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

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

#161

Post by josefresco » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #158

josefresco wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it pretty easy to find reputable news sources, I don't really need a tool but I guess it could help. It's everyone else I'm worried about. Solving this problem for only people who want the truth narrows the scope dramatically and may in fact make the situation worse, by attacking and discrediting legitimate news sources for a perceived bias.

"I find it pretty easy to find reputable news sources," Were your "reputable news sources" promising you up, down, left, right, backwards and forwards that the Mueller report was going to end Trump and conclusively prove that his Presidency was the result of Russian collusion? Maybe not for you as an individual. Mine were a great deal more mixed, for instance. But I suspect for a lot of people, the reason they find i…

> Were your "reputable news sources" promising you

No? News shouldn't "promise you" anything. Maybe you're reading too many opinion pieces? 50-75% of the news I see shared online seems to be opinion pieces attempting to "synthesize" the current news of the day. If you focus on journalists (including following them directly), and just pure news you won't be promised anything.

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

#162

Post by ckastner » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:04 PM UTC

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…

> This, and many other concepts based on "vetting" news assumes that the audience cares.

Exactly. It's not as if there haven't been any high-quality news sources around; quite the contrary. But quality has steadily been losing to whatever the consumers want to here.

Just compare 1980's CNN with today's CNN.

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

#163

Post by josefresco » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #149

TeMPOraL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe that's why the right wing is so pro-climate-change: it gives them more extreme weather to talk about.

Lame joke but it highlights how these topics are condensed and discussed at the dinner table.

---

How about this crazy cold weather?

So much for global warming huh! har har har

That's not how it works Dad!

I know I know but still...

---

Harmless maybe, but it doesn't stop Dad from sharing a climate change denial piece or voting for a candidate who doesn't believe (or pretends to not believe) the science.

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

#164

Post by jerf » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

josefresco wrote: post #161

jerf wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I find it pretty easy to find reputable news sources," Were your "reputable news sources" promising you up, down, left, right, backwards and forwards that the Mueller report was going to end Trump and conclusively prove that his Presidency was the result of Russian collusion? Maybe not for you as an individual. Mine were a great deal more mixed, for instance. But I suspect for a lot of people, the reason they find i…

> Were your "reputable news sources" promising you No? News shouldn't "promise you" anything. Maybe you're reading too many opinion pieces? 50-75% of the news I see shared online seems to be opinion pieces attempting to "synthesize" the current news of the day. If you focus on journalists (including following them directly), and just pure news you won't be promised anything.

"just pure news you won't be promised anything."

One of the most important aspects of the scientific mindset is to attempt to disprove one's own beliefs... I'd argue that that alone is enough to derive the most important aspects of scientific practice from.

Your challenge for the next couple of months is to read your own sources and actively seek out reasons why they are trying to lead you to certain things.

In particular, the question to be focusing on is "What conclusions am I expected to be drawing from this story?"

If you don't find them, I'd like to hear about your sources. They must be something exotic and small, because every name brand I've ever examined is pretty busy telling me what to think, not neutrally reporting news.

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

#165

Post by josefresco » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #162

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…

> This, and many other concepts based on "vetting" news assumes that the audience cares. Exactly. It's not as if there haven't been any high-quality news sources around; quite the contrary. But quality has steadily been losing to whatever the consumers want to here. Just compare 1980's CNN with today's CNN.

ALL cable news.

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

#166

Post by tzs » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

anextomp wrote: post #16

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/

This is because films with more ratings are rated higher. Older films have far fewer ratings by critics, same with smaller films. Add on the fact that each critic's review is distilled to a positive/negative boolean value, and it's clear to see why RT's best films is really just a list of films they are confident you'll like.

There are still some oddities.

"How to Train Your Dragon" (2010), 99% with 206 reviews does not make the list, but many older movies, with lower scores and lower number of reviews do. E.g., "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), 98% with 111 reviews, and "It Happened One Night" (1934), 98% with 56 reviews, and "Casablanca" (1942), 97% with 79 reviews, and "Alien" (1979), 97% with 115 reviews.

It looks like the older a film is, the fewer reviews it needs backing its score to make the list.

It's also possible that the age of the review is taken into account, so that a modern review looking back on a film counts more than an older review, because that would probably be more relevant to someone today deciding what older movies to watch.

For example, take "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" (1966). It wasn't very well received by critics in 1966. Now, though, it's at 97% on RT, and is regular included in lists of top films (it used to be on the RT top 100, but looks like it has been pushed off).

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

#167

Post by josefresco » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #134

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…

> But the real problem, is the growing cynical world view that we cannot trust any authorities

Sounds familiar, almost like it's from some sort of playbook...

> 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

Oof, I wish.

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

#168

Post by catchmeifyoucan » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

How do they make money

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

#169

Post by stcredzero » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

rooam-dev wrote: post #64

Good luck to them if course, but I am not sure this will work. Couple of reasons come to my mind: 1. How will I know that news have been reviewed by qualified people? Technically this should be news agency/source's job. 2. By the time the score will depict the news' quality, the damage may be already done. 3. RT is based on people's opinions, but news should be fact checked. What I think it should do, is to score the…

Although the most effective would be to have some kind of liability for spreading/posting fake news

The market cannot do this, at least as currently constituted. Right now, fake news which pleases the sensibility of whatever group gets rewarded by that group. The same group also fails to punish the fake news. The surprising fact, which shouldn't be surprising, since Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have been calling this out since the 80's, is that the mainstream does this too. The differences in 2019, are that pushing narratives and differences in emotional language play a much larger role, and factual accuracy is much less important to the public now than it was then.

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

#170

Post by jonathankoren » Mon, Mar 25, 2019, 4:32 PM UTC

jerkstate wrote: post #139

daveFNbuck wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re assuming that a publisher would be willing to put enough money into a prediction market to make a profit from the market machinations rather than advertising or subscriptions.

This is also assuming that prediction markets are actually useful in general, and useful in this specific case. Both of which are open to discussion, but even for this specific case, it’s not even clear what the the prediction market would even be predicting. The Politifact meter? What about all the stuff Poltifact doesn’t bother reporting on? Poltifxt (or any other org) aren’t perfect, and can be played as well.