Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fake News Challenge

fakenewschallenge.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 233 posts

Re: Fake News Challenge

#161

Post by jquery »

astrodust wrote: post #112
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #29

It makes me sad to see yet another tech team go down the road of "machines will help us filter the truth" They will not, and the reason has to do with language. Ludwig Wittgenstein tackled this 100 years ago. The best that machines will do for you is to label something as true or not as if you had consumed the article and decided on your own That is a completely different thing from identifying fake news or truth The…

How about a challenge to try and educate people better, to get them "immunized" against propaganda and fake news? We need more cynical takes on things. It's utterly appalling that on one side we have right-wing extremists yelling "FAKE NEWS" about CNN because CNN might get something wrong one time in ten, implying it's no different than Breitbart or Fox News which are wrong nine times in ten, and on the other we have…

Say what you want about Breitbart, it's highly biased in what it chooses to report and the opinions it injects into its stories, but it usually cites and links to its sources. Something I can't say for CNN or Fox News.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#162

Post by willstrafach »

jquery wrote: post #156
kmicklas wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of satire that will dupe any attempts at AI classification.

That's a funny put-down, but inappropriate and stifles real debate. I think there is a lot of evidence Trump is not many of things people claim him to be. And there's evidence for the alternative. It depends on the evidence you find more believable. Here's an excellent article making a compelling argument that Trump is not a racist/homophobe/etc, or at least that calling him such things prematurely undermines the who…

The initial post contained defenses which could very easily be broken down by much stronger opposing points for each. I think that is why it was assumed to be a joke.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#163

Post by jquery »

willstrafach wrote: post #162
jquery wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a funny put-down, but inappropriate and stifles real debate. I think there is a lot of evidence Trump is not many of things people claim him to be. And there's evidence for the alternative. It depends on the evidence you find more believable. Here's an excellent article making a compelling argument that Trump is not a racist/homophobe/etc, or at least that calling him such things prematurely undermines the who…

The initial post contained defenses which could very easily be broken down by much stronger opposing points for each. I think that is why it was assumed to be a joke.

A much stronger defense could be made as well, but could not be contained in a brief HN comment. I recommend reading the article I linked. Whether or not you agree with its conclusion, it's certainly food for thought.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#164

Post by willstrafach »

tokenizer wrote: post #78
debt wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wittgenstein wasn't around when a president used Twitter to both control the media and get elected. Maybe news could rely on first principles approach. Quantify things like political stability, information availability, cultural problems, etc. and maybe apply a first principles approach and maybe an algorithm could tell use what the hell is going on at any given moment and maybe give us some insight into what may go…

Good luck, sounds absolutely insane and unworkable. AI needs "Truth" inputs. I imagine if we had this tool when George W invaded Iraq, this AI would have said Weapons Existed, being all the CIA, and Politicians said so. Isn't that how your filter works? Anti alternative media, pro establishment?

> being all the CIA, and Politicians said so.

This comes up often and is untrue. The Intelligence Community did not have confidence in the WMD claim.

Good read regarding this: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intel...

Re: Fake News Challenge

#165

Post by wybiral »

garanduss wrote: post #154
wybiral wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the Pew poll regarding Russian involvement in the email hack but not one involving direct hacking of tallies. Do you have a link? I followed the election from a variety of sources (WaPo and NYT included) and never got that impression. But I agree that it was a circus from all angles.

It looks like it was from The Economist and YouGov - I falsely remembered it being Pew. Here's a WaPo article with a summary and a link to the raw data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/12/28/am...

Thanks. Yeah, those are some disturbing results...

Do you think it's mostly from misleading mainstream news stories? Or from smaller outlets (social media, celebrities, memes, etc)?

Re: Fake News Challenge

#166

Post by JacobJans »

general_ai wrote: post #141
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…

Millions of people have branded Trump as a "homophobe", where in reality he's the most pro-gay president of all time at the start of his term. Not just republican, any US president, period. Obama was against gay marriage before he was (reluctantly) for it. Trump sees no problem with it. Same with xenophobia: a xenophobe doesn't marry an immigrant. Same with misogyny: a misogynist does not appoint a woman to run his c…

> When the same people that manufactured and spread fake news start lecturing us about the harm of fake news, I just facepalm.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

The reason we're talking about fake news is NOT because of the traditional mainstream media. It's not because of left wing websites such as Alternet or extreme websites such as Breitbart.

The reason we're talking about fake news –– and the real problem that absolutely has to be addressed –– has nothing to do with those websites, or with nearly any media organization that has an easily identifiable group of people running it.

Sure, those websites might post factually incorrect information on occasion. But that's not why we're talking about fake news.

We're talking about fake news because there were –– and are –– websites that repeatedly posted blatantly false "news", during the election, and got massive distribution on social media networks such as Facebook.

That is a problem that has nothing to do with your opinion of Donald Trump. It is not clear why you brought him up, except to distract from the issue.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#167

Post by garanduss »

wybiral wrote: post #165
garanduss wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like it was from The Economist and YouGov - I falsely remembered it being Pew. Here's a WaPo article with a summary and a link to the raw data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/12/28/am...

Thanks. Yeah, those are some disturbing results... Do you think it's mostly from misleading mainstream news stories? Or from smaller outlets (social media, celebrities, memes, etc)?

Misleading mainstream media, IMO. I'm conservative and the headlines about "election hacking" actually duped me until I had the time to read a thorough article about it.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#168

Post by imron »

untog wrote: post #136
woah wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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? Well, that's actually a pretty interesting example to look at. For one, the dossier concerned contained a lot of accusations to do with members of Trump's team travelling to Eastern Europe to meet with Russian contacts, suspect financial transactions and the like - you yoursel…

If you apply the same standard you have displayed here to fake news on the other side of the political spectrum, then almost none of it would be fake news either.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#169

Post by general_ai »

JacobJans wrote: post #166
general_ai wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Millions of people have branded Trump as a "homophobe", where in reality he's the most pro-gay president of all time at the start of his term. Not just republican, any US president, period. Obama was against gay marriage before he was (reluctantly) for it. Trump sees no problem with it. Same with xenophobia: a xenophobe doesn't marry an immigrant. Same with misogyny: a misogynist does not appoint a woman to run his c…

> When the same people that manufactured and spread fake news start lecturing us about the harm of fake news, I just facepalm. This is exactly what I'm talking about. The reason we're talking about fake news is NOT because of the traditional mainstream media. It's not because of left wing websites such as Alternet or extreme websites such as Breitbart. The reason we're talking about fake news –– and the real problem…

Breitbart is less insidious imo. If you go there, chances are pretty good you know it's mostly horseshit. When it comes to e.g. CNN, way too many people take it at face value.

I'm just pointing out that the "legitimate" news sources aren't that much better than Breitbart these days, except a lot of people treat them as though they are.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#170

Post by wybiral »

garanduss wrote: post #167
wybiral wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. Yeah, those are some disturbing results... Do you think it's mostly from misleading mainstream news stories? Or from smaller outlets (social media, celebrities, memes, etc)?

Misleading mainstream media, IMO. I'm conservative and the headlines about "election hacking" actually duped me until I had the time to read a thorough article about it.

I totally agree with you there. Most online news articles use those annoying click-bait titles and try to make the story seem bigger than it is (in a misleading way). Even weather.com does that crap with weather stories.
Post reply on HN