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Fake News Challenge

fakenewschallenge.org

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Re: Fake News Challenge

#191

Post by imron »

untog wrote: post #183
imron wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's miles more credible than the stories found on fake news sites.

1000 * 0 is still 0.

If the Trump campaign had ordered a dossier of dirt on Hillary Clinton, and paid a respected former intelligence officer to provide it, would the claims made in it be credible?

Let's take one of the big 'fake news' items from the recent election, the one regarding Hillary's health. What do you make of this article by a former secret service agent on Hillary Clinton's health:

http://ijr.com/opinion/2016/09/260018-protected-hillary-clin...

None of the facts in that article are in disrepute either, and it's also from a respected secret service agent.

So are the questions it poses about Hillary's health more or less credible than the Trump dossier, and is it fake news or not?

Re: Fake News Challenge

#192

Post by JacobJans »

general_ai wrote: post #188
jccalhoun wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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". :-)

Once again, you are showing why it is so hard to talk about the actual problem. You've managed to distract from the issue by bringing up inflammatory statements about Donald Trump. You go on to accuse Salon.com to be a fake news site, which it is most definitely not, at least not in terms of the problem that lead to the issue of Fake News in the first place.

This, in a sense, is Donald Trump's fault. He is so good at controlling the conversation; his bombastic style demands a response; this is the same style you're using in your posts, and it has successfully redirected the discussion. It doesn't matter whether you're right; the topic has now changed.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#193

Post by intended »

Goddamit. No.

Fake news is a meta problem, and it's solve by funding news agencies and removing them from the advertising loop, as well as laws which make news vs opinion different discussions.

Tech cannot solve it without also creating tools which will be used against us.

The magic tech solution to solve fake news is essentially an assessment of the intent of the author.

Any tool which even gets close to ascertaining this will be badly misused.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#194

Post by intended »

imron wrote: post #171
dragonwriter wrote: post #108

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? You mean the ones contained in a dossier which accurately predicted several Trump related events that were not publicly known to be in planning at the time it was written, but were verifiable to have occurred as predicted before it was published? Seems to me that it was plenty…

If I was Putin and I was trying to interfere in US politics, then after seeing that dossier I would have done this anyway just to mess with people, setting up a bunch of shell companies and essentially selling a 19% share of the company to itself. Gonna need more hard evidence before being concerned about this.

This fails ~~occasion~~ occam's razor. By that logic, Putin could also dress up as an orange ballerina while announcing a 15% sale of the company, just to screw with people.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#195

Post by Retra »

lend000 wrote: post #126
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.

That doesn't really work very well. News as a product means you give the customers what they ask for, not what they need. If they ask for lies, it's not fraud.

However, news as a public service has standards of liability to the public in general, not just to your own customers. It is an obligation to society, not to the buyer.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#196

Post by intended »

imron wrote: post #191
untog wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's miles more credible than the stories found on fake news sites. 1000 * 0 is still 0. If the Trump campaign had ordered a dossier of dirt on Hillary Clinton, and paid a respected former intelligence officer to provide it, would the claims made in it be credible? Let's take one of the big 'fake news' items from the recent election, the one regarding Hillary's health. What do you make of this article by a former s…

No it's not?

The definition of fake news is getting stretched to include controversial news.

"Fake news" is fiction being sold as news on websites that look credible.

Flat out making stuff up, and polluting the media stream with it in order to manipulate people.

This is the easy case to solve. As people actually try to grapple with this, "fake news" will evolve, it will add parts of the truth to it dodge this 0th level definition.

A dossier actually compiled but unverified is still not fake news - it's a shady bad practice circa 1990. Unfortunately we're dealing with much worse problems today.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#197

Post by intended »

imron wrote: post #178
enraged_camel wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that when NYTimes gets something wrong, it is not out of sheer malice and desire to mislead people. It's because their sources were wrong and the journalists didn't do a good enough job verifying the information. Fake news on the other hand are literally made up lies. The overwhelming majority of fake news articles have no basis in reality, period. They tend to be written by people who want nothing…

> The difference is that when NYTimes gets something wrong, it is not out of sheer malice and desire to mislead people That's right, because when Wikileaks revealed high levels of collusion between media outlets and the DNC/Clinton campaign, placing and pulling articles/stories to present a specific narrative, it wasn't out of desire to mislead, rather it was only a desire to 'correct the record'. /s

Which is still business as usual and has solutions elsewhere.

America and the world have a situation where advertisers need to prey on the Id and emotions of users in order to sell widgets. The advent of the internet crushed the ability of media firms to stay afloat and replaced the ecosystem with many upstarts who also faced the same pressure.

In short there's an overheating attention grabbing system when it comes to the media, which is its own issue that needs to be solved.

Unfortunately there's a new hitherto unbelievable problem, where people fabricate complete and utter lies/fiction and can sail it down the streams of social media.

This is different from the older issue in that these are not major news agencies, but websites masquerading/camouflaging themselves as a news outlet and fabricating stories designed to directly press emotional buttons without having to deal with facts.

A closer model is conspiracy theories.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#198

Post by milesf »

So we're going to create bots to trust what is true/not true so when Skynet goes live it will have an easier time defeating us?

I see what you did there ;)

In all seriousness, though, if people do not learn to read the news and media critically then an AI system isn't going to make things better. I remember back in high school, here in Canada, being taught media literacy. I think it was because of our close proximity to the US, and how influential US media can be.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#199

Post by imron »

intended wrote: post #197
imron wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that when NYTimes gets something wrong, it is not out of sheer malice and desire to mislead people That's right, because when Wikileaks revealed high levels of collusion between media outlets and the DNC/Clinton campaign, placing and pulling articles/stories to present a specific narrative, it wasn't out of desire to mislead, rather it was only a desire to 'correct the record'. /s

Which is still business as usual and has solutions elsewhere. America and the world have a situation where advertisers need to prey on the Id and emotions of users in order to sell widgets. The advent of the internet crushed the ability of media firms to stay afloat and replaced the ecosystem with many upstarts who also faced the same pressure. In short there's an overheating attention grabbing system when it comes t…

> fabricating stories designed to directly press emotional buttons without having to deal with facts.

I agree this is a problem. It also happened rather equally on both sides.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#200

Post by imron »

intended wrote: post #194
imron wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I was Putin and I was trying to interfere in US politics, then after seeing that dossier I would have done this anyway just to mess with people, setting up a bunch of shell companies and essentially selling a 19% share of the company to itself. Gonna need more hard evidence before being concerned about this.

This fails ~~occasion~~ occam's razor. By that logic, Putin could also dress up as an orange ballerina while announcing a 15% sale of the company, just to screw with people.

> This fails occasion razor

Occam's razor, but I'm guessing that was autocorrect.

Anyway, no, because there is no incentive for him to do what you are suggesting.

If however you believe his goal is to destabilise U.S. politics, then there is large incentive and zero downside for him to fake a sale of 19% of the company.

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