The cat is out of the bag- this stuff works! As most of us here know, fake news is an incredibly tricky problem to address. You tell me the tool that solves it, and I'll tell you how it can be gamed. Democracy's only hope is to build a culture of transparency and healthy skepticism.
Fake news is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is that our society is gullible and emotionally fragile, and the people bombarding us with propaganda know this. Fake news is tuned to our weaknesses and to fix this we need to improve ourselves as a society. If we don't then whatever media comes next will be similarly tuned, and the cycle will repeat itself (again), as it nearly always has. That sounds like a bi…
Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#22Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am reminded of the experiment where a cockroach had brain implants that allowed its movement to be controlled electronically. After a while the cockroach would figure out the signal the researchers were using and its brain ignored it effectively locking out the researchers. At some point it was figured out that if random noise (music) was constantly transmitted the cockroach could be controlled much longer before i…
I agree. It's worth remembering that placing trust in the people--as a democracy does--is not perfect. It's just better than alternatives, like a corporatocracy--let Alphabet Inc. decide which ideas are OK--or other authoritarian models. However, it is a truly difficult problem. It is difficult to say what penalties there should be for fake news. One thing I would propose is that civil liabilities associated with fal…
Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#24Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fake news is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is that our society is gullible and emotionally fragile, and the people bombarding us with propaganda know this. Fake news is tuned to our weaknesses and to fix this we need to improve ourselves as a society. If we don't then whatever media comes next will be similarly tuned, and the cycle will repeat itself (again), as it nearly always has. That sounds like a bi…
The human brain is buggy, we're glorified monkeys. You can't tackle societal problems by saying that we need to fix the brains. The history of society and politics is about exploiting those bugs and then, through great deal of effort over centuries, establishing institutions and norms to prevent the exploitation of those bugs.
A genius Haskell programmer and good friend of mine in the south recently said something to the effect of "liberals should give up this effort to ban all guns". The news he watches had characterized liberals that way, and he believed them. I pointed out that almost nobody on the left is gunning for that outcome, as it were, the "bug" disappeared.
Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#26The cat is out of the bag- this stuff works! As most of us here know, fake news is an incredibly tricky problem to address. You tell me the tool that solves it, and I'll tell you how it can be gamed. Democracy's only hope is to build a culture of transparency and healthy skepticism.
Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#27The cat is out of the bag- this stuff works! As most of us here know, fake news is an incredibly tricky problem to address. You tell me the tool that solves it, and I'll tell you how it can be gamed. Democracy's only hope is to build a culture of transparency and healthy skepticism.
I am reminded of the experiment where a cockroach had brain implants that allowed its movement to be controlled electronically. After a while the cockroach would figure out the signal the researchers were using and its brain ignored it effectively locking out the researchers. At some point it was figured out that if random noise (music) was constantly transmitted the cockroach could be controlled much longer before i…
reallise, like you draw analogy with fake news being manipulative signals, all inputs which have interpreters behind it can be manipulated if one knows how the input is interpreted in detail. that's just the nature of interpreting signals, it opens possibility to 'fake' signals.
Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#28The cat is out of the bag- this stuff works! As most of us here know, fake news is an incredibly tricky problem to address. You tell me the tool that solves it, and I'll tell you how it can be gamed. Democracy's only hope is to build a culture of transparency and healthy skepticism.
Fake news is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is that our society is gullible and emotionally fragile, and the people bombarding us with propaganda know this. Fake news is tuned to our weaknesses and to fix this we need to improve ourselves as a society. If we don't then whatever media comes next will be similarly tuned, and the cycle will repeat itself (again), as it nearly always has. That sounds like a bi…
Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am reminded of the experiment where a cockroach had brain implants that allowed its movement to be controlled electronically. After a while the cockroach would figure out the signal the researchers were using and its brain ignored it effectively locking out the researchers. At some point it was figured out that if random noise (music) was constantly transmitted the cockroach could be controlled much longer before i…
Maybe we should start with Dan Rather. His fake memo ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy ) was the first attempt (that was caught at the in real-time) in using fake news (literally a faked meo) to influence a Presidential election by a major network. A lot of today's distrust of media traces from that incident.
I remember this incident and what is striking about it is:
- How seriously the fake memo was taken by some in the media; and
- Just how bad a fake it was. Like it was literally just printed off from Word and photocopied at Kinkos. Had someone instead used a typewriter from the era and not been seen at Kinkos it could well have been a different story.
If it had been a reasonable fake it may well have changed the result of the election. People on the right like to argue the media has a "liberal bias". These sorts of incidents don't really help.
Re: Kenyans bombarded with fake news in presidential election [video]
#30The cat is out of the bag- this stuff works! As most of us here know, fake news is an incredibly tricky problem to address. You tell me the tool that solves it, and I'll tell you how it can be gamed. Democracy's only hope is to build a culture of transparency and healthy skepticism.
Fake news is the symptom, not the disease. The disease is that our society is gullible and emotionally fragile, and the people bombarding us with propaganda know this. Fake news is tuned to our weaknesses and to fix this we need to improve ourselves as a society. If we don't then whatever media comes next will be similarly tuned, and the cycle will repeat itself (again), as it nearly always has. That sounds like a bi…