Fake News Challenge

It is simple: everything that does not match your beliefs is a fake news.

>It should be possible to build a prototype post-facto “truth labeling” system [...] Such a system would tentatively label a claim or story as true/false based on the stances taken by various news organizations on the topic, weighted by their credibility.

And of course nobody would love this technology more than the Chinese and Russian governments. Is a system aimed at quickly identifying obscure blogs that disagree with "high-credibility" sources supposed to help democracy?

I'd prefer to see computer learning to identify political propaganda and state the biases in the text as that would be truly unpartisan.

Does anyone know if this challenge has anything to do with Media Matters / Shareblue?

This effort is immensely scary to me as an objective observer. There is an inherent bias in the self-righteous "majority" that blinds it to its own flaws, fallacies, and "fake news". It's akin to asking corporations or dictators to regulate themselves. There is a precedent and model on how to provide a structure to combat "fake news" and it's called the American Constitution with it's various means for separating and balancing powers in addition to the breakdown into three branched of government. What is overlooked is that the very nature that we have two distinct parties is a core function of this leveling and balance and regulation of powers.

The effort to combat "fake news", the solution looks ever more like thought police and authoritarian propaganda machine than it looks, let alone would even be able to provide some sort of accurate and precise filter of "fake news".

What a lot of ... basically everyone on the left ... doesn't realize is that CNN was precisely set up after Carter's thumping, with specific and deliberate effort to manipulate people's minds and perceptions for political purposes, i.e., propaganda. Now, will it be accepted that given its history and its rather regular intentional manipulative and false news reporting that CNN will be labeled "fake news"? There is no chance in hell that would happen even if they came out and said "we are fake news". Just let that sink in; this is not a scientific or principled endeavor, it is purely a political one to weed out "fake news" the left disagrees with, while promoting "legitimate news" the left agrees with.

It goes to the very core and purpose of the freedom of speech in the USA, for which many foreign and ever increasingly even American people don't have a deep enough appreciation for. The vulnerabilities one party of people cunningly and in a self-satisfactory manner so slyly put in place so that they can misuse it one day, may very well fall into the "wrong" hands the next. It is precisely what happened with the oh so righteous Weimar Republic and it's emergency measures that were meant to be used for "good". Well, the National Socialists used it for "good" too, just not the "good" their ideologically opposite expected it to be used for.

From "America Matters" pdf:

"Media Matters has already secured access to raw data from Facebook, Twitter...

Predictive Technology

Bringing this data analysis to scale will also allow Media Matters to identify which individuals and outlets are the most destructive forces driving fake news, misinformation and harrasment.

Cutting-edge advances in cloud computing and machine learning will enable us to identify patterns and connections that would otherwise go under the radar. ... Media Matters' core budget for 2017 is $13.4 millions which covers a staff of 81. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

This budget allows us to create a 34 person research deparment engaged in media monitoring, research, deep dive analysis and rapid response... this budget also alows us to invest in technological innovations like the creation of an early warning system to identify in the profilerationof fake nws more efficiently and to create cutting-edge predictive technology that allows us to identify patterns and connections in order to asses how misinformation will move and how we can neutralise it. "