Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News • Hacker News Board

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#271

Post by bhrgunatha » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:02 PM UTC

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…

post-truth is the OED's word of the year. "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief"

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-t...

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#272

Post by aninhumer » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:03 PM UTC

flukus wrote: post #238

cghendrix wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Care to elaborate?

We're here, so there was some advantage to our irrationality. Hating outsiders helps our children survive for example. I'd argue a lot of our best inventions required a certain amount of irrationality to create.

No, all you can infer from the fact that we're still here is that it's possible to succeed while being irrational. It tells you nothing about whether we succeeded despite or because of it.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#273

Post by leonroy » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:04 PM UTC

lake99 wrote: post #268

tempestn wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

John Oliver clearly has a political leaning but I don't believe he states anything untrue as fact.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#274

Post by ceejay » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

I have a different take on this (sort of). I think it's enormously empowering that anyone in the world can be a "publisher" and reach millions of people with stories through the internet.

The next phase of this evolution, I think, will be to ensure that we train humanity how to deal with this. I think it could be as simple as working hard to improve everyone's ability to (a) build an argument about something, and (b) to critique someone else's argument about something.

Once we (the majority of the general public) know how arguments are constructed and what is required to "prove" or "disprove" them, we'll be a far healthier world.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#275

Post by lake99 » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:11 PM UTC

leonroy wrote: post #273

lake99 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

John Oliver clearly has a political leaning but I don't believe he states anything untrue as fact.

That was not my point. Where exactly did I say he does that? He commits glaring omissions in favour of the people on his side.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#276

Post by aninhumer » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:16 PM UTC

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.

Not a perfect solution, but if you want that, it may help to "Hide all from [News Site]" for each instance.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#277

Post by mmariani » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:18 PM UTC

renaudg wrote: post #228

peterkshultz wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought the same thing, but the people interested in using such an extension would get their news from places other than Facebook. Self-selection bias greatly reduces the efficacy of such an extension.

They could get their news from Facebook too, they would just more likely subscribe to more reputable pages and have less hoax-sharing friends.

Then they would claim that reputable sources too are biased against their beliefs and they'll come up with their reputable sources. Paranoia is some people nurse and profit from—unfortunately.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#278

Post by nosequel » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:22 PM UTC

lake99 wrote: post #268

tempestn wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

To be fair to John Oliver, in the episode he points out stuff from both sides, calling out how many fact news articles are left-leaning. He also points out his own show's bias and mentions Politifact in his episode. To be fair also to John Oliver, Bill Oreilly calling out Trump for not checking facts is amazing, and Trump saying he has no time to check facts is even more amazingly scary.

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#279

Post by croon » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:24 PM UTC

lake99 wrote: post #268

tempestn wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

I don't think anyone is unaware of his partisanship. But partisanship is only relevant if it affects reporting, which by your statement would seem like we are of opposite convictions. I believe both the old Daily Show (and likely the new one as well, but I never watch it) and Last Week Tonight work really hard to put everything they report/joke about in a relevant context without leaving anything out, and I have yet to see anything hinting otherwise.

I've seen a lot of critique for Clinton on Last Week Tonight, but even if I hadn't, why would that in any way affect their Trump coverage (if still factual)?

But speaking of politifact [1] [2]:

Is it somehow disingenuous to report on Trumps blatant lies? I find it wholly unsurprising that all politicians lie more than "regular people", but I find it supremely horrifying the amount of Trumps lies that are swallowed whole to the extent that Hillary is the one portrayed as "crooked" when comparing these statistics.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/

[2] http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/

Re: Snowden: Stop Relying on Facebook for Your News

#280

Post by Fiahil » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:30 PM UTC

> [..] many people are criticizing social media outlets – namely Facebook – for not doing enough to weed out obviously fake news articles that could have potentially impacted people’s votes. This is a claim that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been quick to dismiss, [..]

I wish Facebook would remove their "trending news" feature. Their algorithm is basically selecting and promoting all the junk it can find, without the slightest vetting. How is it possible that a feature botched like this would: 1) pass the "testing" stage, 2) be ever considered a good idea in the first place.

And on top of that, they claim no responsibilities ? Lol.