The MSM is butt hurt they don't control the narrative anymore. The last election proved that. They are scared. Their current strategy is to label their call for censorship as limiting the reach of fake news. Of course everything not in line with whatever narrative they control is fake news. They find some real fake news and attempt to blur the lines in people's heads by associating real fake news with anything not MSM.
We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
161–170 of 223 posts
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't believe his narrative for a second. He's in this for the money, period. He peddles lies for a living, and also is lying about "publicly denouncing" anything.
He even said he tried to do with fake news targeting liberals, but it didn't work. If this was ideological, he never would try for an own goal. Vox even did an article on conspiracies and why they flourish on the right more than the left.[0] Essentially it's low trust, highly engaged people versus lesser engaged people. If you don't trust anything, and you're consuming "knowledge", you're going to latch on to conspir…
Let's assume for a moment that "conspiracies flourish on the right" is true. If so, I'd have to say that must only be true in parts of America. I have met lots of people with both right and left wing views outside of the USA (some of whom were also Americans), and didn't see any obvious correlation between political viewpoint and conspiracy theories. If anything I'd say there was a slight left wing slant if we include very generic conspiracy theories like "the banks and big corporations are trying to undermine us all".
If it is true then I would guess the reason is the relative lack of conservative media in America vs say the UK. In the UK if you want to get viewpoints from the extreme left and right just pick up the Guardian and the Express and read both. In the USA it seems harder. Are there any mainstream conservative-leaning newspapers? Whenever I see the term "conservative media" used in America it always means Fox News which is only a TV channel. Breitbart seems to be tapping into that market segment but again, it's not a newspaper.
If you have right wing views and have figured out that there aren't any media outlets that subscribe to your worldview, I can see that this would very easily look like a generic conspiracy and that in turn would breed receptivity to fake right-wing news simply because there are so few places with good reputation where such news is likely to be covered.
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#163This was the most interesting part for me... -------- He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right. "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler…
>the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right I would say that this individual who was a liberal tried to do this. This isn't like a group of leftists conspiring to do (anti-)propaganda. It is pretty stupid, and his continuation of it is extremely confusing. Sorry, but a side rant to the more "entrepreneurial" startup-cats who browse here. Would you consider this fellow and others like him an entr…
I found this to very shady.
He claimed that he first started with the fake news to:
"then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction"
But then why didn't he stop when that didn't work? I would guess that it's just a way to try to rationalize his shady business to himself.
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#164Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right. Or at least not without more proof? I suspect you'd need a right leaning person with a similar background writing left bait fake news to have the same impact though. Write fake news about charter schools doing something bad (charter school puts LGBT students in detention) or fake churches doing bad (church in Idaho found funneling funds to…
Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right. Or at least not without more proof? Not proof, but an interesting analogy: The relative success of right- and left-wing talk radio. Right wing talk radio is a huge industry, left-wing is practically nonexistent. Maybe it points to an asymmetry in how left- and right-wingers consume information. Granted, it could also be related to other fac…
Surely the left wing equivalent of talk radio is the newspapers?
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not all bad. We're here, aren't we?
Going totally OT here for a sec, but you guys are awesome. Seriously. This is one of the only places I feel I can come where people are, for the most part, respectful and polite to each other. Nobody is pushing a personal agenda with religion, politics or ethics. Nobody is trying to convince you the world is flat or that aliens built the pyramids. Nobody cares if you're male/female/trans/whatever. Just a bunch of fol…
Overall, HN is pretty good because people here care a lot about facts.
If, however, you don't think there are echo chambers here, you might want to look again.
The parameters are just different here.
The echo chambers here tend to be related to > surprise, surprise People might not care about your gender/religion here, but they do focus on other attributes. I've seen people marginalized or dismissed as not being "real programmers" for using a glossy screen, PHP (not so much now, but PHP debates were really bad a few years ago), etc.
On any given day, you'll find some people who think that Microsoft/Google/Facebook/Apple/etc. are crooked and evil and will never change their opinion. On the same note, you'll also find people who think Apple/Tesla/Elon Musk/etc. are infallible.
More recently, if you look at the debates over the whether the new Macbook Pro is "pro enough", you'll see a lot of comments to the effect that "it's [not] like that for me, so it must [not] be true for you/everyone else [either]", which is pretty similar to the bubbles people sit in the non-HN world too.
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#166If a post is being pitched as news, then some amount of fact checking needs to take place. Traditional media has been doing that forever and identifying sources of information, since they have to uphold their reputation. I think in this day and age the responsibility falls on Facebook, or whatever is publishing the "news". Facebook could use a standardized and easily recognizable visual language to indicate how "news…
Traditional media has been doing that forever
Have they? I got to admit I used to think this too. But in the past few years I've had quite a few occasions to talk to the media due to them covering a topic I happen to be (publicly) knowledgeable about. I've been quoted in a lot of media stories in various highbrow outlets. So I've been approached by journalists a whole bunch of times for stories.
However, I have never been approached by a fact checker. If news firms were routinely doing fact checks, I'd expect to see
1) Way fewer obvious mistakes that could be detected with 60 seconds Googling
2) Fact checkers emailing me as part of cross-checking stories they're doing on my area of specialism
But I see (1) a lot and (2) never. I've also never heard any journalist refer to fact checkers or tell me to expect my statements to be fact checked, or actually seen any evidence of these people existing at all.
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google beat them to it. Ad words is insane.... wanna target by individual town? Yes you can and more
Not sure about that. For the last week or so I've been bombarded with Porsche ads in the YT videos I'm listening even though I will never have that much money in order to buy a new Porsche vehicle.
> even though I will never have that much money in order to buy a new Porsche vehicle
You're not meant to buy it. You're meant to be envious of it. The target market is purchasing your envy. See Veblen's _Theory of the Leisure Class_.
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Going totally OT here for a sec, but you guys are awesome. Seriously. This is one of the only places I feel I can come where people are, for the most part, respectful and polite to each other. Nobody is pushing a personal agenda with religion, politics or ethics. Nobody is trying to convince you the world is flat or that aliens built the pyramids. Nobody cares if you're male/female/trans/whatever. Just a bunch of fol…
HackerNews happens to share your values and opinions on things like religion and politics. Donald Trump just won the election; did you read the opinions of people here on this happening? And while we may not be pushing a Flat World, there are plenty of conspiracy theories and ignorance on topics (eg. banks), and a fanaticism with regards to a other things (eg. Tesla) . Opposing views on these sorts of topics are smas…
>> HackerNews happens to share your values and opinions on things like religion and politics.
There are pretty diverse political views here. I don't know if you remember all the HN discussions on Brendan Eich's political donations a while back, but things got pretty heated on both sides. The for and against arguments pretty much drowned out any opinions in the middle.
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#169When I got to the midpoint of the article, I started to wonder if the author was going to tell me at the end that the whole article was fake news.
Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs
#170The first "fake news" I remember seeing was about a year ago, and it was completely apolitical - it was a made-up story about a multiple-fatality car crash in my city. When I investigated the source, it had several exact copies of the same article, just set in different cities around the world. At the time I was completely bewildered as to the motive behind this, but I can only assume that it's the ad money, as paltr…
I've seen the big networks doing this as well. All very strange. Seems to be leading up to something.