While I like the friendly notification/explanation, any tool targeting fake news should do a little better in establishing its own credibility. You want to persuade, not block. I'm not sure the dollar amount is enough. We see it in these very comments: show the user a sample of obvious falsehoods they published. This way you could probably come up with a threshold where you just give up.
Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
71–80 of 117 posts
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#72[deleted]
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#73Fake news = news we don't like. This is just another way to make secluded echo chambers. I see some people learned nothing from the election.
No, fake news = spam sites built from scripts consisting largely of a backcatalog nonsense stories ("Pope endorses Putin for US Presidential Election") with a one or two carefully produced fake stories as a "payload", instead of a purchasing call-to-action like other webspam sites.
You can say that until you're blue in the face, but nobody believes it anymore. This sort of block list has already been used to justify the blocking of completely legitimate (albeit right wing) news sites from Google.
The fact of the matter is this isn't a spam filter, no matter how much you want to spin it that way. Anytime I see the phrase "fake news" I know for sure there's political bias at play. That phrase didn't exist in any real way before the election.
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#74Interesting project, Is censorship the best coarse of action? Bare with me for a second, would it not be better to somehow overlay a meter or light indicating that this story is likely false. Even better, some sort of indicator that showed the # of sources (if any) and devised some sort of rating of quality/truthfulness. I'm against all the fake news in Facebook et all but if we dont teach people to be good at detect…
Censorship is not the best way forward. People need to adjust (read: acquire) critical thinking skills. But let's start with the media. For example, quoting unvetted tweaks should be grounds for shaming, or worse.
In addition,it should be not that this tool can be used to apply any prejudice, bias, etc. I certainly empathize with the sentiment here but this can quickly becomes a case of be careful what you wish for.
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
This blocklist is ridiculously easy to extend to sources of information which upset many people but are not fake
Yes, computers are good at things like that. For my part, I'm worried that they might choose to blacklist Pitchfork, and then I won't know whether to buy the next Animal Collective album.
We must identify a solution which prevents Pitchfork from being blocked
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. Those are the only websites I'm interested in targeting with this extension. For example, I would never blacklist Breitbart, because I'm not interested in censoring political opinions I disagree with. I just want to free us from the burden of these websites that add nothing to the world and leech attention from everyone.
> I just want to free us from the burden of these websites that add nothing to the world and leech attention from everyone. The slope is very slippery. It is very easy to put forth an argument that some left/right wing media "[adds] nothing to the world and [leeches] attention from everyone" Keeping the focus on blatant spam sites is a noble cause, but this tool is as easily misused as a firearm.
I disagree on this slope being slippery (or actually, this being a slope at all).
Let me be more precise, and use tptacek's words in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12999887: "fake news = spam sites built from scripts consisting largely of a backcatalog nonsense stories [...] with a one or two carefully produced fake stories as a "payload".
I think this definition is as objective as it gets, and clearly excludes things I might disagree with politically, but are not the target of this extension.
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, computers are good at things like that. For my part, I'm worried that they might choose to blacklist Pitchfork, and then I won't know whether to buy the next Animal Collective album.
We must identify a solution which prevents Pitchfork from being blocked
For some definition of "must", sure!
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, fake news = spam sites built from scripts consisting largely of a backcatalog nonsense stories ("Pope endorses Putin for US Presidential Election") with a one or two carefully produced fake stories as a "payload", instead of a purchasing call-to-action like other webspam sites.
You can say that until you're blue in the face, but nobody believes it anymore. This sort of block list has already been used to justify the blocking of completely legitimate (albeit right wing) news sites from Google. The fact of the matter is this isn't a spam filter, no matter how much you want to spin it that way. Anytime I see the phrase "fake news" I know for sure there's political bias at play. That phrase did…
So just to be clear, you think there really is a chance the Dalai Lama endorsed both Putin and Trump?
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#79Fake news isn't the problem. People willing to think critically is. The problem is, no one wants to know their baby is ugly. So the bury their heads in their person echo chamber.
Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit
#80Fake news = news we don't like. This is just another way to make secluded echo chambers. I see some people learned nothing from the election.
Exactly. Blocking sites doesn't solve the issues, if anything it makes things worse. We need to be able to respectfully debate people we disagree with, not shut them out. This video pretty much outlines what I think about the recent US election and how I think we should look to move on from it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs
There's no "debate" involved with these sites. They're webspam. When someone sends you cialis spam, do you reply with an email attempting to persuade them to stop sending unsolicited commercial email?
Yours is yet another comment arguing from the faulty premise that "fakenews" describes sites like Breitbart. Breitbart is a horrible site, but it's not webspam fakenews.