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

Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 311 posts

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#141

Post by hobs »

leereeves wrote: post #129
BitwiseFool wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bias is not in-and-of-itself a bad thing. The B-Word feels like a rhetorical trick for simply dismissing someone with a strong stance.

It's just confirmation bias, the desire to avoid information that conflicts with their worldview. Comments like hobs' contribute nothing to the conversation except partisan dismissal of a differing viewpoint. What's ironic is that this attitude was described in the quote hobs responded to: > If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in f…

Credibility is a thing, and if you have none yourself your words don't mean much. NYT can take a long walk off of a short pier, but this person's words are worthless.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#142

Post by omgwtfbbq »

ameminator wrote: post #2

Ironic that this is from the New York Times, which has (in)famously had several years of poor or biased reporting.

Biased reporting != misinformation. By conflating the two I think you tip your hand and reveal yourself to be interested in propagating the latter.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#143

Post by xenophonf »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #119
shrubble wrote: post #73

Pot, kettle, etc. 'The new disclosure revealed that the Post and the Journal each received more than $100,000 per month to run print versions of Chinese propaganda articles. The Times received $50,000 in 2018 to place the propaganda on its website, presumably a small fraction of the revenue it made selling print space to China Daily. The new disclosures also showed that China Daily paid hundreds of thousands of dolla…

Traditional print is over, jobs are disapppearing faster than coal miners. It is not by chance that media is getting more partisan - it is a way to boost subscription numbers, but I don't think it is sustainable. What we are witnessing are the convulsions of their slow-motion suicide. I really hope substack will get bigger, there are incredible authors with a quality of writing that I have never witnessed even in the…

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

https://thehypothesis.substack.com/p/heres-why-substacks-sca...

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#144

Post by babyblueblanket »

leereeves wrote: post #66
tclancy wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh for the love of Buttigeig, if the Democratic Party had an organ, I would hope it would do a better job of stating policy and sticking to it. If The Times is your idea of a lefty boogie man, life must be pretty easy.

You should read more. Everything fallingknife said is backed up by statements from insiders. As one wrote: > Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. ... > But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging…

This resignation letter was also heavily refuted by other insiders, most specifically that Weiss was actively insulting her co-workers in the middle of meetings. Who should I be believing?

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#145

Post by jazzyjackson »

brigandish wrote: post #113
jancsika wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People would be less susceptible to disinformation if they could actually trust mainstream sources like the NYT. What is the relationship between more trust in a mainstream source and susceptibility to disinformation you are implying here? For example, IIRC Rush Limbaugh's audience gave him a lot of credibility and was less informed because of that.

Because a media outlet that is trusted and good and has a significant following would keep people away from disinformers. Unfortunately, we appear to have something towards the opposite - large media outlets that aren't good, aren't trusted, and are trying to manipulate the market (à la Youtube with it's now completely useless search and its nefarious recommendation algorithms) to stop people going to competitors who…

I’ve never been happy with YouTube search, did they change something recently?

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#146

Post by babyblueblanket »

emptysongglass wrote: post #134
afpx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYT reporting seems pretty reliable to me. Could you give a few notable examples at least to support that claim?

For what it's worth, the NYT was also behind the podcast series Caliphate, which I wept to on hearing the first hand accounts of murder and violation perpetrated in the name of ISIS. It came to light later that their primary source they relied on for the story fabricated the whole thing. [1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55375277

I believe the NYT also published their own failing there, widely, on its own front page.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#147

Post by ameminator »

shadowgovt wrote: post #89
ameminator wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally, I wouldn't rely on any one method - critical thinking and critical reading are skills that each person must develop. It seems a little trite to just recommend the one Cornell guide, even if it is of high quality...

Can you recommend any methods to improve critical thinking and critical reading skills? This seems an era where they are more important than ever.

Generally, there is no "all in one" way of doing it. Generally active reading and checking the facts and primary sources will get you far. I don't think there is any substitute for reading lots and from diverse sources.

Four books that helped me along the way are:

How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler

The Book of Fallacies by Jeremy Bentham (alternatively, I enjoyed Logically Fallacious by Bo Bennet, and it fills the same niche)

Trust Me - I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday

Asking the Right Questions by Browne, Keil

I hope that was helpful! Enjoy

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#148

Post by adolph »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #71
helen___keller wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's insanely hard to avoid that main stream media content (celebrities, dramas, dramas, dramas and $bad_stuff/propaganda) that affects the mood, even when I don't use "normal" social medias. an annoying trend is that, over time, almost every webpage or program controlled by corporate interests will come to include a "feed" that tries to lure you back into the modern news/outrage cycle e.g. opening a tab in microso…

It’s time to release my Taboola plug-in for VS Code.

One weird trick that every developer should know, it will be.

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

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#150

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

xenophonf wrote: post #143
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditional print is over, jobs are disapppearing faster than coal miners. It is not by chance that media is getting more partisan - it is a way to boost subscription numbers, but I don't think it is sustainable. What we are witnessing are the convulsions of their slow-motion suicide. I really hope substack will get bigger, there are incredible authors with a quality of writing that I have never witnessed even in the…

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: https://thehypothesis.substack.com/p/heres-why-substacks-sca...

Interesting, wasn't aware.

As long as I can still pick individual authors and pay them directly, I don't care much who Substack chooses to editorialize. Just because someone writes full-time doesn't mean I'm interested in their POV. The authors I follow have built up their own audience over years on Twitter. They suceed because of their unique insights and erudition, not because some Medicis decide to push a narrative.

Post reply on HN