Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 335 posts

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#151

Post by angry-hacker »

popmystack wrote: post #146
angry-hacker wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For someone outside of U.S, both right (breitbart etc.) and left (huff etc.) are propaganda all the way down . It is your left bias. And the people on other political spectrum feel the same but other way around. Watching American elections is like seeing a freak show. I don't understand who are those people who can support any of the candidates or the media.

That's a really cheap false equivalency. You've basically side nothing while ignorning the practical reality of what we're discussing. Take for example, the fact that Fox News will continually post stories about how Global Warming is a hoax, which is something the Huffington Post definitely won't do. The Huffington Post tends to write click-baity headlines, but they've never out right used lies in their articles. Tha…

And Huff constantly publishes stories telling gender doesn't exist. All the scientists beg to differ.

Look mate I'm not interested in arguing who is more wrong. The fact is both sides have bias and talk about things that for whatever reason they find most important. And usually it bothers other side of the political spectrum so it's like a never ending loop from both sides.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#152

Post by popmystack »

jgalt212 wrote: post #128
untog wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Not well versed in Huff Po but the left-leaning likes of NYT publish stories based in fact and backed up with reporting. Breitbart report whatever they wish without ever confirming if anything in a story is true.

I mostly read Huff Po when I, as a white man, am feeling too good about myself. Then I go to Huff Po and read 20 articles about how horrible white men are. It's basically like watching a Lifetime Movie. All the villains are straight white males. Except around Christmas, when all of sudden, they become caring selfless individuals.

I'm sorry, what?

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#153

Post by popmystack »

angry-hacker wrote: post #151
popmystack wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a really cheap false equivalency. You've basically side nothing while ignorning the practical reality of what we're discussing. Take for example, the fact that Fox News will continually post stories about how Global Warming is a hoax, which is something the Huffington Post definitely won't do. The Huffington Post tends to write click-baity headlines, but they've never out right used lies in their articles. Tha…

And Huff constantly publishes stories telling gender doesn't exist. All the scientists beg to differ. Look mate I'm not interested in arguing who is more wrong. The fact is both sides have bias and talk about things that for whatever reason they find most important. And usually it bothers other side of the political spectrum so it's like a never ending loop from both sides.

>And Huff constantly publishes stories telling gender doesn't exist.

They definitely don't do this. It seems like you have a significant misunderstanding of the literature being discussed.

>Look mate I'm not interested in arguing who is more wrong.

No, it's about who is wrong _more often_ and who reports fake stories _more often_. When the standard for one set of sources is consistently absurdly low then you can't just pretend all sources are equal. Again, it's a false equivalency.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#154

Post by DanielBMarkham »

angry-hacker wrote: post #104
vinhboy wrote: post #34

Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda sites. And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a completely fictional headline c…

For someone outside of U.S, both right (breitbart etc.) and left (huff etc.) are propaganda all the way down . It is your left bias. And the people on other political spectrum feel the same but other way around. Watching American elections is like seeing a freak show. I don't understand who are those people who can support any of the candidates or the media.

Agreed.

I'm in the U.S., and I constantly scan most of the major news source and commentary headlines.

It's a cesspool out there.

For a bit of history as I remember it, for what it's worth: in the 80s and 90s, I think, right-wing think tanks started providing a lot of research and background material. Of course these were slanted to right-wing views, but for the most part, unless you were really digging for stuff, it was academic. So if you had an argument about Gulf War I? You could, with effort, find some right-wing slanted stuff. But it was all alongside other academic material. It all balanced out. It was possible to consume a bit of bias and still make analysis work.

Then suddenly when the net started taking off, all of that research and such became much more easily available. If you were some right-wing guy looking to bolster point X, Google was your friend! You could find some nice charts and data.

Of course this was intolerable for the left, as it should be, so they started funding their own foundations and truth-providers.

This quickly became an escalating war. The titles got more and more scandalous and no matter what side you were on no matter the topic, you could find some studies and PhDs somewhere to back you up. It became a post-truth era.

Now it's all grown into vertical silos. Left-wing news sources publish left-wing commentators who repeat left-wing studies. Same thing happens on the right.

It's reached the point now where not only are the headlines and articles slanted trash, but it's problematic to sort it all out. In many cases you need to track an issue over time in both left and right-wing silos to arrive at something that works. The cognitive load for the average reader is simply too great. So instead they just stick inside their bubble and go through their lives not worrying about it.

I think this election a large percentage of people are finally figuring out how hosed up and colluding the systems of news and politics are. I'm not sure there will be improvement, but it's good to see a little daylight shining on things.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#156

Post by dhimes »

jsmith0295 wrote: post #127
vinhboy wrote: post #34

Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda sites. And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a completely fictional headline c…

My perspective is that they're basically the same, The NY Times (and CNN and Fox and many others) are just a lot more subtle about it than Breitbart. But fundamentally it's the same thing. There's a pre-established narrative, and they find a way to make everything fit it. If there's something that contradicts it directly they don't even report on it.

I see it differently. I was around when Bill Clinton was under siege. The "Left Wing" papers (WaPo, for example, was my local) turned on him just like the right wing outlets did.

Some sites don't do this. When it became clear that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was misguided, the propaganda sites did not jump on board. When Rumsfeld finally admitted we weren't going to find weapons of mass destruction the right-biased sites changed the narrative and started trying to make other stories dominate the news cycle.

It happens on the left as well (watch some of the MSNBC shows). That's the difference. It shows up in the willingness to criticize your own team.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#157

Post by panic »

angry-hacker wrote: post #104
vinhboy wrote: post #34

Thank god someone is writing about this. Recently I've been on the Yahoo's homepage a lot, because of Fantasy Football, and I noticed that a lot of the content is exactly like the article says, fake news from right-wing propaganda sites. And no, this is not me expressing my liberal bias. It's one thing to have opinionated headlines like the Huffington Post, it's another thing to have a completely fictional headline c…

For someone outside of U.S, both right (breitbart etc.) and left (huff etc.) are propaganda all the way down . It is your left bias. And the people on other political spectrum feel the same but other way around. Watching American elections is like seeing a freak show. I don't understand who are those people who can support any of the candidates or the media.

The top Breitbart headline, "Criminal Aliens Sexually Assault 70,000 American Women — But Paul Ryan Targets Trump", is willfully inciting anti-immigrant sentiment by taking numbers out of context. According to the report they cite, 69,929 criminal aliens (or 3% of the total criminal alien population they measured) had been arrested for sex-related crimes between August 1955 and April 2010. The number is true but the inference is false.

While the Huffington Post obviously sensationalizes things too, their top headline, "SEX ASSAULT SPREE / ACCUSATIONS PILE UP", is completely true: the accusations are piling up. I don't think you can draw an equivalence here.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#158

Post by mbillie1 »

gadders wrote: post #102
outlace wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people say it's impossible to have unbiased news. Of course this is true in a trivial sense, in that anything written by a human with intent to be interesting to read is likely to have some bias. And of course one can bias the news simply by choosing what to report and not report (eg if all you report are all the things fmr Pres. Bush did wrong, then the audience will get a bad impression). However, there is abs…

>> When you read 3 different versions of the same news story by BBC, NPR, and NYT (for example), then hopefully the biases sort of cancel out and you get something closer to the truth. You list three left-leaning news organisations, and expect their biases to cancel out? Wouldn't they reinforce each other?

I am not accusing you personally of this, but the tactic of continually accusing more and more mainstream publications of being left-leaning in order to make room for e.g. Breitbart / InfoWars is becoming increasingly common, and it's a wholly fallacious argument. All you need to do is push the boundary of the extreme right quite far along and all the sudden all ordinary news outlets lean "left" by comparison.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#159

Post by dhimes »

humanrebar wrote: post #144
majormajor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> take abortion, you are either for choice, or you believe it is infanticide Well, no, even on abortion there is usually a position somewhere in the middle is where a lot of people end up (and you left out part of the spectrum, where even contraceptives are believed to be morally wrong), and usually the law has ended up somewhere in the middle, too. We confuse "loudest" views with "most common" a lot these days, so I…

Some "middle positions" on abortion tend to be poorly thought out from a deontological perspective. Allowing abortion in cases of rape makes zero sense if abortion is murder, for example. Help should surely be given to rape victims, but giving it in the form of infanticide?

I understand your point but I don't think we should continue on the particular topic of abortion in this thread.

Re: Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors

#160

Post by quirkafleeg »

argonaut wrote: post #136
EJTH wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT published a news article about car fires in Denmark, where they blamed the "right wing lower class" for the fires. No evidence given for this at all. Infact all evidence points in a different direction: Arab Ghetto kids (I live in one of the places, where there was car fires, I can tell you that the right-wing thing is complete BS)

If this is the article you are talking about: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/world/europe/copenhagen-de... , you are misreading it. "One theory is that cars in Denmark are being burned by individuals from an angry underclass in a country where far-right groups have organized bitter protests against immigration, calling it a threat to the nation’s identity." The article makes it clear the "angry underclass" is sepa…

If that paragraph is not suggesting the far-right may be responsible, why does it refer to their "bitter protests" immediately after the theory that an "angry underclass" are burning cars?

Why even mention the far-right at all, if nobody is suggesting they have something to do with these crimes?

Post reply on HN