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Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

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Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#251

Post by admax88q »

mikedilger wrote: post #229

I appreciate the recognition that there is a problem in journalism. But I'm afraid that the fundamental problems are problems in the nature of humans and aren't ameniable to this sort of solution. Those problems include: 1) Many people choose to believe what feels right to them, rather than dispassionately seeing things for what they are. Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and they…

> Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and they have practiced this their entire lives.

A certain percentage of the population does not have critical thinking skills and never will. However a project like this is useful for those of us who do. If journalists don't disclose their data and reasoning its hard even for those of us inclined to verify or fact check anything, leaving us susceptible to propaganda.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#252

Post by matt4077 »

99052882514569 wrote: post #125
50656E6973 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claas Relotius, the Der Spiegel journalist who won CNN's journalist of the year award who was revelead to be completely inventing stories about people to make enticing click bait. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-spiege...

He either invented sources or made up quotes from real people he never met. How do you expect this platform to remedy that?

There were a few tells one could find, at least after the fact. For example, he described a women locking her door „with three turns of the key“. That’s something that works on German locks, where the bolt keeps advancing. But the incident was supposed to have happened in some southern US state. And in the US, most locks only allow a quarter turn. I asked specifically about the prevalence of different lock types in the state in a HN threat at the time.

That said, this is a singular and decidedly rare event. The insinuation of widespread whole-cloth fabrication is almost certainly wrong, and probably more damaging to democracy than any actual fraud will ever be.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#253

Post by agumonkey »

mikedilger wrote: post #229

I appreciate the recognition that there is a problem in journalism. But I'm afraid that the fundamental problems are problems in the nature of humans and aren't ameniable to this sort of solution. Those problems include: 1) Many people choose to believe what feels right to them, rather than dispassionately seeing things for what they are. Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and they…

Another fact, in some domains I don't think reporters can ever write anything useful, it would take very high viewpoint and years of experience in the field to say something ..

Reporter reports

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#254

Post by enriquto »

But journalism is not only stating true facts, but choosing a limited set of facts to present.

You can pretty well do fake news by stating a list of true facts (and omitting a few other, fundamental, true facts).

Example:

Published news : person A killed person B by pushing a knife on his stomach, at a time when person B was unarmed.

Non-published statements : just before being killed, person B and a group of three friends armed with knifes attacked person A, which was unarmed at the time, and started cutting him. During the struggle, person A managed to get hold of B's knife and fought back, harming B. The friends of B were scared and ran away. Person A finally survived his injuries, but person B didn't.

I suppose everybody agrees that publishing the first statement alone is a clear example of fake news.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#255

Post by GistNoesis »

Little feedback : Nice. Please add a vertical splitter in the verify page so that the verification is not constrained to a small margin on the right, which make it not easily readable.

It would also be nice to have some color coding when reading articles, so you can know what's the majority opinion on the validity of the piece.

Hopefully once you have gathered enough data, you can get one of these NLP bots to check the fact in an even more neutral way.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#256

Post by v_lisivka »

Fnoord wrote: post #70
v_lisivka wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian government backed trolls will use this system to spread fakes instead. Wikipedia has similar system and Russians abuse it a lot.

Can you back this up with examples?

Examples of hoaxes backed by Russian government trolls, or examples of abuse of Wikipedia and other sites by Russian government trolls? I have both.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#258

Post by oaf357 »

admax88q wrote: post #251
mikedilger wrote: post #229

I appreciate the recognition that there is a problem in journalism. But I'm afraid that the fundamental problems are problems in the nature of humans and aren't ameniable to this sort of solution. Those problems include: 1) Many people choose to believe what feels right to them, rather than dispassionately seeing things for what they are. Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and they…

> Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and they have practiced this their entire lives. A certain percentage of the population does not have critical thinking skills and never will. However a project like this is useful for those of us who do. If journalists don't disclose their data and reasoning its hard even for those of us inclined to verify or fact check anything, leaving us sus…

False. Trust in journalism is built by proving reporting to be of quality over time. Not by providing a bibliography before the report ever dries.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#259

Post by Veen »

hannasanarion wrote: post #236
colechristensen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"An article on Sunday about once-dominant N.H.L. teams adjusting to an evolving league misstated the number of conference finals appearance by the Kings, the Ducks and the Blackhawks since 2009. It is 10, not nine. Because of an editing error, an earlier version also misstated the number of playoff appearances by those teams in that span. It is 24, not 27." An example from the new york times from yesterday. Obviously…

Yeah, and they corrected the error themselves and published the correction. This is why they are trustworthy. Making a mistake is not the same as lying.

Making a mistake is not lying, but it is a moral failing to promulgate fiction as fact because it accords with your preferred narrative, especially when it's done by the media, who are trusted because they are supposed to practice restraint and good judgment.
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