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Alas we are not supposed to use that term anymore: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-time-to-r... Also somehow CNN shows in the front page of result for "fake news" image search on Google. It wouldn't be totally wrong, depending on how the term is defined.
Fact: 99% of "fake news website" classifications are in fact false.
Heh, I think need an explicit meta-fake news category.
Is anyone else put off by this obsession with "solving" fake news? As if we can simply throw technology at such a contentious and controversial issue and then trust the results. It reads to me like the goal is censorship, where only "approved" articles/authors are allowed, all in the name of "fact checking". Never mind that it's incredibly easy to cherry-pick facts or exaggerations to target "offensive" articles (by…
Exactly. I'd argue that disingenuous news from mainstream news organisations is worse than dedicated "fake news" websites because they exploit legitimacy and reader-trust to peddle falsehoods. They are our port in a storm of bullsh*t, and they're failing us.
That said, I think the other part of this problem is how the news is consumed. Our lazy minds are trained to read the shorter version if there is one available. Every day more people are liking the 140 character version of news. The more you read (from more people), the more you're reinforced in that belief. So while we train the models on news articles, we should also attempt to train on tweets. Just my two cents.
fake_news !== click_bait
Consider the sensationalist headline "Trump Facing Impeachment for Muslim Ban".
Okay, a lot of people (including politicians) are saying "yeah we should maybe impeach that guy", and a lot of Muslims are affected by the order. But there's no impeachment trial and it's not a direct ban on all Muslims.
I don't think it's appropriate to shift all the blame to the publishers but, when people just read the title, nod approvingly, and close their browser, it's the same effect.
This is not a new thing, and we used to simply ignore it. Now we made it a thing.
Not to sound cliche but I believe the bigger problem in this country is education, which apparently has failed many in this country on both sides of the political spectrum, if the past couple of years are any indication. I guarantee you fix people's problems with English, Math, and History in the classroom, you will have no need for machines or algorithms to filter junk that influences people online.
The problem is not "fake news". The problem is people are treating the news like a product in the capitalist paradigm. If you don't like the way your local bakery makes their bread you go somewhere else. Now if the media reports on something you don't like someone else will tell you what you want to hear. This issue happens on both sides of the political spectrum BUT it does seem to be a lot worse on the conservative…
How is that any different than people in the Bible Belt who believe the earth was made in 7 days ? Or elderly people who become vulnerable and fall prey to exploitation (because they believe phone scams, or sob stories from strangers, etc) ? (Edit: or young people who think they're going to grow up and be an astronaut or NBA star). There will always be a sizable proportion of the population who believes wacky stories.
I know you weren't implying this, but NYT and WaPo's hands aren't clean either. I really didn't appreciate how they pushed the "Russia HACKED the election" narrative. That's predatory on the same level: take advantage of the nebulous word "hacking" and misapply it to something that doesn't even rely on computers, do some hand-waiving, and voila, there's some "fake news" to dish up to the masses [which is ironic when your other stories are about the spread of "fake news"].
Not to sound cliche but I believe the bigger problem in this country is education, which apparently has failed many in this country on both sides of the political spectrum, if the past couple of years are any indication. I guarantee you fix people's problems with English, Math, and History in the classroom, you will have no need for machines or algorithms to filter junk that influences people online.