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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

#261

Post by ethbro »

pg314 wrote: post #258
eriknstr wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the world so radically different in this regard now? I'm not disagreeing outright, but I still think that lies, misinformation and misrepresentation have been a part of human communications since the dawn of time. Remember the chain e-mails that were oh so popular prior to social networks? And before that, before electronics, there must have been a lot of bullshit that was spread in the written word on paper and b…

The feedback loop is much tighter now. The more outrageous a story is, the more people click it, and the more money that story makes. You can immediately measure the effect (the Macedonian teenagers quickly zoomed in to the more gullible Trump supporters, because they made more money). In the past news sources had a reputation to protect, so crazy stories were confined to tabloids and some radio shows. Now all these…

The yellow journalism feedback loop of the late 19th century was pretty tight.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#262

Post by balthamael »

I don't see this as a new problem tbh. It's a function of human nature. We like to think that we are smarter and better than our primitive ancestors but the fact is that we are exactly as dumb or as smart as they were. Only thing that separates us is our knowledge. But we are just as prone to bias, intellectual weakness, selfish dishonesty and irrationality than our dumb ancestors. Most people are followers, we want to be in a group, we want to belong, we want to be led and above else we want to feel good about ourselves. People believe what they want to believe because that is safe, comfortable and easy. The psychology is the same as religion, minus the supernatural. This election showed as much. We are perfectly willing to disregard facts and reason if it suits our narrow benefits or correlates with what we think we know already. It takes great strength of character to put principles and reason above personal comfort and safety and frankly most people lack it. Add to this modern identity politics and you have a recipe for disaster.

Our lives are easy. We think that we are advanced but this can all turn to shit in no time because our base natures are still very much intact. Consider the Nazis and the power of group think and in group bias. Completely normal people can be made quite easily to do savage things. Even in this post WW2 world, the Stanford prison experiment showed as much. We really are fragile beings and we have to be vigilant, now more than ever, because we are under the mistaken belief that we today are somehow better, more evolved or new. When it comes down to it then we are nothing but animals, driven by our instincts and all the science, culture and philosophy flies out the window. I think the Jedi and the Sith are a great metaphor for this. We need self control and vigilance to not fall to the dark side, which is often tempting and the path of least resistance and no matter hour high you have risen, you can always fall.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#263

Post by balthamael »

I don't see this as a new problem tbh. It's a function of human nature. We like to think that we are smarter and better than our primitive ancestors but the fact is that we are exactly as dumb our a smart as they were. Only thing that separates us is out knowledge. But we are just as prone to bias, intellectual weakness, selfish dishonesty and irrationality than our dumb ancestors. Most people are followers, we want to be in a group, we want to belong, we want to be led and above else we want to feel good about ourselves. People believe what they want to believe because that is safe, comfortable and easy. The psychology is the same as religion, minus the supernatural. This election showed as much. We are perfectly willing to disregard facts and reason if it suits our narrow benefits or correlates with what we think we know already. It takes great strength of character to put principles and reason above personal comfort and safety and frankly most people lack it. Add to this modern identity politics and you have a recipe for disaster.

Our lives are easy. We think that we are advanced but this can ask turn to shit in no time because our base natures are still very much intact. Consider the Nazis and the power of group think and in group bias. Completely normal people can be made quite easily to do savage things. Even in this post WW2 world, the Stanford prison experiment showed as much. We really are fragile beings and we have to be vigilant, now more than ever, because we are under the mistaken belief that we today are somehow better, more evolved or new. When it comes down to it then we are nothing but animals, driven by our instincts and all the science, culture and philosophy flies out the window. I think the Jedi and the Sith are a great metaphor for this. We need self control and vigilance to not fall to the dark side, which is often tempting and the path of least resistance and no matter hour high you have risen, you can always fall.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#264

Post by eternalban »

ejstronge wrote: post #247
eternalban wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't really have an independent press anymore, and blog-sphere can be trivially gamed by interested and powerful actors. Have we as a civilization ever witnessed such a pervasive disinformation culture? I forget who said this, possibly a character in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, but the idea was that when a population perceives that the social order is unfair (due to bad faith power actors) the genera…

Issues of going to magazines for current-events aside, I do not understand what your underlying argument is when you say: how it glibly notes in passing that DJT denies it If we step away from the context of what happened, are you stating that anything a politician denies must not be true? If you'd like, I'm happy to go into the context of this as well.

> are you stating that anything a politician denies must not be true?

No. Simply that the barrier to featured publication of rumors on national press is supposed to be somewhat more demanding than 4chan et al.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#265

Post by jbverschoor »

I don't want ANY news on my facebook.

I wish I could just filter all externally linked posts, posts with > 200 shares or likes.

Facebook is pretty useless for me. I use messenger, because it's ubiquitous, but other than that, it's a hybrid of twitter and 9gag.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#267

Post by eternalban »

jacalata wrote: post #200
DougN7 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I put on my rose-colored glasses and look back at the past (1950s??) it seems that lying was very much looked down upon. Not so much any more. Seems like it's 'anything goes that you can get away with'. Is this because we're not teaching ethics in school? Decline in churches? Apathy from feeling helpless?

No, just lying about different things. Back then you were absolutely supposed to lie about things like having sex before marriage, where your teenage daughter went for six months just after she started dating that guy and putting on weight, how much you love being a housewife, the attraction you have for your own sex, your interest in non-gender-conforming behaviour, what your creepy uncle did when he babysat you...

I agree with you that humans are prone to lie, and that cultures have developed protocols around that, but we can distinguish here on both degrees and categories of lies. If your daughter became pregnant in school in the 50s, something terribly had gone off socially acceptable script. (It is irrelevant how we view that script today.) All of your examples are specimens of social remedies to deal with these social hot potatoes. But adopting domestic propaganda as a norm is another thing.

Or take the somewhat analogous history of torture in USA. Of course that shit has been going on in this country (and elsewhere) from day one, but it is one thing for individuals or units or even communities to lose it, or do it out of sight, and another thing entirely for the state to officially adopt it as a tool of state craft.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#268

Post by lake99 »

tempestn wrote: post #254
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…

Check out the most recent Last Week tonight. Features clips of President Elect Trump making almost identical comments. In March he claimed a man who rushed the stage at one of his rallies had ties to ISIS. When confronted with the fact that the source he'd linked to was a hoax, his response was, "What do I know about it? All I know is it was on the internet." [1] Then there was an interview with Bill O'Reilly: Bill:…

This extreme partisanship is one of the reasons I'm wary of John Oliver. For example, Politifact, despite its biases or subjectivity, has documented examples of practically every major politian making untrue statements. Including the current POTUS.

We need a systemic approach to dealing with lies and untruths of the people who weild power. If you make it partisan, the liar/politican will just block you out, and so will their followers.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#269

Post by zdkl »

jbverschoor wrote: post #265

I don't want ANY news on my facebook. I wish I could just filter all externally linked posts, posts with > 200 shares or likes. Facebook is pretty useless for me. I use messenger, because it's ubiquitous, but other than that, it's a hybrid of twitter and 9gag.

No promoted stories, no algorithmic timeline... Just plain old chronology from the people I actually want to follow. Seems like the facebook we want to use is gone, but good luck migrating your social circle.
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