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‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

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Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#221

Post by jkoudys »

deogeo wrote: post #49
gfodor wrote: post #35

The "best" fake news these days is the stuff that doesn't register even to people are read-in on the usual anti-patterns. Subtle framing, selective quotation, anonymous sources, "repeat the lie" techniques, and so on, are the ones that I see happening today that are hard to immunize yourself from. Ironically, the people who fall for these are more likely to self-identify as being aware and clued in on how to avoid fa…

Second best. The best is selective reporting. Even if every story is reported 100% accurately and objectively, by choosing which stories are promoted, and which buried, you can set any agenda you want. Edit: See https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... for an example.

Sure, and while biased reporting can certainly promote an incorrect worldview, it doesn't quite meet the standard of being "fake". The game is much more about outright fabricated stories that gain credibility.

There can be more than one bad thing happening at once, and it's not necessary that everything address all of them.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#222

Post by jkoudys »

btilly wrote: post #177
cat199 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> left, but on the big ones we're forced to slant right so peculiar that while existing in a 4d space, we are so prone to believing that politicians only operate on a 1d vector.

Depending on which issues matter to you, there are a lot more than 4 dimensions. I'm a fun example. Of the major candidates in the last election, preference list read (best to worst) Ted Cruz, Bernie Sanders, (big gap) John Kasich, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton. This does not fit with ANYONE's idea of the political spectrum. Why that order, and how do the most oppositely polarized candidates wind up o…

It seems like even personally identifying as conservative or liberal is a fairly new (last 30 years) change. Time was it meant "stay the course" vs "shake things up", which are reasonable things the change your mind about from election to election, or federal vs state elections. Now the parties are just sports teams, and you support your side as a matter of personal pride.

Look at Reagan's last election - he was hugely popular, and won by a massive margin in the electoral and popular votes. A big chunk of the country was happy voting for a democrat before Reagan, and went back to voting for one after him. I can't imagine a scenario like that these days.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#223

Post by jkoudys »

nabla9 wrote: post #160
deogeo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second best. The best is selective reporting. Even if every story is reported 100% accurately and objectively, by choosing which stories are promoted, and which buried, you can set any agenda you want. Edit: See https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-i... for an example.

This discussion is falling to a trap where "Fake News" is diluted to synonym for all influencing in and propaganda. Fake News is propaganda that consists of deliberate disinformation or hoaxes. Nothing mentioned mention here falls into a category of Fake News. Fake News creates cognitive dissonance and distrust. More subtler methods work differently. "But mainstream media also does Fake News" arguments are whatabouti…

The drive to dilute the term is putting a lot of energy into making fighting fake news more difficult. There can be more than one bad thing happening in the world, but lumping them all together is just an excuse not to do anything about any of them.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#224

Post by jkoudys »

krapp wrote: post #208
johnchristopher wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't "fake news" a term popularised by someone accusing others of lying about him ? So that he'd look like the victim ?

Fake news was initially popularized in reference to hoaxes and propaganda being spread on the internet under the guise of legitimate news, and the effect that increasing public trust in such stories had on the recent Presidential campaign cycle. Trump supporters found themselves more strongly associated with such stories than the Democrats (not surprising given his support among right-wing social media,) so they atte…

Right on. I've seen an incredible amount of misunderstanding, unusual for hackernews, in these comments.

If FOX news runs front-page mugshots non stop every time an immigrant commits a crime, that shows a massive bias and leads its readership to an incorrect worldview, but it's not "fake". If Honest Truth Online runs a story that a missing girl was murdered by an immigrant based on miniscule to no evidence, that's fake news.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#225

Post by jkoudys »

jlawson wrote: post #212
mcv wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republicans did not shift leftward, they shifted far to the right. In the 1980s, the Dems and Reps overlapped quite a lot. If you go back far enough, they even switched position (Eisenhower was effectively a social democrat, for example, while pre-WW2 Dems were racists). The US didn't even have a meaningful left in the 1980s, and has recently been developing one because people were horrified by how far the countr…

You can flatly assert that, but it'd be more interesting if you made an argument or cited some evidence. On what issues have the Republicans shifted to the right since, say, 1985?

This is a comments section. If you want citations, read articles. It's impolite to demand someone here be held to that standard. We know from context that these are opinions, and everyone has the opportunity to provide citations if they want to, but don't demand them.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#226

Post by jkoudys »

pessimizer wrote: post #175
jlawson wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1980's Republicans supported sanctuary cities, gay marriage, free college, and socialized health care? No, they didn't. Data shows that the American left shifted far leftward over the last 30 years, with the left edge going the furthest. The Republicans shifted leftward only a small amount. Here's Tim Pool covering the data: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6grXCooL3-M Listen to Bill Clinton in the 90's basically layi…

Bill Clinton and the New Democrats were the rightward shift in the Democratic Party.

As a Canadian, it's crazy that anyone could think of the Democrats as far left. Our Conservative party stopped fighting against gay marriage before the Democrats did.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#227

Post by TomMckenny »

germanlee wrote: post #216
TomMckenny wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infowars: Clinton runs a child abuse ring from a pizza shop. Pulitzer Prize winning news source: Clinton does not run a child abuse ring. How does ignoring Infowars because it is intentionally lying make me less informed? >Every comment about being skeptical about media ( especially mainstream media ) gets met with your type of comment. Makes me wonder. Our conspiracy has been exposed! Back to Moscow comrades!

You forgot other Pulitzer Prize gems. Pulitzer Prize winning news source : Nayirah, Yellow cake, assad syria chemical attack, Trump working for Putin conspiracy. But then again, Pulitzer was the founder of yellow journalism, the original fake news. I don't think winning an award named after the founder of yellow journalism is anything to be proud of. "Back to Moscow comrades"? That sounds like the fake news we've bee…

You mean Assad has never conducted chemical attacks on his people? Even though Syria, Russia, Iran and youtube conspiracy theorists claim he is Innocent, the actual fact of chemical attacks it is well established. It is actually found in victims blood.

And Nayirah was invited by congress to lie in those chambers in order to give Bush justification for his war. None of those parties are news papers. In fact it was the press that ultimately exposed those lies, not a guy in his basement on youtube.

By yellow cake, I assume you are referring to the article[1] that _exposed_ Bush's lie about WMD in Iraq coming from Africa. The article that resulted in white house retaliation threatening the life of Valerie Plame.

In addition, there were a series of op-eds _opposing_ the war by Joseph C. Wilson and others. The only degree to which real journalism is guilty is the degree to which it gullibly repeated what the whitehouse said. I believe we are all aware now that the whitehouse lies profusely.

And indeed, the respectable papers report the Trump organization's meetings and deals with Russia. If this data looks like an accusation to you, I have to agree that evidence is quite damning.

So here is a counter proposal: The far right is trying to discredit and ultimately crush the free press and academia as always. One of the tools is a re-write of history so that somehow those institutions that opposed war are now blamed for it. And the hawkish right who actually did start the war is falsely portrayed as opposing it.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/what-i-didn-t-fin...

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#228

Post by SantalBlush »

TomMckenny wrote: post #227
germanlee wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot other Pulitzer Prize gems. Pulitzer Prize winning news source : Nayirah, Yellow cake, assad syria chemical attack, Trump working for Putin conspiracy. But then again, Pulitzer was the founder of yellow journalism, the original fake news. I don't think winning an award named after the founder of yellow journalism is anything to be proud of. "Back to Moscow comrades"? That sounds like the fake news we've bee…

You mean Assad has never conducted chemical attacks on his people? Even though Syria, Russia, Iran and youtube conspiracy theorists claim he is Innocent, the actual fact of chemical attacks it is well established. It is actually found in victims blood. And Nayirah was invited by congress to lie in those chambers in order to give Bush justification for his war. None of those parties are news papers. In fact it was the…

>One of the tools is a re-write of history so that somehow those institutions that opposed war are now blamed for it. And the hawkish right who actually did start the war is falsely portrayed as opposing it.

I've been noticing more frequent references to WMDs lately, which is meant to imply that people who follow the mainstream media are being duped again. The issue with this narrative is that they weren't really duped the first time. Iraq was the most widely protested war internationally in modern history. The whole comparison between modern news events and WMDs is just grasping at straws.

Re: ‘Pre-bunk’ game reduces susceptibility to disinformation

#229

Post by uep »

jlawson wrote: post #118
uep wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I fundamentally disagree with their results, but the study seems like it has significant bias itself. In what context is Fox News only slightly right-leaning? Anything critical of the current administration is not left-leaning either. In the past, most of these organizations have been critical of the Obama administration, but they weren't considered right-leaning then.

You can't possibly compare the endless, breathless, full-court attack on Trump from the mainstream media with their occasional symbolic quibbles with Obama. The covered for Obama for years, all through his drone strikes, his kids in cages, his tear gas at the border, his gunwalker scandals and so much more. It's hard to imagine a mindset where you see media treatment of Obama as comparable to that of Trump. It's nigh…

There is a dramatic difference between the two presidents. At least as far as I know, left-leaning vs right-leaning isn't supposed to be support-blue-team-at-all-costs vs support-red-team-at-all-costs.

It's supposed to mean, would you treat blue-team or the red-team better for the same behavior?

> drone strikes

This was heavily covered. This was probably the number one thing that Obama was criticized for. I think most people agree that this is bad (for various reasons), though technically it is protecting American soldiers lives. Oddly, we don't hear much about the fact that Trump administration has relaxed rules and is performing more drone strikes [1][2].

> tear gas at the border

I also remember his immigration policies being heavily criticized. Yet, if you look at the policies of the current administration, they are objectively far worse. If the policies are far worse, it is consistent with a neutral position to be more critical of the current administration's policies than the previous administration's.

> gunwalker scandals

While they tried to pin Gunwalker on Obama, Gunwalker was really a Bush administration scandal that wasn't discovered until Obama [3][4]. That was an attempted political hit during an election year, equivalent to Benghazi. Despite that, it was covered even by the crazy "leftist" CNN [5][6].

If Obama had been meeting secretly with the Kenyan government to gather dirt on his political opponents, defending them every chance he got when it was discovered that they spent significant effort to influence our elections, and trying to remove sanctions against them, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this would be heavily criticized and covered by both CNN and MSNBC. I do believe MSNBC leans left.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-admin-ups-drone-s...

[2] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jun/7/donald-trump...

[3] https://www.foxnews.com/us/ap-exclusive-second-bush-era-gun-...

[4] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/01/05/144761413...

[5] https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/28/politics/holder-contempt/inde...

[6] https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/world/americas/operation-fast...

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