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Fake News Challenge

fakenewschallenge.org

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Re: Fake News Challenge

#121

Post by digler999 »

wybiral wrote: post #110
digler999 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A significant portion of the electorate has been drinking from the well and cannot be reached. 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…

> How is that any different than people in the Bible Belt who believe the earth was made in 7 days ? I see no difference there but I'm not sure that I get the point. > I really didn't appreciate how they pushed the "Russia HACKED the election" narrative. I never got the impression that those news orgs were saying that actual voting counts were being hacked. But the emails were hacked and leaked. They jumped the gun o…

> I see no difference there but I'm not sure that I get the point.

my point is that there have always legions of people who believe ridiculous things. They've been around for every single previous election. So we shouldn't be surprised when the scientific community says "civilization has changed the climate" but people still don't believe it (even when the claim is supported by evidence).

Re: Fake News Challenge

#122

Post by deckard1 »

cmdrfred wrote: post #27
wccrawford wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's how most people, on both sides, define it. Far too many people are unwilling to recognize that news that confirms their world view might be fact. They cannot or will not challenge it, and simply accept it as fact.

The right believes Obama is from Kenya, the left believes Trump just signed an order that banned Muslims. Both claims upon inspection fall apart immediately. The fact that both of these are so widely believed shows you how little critical thinking and research the average person does. They really just want "their team" to win, it's really a instinctual reaction more than a intellectual one.

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/31/512439121/trumps-executive-ord...

> prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality.

You're right. It's not an order that bans Muslims, explicitly. It's an order that bans them implicitly. The NPR annotation:

> If you CTRL+F this document, you won’t find the words “Christian” or “Muslim.” But if you read closely, this is the section that indicates prioritizing Christians. How so? Because the seven countries affected by this order are all Muslim-majority countries. Also note that Trump himself indicated a preference for prioritizing Christians in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. And former Trump campaign surrogate Rudy Giuliani told Fox that Trump first called it a “Muslim ban” but asked him to come up with a legal framework for it. Giuliani said he did, one based on “danger,” not religion.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#123

Post by cmdrfred »

deckard1 wrote: post #122
cmdrfred wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right believes Obama is from Kenya, the left believes Trump just signed an order that banned Muslims. Both claims upon inspection fall apart immediately. The fact that both of these are so widely believed shows you how little critical thinking and research the average person does. They really just want "their team" to win, it's really a instinctual reaction more than a intellectual one.

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/31/512439121/trumps-executive-ord... > prioritize refugee claims made by individuals on the basis of religious-based persecution, provided that the religion of the individual is a minority religion in the individual's country of nationality. You're right. It's not an order that bans Muslims, explicitly . It's an order that bans them implicitly . The NPR annotation: > If you CTRL+F this docu…

I dont disagree that he wishes to ban them. Just by the numbers its rather innefective as a Muslim ban if so intended.

https://i.redd.it/jh4nz1fm48dy.png

Re: Fake News Challenge

#124

Post by e40 »

woah wrote: post #102
MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want to make you accept their interpretation of the facts. Please, describe to me how someone can convey pure unadulterated facts in language, without imposing an "interpretation" on them. It's an absurd fantasy. There's no possibility for a disembodied, perfectly objective voice conveying facts. So yes, in a sense, every news org favors a certain interpretation of the facts. But these subtle variations used t…

I'm personally opposed to almost everything Trump is trying to do, but don't act like it's only a problem on the right. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy?

Many, and I mean MANY, of the people relaying/pushing the story did it with the caveat 1) it's completely unsubstantiated and 2) this is EXACTLY what the right did to the Clintons for 2 decades.

When did the people pushing the N Clinton conspiracies every say "this may or not be true..."???

So, your statement is disingenuous, at best.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#125

Post by lend000 »

smsm42 wrote: post #93
lend000 wrote: post #38

How about a 'subjectiveness' ranking instead, with notations for "unable to find link to a source of factual claims"? That's the best we could ever safely do, and we would likely find interesting results (WaPo might be labeled more subjective than Fox News, for example, even though both would generally have low numbers of notations for 'unable to find link to source of factual claim'). As I said in another post: The…

> How about a 'subjectiveness' ranking instead, with notations for "unable to find link to a source of factual claims"? What would that mean? Let's say I write an article where I claim White House is controlled by reptiloids from planet Nibiru. Would it check that I have any links in my article at all? Or that the links actually prove my claims? Or that these proofs can be trusted (I may just link to my own website o…

At the source, you do need some form of verification, similar to "trusted certificates." For example, there could be a database of known mappings, such that apple.com and subdomains are authorized to make statements cited as press releases about Apple, Inc. A link would have to be intelligently interpreted as a citation, perhaps involving a search for similar stories (or it just results in 'unable to find link to primary source' even when it's legitimate, i.e. false positives). Subjectiveness is another area that's quite difficult, but would likely result in percentage of 'unique claims' that the AI was not able to derive from the source material.

It's more difficult than just blindly blocking any stories that aren't covered on 'major, trusted sources', and probably only a couple of organizations could implement anything close to this right now, but it's the best we can strive for. All the other 'solutions' I've heard involve censorship of unpopular opinions.

Edit: But yes, to the point, my envisioned implementation would not find any referenced sources in your article or through a search, and if it did, those sources would not be authorized to make the claims about the Whitehouse reptiles, so it would get the notation that indicates 'could not verify.'

At first, most real news stories would be unable to be verified, but over the time, there would be fewer false negatives. The important thing to recognize, though, is that the notation just means the reader has to make his own judgment; it does not state whether or not it's fake.

And "real stories" should also probably have a notation with a direct link to what the algorithm thinks is the base source.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#126

Post by lend000 »

padseeker wrote: post #53

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…

> The problem is people are treating the news like a product in the capitalist paradigm.

News is a product, but it should be noted that fraud is a crime in a free market. Not that it discounts the rest of what you're saying.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#127

Post by lend000 »

VLM wrote: post #87
lend000 wrote: post #38

How about a 'subjectiveness' ranking instead, with notations for "unable to find link to a source of factual claims"? That's the best we could ever safely do, and we would likely find interesting results (WaPo might be labeled more subjective than Fox News, for example, even though both would generally have low numbers of notations for 'unable to find link to source of factual claim'). As I said in another post: The…

Your arguments are strong, however have you considered an algorithm based on the laziness and cheapness of humans? Consider that a lot of propaganda is heavily coordinated and not creative in the sense of being centrally created and issued. An algorithm could watch, say, 50 sources and see if they simultaneously start using identical phrases, given access to a thesaurus aren't those odds a little unusual? This happen…

I've been the source of junk news before, and I agree that plagiarism could be a decent metric for identifying quality.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#129

Post by mongmong »

Lord_Yoda wrote: post #70
HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #57

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.

Exactly what I was thinking today. Our laziness to read (longer articles, books, etc) and think has caused this problem. Educate the people and this will go away on its own.

This is not something you can make people do through education though. Even among people i know that are highly educated and have achieved top marks and went to the best companies, there are those who just don't give a shot about politics. They are not interested enough to look or dig further.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#130

Post by lend000 »

JacobJans wrote: post #113

You'll notice so many posts here that deny the existence of fake news, or attempt to redefine it as "bias." Frankly, I find it disturbing that so many well educated people aren't able to objectively think about an actually objective problem. The fake news that started the concept of "fake news" is not a subjective problem. The problem is literal invention of facts not even related to reality, combined with the mass d…

> You'll notice so many posts here that deny the existence of fake news, or attempt to redefine it as "bias."

That's a hyperbole -- most of the dissidents here do not deny that completely fake stories occur, but express valid concerns about what kind of things will be labeled as facts or not. Based on what we've already seen (the WaPo list, for example), there are publications they would like to censor with very good track records, including the "Ron Paul Liberty Report." Production budget aside, that's often the first source that reports on interesting new bills submitted to the House, such as the recent pre-authorization for invasion of Iran bill. This is not a fake fact -- you can see it on the House website. And there aren't supporting examples of fakeness provided by WaPo for their list, even though I could find numerous factual errors by WaPo or NYT, like the power grid hacking or Aleppo (usually fixed within a few days, but still).

And of course, there's the fact that powerful propaganda does not need to stem from provably false facts -- it uses selection/omission of stories and crafting heavily-opinionated narratives to 'mislead.' That is just as concerning as fake facts, and a poor attempt to stem the latter would most likely end up stifling unpopular opinions and further empower the propaganda you see on major sources like WaPo/FoxNews.

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