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How Lies Spread Online

nytimes.com

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Re: How Lies Spread Online

#51

Post by acheron »

bsder wrote: post #25
sien wrote: post #6

You hire Judith Miller to write about WMDs. Then get 'quality' news to publish it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller The cost of the NYT's 'disinformation' about Iraq was a war that cost hundreds of billions and thousands of lives.

Whataboutism. Your statement, while accurate, says nothing about the veracity of the current article. I wish I could do more than downvote you.

> I wish I could do more than downvote you.

It’s off topic garbage, and generated an equally garbage subthread, so flagging is certainly appropriate.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#52

Post by everybodyknows »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

This was from March but it is a good question. It prompted me to do some spot checks on Facebook virality and Twitter virality as well. One of the things that stands out in false stories is that because they are false they stay "on message" in their falseness. This contrasts with stories that are more truthful which tend to include questions and unknowns that might later contradict or modify the story. So for an exam…

These same criteria apply nicely to vetting of Yelp/Google reviews. The fakes seldom show any thought of non-positive information.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#53

Post by tasty_freeze »

Veelox wrote: post #34
bumholio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite unfair to compare misinformation campaigns orchestrated by the whole US government and it's intelligence agencies, as was the case with Iraq's WMDs, to online propaganda organized by private individuals to the benefit of various political candidates or their own online circulation. What happened with Iraq was not just fake news, it was fake governing, it was another order of magnitude. Miller and the NYT w…

Do we have reason to believe that the government knew there were no WMDs?

You are putting the burden on the wrong shoulders. Cheney et el claimed to have extensive proof, which was later shown to be made up. Then there were things which were debunked even before we started the campaign, such as the aluminum rods which were supposedly for a nuclear reactor.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#54

Post by DonaldFisk »

I know the authors suggested and found some evidence for novelty being the reason why false news is so compelling, but might it not be that it fits whatever narrative or agenda is being promoted? You can make up whatever false news you want, but you can't make up facts, so false news will always be more likely to fit the narrative.

Another possible reason is that if you tell your friends something is true, and later find out from a more reliable source that you were deceived, you then look gullible believing it in the first place, and even if you don't tell them, you'll feel gullible unless you hang on to your original belief.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#55

Post by ryandrake »

munk-a wrote: post #33
GW150914 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, the backlash we're seeing against mainstream media these days are, I believe, in a large part driven by those reporters that failed to do their due diligence when it came to Iraq. Except that the “MSM is lying” crowd still overwhelmingly supports W. bush and the Iraq war, and didn’t seem to mind what the media had to say for 8 years of his presidency. This whole thing kicked off under Obama when “alt” news was t…

When it comes to the Iraq war everyone was lied to. Certainly war hawks might have been happy, but the majority of Americans on both sides of the aisles dislike unnecessary wars. Honestly, participants in the media and those on this message board are likely to be among the less effected by wars but people from the full political spectrum die in combat. To clarify, though, I didn't meant to say that the right wouldn't…

> Certainly war hawks might have been happy, but the majority of Americans on both sides of the aisles dislike unnecessary wars.

It doesn’t matter what they like or dislike, it matters who they vote for. For most of the USA’s history, Americans have consistently voted for national candidates who ended up starting or continuing unnecessary war. This is true for both major parties. The country has been involved in voluntary military conflicts for how many years of its history?

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#56

Post by function_seven »

slg wrote: post #38
function_seven wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody in this thread suggested that the journalists were lying, just that they were terrible at their jobs. They repeated the official line, without questioning the source.

The title of this article and post presents a question. The first comment in this thread appears to be answering that question by blaming it on the NYT.

Right. By blindly parroting the government's line. By failing to do due diligence, or be skeptical of the sources, etc. Those are all different things than lying. They're lapses in professional care, or shortcomings in ability. Straight up lying could also be involved, sure. But lying isn't necessary for blame to be assigned.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#57

Post by iamleppert »

This pretty much quantifies one of my core beliefs about human behavior: people are dishonest by nature.

The reward mechanisms for our world are clearly optimized for dishonesty and deception. This isn’t to make some kind of statement about our culture, rather it’s an observation about reality. Dishonesty and falsity are everywhere, and you even find it in nature and animals.

I don’t think it has anything to do with good or bad per se, as it does with the path of least resistance; a lie is almost always more connvienent than the truth. People who are most successful tend to be those that are the most dishonest and are also very good at knowing how to tell fact from fiction which they then use to create more elaborate offensive and defensive models of the world.

If you think about it this way it doesn’t seem that odd, as even nature and evolution are constantly truth testing, it’s like at some level you must assume everything is a lie until proven otherwise, and even that evidence may itself be just a more elaborate falsehood.

People rarely go to the movies to be entertained by the truth.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#58

Post by mirimir »

tl;dr = lies spread faster because they're more shocking

And not, I think, just because they're more shocking. Also because they're more interesting. And more validating. Because they simplify complexity and ambiguity.

While it's unfair to single out NYT's role, the Iraq War was indeed a major propaganda effort. It worked, I think, because it helped many people deal with 9/11. But the largely unasked question has been "Whose propaganda effort?" Except, ironically enough, for stuff that many would call "fake news" or "conspiracy theory".

I suspect that much of the "fake news" that mainstream liberals are upset about now is driven by Russian propaganda. Back in the day, Russia targeted mainly the radical left. But by the mid 80s, they were focusing more on the radical right and libertarians. And for those that remember Joseph McCarthy, that is extremely ironic.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#59

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Veelox wrote: post #34
bumholio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite unfair to compare misinformation campaigns orchestrated by the whole US government and it's intelligence agencies, as was the case with Iraq's WMDs, to online propaganda organized by private individuals to the benefit of various political candidates or their own online circulation. What happened with Iraq was not just fake news, it was fake governing, it was another order of magnitude. Miller and the NYT w…

Do we have reason to believe that the government knew there were no WMDs?

They didn't know there were none. It's hard to be sure of a negative like that. They knew the chances were too slim to justify a war without a lot of embellishing.

Re: How Lies Spread Online

#60

Post by nostrademons »

SpikeDad wrote: post #41
prolikewh0a wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if you're just using sarcasm here, but there's nothing "treasonous" about not trusting intelligence agencies that throughout history have not been very trustworthy. You should also stop using "treason" incorrectly. Here [1] is a great debate between Glenn Greenwald and James Risen where Glenn breaks down how important it is to not use Treason in an incorrect manner, and explains (sourced) exactly what Tr…

Interesting to have Greenwald define treason. Is he trying to keep himself out of that illustrious crowd? Guess living in a foreign country makes one braver than usual.

It's not Greenwald's definition - he sourced it in the video from Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiii

And then goes on to cite previous court cases and what charges were actually brought in them.

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