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Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

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Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#131

Post by josefresco »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #89
josefresco wrote: post #58

This, and many other concepts based on "vetting" news assumes that the audience cares. A significant portion of the audience does not care, and is instead looking for news that validates their worldview, and furthers their (and their chosen political party's) goals. So basically these services will cannibalize the part of the audience that does care about truth, turning people against each other over marginally skewe…

It's even worse. For most people, news is just a social object. Something to talk about with family, co-workers, etc. Whether or not any particular story is true doesn't matter - what matters is that everyone in their circle is aware of the described event (whether they read the same story, or a different one). Humans are pretty good at fact-checking and critical thinking when getting it wrong means some immediate lo…

> But most news stories are irrelevant to almost everyone's lives, and those few that are, don't have a direct and immediate impact.

Seemingly yes.

A murder in the closest largest city/town has NO IMPACT on my life (unless I know the victim) but yet tax or health policy changes on the national level do in fact have a direct impact. Guess which one gets run on the evening news? Which one does your family talk about at the dinner table?

Nightly network news should be focusing (and condensing unlike "cable news") on national/state and local laws, policies etc. not fire/murder/theft.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#132

Post by NoblePublius »

This seems far too complicated. The UX of Dissenter (boo, hiss, I know, control yourself) is simple by comparison, doesn’t involve another destination site, and doesn’t involve a committee deciding whose reviews are more worthy of consideration than others. What Id prefer is a ranking system of journalist merit: does this story cite anonymous sources? Is this story original reporting? Does this story simply repackage someone else’s original reporting with an editorial headline? Is it news, editorial, or opinion? What corporations advertise with the parent company? These are objective measures of newsworthiness and Credder would track none of them by default.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#133

Post by jellicle »

And if you have questions about the credibility of Credder, you can just check the Credder ratings on Verrit, which is itself verified by Truther and Accurit, which are backed up by Credder. Solved!

News trustworthiness is not a technical problem and cannot be solved by technical solutions. News: something you don't know. Verifying news: asking people to opine about the trustworthiness of something they don't know.

> "Here's an opaque cardboard box. In it is a banana. Now rate my news story on its accuracy. NO, you are not allowed to open or inspect the box in any way. Also, a lot of you have strong political opinions about bananas. Ready, GO!"

Garbage in, garbage out.

Far too gameable, a fundamentally insoluble problem to begin with.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#134

Post by jimbokun »

josefresco wrote: post #58

This, and many other concepts based on "vetting" news assumes that the audience cares. A significant portion of the audience does not care, and is instead looking for news that validates their worldview, and furthers their (and their chosen political party's) goals. So basically these services will cannibalize the part of the audience that does care about truth, turning people against each other over marginally skewe…

I think there are people who care. But the real problem, is the growing cynical world view that we cannot trust any authorities, and therefor have no way of assessing truth or reliability of anything we read or here.

The first step is to educate people this is not inevitable. No, don't trust authorities, but trust your ability to research and verify and spot faulty or unsupported arguments and assertions.

I'm pretty sure the reason this is being prominently discussed on Hacker News today is because of the criticism of "the media" around the Mueller report. But an equal emphasis needs to be placed on praising Mueller for the thorough job he performed, and the credibility and integrity which he invested into this task as an act of service to the nation. I think it will be very difficult now for anyone to argue there was not a massive effort from the Russians to help elect Trump, that there was a disregard and contempt for the law from many people in the Trump administration who have been found guilty of crimes or await trial, but also that there is insufficient evidence to prove Trump personally committed a crime with regard to the Russian interference.

The investigation is a shining example it is still possible to establish facts and evidence with some level of objectivity, if one is willing to be patient and wait for the process to play out before coming to conclusions.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#135

Post by josefresco »

sureaboutthis wrote: post #69
josefresco wrote: post #58

This, and many other concepts based on "vetting" news assumes that the audience cares. A significant portion of the audience does not care, and is instead looking for news that validates their worldview, and furthers their (and their chosen political party's) goals. So basically these services will cannibalize the part of the audience that does care about truth, turning people against each other over marginally skewe…

To a point, you are correct, but most people don't "not care". Most people are unaware and only assume a knowledgeable, experienced editor vets and edits the news. Today, most news has a marketing angle applied to it to attract more viewers and visitors.

The number of people who shared and continue to share "fake news" is a sign (to me) that most don't care about truth and are in fact complicit. These people are selfish, narcissistic, naive maybe all of the above.

> Most people are unaware

I just don't buy this based on the content that I see shared.

When corruption (for example) is exposed it should be a slam dunk for both sides of the political debate. However, this is no longer happening, with each side digging in deeper.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#137

Post by beat »

keiferski wrote: post #4

Taking a look at the Rotten Tomatoes “Top 100 Films of All Time” list [1], I’m not exactly sure why it’s a model to be replicated. It’s extremely obvious that “top” means “popular and/or most advertised.” [1] https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/

Fully half that list is movies from the 20th century, going back as far as 1920. I think it's a flawed list in many ways (especially the lack of non-English language films, missing masterpieces like Tarkovsky's Stalker), but it doesn't seem to be driven by mere popularity or advertisement.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#138

Post by jimbokun »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #117
sverige wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "news" involves reaching conclusions, isn't that really "editorial" content? For example, it's one thing to report what AG Barr's letter on the Mueller investigation says, and maybe also what it doesn't say. It's also "news" to report what various players say about the report. It's another thing for reporters to speculate what it means in terms of future investigations, or whether the report is "trustworthy," or t…

I suspect most people either can't or don't care to tell the difference. Fox News, for instance is widely regarded to be biased to the right. And their opinion or editorial content absolutely is, often to the point of absurdity. But their actual news content is very well done so far as I can see. Do their viewers distinguish the two? I doubt it. Do their detractors distinguish the two? I doubt that also.

"Do their detractors distinguish the two?"

There is a significant amount of respect for Shep Smith and Chris Wallace in predominantly liberal news discussions (like r/politics subreddit) for being willing to criticize Trump and Republicans.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#139

Post by jerkstate »

daveFNbuck wrote: post #123
ZhuanXia wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subsidized prediction markets. Unfortunately, they are illegal

How would a prediction market help determine whether a news article about current events is accurate?

I believe that the theory is that having "skin in the game" in the form of money would help optimize the news for something other than clickworthiness.

Re: Credder Wants to Create an Equivalent to “Rotten Tomatoes” for News

#140

Post by beat »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #42
dagw wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s extremely obvious that “top” means “popular and/or most advertised.” In RTs case, "Top" means films no one dislikes it and everybody thought it was at the very least OK. The "problem" with genuinely great films is that they can often be divisive and challenging and generate a lot of strong opinions in both directions, and thus they'll never rate as well on RT.

I think that's exactly the case the OP has: there's no lack of divisive news at the moment. It's a calm, balanced, quality journalism that's we all are missing.

I don't think there's any lack of calm, balanced, quality journalism. Rather, there's a lot of politicized rejection of calm, balanced, quality news. You don't have to look too far to find people who think AP (much less BBC or Al Jazeera) is part of some conspiracy or another.

As Cobert (I think) said, "Facts have a known liberal bias".

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