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Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

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Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#91

Post by tptacek »

lj3 wrote: post #87
tptacek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that sites that report as news that the Dalai Lama joined Putin in condemning Obama and Clinton as progenitors of ISIS are not worth listening to. We are not applying the same standard to Fox News and CNN, because neither of those organizations simply invented crazy stories out of whole cloth and ran them as news on multiple different sites. Here's an exercise: take the craziest story you can find on ENDTH…

Webspam farms are spam and should be filtered as such. The fact is 'fake news' is a separate term and is using separate filters because it's a completely separate concept that is political in nature. You claim this isn't a slippery slope, but we've already slid down it a bit. Infowars was delisted by Quantcast as 'fake news'. Whether you like Alex Jones or not, I think we can both agree his site isn't blogspam.

No, they are not separate concepts. Your argument is akin to the one that says "if we block cialis spam, what's to prevent us from blocking all of commerce".

Why are you defending spam? You just did it upthread, when you suggested that maybe we shouldn't be so hostile to people who believe that the Dalai Lama endorsed Trump. The authors of that story do not believe that. It's webspam.

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#92

Post by tptacek »

lj3 wrote: post #90
notahacker wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't have similar qualms about voluntary mass blocking of ads. I think the reverse assumption - that everything should be considered a valid information source until conclusively proved otherwise - is probably a more dangerous bias than assuming that some media does add nothing to the world.

That logic suggests we should ban free speech and only allow certain people and organizations to be registered as valid information sources, preferably after passing some sort of test that shows they're legitimate and trustworthy.

I have an idea, why don't we just filter out all the obvious spam sites?

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#93

Post by lj3 »

tptacek wrote: post #91
lj3 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Webspam farms are spam and should be filtered as such. The fact is 'fake news' is a separate term and is using separate filters because it's a completely separate concept that is political in nature. You claim this isn't a slippery slope, but we've already slid down it a bit. Infowars was delisted by Quantcast as 'fake news'. Whether you like Alex Jones or not, I think we can both agree his site isn't blogspam.

No, they are not separate concepts. Your argument is akin to the one that says "if we block cialis spam, what's to prevent us from blocking all of commerce". Why are you defending spam? You just did it upthread, when you suggested that maybe we shouldn't be so hostile to people who believe that the Dalai Lama endorsed Trump. The authors of that story do not believe that . It's webspam.

Argumentum ad absurdum. I expected better from someone with your reputation here on HN.

And now you're not even reading what I said! Spam should be filtered as spam. 'fake news' applies to so much more than just spam, as I have already demonstrated.

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#94

Post by tptacek »

lj3 wrote: post #93
tptacek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not separate concepts. Your argument is akin to the one that says "if we block cialis spam, what's to prevent us from blocking all of commerce". Why are you defending spam? You just did it upthread, when you suggested that maybe we shouldn't be so hostile to people who believe that the Dalai Lama endorsed Trump. The authors of that story do not believe that . It's webspam.

Argumentum ad absurdum. I expected better from someone with your reputation here on HN. And now you're not even reading what I said! Spam should be filtered as spam. 'fake news' applies to so much more than just spam, as I have already demonstrated.

No, it's not reductio ad absurdum. The reason r.a.a. is a fallacy is that it introduces the false premise that the opponent must believe something ridiculous (that they clearly don't believe) for their statements to hold. But you actually just did defend the Dalai Lama site.

Are we agreed that ENDTHEFED.COM should be filtered? Maybe we're just arguing past each other.

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#95

Post by lj3 »

tptacek wrote: post #94
lj3 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argumentum ad absurdum. I expected better from someone with your reputation here on HN. And now you're not even reading what I said! Spam should be filtered as spam. 'fake news' applies to so much more than just spam, as I have already demonstrated.

No, it's not reductio ad absurdum. The reason r.a.a. is a fallacy is that it introduces the false premise that the opponent must believe something ridiculous (that they clearly don't believe) for their statements to hold. But you actually just did defend the Dalai Lama site . Are we agreed that ENDTHEFED.COM should be filtered? Maybe we're just arguing past each other.

No, I think I'm done. You stopped engaging with my facts a while ago and switched to pure rhetoric. You've lost.

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#96

Post by tedunangst »

tptacek wrote: post #80
ZenoArrow wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, but let's be fair. There's also a lot of people blaming recent results on breitbart. You may not consider it fake news, but I know a lot of people who'd say it's "just as bad". So is it surprising somebody thinks that "faux news" may get swept up by a fake news banner?

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#97

Post by jknoepfler »

To people who believe this kind of project is "paternalistic" or that filtering out noise is somehow weak or irresponsible, I disagree.

Time is finite. It is impossible to consume all of the information that is published in the world. It's not just a little impossible: the fraction of information that an individual can consume is very near zero. Most people who have worked in an academic or scientific field know that it is impossible to consume even a fraction of the domain-specific publications in their field, much less "all the news that's fit to print."

It makes sense, therefore, to have a strategy for selecting a subset of information that one trusts as "worth considering," which might include a spam filter (just as email has, for good reason).

I personally very seldom read news articles shared online, because my experience has been that they are consistently of very low quality. Speaking for myself, I get big world event news from the Economist, which has earned some trust, and the rare nytimes/wsj article that is about something it can't possibly fuck up (anything outside the borders of the United States is generally beyond NYT/WSJ).

Would I be wrong for filtering all of the shared news articles from my feed? The only reason I keep them there is that I skim Facebook to get a feel for what people are thinking about and feeling on a given day (to stay slightly "in touch" with people, even if I think they wallow in a world of self-serving garbage information and would be better served by finding something more interesting to occupy their minds).

A better criticism of this kind of filtering might that it is intrinsically arrogant, but I don't think it is any more paternalistic or irresponsible than a spam filter for email.

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#98

Post by allemagne »

tptacek wrote: post #25
allemagne wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example of "endingthefed.com" (appears to be an ultra-conservative platform, but nothing overly nonsensical) from the README implies otherwise.

Front page of that site: "German Scientists Prove There Is Life After Death". From the backcatalog: Putin Issues US Election Theft Warning, Orders Military To Protect Trump “At All Costs” BREAKING: Putin Just Gave Obama 24 Hours Or His Ships Will Open Fire Putin ally tells Americans: vote Trump or face nuclear war Putin Warns Trump…ELITES PLANNING YOUR ASSASSINATION Vladimir Putin Escapes New World Order Assassinatio…

>The front page is designed to look semi-sane. That's the point. Fakenews wouldn't work if you were just one click away from seeing that it's all a troll factory construction.

That didn't occur to me. Makes total sense. Thanks

Re: Show HN: Stop the Bullshit

#100

Post by noobermin »

programmarchy wrote: post #65
InclinedPlane wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to stop using the word "fake news" as though people were seeing stories about "bat boy" in the grocery store checkout aisle and believing them. This is propaganda. It's inflammatory, it's knowingly false, and it has a political agenda. It's propaganda.

I'd challenge you to name one news site that doesn't have a political agenda. Everything is "propaganda", including your comment, and mine.

"The sky is blue."

That statement isn't untrue, it is objectively observation with one's eyes or using spectrometers in the case of an individual who is colorblind. It isn't binary, statements can be rated on a range of truthfulness from false propaganda to very objective...and, arguments that are isomorphisms of "all sides do it" are harmful because they essentially justify parties who benefit from such propaganda.

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