Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Information overload helps fake news spread

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 171 posts

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#41

Post by garraeth »

nillium wrote: post #32

Shameless plug, but this is something we are working on right now. Social media is a terrible medium for news. Aside from the ability for anyone to post anything, which can easily lead to misinformation, it also sets up the absolute worst incentives. If news organizations are expected to share their reporting for free, and only be able to monetize when someone clicks through to their page -- you end up with clickbait…

I hope it works out!

I tried registering for updates but got a Cloudflare 502. HN "hug of death"?

Once it's sorted out, I'll give it another shot. Quick request: can you please add more details to a faq or something? eg. how much it'll cost for us users, will there be a desktop interface, etc.

Thanks!

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#42

Post by onecommentman »

jasonv wrote: post #27
paulz_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame wrote about this experience calling it "Gell-Mann Amnesia." >“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wron…

Reading HN though, every assertion from someone who knows something can become a thread of dispute, disagreements and "yeah, but" digressions. So, maybe, who knows anything..

“Who knows anything” sounds dangerously close to nihilism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism

The problem is nihilists never produce anything of lasting value. Or of any value. It seems to be the posture of those who feel like failures, and justify that perceived failure to themselves by telling themselves that nothing is worth anything.

Perhaps others hold that position too. It seems like a dead end in a lot of ways...

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#43

Post by at-fates-hands »

nprz wrote: post #5

This constant pushing of stories about Fake News and Misinformation makes it really feel like there's a concerted effort to alter public opinion on censorship and free speech.

Richard Stengel was just appointed to Biden's transition team:

Stengel wrote last year in a Washington Post op-ed that US freedom of speech was too unfettered and that changes must be considered:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/10/29/why-ameri...

Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned about Stengel’s appointment in a column Tuesday: “It would be difficult to select a more anti-free speech figure to address government media policy, one has to assume that Biden will continue the onslaught against this core freedom as president.”

He noted that Biden himself had publicly advocated restrictions on speech during the campaign: “Biden called for greater speech controls on the Internet and denounced Twitter for allowing others to speak freely.”

One side of the political aisle rallies against social media for censoring their posts while the other side says social media don't censor enough. I feel there is a simmering battle over a lot of our constitutionally protected rights which is about to reach a crescendo depending on what the Biden administration does in the next few years.

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#44

Post by Nacdor »

I think one of the root causes of this is the increasingly partisan behavior of the "mainstream" media. People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them, they're sick of media outlets that all push the same narratives 24/7 (Russiagate, anyone?), and they're desperately searching for any outlet that will objectively report "all the news that's fit to print" (as the NY Times likes to say).

In the past year we saw Andrew Sullivan leave New York Magazine[1], Bari Weiss leave The New York Times[2], Matthew Yglesias leave Vox (which he founded) [3], and Glenn Greenwald leave The Intercept (which he founded) [4]. All of them had one thing in common that Greenwald summed up well: "The same trends of repression, censorship and ideological homogeneity plaguing the national press generally have engulfed the media outlet I co-founded, culminating in censorship of my own articles."

The mainstream media has created an information vacuum, and the spread of disinformation is a direct result of that.

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-...

[2] https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-a...

[4] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-resignation-from-the-int...

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#45

Post by carabiner »

beefield wrote: post #38
goalieca wrote: post #3

I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess. Humans tend to trust the first thing they hear and we tend to be less skeptical about news media especially if they seem very confident or persuasive.

Generally, I have tip my hat to The Economist Here. Even on the things I think I know something about, they seem to get their facts straight.

I've caught errors about my field (engineering, not software) in other publications, even Popular Science, but the handful of Economist articles on the subject have been spot-on correct on details/nuances. I remember an old hiring ad of theirs. They were looking for "science writers," and they emphasized "scientists who can write, not the other way around."

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#46

Post by NullIsland »

This article is interesting, I see the echo chambers of all ideologies.

I have the time to look at both sides of a given issue and do not fall on either side of any political or social group. I attempt to post moderate reasonable ideas that are well vetted. But this gets me called a fence sitter.

But what is scarier, in my opinion, is the idea of censorship. I would rather wad through crap than see anything censored, aside from clear incitement to commit violence.

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#47

Post by chordalkeyboard »

wombatmobile wrote: post #28
timr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess." Same. This year, with the coverage of Covid (an area where I have a certain level of expertise), I've been bombarded with the extremely low quality level of essentially all of the major news providers. They are more than willing to amplify the most speculative…

> I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted Interesting choice you're making there - social acceptance prioritised over journalistic accuracy and scientific advocacy.

I think its better characterized as making the meta-level point without specifics as various people's disagreements on the object level would drown out the meta-level point.

FWIW, I think he made the right decision.

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#48

Post by fokinsean »

Nacdor wrote: post #44

I think one of the root causes of this is the increasingly partisan behavior of the "mainstream" media. People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them, they're sick of media outlets that all push the same narratives 24/7 (Russiagate, anyone?), and they're desperately searching for any outlet that will objectively report "all the news that's fit to print" (as the NY Times likes to say). In the past year we…

> People are sick of having their opinions dictated to them

I'm fairly sure my family's opinions come straight from the media.

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#49

Post by nillium »

garraeth wrote: post #41
nillium wrote: post #32

Shameless plug, but this is something we are working on right now. Social media is a terrible medium for news. Aside from the ability for anyone to post anything, which can easily lead to misinformation, it also sets up the absolute worst incentives. If news organizations are expected to share their reporting for free, and only be able to monetize when someone clicks through to their page -- you end up with clickbait…

I hope it works out! I tried registering for updates but got a Cloudflare 502. HN "hug of death"? Once it's sorted out, I'll give it another shot. Quick request: can you please add more details to a faq or something? eg. how much it'll cost for us users, will there be a desktop interface, etc. Thanks!

Thanks -- I will have a look to see whats going on. We definitely want to have you on board!

There will be a free ad-supported tier for users, along with some form of paid add on, that we are working on now. At the moment, the main consumer offering will be mobile, but if there is interest, of course that is not set in stone.

Re: Information overload helps fake news spread

#50

Post by Jtsummers »

damnencryption wrote: post #20
farias0 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think this public worrying is deserved, given the rise of Facebook and algorithms, troll farms and everything else?

What changed in the recent years is the amount of media time nutjobs on the internet get that everyone ignored back then. Nothing else. If you checked qanon groups before and after media attention, you will notice a steep increase in member count. There is a dilemma. Should we report and amplify their voice or should we shut up about an "increasing" problem? Some problems do disappear when you ignore them.

They don't need the mainstream media to spread their nonsense. It spreads on FB and Twitter quite well, and was the reason I stopped following (and unfriended) a lot of people over the past several years.

Hell, a few years ago my bartender tried to sell me on their nonsensical ideas.

Post reply on HN