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Fake News Challenge

fakenewschallenge.org

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Re: Fake News Challenge

#181

Post by nl »

MaxfordAndSons wrote: post #95
enknamel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is not "fake news". The problem is people are treating the news like a product in the capitalist paradigm. I would say a huge part of the problem is that news is no longer news. It's all commentary. News organizations are not only incentivized to to sensationalize stories to make money but they are also ran by people who have extreme political views and want to essentially mind control the population. T…

> 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…

Please, describe to me how someone can convey pure unadulterated facts in language, without imposing an "interpretation" on them.

I've addressed this elsewhere, but there is definitely cases where this can be done.

No, Tom Cruise is not moving to Buffalo, Missouri[1].

No, there is no attempt by lawmakers to legislate the disposal of unused semen[2].

Etc, etc. Some of these are satire, but some are just complete deliberate fakes.

This is a different class of problem to "OMG Hillary is a Nazi/OMG Trump bought Pizza" opinion spam.

[1] http://www.snopes.com/celebrity-moving-small-towns/

[2] http://www.snopes.com/unused-semen-bill/

Re: Fake News Challenge

#182

Post by rrdharan »

jquery wrote: post #163
willstrafach wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you for posting that article. Well worth the read.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#183

Post by untog »

imron wrote: post #168
untog wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's not true. The dossier exists. It was prepared by a respected former intelligence officer. It was ordered by Jeb Bush's campaign. None of these facts are in disrepute. And the vast majority of news reports accurately stated that the contents of the dossier cannot be verified. It's miles more credible than the stories found on fake news sites.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#184

Post by jartelt »

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…

Trump has stated several times that he supports traditional marriage and is not comfortable with gay marriage (http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/aug/14/se...). These comments show he has a problem with gay marriage. Just because Trump married an immigrant from one country doesn't mean he can't be a Xenophobe. It is pretty clear based on his comments that he intensely dislikes and fears immigrants from Mexico and from Muslim countries. As far as misogyny, he has made several disparaging comments about women. These comments show that he has a lack of respect for women, and that does not change regardless of whether he has hired women or is married to a women. Simply put, you cannot go around speaking about women as if their only value is their body and then claim you are a feminist. I have not seen outright evidence of antisemitism so I can't comment on that. In fact he is too pro-settlement in Isreal for my liking. For racism, there have been documented cases where his businesses have shown discriminatory and racist behavior. He also speaks of (and likely treats) hispanic people very poorly and claimed Obama was from Kenya for several years. That is not fake news. That is just taking examples of Trump's comments and behavior and applying appropriate descriptors to them.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#185

Post by jartelt »

fullshark wrote: post #138
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…

I think the issue is a lot of the complaints about fake news are not of the objectively false stuff, but of the kind where you report what some crackpot analyst says. It's objectively true that "PERSON X THINKS THIS" but it used to be journalists wouldn't print that because it was nonsense. For an example of this consider the Trump intelligence report or the Pizzagate analysis. In the internet age a lot of these anal…

It is true that when the average crackpot thinks something, it is not newsworthy. However, when the POTUS thinks (and especially when he tweets) something crazy/abnormal, it is newsworthy. If the leader of the US believes something crazy, the citizens should hear about it. Unfortunately, Trump doesn't like to be made fun of by the media so he just lies and says it's fake news when someone reports on his abnormal tweets and comments.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#186

Post by microcolonel »

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…

If you don't pay for the news, who does the news agency have a responsibility to? Certainly not you.

You can see this right now. The mainstream media falsifies or omits the truth on behalf of their backers or the organizations they fear: major political parties, subsidiaries of their parent companies, major investors, etc. I would argue that they do this because the public is not their customer, it's their target demographic.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#187

Post by deboboy »

Get money out of news. Sure money doesn't corrupt news as badly as politics but it does bias what, how news is delivered.

And I'm not suggesting all news agencies [whatever this means in 2017] should transform into NPR or PBS clones. I like MSNBC, FOX, CNN , ABC... news but they all exist within media empires. Let's figure out how to spin them out into entities not funded from media business models. Hard problem, sure. So what. We have to figure this out.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#188

Post by general_ai »

jccalhoun wrote: post #174
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…

Just because you didn't hear people call him racist for years doesn't mean it didn't happen. I am willing to be that people called him racist when the Justice Department filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against his company in 1973. Or when his company settled that suit but in 1978 the government filed another complaint claiming his company didn't meet the terms of the settlement. https://www.salon.com/2011/04/2…

Say the company your work for or have shares in discriminates on the basis of race. Does this make _you_ a racist? Is there any evidence that he was in fact the decision maker when it comes to these policies? FWIW, the very same article you linked to (in a despicable fake news rag, BTW) says "Donald testified repeatedly that he had nothing to do with renting apartments". :-)

Re: Fake News Challenge

#189

Post by general_ai »

dragonwriter wrote: post #175
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…

> Same with racism: he wasn't in any way called "racist" by anybody until he ran for president, Trump was first sued by the government for racial discrimination something like 40 years ago; he's been being called a racist for a long time before he ran for President. Of course, a lot more people paid attention to him and talked about him at all, and a lot more people paid attention to what was said about him, once he…

Not "Trump", but "one of Trump's companies". There's a difference. Trump would only be really at fault here if he was the author of the discriminatory policies in question, and there's no evidence that he was. Moreover, he testified under oath that he wasn't.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#190

Post by smsm42 »

lend000 wrote: post #125
smsm42 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pri…

Just encountered an article from AP, which purports to "fact check" some Trump statements. The whole article did not contain even a single link. Not even to the statements they are checking. I went back to look at another "fact checks" from AP - yep, not a single link to the source at any of them. Sigh. And these people probably think Wikipedia is unreliable and poorly sourced.
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