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Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

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Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#71

Post by dragonwriter »

JacobJans wrote: post #66

I have interacted with several people on Facebook who rely on fake news sources. I pointed out fake news articles several times on one person's Facebook page. She agreed the articles were not true. However, she added "I don't have time to figure out if they're true. People can read your comments." I asked her what she thought of the fact that this particular article, which was blatantly false, was shared 16,000 times…

Note that when confronted about false stories (which were sourced from white aupremacist propaganda) he retweeted, the President-elect, while still a candidate, responded fairly similarly, so, yeah, it's definitely an attitude that is becoming quite normalized.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#72

Post by bitJericho »

sambe wrote: post #24

I know it's off-topic to comment on the quality of a submission, but this is the first time I've been truly shocked by a #1 HN story. Normally when there is some discussion about relevance to HN, I can at least say "this is not really for me, but there's no problem with it being here". This is so mundane and obvious that I suspect non-normal voting. If you found this story interesting - why? "On-Topic: Anything that…

Snowden is an American hero. Anything he has to say is interesting to me.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#73

Post by adventured »

fokov wrote: post #63
mzw_mzw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you trust them to break up all the alternate reality bubbles, or just the ones they don't like? What's truly dangerous here is that one organization has so much control over what news people see.

Is this really different than TV news? Most people stick to one network (Fox news, NBC, CNN, etc) and not only do they not watch the others but believe they are corrupt, fixed, and lying. The problem is we don't have multiple major news organizations per major area like we used to. Back then there was bias, but it was easier to be called out on it. Now I think many people are fine living in the bubble.

It's different because Facebook has captured nearly every American adult and they have a Google-like (in search) dominance over social. There's no news platform in US history that has ever come even remotely close to being able to claim that. They're just about worth more than every US media company combined, their reach and financial power are already incredible; four years from now they'll be as profitable as Google is today and their reach will likely have expanded further.

I can't see a scenario where Facebook manages to avoid anti-trust action against it in the next four to six years, both in Europe and the US.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#75

Post by randyrand »

j2bax wrote: post #18
randyrand wrote: post #11

I really think this problem is way overblown. Most people follow many different news sources. I personally don't even rely on Facebook for news at all.

I think you vastly overestimate the general populations ability to actively inform themselves.

I think you underestimate it. There's a really common bias where people assume everyone else is an idiot/bad driver/etc except themselves.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#76

Post by twblalock »

CalChris wrote: post #57
fixxer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing from electoral college to pop vote also means the nature of campaigning will change. California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter. I don't think Trump did any non military focused rallies there. I am in Illinois. I didn't vote in 2008 or 2012 because I knew my vote would have no impact. Give me a popular vote and you might have Romney... Be careful what you wi…

Romney lost 51-47 in the popular vote.

That's not a useful fact, because both candidates would have campaigned differently if the president was chosen by popular vote rather than the electoral college. It's very unlikely that the popular vote would have been the same.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#77

Post by hdctambien »

CalChris wrote: post #57
fixxer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing from electoral college to pop vote also means the nature of campaigning will change. California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter. I don't think Trump did any non military focused rallies there. I am in Illinois. I didn't vote in 2008 or 2012 because I knew my vote would have no impact. Give me a popular vote and you might have Romney... Be careful what you wi…

Romney lost 51-47 in the popular vote.

Of those that voted. I think fixxer is saying that there are alot of people that don't vote (about half of the voting population) because they are an X in a Y state so they don't think their vote will change that. But if the electoral college went poof, a lot more of the missing 50% would vote and that could change the expected value of a popular vote.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#78

Post by supergarfield »

thebooktocome wrote: post #59
ochoseis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economist is another good option. They have decent digital versions, including a daily edition that's just enough news for me.

The Economist carries just as much propaganda as any other political magazine. They're better at hiding it, perhaps.

Your definition of propaganda probably is a little to inclusive. In my experience, the Economist very rarely gets the facts wrong (including by omission of major elements). The "letters to the editor" at the beginning of every issue are also almost always critical of previous issues of the magazine, and they don't have a problem with publishing them.

What the Economist constantly does is give its opinion on the facts, and that opinion usually sums up to how good free-trade and libertarian policies are. I definitely wouldn't count that as propaganda. You could, but then any newspaper with opinion pieces would be propaganda, which is not what is normally meant by "propaganda".

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#79

Post by rhblake »

fixxer wrote: post #49
zanny wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its impossible to happen under the system as it is established, but you just needed to push for a constitutional amendment and / or state compact like the one to overturn the electoral college to change the voting system to support either proportional (doesn't work when you elect a single seat like the president) or STV (ie runoff voting). The chance of that happening in the next four years? Really low. About as unli…

Changing from electoral college to pop vote also means the nature of campaigning will change. California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter. I don't think Trump did any non military focused rallies there. I am in Illinois. I didn't vote in 2008 or 2012 because I knew my vote would have no impact. Give me a popular vote and you might have Romney... Be careful what you wi…

> California, for example, has a huge population of Republicans and now their vote would matter.

And at the same time votes from Democrats in California would also matter more. I'd assume a number of people who'd vote Democrat in CA don't vote because they know the Democrats won't lose anyway.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#80

Post by sambe »

untog wrote: post #65
sambe wrote: post #24

I know it's off-topic to comment on the quality of a submission, but this is the first time I've been truly shocked by a #1 HN story. Normally when there is some discussion about relevance to HN, I can at least say "this is not really for me, but there's no problem with it being here". This is so mundane and obvious that I suspect non-normal voting. If you found this story interesting - why? "On-Topic: Anything that…

Like it or not, tech now has a huge, huge place in society. A tweak in Facebook's algorithm could easily decide an election (I'm not saying it has , but it definitely could ). For many people on HN, their work has the potential to have social implications in a way that was never the case twenty years ago. I for one am glad to see stories like this posted to HN, as I think engineers that make things like the algorithm…

Right, sure. I'm absolutely not surprised that people want to talk about the role of Facebook in society, or fake news, or the algorithms used. And much of that has been covered recently in other front-page articles. Some of them have been interesting to me, some haven't, I definitely won't complain if there are more of them.

However, this particular article doesn't provide any interesting commentary on Facebook algorithms, its role in society or fake news. It's borderline content-free and I find that puzzling. Snowden says we should be wary of getting our news from a single source. Did this add something to any of the subjects you mention?

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