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The first concern is identifying "fake news". One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, an

The first concern is identifying "fake news". One of the biggest political news stories of 2020, Hunter Biden's laptop, was falsely declared misinformation, and the NY Post was accused of being a low quality site. Now we know it's true. On the other hand, the Steele Dossier was considered legitimate news at the time and "many of the dossier’s most explosive claims...have never materialized or have been proved false."[1]. So I'd like to know exactly what the study's authors considered low-quality news, but unfortunately I couldn't find a list in the paper you linked. In my experience, most people tend to declare sources "high-quality" or "low-quality" based on whether they share the same worldview. 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-private-spies-news-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/business/media/spooked-pr...

haberman 4y ago
I had the same skepticism as you, but the study authors did attempt to be fair by letting a set of politically balanced laypeople (equal number Democrat and Republican) adjudicate the trustworthiness of sites. They also had journalists rate the sites, but they present the results of both results (layperson-rated and journalist-rated). I wish they had included the list so we could see for ourselves. It's still possible that there are flaws in the study. But the it appears to take the concern of fairness more seriously than most.
- leereeves 4y ago
  Of course, that also raises the question of who they asked to rate the sites, and they don't provide that information either.
oezi 4y ago
As a European I don't know much about the Hunter Biden story, but it wasn't a political news story because it doesn't even cover a politically relevant person. It is a celebrity story and even two years later no allegation of substance seems to have come from it (skimming wikipedia). From a European perspective it was just outlandish hearsay and speculation. Hard to understand why Americans get so invested when no criminal case materializes.
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  The news was that you couldn’t even talk about the truth of the situation in DMs on Twitter.
- didericis 4y ago
  This is a political minefield/one of the most polarized topics of conversation in a minefield of extremely polarized topics, and I greatly value this forum as a place for intelligent conversation. Please don't jump to any assumptions about my presentation of this perspective, or endorsement of crazy people who say similar sounding things, this is simply a summary of why this story is important to the right. The Hunter Biden story is significant because there are emails which suggest Hunter Biden had ties to foreign companies that wanted access to his father. This could be grounds for a criminal case implicating his father. Now, in a sane society during a less polarized election, this would have been discussed in the open, and people would make cases as to the relevance or irrelevance of the evidence, relevance to Joe Biden specifically, and whether the evidence merits investigation through proper channels in an open and transparent way. Since Trump was viewed as even more corrupt and more of a threat by enough people capable of suppressing the story, the story was suppressed, and this conversation didn't happen until after the election. That does not mean the entire FBI and judicial process is broken like some people on the right claim, which is an extremely dangerous accusation, and the lack of a proper case means we do not know the extent or non extent of corruption, but the suppression of the story was a violation of public trust by those who suppressed it and poured a lot of fuel on an already raging fire.
  - notafraudster 4y ago
    > The Hunter Biden story is significant because there are emails which suggest Hunter Biden had ties to foreign companies that wanted access to his father. This could be grounds for a criminal case implicating his father. Now, in a sane society during a less polarized election, this would have been discussed in the open, and people would make cases as to the relevance or irrelevance of the evidence, relevance to Joe Biden specifically, and whether the evidence merits investigation through proper channels in an open and transparent way. I agree with that in principle. The idea that a presidential candidate's son has obviously nepotistic business appointments in industries and countries that he has no business being in presents a facial conflict of interest and should invite a debate on quid pro quo corruption. I would say these kinds of stories are a feature of both political parties in the U.S. and across a wide swath of time -- this is effectively the same role as the Clinton Foundation played in the previous election, for instance. And I think it makes sense to debate or investigate this kind of thing in public, including during the election. In fact, Hunter Biden's role in these companies was scrutinized to some degree earlier in the presidential election and also in the primary and also indeed over the last four years. So I reject the notion on the right that this is an issue that "could not" be discussed because "the elites" suppressed the discussion. My sense is that the eventual conclusion was what it seemed from the very beginning: Hunter Biden is a colossal fuckup, everyone around him tried to help him not be a fuckup, he kept being a fuckup, and it should be to no one's surprise that he tried to leverage his father even though there's no to limited evidence any such quid pro quo occurred. The laptop, though, is a pretty complicated thing. It feels more like a direct parallel to the Podesta email hacking in the 2016 election (which, among other things, spawned Pizzagate). Bad actors (in 2016, foreign intelligence; in 2020, a domestic political adversary) took steps to secure a large cache of material, potentially by committing crimes to do so, and released it to the public on the very eve of a presidential election as an October surprise. The framing of the stories on the right was that the _existence_ of the material (emails in 2016, laptop in 2020) was proof that the allegations against the candidate were true, even though basically none of the material seems at all connected to the allegations. Furthermore, the nature of the release was that the people who secured the damaging material obfuscated and laundered it. The press had neither the time nor the resources necessary to verify the contents of the material. Finally, the biggest risk was that large amounts of true material would be combined with knowingly fabricated material in a way that laundered the reputation of the false material. This is hardly an empty false flag thing, it's literally exactly what a nefarious actor _should_ do if they come into possession of huge amounts of stolen material to make the greatest impact. Although the reactions to the Hunter Biden story were overreactions, that's the framework that I think people had adopted. I think people were thinking back to the Podesta email hack and to the FBI confirmation of the Weiner stuff causing a significant late disruption in 2016 election and wanting to avoid the possibility of a similar disruption here. And I think in principle there is a responsibility to avoid this kind of chaos: for instance, if a candidate is accused of a heinous crime (say rape or murder) the day before an election, it is possible both that the accusation would have a serious impact on the election and that not enough time exists to validate, refute, or contextualize it. I can't say the exact length of time before an election that should be a sundown period, informally or formally, but I just recognize that you might imagine some combination of late breaking, serious, and difficult to verify that would merit a deliberate choice to not interfere with the election. The same thing occurred in France about 36 hours before the 2017 presidential election: Huge cache of Macron emails were hacked and distributed (probably by foreign intelligence). Opponents of Macron said, without evidence, that this was proof of Macron's perfidy and would sink him. The media generally refused to engage the story because it was the fruit of a poison tree and 36 hours is not enough time to work it out. The far-right party noted that this was censorship and the end of free speech and investigative journalism is over. The only winner in a situation like this are the agents of chaos.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pstuart 4y ago
Hunter Biden's "laptop" is a misdirection campaign. The contents appear to be from Biden but whether or not it was actually sourced as claimed will likely never be verified (the recipient is conveniently effectively blind). But those that care about this story only seem to care about the story about the story, i.e., that there was effort to prevent propagating it. I find it fascinating that every person who is hung up on this story doesn't care about the substance or relevance of it. In regards to substance, it's a story about corruption. The corruption on its face is irrefutable (i.e., Hunter Biden was paid money in an attempt to purchase the influence of his father). That's genteel, old school corruption. But the relevance of it is that Hunter himself is a private citizen and his (mis)conduct is not really newsworthy. But the implication of it is that his father is equally corrupt (which has not been shown), and that is the entire point of the story. That charge of corruption is important to deflect any reports of corruption by the political rival of Hunter's father (of which there's significant reporting of such). My commenting here is pointless yet necessary: pointless because I've yet to see a cogent rebuttal, and necessary because this topic is toxic and should be countered as best possible. edit: 4th paragraph substance to relevance
- leereeves 4y ago
  It wasn't my intention to litigate this story here. I was simply citing it as an example of the difficulty of identifying misinformation. Also, I think a fair discussion of Twitter moderation should include a post-mortem of one of their most famous mistakes, discussing what Twitter did and what should they have done differently, and not so much the story itself. (Of course, the substance is also important, but this isn't the right place for that discussion.)
  - pstuart 4y ago
    That's just it: I don't think it was a mistake (if we're talking "censorship" about the laptop story). The story is radioactive. The veracity of it means nothing -- just the phrase is now a talking point, a campaign slogan. If my points are correct per the prior comment, what good does it serve the people to be amplified in a short attention span economy? Why shine light on dialog that sucks oxygen out of the room? HN is not the place to come to blows over tribal politics, but I think that discussing policies, strategies, and other political hacking is worthy of being explored if there's willingness to examine the impacts that these actions have.
originalvichy 4y ago
This is a tangent. Twitter declared this story a story about hacked material which they treated as rule-breaking at the time. They changed their rule afterwards, but it is a legitimate rule to have. The quality was measured by a group that was selected due to their broad range of leanings. It should be in the final paper.
rallison 4y ago
As mentioned elsewhere, the laptop story was not restricted for being misinformation, it was restricted due to Twitter's policy (at the time) on hacked materials. Some background: https://www.techdirt.com/2020/10/16/twitter-fixes-bad-policy-blocking-hacked-documents/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/10/16/twitter-fixes-bad-policy... It was a policy that had previously received criticism, and had already come into play in a significant story: https://www.techdirt.com/2020/09/16/content-moderation-case-study-twitter-removes-account-pointing-users-to-leaked-documents-obtained-hacking-collective-june-2020/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/09/16/content-moderation-case-... And, following the laptop story, Twitter changed their policy on hacked materials. And that's the thing with content moderation - specific examples of content moderation often themselves go viral, but often also shed the actual context of said moderation (as was the case in your example), and thus feed into existing narratives around bias in content moderation. With full context, one might still disagree with the policy, but the narrative falls away.

haberman 4y ago

I had the same skepticism as you, but the study authors did attempt to be fair by letting a set of politically balanced laypeople (equal number Democrat and Republican) adjudicate the trustworthiness of sites. They also had journalists rate the sites, but they present the results of both results (layperson-rated and journalist-rated). I wish they had included the list so we could see for ourselves. It's still possible that there are flaws in the study. But the it appears to take the concern of fairness more seriously than most.

leereeves 4y ago
Of course, that also raises the question of who they asked to rate the sites, and they don't provide that information either.

oezi 4y ago

As a European I don't know much about the Hunter Biden story, but it wasn't a political news story because it doesn't even cover a politically relevant person. It is a celebrity story and even two years later no allegation of substance seems to have come from it (skimming wikipedia). From a European perspective it was just outlandish hearsay and speculation. Hard to understand why Americans get so invested when no criminal case materializes.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
The news was that you couldn’t even talk about the truth of the situation in DMs on Twitter.
didericis 4y ago
This is a political minefield/one of the most polarized topics of conversation in a minefield of extremely polarized topics, and I greatly value this forum as a place for intelligent conversation. Please don't jump to any assumptions about my presentation of this perspective, or endorsement of crazy people who say similar sounding things, this is simply a summary of why this story is important to the right. The Hunter Biden story is significant because there are emails which suggest Hunter Biden had ties to foreign companies that wanted access to his father. This could be grounds for a criminal case implicating his father. Now, in a sane society during a less polarized election, this would have been discussed in the open, and people would make cases as to the relevance or irrelevance of the evidence, relevance to Joe Biden specifically, and whether the evidence merits investigation through proper channels in an open and transparent way. Since Trump was viewed as even more corrupt and more of a threat by enough people capable of suppressing the story, the story was suppressed, and this conversation didn't happen until after the election. That does not mean the entire FBI and judicial process is broken like some people on the right claim, which is an extremely dangerous accusation, and the lack of a proper case means we do not know the extent or non extent of corruption, but the suppression of the story was a violation of public trust by those who suppressed it and poured a lot of fuel on an already raging fire.
- notafraudster 4y ago
  > The Hunter Biden story is significant because there are emails which suggest Hunter Biden had ties to foreign companies that wanted access to his father. This could be grounds for a criminal case implicating his father. Now, in a sane society during a less polarized election, this would have been discussed in the open, and people would make cases as to the relevance or irrelevance of the evidence, relevance to Joe Biden specifically, and whether the evidence merits investigation through proper channels in an open and transparent way. I agree with that in principle. The idea that a presidential candidate's son has obviously nepotistic business appointments in industries and countries that he has no business being in presents a facial conflict of interest and should invite a debate on quid pro quo corruption. I would say these kinds of stories are a feature of both political parties in the U.S. and across a wide swath of time -- this is effectively the same role as the Clinton Foundation played in the previous election, for instance. And I think it makes sense to debate or investigate this kind of thing in public, including during the election. In fact, Hunter Biden's role in these companies was scrutinized to some degree earlier in the presidential election and also in the primary and also indeed over the last four years. So I reject the notion on the right that this is an issue that "could not" be discussed because "the elites" suppressed the discussion. My sense is that the eventual conclusion was what it seemed from the very beginning: Hunter Biden is a colossal fuckup, everyone around him tried to help him not be a fuckup, he kept being a fuckup, and it should be to no one's surprise that he tried to leverage his father even though there's no to limited evidence any such quid pro quo occurred. The laptop, though, is a pretty complicated thing. It feels more like a direct parallel to the Podesta email hacking in the 2016 election (which, among other things, spawned Pizzagate). Bad actors (in 2016, foreign intelligence; in 2020, a domestic political adversary) took steps to secure a large cache of material, potentially by committing crimes to do so, and released it to the public on the very eve of a presidential election as an October surprise. The framing of the stories on the right was that the _existence_ of the material (emails in 2016, laptop in 2020) was proof that the allegations against the candidate were true, even though basically none of the material seems at all connected to the allegations. Furthermore, the nature of the release was that the people who secured the damaging material obfuscated and laundered it. The press had neither the time nor the resources necessary to verify the contents of the material. Finally, the biggest risk was that large amounts of true material would be combined with knowingly fabricated material in a way that laundered the reputation of the false material. This is hardly an empty false flag thing, it's literally exactly what a nefarious actor _should_ do if they come into possession of huge amounts of stolen material to make the greatest impact. Although the reactions to the Hunter Biden story were overreactions, that's the framework that I think people had adopted. I think people were thinking back to the Podesta email hack and to the FBI confirmation of the Weiner stuff causing a significant late disruption in 2016 election and wanting to avoid the possibility of a similar disruption here. And I think in principle there is a responsibility to avoid this kind of chaos: for instance, if a candidate is accused of a heinous crime (say rape or murder) the day before an election, it is possible both that the accusation would have a serious impact on the election and that not enough time exists to validate, refute, or contextualize it. I can't say the exact length of time before an election that should be a sundown period, informally or formally, but I just recognize that you might imagine some combination of late breaking, serious, and difficult to verify that would merit a deliberate choice to not interfere with the election. The same thing occurred in France about 36 hours before the 2017 presidential election: Huge cache of Macron emails were hacked and distributed (probably by foreign intelligence). Opponents of Macron said, without evidence, that this was proof of Macron's perfidy and would sink him. The media generally refused to engage the story because it was the fruit of a poison tree and 36 hours is not enough time to work it out. The far-right party noted that this was censorship and the end of free speech and investigative journalism is over. The only winner in a situation like this are the agents of chaos.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

pstuart 4y ago

Hunter Biden's "laptop" is a misdirection campaign. The contents appear to be from Biden but whether or not it was actually sourced as claimed will likely never be verified (the recipient is conveniently effectively blind). But those that care about this story only seem to care about the story about the story, i.e., that there was effort to prevent propagating it. I find it fascinating that every person who is hung up on this story doesn't care about the substance or relevance of it. In regards to substance, it's a story about corruption. The corruption on its face is irrefutable (i.e., Hunter Biden was paid money in an attempt to purchase the influence of his father). That's genteel, old school corruption. But the relevance of it is that Hunter himself is a private citizen and his (mis)conduct is not really newsworthy. But the implication of it is that his father is equally corrupt (which has not been shown), and that is the entire point of the story. That charge of corruption is important to deflect any reports of corruption by the political rival of Hunter's father (of which there's significant reporting of such). My commenting here is pointless yet necessary: pointless because I've yet to see a cogent rebuttal, and necessary because this topic is toxic and should be countered as best possible. edit: 4th paragraph substance to relevance

leereeves 4y ago
It wasn't my intention to litigate this story here. I was simply citing it as an example of the difficulty of identifying misinformation. Also, I think a fair discussion of Twitter moderation should include a post-mortem of one of their most famous mistakes, discussing what Twitter did and what should they have done differently, and not so much the story itself. (Of course, the substance is also important, but this isn't the right place for that discussion.)
- pstuart 4y ago
  That's just it: I don't think it was a mistake (if we're talking "censorship" about the laptop story). The story is radioactive. The veracity of it means nothing -- just the phrase is now a talking point, a campaign slogan. If my points are correct per the prior comment, what good does it serve the people to be amplified in a short attention span economy? Why shine light on dialog that sucks oxygen out of the room? HN is not the place to come to blows over tribal politics, but I think that discussing policies, strategies, and other political hacking is worthy of being explored if there's willingness to examine the impacts that these actions have.

originalvichy 4y ago

This is a tangent. Twitter declared this story a story about hacked material which they treated as rule-breaking at the time. They changed their rule afterwards, but it is a legitimate rule to have. The quality was measured by a group that was selected due to their broad range of leanings. It should be in the final paper.

rallison 4y ago

As mentioned elsewhere, the laptop story was not restricted for being misinformation, it was restricted due to Twitter's policy (at the time) on hacked materials. Some background: https://www.techdirt.com/2020/10/16/twitter-fixes-bad-policy-blocking-hacked-documents/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/10/16/twitter-fixes-bad-policy... It was a policy that had previously received criticism, and had already come into play in a significant story: https://www.techdirt.com/2020/09/16/content-moderation-case-study-twitter-removes-account-pointing-users-to-leaked-documents-obtained-hacking-collective-june-2020/ https://www.techdirt.com/2020/09/16/content-moderation-case-... And, following the laptop story, Twitter changed their policy on hacked materials. And that's the thing with content moderation - specific examples of content moderation often themselves go viral, but often also shed the actual context of said moderation (as was the case in your example), and thus feed into existing narratives around bias in content moderation. With full context, one might still disagree with the policy, but the narrative falls away.