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We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

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Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#181

Post by _delirium »

slantyyz wrote: post #158
ryuker16 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google beat them to it. Ad words is insane.... wanna target by individual town? Yes you can and more

Ad words aside, Google News is incredibly bad at aggregating fake news/farmed content into their real news feeds. For a lot of the news categories Google thinks or knows I like, I get tons of headlines from questionable news sources, and the last time I looked, their preferences wouldn't let me blacklist repeat offenders from showing up in my main headlines feed.

You can excise sites one by one, though it's a bit clunky. If you're logged in, click "Personalize" at the top-right, then type in the publication's name under "Adjust Sources", click + (if it's found) to add it to your customized sources list, then drag the frequency slider for that source all the way to the left. I'm not sure if this precisely blocks it, but it should mostly get it out of your Google News feed.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#182

Post by A_COMPUTER »

reitoei wrote: post #99
intoverflow2 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this the other half of the problem? People sitting comfy in their echo chambers. I'm sure the people on alt-right forums feel the same way about their fellow posters.

Is that fair though? Would you consider a something like a online bee-keeping community or a MUD an 'echo chamber'? I think the phrase gets bandied about a bit too easily nowadays. Alt-right forums have a specific agenda, the former would have none. I see HN in that regard, but that's just me.

An observation on the right is that any organization that is not explicitly right wing will over time drift into being left wing. I think it's correct.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#183

Post by BeetleB »

zigzigzag wrote: post #162
jonathankoren wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 includ…

My guess is he just picked the wrong topics to target liberals. Put in stuff about big agra, the failures of modern medicine, the wonders of alernative medicine, etc, and you'll make money.

Umm... Hold on while I register a few sites...

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#184

Post by BeetleB »

ec109685 wrote: post #32
aikah wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction Denounce those stories by making $30k a month as a spammer ? that's how this guy "denounces the alt-right" ? and NPR buys that argument just like that ?

I don't think the NPR passed judgement as to whether it should be bought or not. They are letting us decide. My value judgement is that this is a terrible way to make money and it is unfortunate blatant lies are not somehow slander, despite it being about a prominent individual. The rolling stone was held liable for their false article about sexual assault. I wish this guy could be as well. He duped millions of peopl…

>He duped millions of people.

Yes and no. I suspect those people would have voted for Trump anyway.

I just got done reading The Righteous Mind (https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Relig...). After reading it, my default view on all these things: The final outcome is set in their mind, and they are merely looking for any reason to justify it.

(I mean, sure, things are elastic. His articles do play a role - just not that much).

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#185

Post by slantyyz »

_delirium wrote: post #181
slantyyz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad words aside, Google News is incredibly bad at aggregating fake news/farmed content into their real news feeds. For a lot of the news categories Google thinks or knows I like, I get tons of headlines from questionable news sources, and the last time I looked, their preferences wouldn't let me blacklist repeat offenders from showing up in my main headlines feed.

You can excise sites one by one, though it's a bit clunky. If you're logged in, click "Personalize" at the top-right, then type in the publication's name under "Adjust Sources", click + (if it's found) to add it to your customized sources list, then drag the frequency slider for that source all the way to the left. I'm not sure if this precisely blocks it, but it should mostly get it out of your Google News feed.

Thanks, this is useful. The last time I tried editing my preferences was within the Android News & Headlines app. Turns out I should have just done it in a web browser. You are right though, it is clunky.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#186

Post by BeetleB »

JonnieCache wrote: post #66

This is utterly offensive and this man is utterly corrupt. He claims to be doing this to discredit his foes, but there's no evidence that he's done any of the "public denouncing" which he gives as his justification for polluting the public sphere with his lies. He does however admit to coining it to the tune of six figures. If we've learned anything from the twentieth century its that corrupting the public discourse…

While I'm sure he probably stuck to it for the money, I, for one, am thankful for his work.

I used to be a news junkie. The amount of junk I would see from proper news organizations was eye-opening. Sure - not at his level - much more subtle.

When there is not enough skepticism, people like him are a guaranteed outcome. By taking things to the extreme, he did expose how flawed our approach to the news is, and how little standards we have for journalism.

To be honest, if people become skeptical of most news media because of him, that's actually a good thing.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#187

Post by j2kun »

CalChris wrote: post #160

HN has a hide button. Click it and something's gone, no questions asked. That should be the standard. FB has some hide buttons. Click it and up pops a menu. Click Hide Ad . Up pops a dialog asking Why don't you want to see this? Choose It's not relevant to me . This is followed by a Thanks dialog. And after it's hidden, it's not hidden. There's a grey box saying and asking You won't see ads like it. Undo? FB also doe…

Problem is, when every fake news story comes from a new fake news website, clicking hide doesn't help for the future.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#188

Post by BeetleB »

greggman wrote: post #56

Fascinating. 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…

I think the left tends not to fall so much for political stories, but put in stuff about evils of big agra, big pharma, fake studies showing alternative medications working well, etc and they'll lap it up.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#189

Post by A_COMPUTER »

He is doing the same thing to NPR, and by extension NPR's listeners, what he was doing to low-info right-wingers: telling them what they wanted to hear, whether or not it's true. He's good at it.

He wants you to believe that he tried, but he just couldn't get the left wing to fall for it. But anybody who has used Facebook as seen how popular AddictingInfo-org is, and it is an overtly left wing fake news site. It's not remotely the only one.

The fake news reporting is itself filled with fake news. And it's easy to find marks because after the election, many people need to find a scapegoat so they are turning off their critical faculties. The current complaining about fake news is a mirror image of the right's disrespect of the "mainstream" media. For instance all the reporting on the Trump-Russia covert email server communication matches the formula for fake news, it took a nugget of truth, twisted it, and tried to ride the lie long enough that by the time it was exposed as nothing, the election would be over and the "damage" done. But it wasn't fake news I guess because the outlet has to be small and the target and victim were reversed. Anybody looking at that should reasonably be upset about "fake news" but it's categorically ignored by the left. You are not inhumanly wise and immune to the effects of incentivized bias.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#190

Post by A_COMPUTER »

dluan wrote: post #87
dluan wrote: post #72

What boggles my mind is that Facebook and Twitter are so very complicit by creating platforms for very granular targeting. You liked the Green Bay Packers, a gun owners group, an old 2008 Tea Party video, live 60 miles outside of a city and between 40-65? Not only is that profile there, Facebook ads will tell you almost exactly how large your reach is. This is nothing more than information arbitrage, and that the uni…

"In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore." https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-histo...

>So, if you start thinking down that line, if someone threatened murder, you’d probably take that off the platform. If someone threatened assault, you’d take that off. But if a presidential candidate threatens to imprison an entire religious minority[...]

It's easy to see what he's referring to here, and thus, he demonstrates that he's captured by fake news as well, and doesn't even recognize it. Half-truths or intentional misreading of things Trump has said are bread and butter of the left wing's fake news organizations.

As a side note, he succinctly explains with what is wrong with a coincident push by the same people, banning of certain viewpoints off Twitter. Oh well it's a private company, and they can run it how they want! Your free speech is not being violated. But as he just admits, these private entities are extremely powerful brokers of speech, and what they decide stays and goes has a very large impact on society. But, consistency is not the strong suit of these people. It is entirely whatever argument works at the time.

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