago> The group will be led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM. > [...] > Although backed and launched by progressives, McGowan says the group could make investments in entities across the political spectrum so long as their editorial standards support fact-based information. Seems like another partisan organization trying to gaslight people into thinking they are objective.
- mckirk 5y agoUntil they actually show their partisanship, I'm skeptical that guilty-by-default assumption should be made.
- rapsey 5y agoHoffman and Soros backed. Two ultra progressive people. There is no chance in hell this will be anything other than extremely one sided.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago“Backed and launched by progressives” seems like a show of partisanship by itself - if they’re conscious of the concern, why couldn’t they find a token conservative to join in?
- ekianjo 5y agoHow can you trust that people who have been activists till now will suddenly stop being activists ?
- roenxi 5y agoThat was a direct quote. "The group will be led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM." This is a partisan organisation until it firmly proves itself otherwise. Maybe this is a radical change where billionaires start promoting objective truth instead of their own interests, but extreme scepticism (moving well into cynicism) is the sensible default.
- 5y ago
- DLA 5y agoMore George Soros open border, one world, critical race theory, etc. evil machinery. By disinformation the far left means any viewpoints that are not their viewpoints.
- MrBuddyCasino 5y agoFinally, the US is getting its own, official Pravda, to the surprise of absolutely nobody. EDIT aaand its off the front page, as usual
- nix23 5y agoBut the Pravda was at least controlled by a Government (with some kind of laws).
- viktorcode 5y agoThere was no private media in the USSR. And out of state media, Pravda was the main political newspaper. The voice of the state. I wonder, how did you come to the conclusion that US is getting "official Pravda"?
- pandaman 5y agoFormally, the Communist Party of the USSR was a private organization with no ties to the government and Pravda had been its newspaper. I see a lot of parallels with the current situation in the USA where private businesses and persons control the government and govern the people by themselves. The government newspaper was this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izvestia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izvestia if you are interested.
- game_the0ry 5y agoI hate getting political on HN and I am no longer a partisan citizen, but the story of the democratic party trying to deploy tech for its own purposes is too interesting to ignore. Its like they watched House of Cards and took it a little too literally, trying to loosely implement the plot-line with shockingly poor execution. Tara McGowan was a part of the organization that ran Shadow Inc, the company that made the app that fucked the vote count for the 2020 Democratic Iowa primary. BTW ,the vote count was never resolved and the DNC basically gave the state to Pete Buttigieg, who happened to be Ms McGowen's favored candidate (hmmm...). Some highlights from the wikipedia: > The Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow Inc. $63,183 to develop the IowaReporterApp. > A bug in the code of the app caused the app to fail at the time of the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses. Gerardo Niemira, the CEO of Shadow Inc., which created the app, stated that technology used by Democrats in prior elections was a "shitshow" and "tangled morass" > Shadow came under scrutiny for its lack of maturity and the means it used to distribute the IowaReporterApp to users. Shadow required iOS device users to use Apple's behind-the-scenes beta-testing infrastructure, TestFlight, while Android users had to use third-party app TestFairy to download the app. Furthermore, a reporter from Motherboard downloaded the app to two Android devices, but it only opened on one of them. The next day, the site published an APK of the app. It also solicited the opinions of various cybersecurity experts. Dan Guido, the head of Trail of Bits, described the app as "hastily thrown together." > Not-for-profit ProPublica commissioned a security audit of the app. It was determined to be "insecure," so an external entity could have hacked it. > Several security and app experts have criticized the amateurish nature of the app. App-development expert, Kasra Rahjerdi, said "the app was clearly done by someone following a tutorial. It’s similar to projects I do with my mentees who are learning how to code." A team of researchers at Stanford University, including former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos, said that while analyzing the app, they found potentially concerning code within it, including hard-coded API keys. The app was written in React Native, authenticated through Auth0, and sent data to Google Cloud Functions. > The Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Kirsten Gillibrand presidential campaigns all made payments to the company. Hard-coded API keys... Probably pushed to a public Github repo too. src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueLink_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueLink_(company) And that's just the backstory for Ms McGowan. Some highlights from her new venture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cao3DB1apNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cao3DB1apNE They're basically unintentionally feeding the narrative of fake news and media manipulation that the GOP accuses them of.
- throw0101a 5y agoThe problem is not "media firms" that provide {mis,dis}information. The problem is that there is demand for the stuff in the first place. It is not possible to stamp out people talking about (e.g.) Flat Earth if there are folks that believe it to be true. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth#Modern_flat-Earthers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth#Modern_flat-Earther... IMHO it's necessary to take a step or two back and ask why people get into this stuff in the first place.
- acover 5y ago> In the end that is the core malfunction of the flat-earthers, and the modern populist rejection of expertise in general. It is a horrifically simplistic view of the world that ignores (partly out of ignorance, and partly out of motivated reasoning) to [sic] real complexities of our civilisation. It is ultimately lazy, childish, and self-indulgent, resulting in a profound level of ignorance drowning in motivated reasoning. One experts view on why people get into it, from your first link.
- disambiguation 5y agoPeople will read and believe what ever trickles in to their generated news feeds. Of course there will always be demand for confirmation bias and an alt reality, but the fact there are teams of people manufacturing dis info with an agenda, actively competing for mind share, is way more concerning. Bad actors taking advantage of weak minds
- viktorcode 5y agoI think stopping this is never the intent. It can't be realistic. But giving the majority of people "on the fence" of Earth curvature etc. different point of view, or at least showing where exactly they are being misled, seems achievable.
- lovecg 5y agoAs I understand it, modern flat earth stuff borders on outright religious belief (with a dose of antisemitism and conspiracy theories - a lot of qanon is just flat earth rebranded), so convincing someone like that with physics is like trying to convince a religious person that god doesn’t exist because we flew to space and didn’t see him. I think what definitely works is reducing exposure and minimizing the number of new susceptible people who become aware of this stuff.
- drewcoo 5y ago. . . says press release posing as "news."
- andrenth 5y agoDemocrats keep saying billionaires shouldn’t exist. Apparently that doesn’t apply to their billionaires.