Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by colinmhayes » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

the-dude wrote: post #169

dd36 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shared it with their audience. The standard isn’t always be right, it’s have integrity.

Everybody shared it with 'the audience'. The WMDs were obviously not there, were they? Hard to keep it up.

Everyone in the government was saying they were there. Not reporting that would be negligent. Should NYT have been faster at reporting the truth? Of course. But when the president says there are weapons of mass destruction you report as much.

The NYT retracted the story, which is pretty much all I can hope for in a situation like this.

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

#212

Post by colinmhayes » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

Covzire wrote: post #77

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?

One way outlets like the NYT slant their credibility into the ground is by always giving Democrats the benefit of any doubt, and never giving it to anyone else. Everything that could be good for Democrats is amplified to 11, everything that could be a bad look for everyone else is amplified to 11 in the other direction. They appear to be a lot more reliable than they actually are.

Source?

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

#213

Post by _y5hn » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

gorwell wrote: post #166

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…

It's useful, at this point, to carry a default assumption that reporting is propaganda or otherwise misrepresented. This arguably extends even into research; Richard Smith, who edited BMJ for 13 years, on the state of health research: "It may be time to move from assuming that research has been honestly conducted and reported to assuming it to be untrustworthy until there is some evidence to the contrary." https://tw…

You ask to rely on evidence, and then quote a Twitter post.

It's true journalists often get things wrong. Anybody who has been part of something newsworthy, will learn that what is written is hard to recognize after the fact. Reporting "as it were" is exceptionally hard and requires in-depth research, time and efforts. But that doesn't mean pure speculation and wishful thinking weighs heavier than consensus among experts. By all means take things with grains of salt, but don't fall for con-artists and bullshitters in the name of "skepticism".

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

#214

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:38 PM UTC

uses wrote: post #156

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…

Are you going to make the same post for every nytimes article? Like yeah I guess we can dismiss the entire investigative and reporting output of the nytimes because of a troll post from a dumpster tier brietbart wannabe about how the nytimes cleaned up its advertising business? The most frightening thing is that views like this are the ultimate goal of the type of propaganda we're seeing. Convincing you of fact X is…

For an article about "disinformation for hire", do you actually not see the relevance of shrubble's point? The NY Times is taking money to spread Chinese disinformation; how is that possibly irrelevant to a discussion of disinformation for hire?

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

#215

Post by nobody9999 » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

codyswann wrote: post #162

enumjorge wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending the NYT, but there's a reason why most news sources have become extremely opinionated. There's lots of competition for people's attention, especially when it comes to news and people don't want to pay for news. As a result, they've tried to gain back viewership by becoming more editorialized. Sure you lose people who want a more objective source of news, but you gain a more dedicated following by pi…

Agreed. We point the finger at the media all the time, but the media is just a reflection of society. Why is Kim Kardashian on the front page of CNN? Why is "Iconic New York City park, featured in sitcom ‘Friends,’ trashed by urban decay" on the front page of Fox News? Because they drive clicks. As soon as gossip and unedited "news" blogs started appearing with rumor and unsubstantiated claims, it was a race to the b…

>Why? Because the majority of people prefer mindless trash to the idiosyncrasies of a local county commission meeting.

>I don't have a good answer because media companies have to make money to stay in business. Making them backed by the state is an even worse idea.

An excellent point. Local media outlets (in the US at least, not sure about elsewhere) are few and far between these days.

We need local news that focuses on "county commission meetings" and other happenings of local concern.

Unfortunately, unless you're in a big media market (NY, LA, SF, Chicago, Boston, etc.), odds are that your "local" news is written by folks hundreds of miles away, with no real understanding of local issues.

Here in NYC, we have dozens of local papers, blogs, independent news sites and local TV news outlets. As such, coverage of local issues is quite good.

But the days of small towns/counties having their own local newspapers and TV news are long gone in the US.

Anyone not living in a big media market will likely get only the broad-brush, zero nuance reporting that comes from national/regional news outlets.

That's a big problem for small towns, as there's no one with "skin in the game" watching the goings on of local and state government actors.

I don't have a solution (sadly) for this issue, because local news outlets in small media markets had a hard time staying in business long before the Internet, and the loss of classified ads in those small markets killed local journalism.

And so we have big national players like Fox, CNN, WSJ, NYT, USA Today, etc. that provide coverage of national issues and very limited (and inferior to real local reporting) coverage of regional/local issues.

This leads to really poor governance at the state and local levels and a lack of nuance about regional/national issues as they relate to local populations/economies.

More's the pity.

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

#216

Post by colinmhayes » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

dharmaturtle wrote: post #114

Lendal wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story is about shady companies funded by government propaganda agencies around the world, and which cease operating as soon as you start investigating them. The New York Times has been doing business continuously since 1851, is one of the cornerstones of democracy, a recognized leader in journalism schools across the globe, and to this day regularly fires journalists who are caught lying in a story. Anyone is fr…

They still employ Cade Metz, who doxxed Scott Alexander. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/statement-on-new-york-...

Doxxing isn't a thing anyone outside this website cares about. I agree, that article was a shitty hit piece, but it's not disinformation.

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

#217

Post by AnimalMuppet » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

XnoiVeX wrote: post #164

happy_path wrote: post #93

Disinformation/narratives' control has always been present: There are some examples I can think of: - Manifest Destiny. - Spanish American 1989 war because (Maine sinking). - The gulf of Tokin incident. - The Nayirah testimony. - Irak's WMD. I think the issue here is that the some western governments are failing to control information, and their citizens are now being preyed by other governments' disinformation campa…

Add MK Ultra to that list. The Internet and social media have made it so much easier to run disinformation campaigns. The only defense is to teach people critical thinking. It's almost impossible to police the content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

If the data available to you are 90% carefully crafted lies, it's not that easy for critical thinking to save you. Correct reasoning based on faulty information will not produce good results.

I mean, critical thinking can cut through a bunch of the garbage, but it won't help with the well-done disinformation - not if there's enough of it.

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

#218

Post by misiti3780 » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

babyblueblanket wrote: post #146

emptysongglass wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, but the author was not fired. Until journalist that fuck up this bad get fired, it's honestly hard to blame people for not taking these publications seriously.

In 2020, Callimachi was reassigned at the Times and will no longer cover terrorism.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/caliphate-rev...

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

#219

Post by bequanna » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

There shouldn't be any legal description of "disinformation" in a country with free speech protections.

ALL skepticism is crucial. Even ridiculous viewpoints should see the light of day to allow them to be investigated or dismissed.

The push to suppress opposing views is really only coming from one direction right now. If someone supports limiting free speech, I can probably guess which political party they identify with.

Like every other attack on rights, the stated goals are always very noble: "limit hate speech", "stop disinformation", etc. Cute. But behind those reasons, we're all aware of the real goal: silence anyone who opposes your views.

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

#220

Post by prof-dr-ir » Mon, Jul 26, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #171

prof-dr-ir wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are on the fence then it might be worth re-reading what the NY times wrote about it back then. For example, I could not find much wrong with this from February 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru... It does (correctly, IMO) focus on the 'bioweapon' conspiracies rather than the 'lab leak' theory and mentions how the senator ended up distancing himself from the former. And actually…

With which version of Feb 2020 do you not find fault? https://web.archive.org/web/20200217083402/https://www.nytim... https://web.archive.org/web/20210724164846/https://www.nytim...

The first of these is a stub and might be unclear on the meaning of "originated in". Again, if you read it as "engineered" I do not think I can disagree with its content. The second is the one I referred to and seems to have appeared at most a day later.

Also - what exactly is your point? Like the other readers here I could probably be convinced that my example is bad, and you might even be able to make us adjust our opinion of the NY times. But right now I only see a suggestion of criticism rather than the raising of an actual issue. Would it be too much to ask you elaborate?