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Oddly prescient. We're converging on a bimodal world of information. 1. Trusted, centralised sources like the Economist, BBC, NYTimes, etc. 2. Everything else

Oddly prescient. We're converging on a bimodal world of information. 1. Trusted, centralised sources like the Economist, BBC, NYTimes, etc. 2. Everything else, you should basically assume is generated information pushing some agenda. Quoting some stats from an article on HN mid last year (links to sources didn't copy over) [1] --------------------------------- * Elon Musk estimates that 20% of Twitter users are bots. The authors of this paper suggest 14% as an upper bound. * Supposedly 10% — or around 95m — of accounts on Instagram are bot/spam accounts. * In a study of the first impeachment of Donald Trump (same paper as linked above), bots made up 1% of active users, but posted 31% of the tweets. * Some 42% of Amazon reviews are fake. Amazon are suing Facebook for ‘failing to tackle fake review factories’ * TikTok is not immune either. Bots are artificially inflating popularity of accounts and posting videos that are essentially adverts. Here’s a comprehensive guide to buying bots on TikTok. * According to this article, “over 80 percent of NFTs minted for free on OpenSea are fake, plagiarised or spam”. --------------------------------- For any platform where any user is free to create their own content. In the not too distant future, nine times out of ten, they'll be a bot. [1] https://grandy.substack.com/p/the-new-normal-the-coming-tsunami https://grandy.substack.com/p/the-new-normal-the-coming-tsun...

ridgered4 4y ago
> * Some 42% of Amazon reviews are fake. Amazon are suing Facebook for ‘failing to tackle fake review factories’ Why is it Facebook's job to make sure Amazon's reviews aren't fake? I guess I don't understand the pipeline for fake reviews or something.
- fumblebee 4y ago
  Feels closer to an SNL skit. Here's the original link to the news story [1]. Clearly this is a problem on the Amazon side, and not the Facebook side. If Amazon design their platform in a way where fake reviews are trivial to write, then they will be written, regardless of whether the groups behind them have communities on Facebook, or Reddit, or wherever else. [1] https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-files-lawsuit-against-10-000-facebook-groups-designed-to-create-fake-reviews-12654766 https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-files-lawsuit-against-10-0...
Georgelemental 4y ago
> 1. Trusted, centralised sources like the Economist, BBC, NYTimes, etc. > 2. Everything else, you should basically assume is generated information pushing some agenda. Those "trusted" sources are propaganda too, by the way
generalizations 4y ago
> "Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002. > Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms. (http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html) I think we're gonna need GPT/AI tools just to sort through the noise and find the news worth hearing about.

ridgered4 4y ago

> * Some 42% of Amazon reviews are fake. Amazon are suing Facebook for ‘failing to tackle fake review factories’ Why is it Facebook's job to make sure Amazon's reviews aren't fake? I guess I don't understand the pipeline for fake reviews or something.

fumblebee 4y ago
Feels closer to an SNL skit. Here's the original link to the news story [1]. Clearly this is a problem on the Amazon side, and not the Facebook side. If Amazon design their platform in a way where fake reviews are trivial to write, then they will be written, regardless of whether the groups behind them have communities on Facebook, or Reddit, or wherever else. [1] https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-files-lawsuit-against-10-000-facebook-groups-designed-to-create-fake-reviews-12654766 https://news.sky.com/story/amazon-files-lawsuit-against-10-0...

Georgelemental 4y ago

> 1. Trusted, centralised sources like the Economist, BBC, NYTimes, etc. > 2. Everything else, you should basically assume is generated information pushing some agenda. Those "trusted" sources are propaganda too, by the way

generalizations 4y ago

> "Suits make a corporate comeback," says the New York Times. Why does this sound familiar? Maybe because the suit was also back in February, September 2004, June 2004, March 2004, September 2003, November 2002, April 2002, and February 2002. > Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren't about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms. (http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html) I think we're gonna need GPT/AI tools just to sort through the noise and find the news worth hearing about.