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I keep getting gobsmacked by how much misinformation and straight up lies there are on the internet these days. And what's worse is that I keep falling for it l

I keep getting gobsmacked by how much misinformation and straight up lies there are on the internet these days. And what's worse is that I keep falling for it like everyone else, even though I pride myself on being so skeptical about everything. I remember reading that last week and thinking "oh, interesting" and now I'm angry at myself for not questioning that more, especially since I worked at a bank. With so much manipulated information, AI-generated content, and straight up lying, I really can't tell what's real and fake anymore. I distinctly remember finally not being able to tell the difference between fake and real info during the Allen Texas shopping mall shooting. I went on Twitter to get more info and I couldn't tell what was real and what was fake for the first time because everything was so convincing. That feels like ages ago now because things are so much more sophisticated.

colechristensen 2y ago
In the attention economy, what you're saying being true has no relation to you getting paid (and reality is often more boring). This is what you get for wanting everything to be "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" at the same time in a market economy. Systems optimized to profit from free information have reached great efficiency.
geetee 2y ago
It's exhausting. Each side of every argument is full of misinformation, intentionally or not.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- drawkward 2y ago
  >Each side of every argument is full of misinformation, intentionally or not. This is just silly information, and is used to sow resignation and demean actual and valid arguments. There are plenty of arguments and forums where misinformation is treated disdainfully, as it should be. HN used to be one of them, but everything anti trump and musk seems to get brigaded, rather than debated. I will point out that it is predominantly one side in American politics using misinformation as a weapon. Its the side that brought us "teach the controverry" instead of accepting the scientific reality of evolution. Its the side that made it illegal for the CDC and ATF to do studies of firearms. Its the side that claims to be anti- politics in science while at the very same time politicizing science. Your statement benefits the side that doesnt have truth on its side, and is therefore harmful.
  - readthenotes1 2y ago
    You're saying the party of "the President is fine don't trust the cheap fakes" is to be trusted?
    - drawkward 2y ago
      I am making two claims: 1. Not all arguments suffer from misinformation on both sides. 2. The political right uses misinformation as a weapon at a scale that dwarfs that of the political left. Your single example does not counter that argument.
      - BurningFrog 2y ago
        Do you have an objective way to measure levels of "misinformation as a weapon" that supports claim 2?
      - grandempire 2y ago
        [flagged]
        zimpenfish 2y ago
        > The political right doesn’t have the same kind of media support. How do you figure that? From what I've seen, most US media leans right[0], if not overtly right-wing. [0] In that they'll hammer the left on every small issue whilst glossing over the more egregious actions of the right.
        milesrout 2y ago
        [flagged]
        zimpenfish 2y ago
        > suddenly it is a new problem when Trump does it. Nope. January 29, 2021: "Biden has taken heat from critics over his early reliance on executive action, with Republicans saying it betrays his vow to work with Congress on to build a consensus on issues."[0] February 6, 2014: "Executive Order tyranny -- Obama plans to rule America with pen, phone"[1] November 2, 2011: "Obama uses executive orders as a political tool"[2] February 21, 2001: "The Use and Abuse of Executive Orders and Other Presidential Directives"[3] [0] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-has-signed-40-executive-orders-and-actions-since-taking-office https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-has-signed-40-executi... [1] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/executive-order-tyranny-obama-plans-to-rule-america-with-pen-phone https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/executive-order-tyranny-obam... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/01/politics/obama-executive-orders/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/01/politics/obama-executive-... [3] https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-use-and-abuse-executive-orders-and-other-presidential-directives https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-use-an...
- dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
  That always was possible and always required critical thinking and further evidence to resolve. People just don't have the skills, or are being brainwashed into not using their skills.
- fncypants 2y ago
  Do not both sides any of this. One cannot claim that both sides present misinformation and then not acknowledge that one side is doing so intentionally and the other is not. Elon tweeted that there was a lot of 150-year-old recipients. That's all he said. [1] So there was a rush to point out why, if this 150 year old number is the only information he's providing of fraud, it is not a prima facie case of fraud. That was a good faith response to a bad faith, selective release of information. [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/musk-claims-150-year-olds-receiving-social-security-benefits https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/musk-claims-150-year-ol... So then Musk provides more data, but again, not enough data to provide all the context. What he leaves out is that there have been multiple, prior good faith attempts to investigate these data entries, identify whether there's any fraud, and address any problems. This was the work of inspectors general whose job is to work in good faith to try to resolve these issues. There is one side acting only in bad faith. If they were acting in good faith, they would raise these issues through legal channels (inspectors general) and then have an orderly, legal process to address them. That is how it has always been done, for a reason. They are not operating legally because they know that what they are doing is in bad faith and would be found out as such. What we are witnessing is a dismantling of the rule of law. It's important to recognize that and to not to be complicit in it.
  - Amezarak 2y ago
    You're replying to a thread on an article about how someone just made up the 1875 thing to own Elon. There's definitely a "both sides" problem here. Many more commenters are making totally unfounded assertions about how these systems actually work for the same reason. You yourself are pontificating about the inspector general's report at a level of expertise beyond what you likely have. I have some familiarity with IGs, though not in the SSA. It has been eye-opening to see people crawling out of the woodwork to talk about their role, their effectiveness, their "good faith attempts", etc. They don't actually know any of this: it's just ammo they found online to "get" Musk since the controversy started. Why is it so hard to just suspend judgement about these claims, rather than attack them with little basis? Or at least go after it for solid philosophical reasons? I can't understand why the level of discourse on this subject on Hacker News, of all places, is so bad.
cyanydeez 2y ago
Can you give us a misinformation example related to this post. This sounds like an empty complaint with no vector.
- chrisco255 2y ago
  There's a snarky thread going around attempting to dunk on DOGE employees who revealed that some social security recipients have 150 year old birth dates. The claim is that this is just the default start date for COBOL (like the UNIX epoch), but it's not even true, and even if it was, it's still a major problem if we have social security recipients with no birth date in the system.
  - bloomingkales 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - chrisco255 2y ago
      Have you interacted with the federal government? Or any government at all? Do you know how much money they waste? Do you think a 7 trillion dollar budget isn't going to be filled with multiple hundreds of billions of dollars of false payments, waste, fraud, and 42-year old loopholes that have never been closed? Our national debt is growing at trillions a year. That's not sustainable. The inflation is happening now. It gets a lot worse without this.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - drawkward 2y ago
        Of course there is waste. Nothing runs with 100% efficiency. You claim a huge scale of fraud, "multiple hundreds of billions of dollars" which we can bound as 200/7000 - 900/7000 Or something roughly in the range of 3-12%. So, not exactly invisible. Probably pretty findable. Where is the evidence of these "multiple hundreds of billions of dollars"? If you are going to go about it from individual fraudulent SS recipient upwards, you will be looking for fraud forever. A liftetime of SS is, what, $100,000? So, like 0.00005% of the amount of fraud you claim? If this is how DOGE is going about it, IT WOULD BE THE LEAST FUCKING EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT PROGRAM EVER. This is not how you find fraud. This is not how you audit. This is a smash and grab job, orchestrated by the most wealthy human and most powerful elected official on the planet. This is NOT democracy. This is Autocracy.
frugalmail 2y ago
In this case the misinformation isn't even the attack the mis-informers think it is. Anybody getting payments with this erroneous data is committing fraud because the choices with that mis-information are that we don't know how old they are. This means they have been 150 years old since they got into the system. That scenario is actually worse than they have been getting payments for some decades after their qualification age.
- zimpenfish 2y ago
  > This means they have been 150 years old since they got into the system. No, the theory being made was that they appear to be 150 years old because the marker for "unknown DOB" -when queried- comes out as 1875 by default and that wasn't accounted for / known about by the Special Boys given their lack of knowledge around these systems. It's entirely plausible that they look 150 years old (with a badly formed query done in a rush) but there's an "eligibility" section of fields which says they're eligible because they verified their citizenship[0] in 1952 with their military record[1]. Basically doing a query on DOB/age instead of eligibility. Easily done! Just not something to brag about in a press conference before triple-checking that you weren't about to make a massive arsehole out of yourself to the world. [0] Or however it works, I'm from the UK, I don't know. [1] Or equivalent validating document.

colechristensen 2y ago

In the attention economy, what you're saying being true has no relation to you getting paid (and reality is often more boring). This is what you get for wanting everything to be "free as in beer" and "free as in speech" at the same time in a market economy. Systems optimized to profit from free information have reached great efficiency.

geetee 2y ago

It's exhausting. Each side of every argument is full of misinformation, intentionally or not.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
drawkward 2y ago
>Each side of every argument is full of misinformation, intentionally or not. This is just silly information, and is used to sow resignation and demean actual and valid arguments. There are plenty of arguments and forums where misinformation is treated disdainfully, as it should be. HN used to be one of them, but everything anti trump and musk seems to get brigaded, rather than debated. I will point out that it is predominantly one side in American politics using misinformation as a weapon. Its the side that brought us "teach the controverry" instead of accepting the scientific reality of evolution. Its the side that made it illegal for the CDC and ATF to do studies of firearms. Its the side that claims to be anti- politics in science while at the very same time politicizing science. Your statement benefits the side that doesnt have truth on its side, and is therefore harmful.
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  You're saying the party of "the President is fine don't trust the cheap fakes" is to be trusted?
  - drawkward 2y ago
    I am making two claims: 1. Not all arguments suffer from misinformation on both sides. 2. The political right uses misinformation as a weapon at a scale that dwarfs that of the political left. Your single example does not counter that argument.
    - BurningFrog 2y ago
      Do you have an objective way to measure levels of "misinformation as a weapon" that supports claim 2?
    - grandempire 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - zimpenfish 2y ago
        > The political right doesn’t have the same kind of media support. How do you figure that? From what I've seen, most US media leans right[0], if not overtly right-wing. [0] In that they'll hammer the left on every small issue whilst glossing over the more egregious actions of the right.
        milesrout 2y ago
        [flagged]
        zimpenfish 2y ago
        > suddenly it is a new problem when Trump does it. Nope. January 29, 2021: "Biden has taken heat from critics over his early reliance on executive action, with Republicans saying it betrays his vow to work with Congress on to build a consensus on issues."[0] February 6, 2014: "Executive Order tyranny -- Obama plans to rule America with pen, phone"[1] November 2, 2011: "Obama uses executive orders as a political tool"[2] February 21, 2001: "The Use and Abuse of Executive Orders and Other Presidential Directives"[3] [0] https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-has-signed-40-executive-orders-and-actions-since-taking-office https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-has-signed-40-executi... [1] https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/executive-order-tyranny-obama-plans-to-rule-america-with-pen-phone https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/executive-order-tyranny-obam... [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/01/politics/obama-executive-orders/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/01/politics/obama-executive-... [3] https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-use-and-abuse-executive-orders-and-other-presidential-directives https://www.heritage.org/political-process/report/the-use-an...
dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
That always was possible and always required critical thinking and further evidence to resolve. People just don't have the skills, or are being brainwashed into not using their skills.
fncypants 2y ago
Do not both sides any of this. One cannot claim that both sides present misinformation and then not acknowledge that one side is doing so intentionally and the other is not. Elon tweeted that there was a lot of 150-year-old recipients. That's all he said. [1] So there was a rush to point out why, if this 150 year old number is the only information he's providing of fraud, it is not a prima facie case of fraud. That was a good faith response to a bad faith, selective release of information. [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/musk-claims-150-year-olds-receiving-social-security-benefits https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/musk-claims-150-year-ol... So then Musk provides more data, but again, not enough data to provide all the context. What he leaves out is that there have been multiple, prior good faith attempts to investigate these data entries, identify whether there's any fraud, and address any problems. This was the work of inspectors general whose job is to work in good faith to try to resolve these issues. There is one side acting only in bad faith. If they were acting in good faith, they would raise these issues through legal channels (inspectors general) and then have an orderly, legal process to address them. That is how it has always been done, for a reason. They are not operating legally because they know that what they are doing is in bad faith and would be found out as such. What we are witnessing is a dismantling of the rule of law. It's important to recognize that and to not to be complicit in it.
- Amezarak 2y ago
  You're replying to a thread on an article about how someone just made up the 1875 thing to own Elon. There's definitely a "both sides" problem here. Many more commenters are making totally unfounded assertions about how these systems actually work for the same reason. You yourself are pontificating about the inspector general's report at a level of expertise beyond what you likely have. I have some familiarity with IGs, though not in the SSA. It has been eye-opening to see people crawling out of the woodwork to talk about their role, their effectiveness, their "good faith attempts", etc. They don't actually know any of this: it's just ammo they found online to "get" Musk since the controversy started. Why is it so hard to just suspend judgement about these claims, rather than attack them with little basis? Or at least go after it for solid philosophical reasons? I can't understand why the level of discourse on this subject on Hacker News, of all places, is so bad.

cyanydeez 2y ago

Can you give us a misinformation example related to this post. This sounds like an empty complaint with no vector.

chrisco255 2y ago
There's a snarky thread going around attempting to dunk on DOGE employees who revealed that some social security recipients have 150 year old birth dates. The claim is that this is just the default start date for COBOL (like the UNIX epoch), but it's not even true, and even if it was, it's still a major problem if we have social security recipients with no birth date in the system.
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - chrisco255 2y ago
    Have you interacted with the federal government? Or any government at all? Do you know how much money they waste? Do you think a 7 trillion dollar budget isn't going to be filled with multiple hundreds of billions of dollars of false payments, waste, fraud, and 42-year old loopholes that have never been closed? Our national debt is growing at trillions a year. That's not sustainable. The inflation is happening now. It gets a lot worse without this.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - drawkward 2y ago
      Of course there is waste. Nothing runs with 100% efficiency. You claim a huge scale of fraud, "multiple hundreds of billions of dollars" which we can bound as 200/7000 - 900/7000 Or something roughly in the range of 3-12%. So, not exactly invisible. Probably pretty findable. Where is the evidence of these "multiple hundreds of billions of dollars"? If you are going to go about it from individual fraudulent SS recipient upwards, you will be looking for fraud forever. A liftetime of SS is, what, $100,000? So, like 0.00005% of the amount of fraud you claim? If this is how DOGE is going about it, IT WOULD BE THE LEAST FUCKING EFFICIENT GOVERNMENT PROGRAM EVER. This is not how you find fraud. This is not how you audit. This is a smash and grab job, orchestrated by the most wealthy human and most powerful elected official on the planet. This is NOT democracy. This is Autocracy.

frugalmail 2y ago

In this case the misinformation isn't even the attack the mis-informers think it is. Anybody getting payments with this erroneous data is committing fraud because the choices with that mis-information are that we don't know how old they are. This means they have been 150 years old since they got into the system. That scenario is actually worse than they have been getting payments for some decades after their qualification age.

zimpenfish 2y ago
> This means they have been 150 years old since they got into the system. No, the theory being made was that they appear to be 150 years old because the marker for "unknown DOB" -when queried- comes out as 1875 by default and that wasn't accounted for / known about by the Special Boys given their lack of knowledge around these systems. It's entirely plausible that they look 150 years old (with a badly formed query done in a rush) but there's an "eligibility" section of fields which says they're eligible because they verified their citizenship[0] in 1952 with their military record[1]. Basically doing a query on DOB/age instead of eligibility. Easily done! Just not something to brag about in a press conference before triple-checking that you weren't about to make a massive arsehole out of yourself to the world. [0] Or however it works, I'm from the UK, I don't know. [1] Or equivalent validating document.