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

201–210 of 233 posts

Re: Fake News Challenge

#201

Post by intended »

imron wrote: post #160
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…

> All I know is the people who seem prone to believing the stupidest stories also believe global warming is a hoax and Obama was not born in this country Really, because not more than a few weeks ago I remember a whole bunch of people believing the "we can't verify, but we're going to press anyway" stories about Trump and golden showers in Russia, not to mention a whole bunch of other similar fake news regarding Trum…

There's a marked difference between those statements

1) media agencies on all sides had the dossier and didn't publish it since t was unverifiable

2) when buzfeed or whomever linked the dossier, it forced other firms to do so as well or lose out on a critical story.

3) the adaptation to deal with this is to not report the dossier as fact, but as claims. And of course, it spiraled downhill from there,

In this scenario it's important to note that media firms avoided reporting on this issue because it was crap.

For global warming, ah man where do we start.

Firstly, it's unfair to lambast people for believing it's a hoax.

Since the 80s and before, a long, intelligent and concerted effort to spread FUD has been active in America. It is today successful enough to spread around the world.

If people were old enough, they would remember that initially scientists would not give the time of day to global warming conspiracist/deniers.

It was correctly believed that doing so actually gave cranks and loons the patina of credibility, when they should be allowed to die out.

Unfortunately, these cranks and loons were cultivated and nurtured, and given airtime. In particular there is one news network that I recall had a more active role in this and it was not CNN.

Eventually scientists were forced to engage, and by engaging they lost.

Scientists, (and people on HN) are constantly making the error that this is about facts.

It's about entertainment and playing with human emotions.

Scientists walked in expecting a debate, when it was about showmanship, with one side reporting things unevenly.

As a result there are people today who will be anti global warming because they are being manipulated.

Fake news is a new problem

Re: Fake News Challenge

#202

Post by imron »

intended wrote: post #196
imron wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 lev…

Ok, so if I compile a dossier of unverified stories regarding Hillary, and package them up then it suddenly makes otherwise fake claims not fake news?

I mean that's the whole sub-prime mortgage problem all over again. Take a shitty product and wrap it in layers of respectability until people don't know any better.

When there is also evidence to suggest much of the contents of the dossier came from a 4-chan prank, it's hard to see where the difference is.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#203

Post by untog »

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…

I wouldn't describe this as fake news at all, but I'd say that one person's view on a video they have watched isn't comparable to that dossier, which was (apparently) compiled from numerous in-person visits and interviews. Not to mention, reporting on the dossier always clarified that it was not verified, while this opinion piece is making broader conclusions.

I agree with you broadly, though. To me, fake news has absolutely no mooring in reality whatsoever and is pure clickbait - usually without political motive beyond getting angry people to click.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#204

Post by intended »

zzzcpan wrote: post #153
RandyRanderson wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noam called it manufacturing consent and it's been a thing for quite a while[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

Interesting that his propaganda model [1] actually breaks a bit with the age of internet. Social media, news aggregators, small independent bloggers and small independent news outlets don't have the described biases. Algorithmic filters are somehow unbiased. Independent person/outlet can question the government, capitalism, doesn't have to trust government's spokesmen, doesn't have to publish them, doesn't even have…

No it doesn't work that way. It's a nice theory, but I've been a mod on a national sub for a while, and I've been on forums since around/before slashdot.

You can very easily overwhelm the signal with noise. The plethora of independents means nothing if only a few of them get heard.

Matter of fact, with some pushing, you can have one "independent" dominate a large portion of the channel. At some juncture the network effect takes over and the process becomes self sustaining, you just need to play on people's/your target markets biases well.

This is a people problem, and people are getting way too good and understanding and manipulating the biases of other people.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#205

Post by intended »

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…

This is again business as usual, an issue which has its own space and time.

But fake news is not the same and it's a whole different issue which also needs to be resolved.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#206

Post by general_ai »

JacobJans wrote: post #192
general_ai wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How are my statements in any way "inflammatory"? They're as factual as it gets. Is there anything in them that's even up for debate?

Re: Fake News Challenge

#207

Post by imron »

intended wrote: post #201
imron wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All I know is the people who seem prone to believing the stupidest stories also believe global warming is a hoax and Obama was not born in this country Really, because not more than a few weeks ago I remember a whole bunch of people believing the "we can't verify, but we're going to press anyway" stories about Trump and golden showers in Russia, not to mention a whole bunch of other similar fake news regarding Trum…

There's a marked difference between those statements 1) media agencies on all sides had the dossier and didn't publish it since t was unverifiable 2) when buzfeed or whomever linked the dossier, it forced other firms to do so as well or lose out on a critical story. 3) the adaptation to deal with this is to not report the dossier as fact, but as claims. And of course, it spiraled downhill from there, In this scenario…

> For global warming, ah man where do we start.

Global warming wasn't part of my argument. That was just me quoting the parent who appears to believe only one side of the political spectrum is susceptible to fake news.

Personally I trust the science, and think that even if you don't there are enough other compelling reasons to move on to renewable energy sources that we'd be stupid not to anyway.

WaitButWhy.com had a good series on Elon Musk that explored many of these issues: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-lif...

> Fake news is a new problem

There was plenty of science going against 'smoking causes cancer'. Fake news has been around for quite some time, just not in its current more virulent form.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#208

Post by intended »

imron wrote: post #199
intended wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The sides don't matter.

If you really want to know how it works, please take a look at a recent a paper co-authored by Alessandro Bessi. It came out a week ago. It should be accessible for most people on HN.

Re: Fake News Challenge

#209

Post by imron »

untog wrote: post #203
imron wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I wouldn't describe this as fake news at all, but I'd say that one person's view on a video they have watched isn't comparable to that dossier, which was (apparently) compiled from numerous in-person visits and interviews. Not to mention, reporting on the dossier always clarified that it was not verified, while this opinion piece is making broader conclusions. I agree with you broadly, though. To me, fake news has ab…

> isn't comparable to that dossier, which was (apparently) compiled from numerous in-person visits and interviews

And that (apparently) can trace its origins to a 4-chan prank?

Re: Fake News Challenge

#210

Post by astrodust »

jquery wrote: post #161
astrodust wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sources are one thing. Then they go and draw perverse or completely contradictory conclusions from them.
Post reply on HN