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

281–290 of 335 posts

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

#281

Post by craigyk »

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'd say US news sources strive to hard to be "fair" where their definition of fair is based on a prior of both sides being on opposite sides, but equally distant, from some "center".

I can't go to CNN (what most on the "right" would consider "left") most days without seeing some headline about Trump unaccompanied by a headline about Hillary, in what I can presume is an attempt to be "balanced". The headlines are crafted to make things look equally revelatory. But when you read the articles you find that one is a serious strike (saying shocking things on a mic), and the other is usually a non-story, ie. leaked emails showing the candidate saying pretty much exactly what their public stance has been all along.

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

#282

Post by res0nat0r »

551199 wrote: post #237
JeremyNT wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious about this Greenwald quote, which does not really match my perception of recent media coverage, so I went and looked up the date[0]: the article in which the quote appears was published in July. Greenwald's context here is mostly (or entirely? I'm not sure when the interview itself was conducted) based on the primary process, which certainly seemed strongly anti-Trump, to the extent that many outlets ev…

I don't vote but the media bias against Trump is absolutely ridiculous. Makes me question everything I've read from the news. False story after story. Clinton campaigns Wikileaks emails confirm a vast media collaboration campaign to smear Trump and avoid negative Clinton stories. Considering Greenwalt: October 11 2016, Glenn Greenwald: In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots http…

> False story after story.

What is false?

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

#283

Post by res0nat0r »

551199 wrote: post #259
hx87 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no matter how fact-free, no matter how irrational, no matter how dangerous The allegations against Trump are based on fact, rational, and hardly dangerous.

Like the rational 'fact' that Trump is a Russian agent. Please.

No one claimed that. They are just repeating the fact that he praises Putin more than Obama.

Repeating words that directly come out of his mouth isn't bias.

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

#284

Post by retox »

bartread wrote: post #143
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.

Agreed, and sadly not limited to the US. One of the things I (eventually) realised is that here in the UK The Guardian is equivalent to The Daily Mail, but for liberal intelligentsia instead of Conservatives and UKIP supporters.

The Guarniad has become mostly opinion click/outrage bait, and then they wonder why people are turning away in droves.

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

#285

Post by res0nat0r »

cmdrfred wrote: post #228
seertaak wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Glenn Greenwald, who can hardly be accused of being right-wing or a Trump supporter, on media bias: The U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president. I don’t have an actual problem with that because I share the premises on which it is based about why he poses such extreme dangers. But that doesn’t mean that as a journalist, or even jus…

This is extremely obvious if you are non-partisan. Right now, there are huge issues about Clinton just released by wikileaks[0] she said that she has a "public position" and a "private position" to placate a room full of bankers (Read: Hey guys I won't really do any of that Bernie Sanders stuff, I'm just saying it for votes) CNN's top story: Trump said "grab her in the pussy" in 2005 [0] http://www.washingtontimes.co…

That's not at all what that means, she explained what that meant during the last debate.

This is the issue with all of these "leaks", they can create a one sentence soundbyte and make uninformed people think conspiracy theories when in fact it is standard mundane work being done by people trying to fix complex problems involving many different groups of people who need to come together to find a solution.

No wonder why the leaks are always in drips, no one is bothered or intelligent enough to spend more than 3 seconds analyzing the story they'll just re-post some nonsense from their Facebook feed and assume it is true.

I think this is the exact reason Trump is where he is. The right wing media frenzy has come full force and the echo chamber has reached a new high. Unfortunately when he loses badly the conspiracy nonsense will come back full force in that he was cheated out of the election. No one but the subset of a subset of Republicans will believe this but it is what it is.

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

#286

Post by mbillie1 »

talmand wrote: post #236
mbillie1 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be fair, the opposite is true as well.

Absolutely - it's less about left/right and more about "I can discredit reasonable sources as biased by recalibrating what bias means based on these extreme outliers"

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

#287

Post by hx87 »

551199 wrote: post #259
hx87 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no matter how fact-free, no matter how irrational, no matter how dangerous The allegations against Trump are based on fact, rational, and hardly dangerous.

Like the rational 'fact' that Trump is a Russian agent. Please.

Nobody is claiming that he is a Russian agent. At most, they are claiming that he is rhetorically pro-Russian, perhaps because of admiration for Putin's leadership style, perhaps because of hopes for future deals in Russia in case the 'running for President' thing doesn't work out.

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

#288

Post by soundwave106 »

cmdrfred wrote: post #228
seertaak wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Glenn Greenwald, who can hardly be accused of being right-wing or a Trump supporter, on media bias: The U.S. media is essentially 100 percent united, vehemently, against Trump, and preventing him from being elected president. I don’t have an actual problem with that because I share the premises on which it is based about why he poses such extreme dangers. But that doesn’t mean that as a journalist, or even jus…

This is extremely obvious if you are non-partisan. Right now, there are huge issues about Clinton just released by wikileaks[0] she said that she has a "public position" and a "private position" to placate a room full of bankers (Read: Hey guys I won't really do any of that Bernie Sanders stuff, I'm just saying it for votes) CNN's top story: Trump said "grab her in the pussy" in 2005 [0] http://www.washingtontimes.co…

One of the Wikileaks "scandals" in this article is that Hillary Clinton advocates "a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders".

Scandal? Come on, that's not a scandal, that a policy position. Personally, I agree with free trade in general, so I'm not scandalized by this "revelation" one bit.

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

#289

Post by res0nat0r »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #230
devrelm wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How are the numbers taken out of context? The numbers lack context in that they don't specify a rate, merely a value. It makes it sound like 70K women are attacked each year by undocumented immigrants, when the reality is that the number is closer to 1.27K per year since 1955. Let's do some back of the napkin math: There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in the US, meaning that the rate of sexual assault…

The numbers don't claim to specify a rate - that was your inference. Also, your numbers seem to demonstrate the exact dishonesty that you accuse Breitbart of doing. The number cited for illegal aliens is the number of arrests. The number you cite for the general population is a victimization survey which includes a lot of alleged rapes that were never reported to the police. (In fact, I can't even figure out if all o…

That's the problem. The people reading the site think there are 70k rapes a year by reading the headline, and that is the incorrect, and a problem. The site exists to put up data as such to incite hatred against immigrants.

We are now in a post-fact era. Watching the current idiocy of the Trump speech happening right now shows it in full force. Any factual data people don't like now is a "conspiracy".

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

#290

Post by dmansen »

seertaak wrote: post #182
panic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your opinion, how would that headline read if the numbers weren't taken out of context? "Criminal Aliens Arrested for Sex-Related Crimes 70,000 Times Between 1955 and 2010 — But Paul Ryan Targets Trump" The original headline creates an emotional impact by implying certain things: that these 70,000 events are sexual assaults (not generic sex crimes like indecent exposure etc.) against women (implying a relationship…

OK, so it seems you have two objections. First that the headline omits the fact that that the period involved is not annual, thus optically inflating the figure. Second, you object that the phrase "sexually assaulted" is used instead of the more accurate and neutral phrase "arrested for sex-related crimes". I have to say I agree with you on both counts. It would have been more accurate and neutral to write the headli…

"Criminal Aliens Sexually Assault 70,000 American Women". You're saying you don't see ANY problem with this headline? The inference is that this is a giant problem that we should be addressing right now, that it's eclipsing all other issues, when in fact it isn't in the slightest. You're being wilfully obtuse if you don't see the subtext: "Be very afraid of criminal aliens, they're coming to hurt you and rape you."

Let's not dismiss what inaccuracy here can lead to: bigotry on false pretenses, violence against innocent immigrants, and blindly supporting wars against "the wrong kind of people."

Post reply on HN