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Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

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Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#61
Maybe it’s because I’m old, but it still completely blows my mind that people rely on social media for news.

To me social media is no different than Saturday morning cartoons (American phenomenon from the 80s/90s) that fill children’s minds with advertisements of sugar cereal and action figure toys, except social media is 24/7 and just stupid enough to become a drug habit.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#62

Maybe it’s because I’m old, but it still completely blows my mind that people rely on social media for news. To me social media is no different than Saturday morning cartoons (American phenomenon from the 80s/90s) that fill children’s minds with advertisements of sugar cereal and action figure toys, except social media is 24/7 and just stupid enough to become a drug habit.

(he said, while relying on HN for news)

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#63

Maybe it’s because I’m old, but it still completely blows my mind that people rely on social media for news. To me social media is no different than Saturday morning cartoons (American phenomenon from the 80s/90s) that fill children’s minds with advertisements of sugar cereal and action figure toys, except social media is 24/7 and just stupid enough to become a drug habit.

CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, etc, are no better. They're just more established.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#64

When people say "fake news" it means different things to different people. "Hunter Biden's laptop is a Russian plant" was considered the truth and anything to the contrary "fake news". It wasn't just a mistake, it was a hard lie. Having any single entity determine what is "fake" and what is "real" is incredibly dangerous. We can't even agree if 72F degrees is the correct room temperature - let alone complex things li…

I don't want to be overly cynical and say it was intentional, but the term was watered down to become meaningless, but when it first came into use, it had a pretty clear and unambiguous meaning that I don't think any reasonable person would argue with. The Washington Post published an expose early in 2016 about two men in Orange County who had the brilliant idea of exploiting pre-election hysteria by registering hundreds of domains with names like patriotdailynews.com, giving it all the veneer of a real news page, writer bylines and bios, but all of it was completely made up. It was just the two guys in their apartment living room brainstorming the most outrageous sounding headlines they could come up that they thought people might believe, then making up fake writers and fake sources. That is "fake news."

When it started being used to mean any published account of purported facts that is wrong because inference is imperfect, evidence can be misleading, and publishers have some inescapable level of bias, then yes, it became a useless term. But it is not useless to distinguish between largely good faith attempts by real organizations with investigators who are at least trying to discover, verify, and publish facts, but some of the time fail, and outright fraud committed by people making up the entire endeavor wholesale.

There is no reason at all we should believe authorities cannot accomplish the latter.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#65
post #29

Well okay, but Facebook is not an outlier. Every outlet has noticed the popularity that comes with telling people what they want to hear. It’s legal to give “opinion” that has no backing evidence, as opposed to journalism, where people reasonably expect some due diligence. That’s why Hannity, for instance, is quick to point out that he is not a journalist, but in fact an opinion show host. That distinction is meant t…

I actually think hiding behind “journalism” gives you more freedom to say what you want. In theory, you couldn’t blatantly make stuff up, because you risk getting sued. However, if the last decade has taught me anything, even then, the burden of proof is on the victim. I think these high profile media folks volunteer that what they say is opinion, not out of freedom, but more so to frame their talking points in a mor…

Historically, people trusted something reported as fact and were naturally skeptical of opinion. It seems that many people are realigning to an environment where the "facts" were presented to create a limited, specific perspective of the world (which is closer to opinion) and the majority of "opinion" producers were challenged to be, and in some cases became, more evidence-based (which is closer to fact). In effect, the system is self-correcting to reflect the natural state of the world: truth exists, and the task is on you to discover it.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#67

Which side's misinformation?

All sides are lying, just about different issues. And the ones they aren't lying about, they're spinning.

Russia has been running a full-on information warfare campaign against the US (and probably other countries) for several years now. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans are running a full scaled civil war in the info arena. (No, it's not just normal election stuff. I've seen those; this is different.)

Everything is getting caught up in this. Vaccines. Federal Reserve interest rates. Energy policy. Pop culture. Everything. You can't have a sane discussion about anything without getting tangled up in the information war.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider the "host your own software" approach akin to being a linux user, so I am already accustomed to being in a minority. People love frictionless UX which the FOSS lifestyle really can never provide. So perhaps we can settle for a solution that meets the needs of enthusiasts, even if the masses choose "junk".

I tend to agree, but maybe I'm talking about something slightly different. I was meaning that when I watch a YouTube video, if the creator has monetised it then they get a tiny amount of money, which enables them to do more videos. The Web in general doesn't have anything like that.

True. You should look into Project Xanadu, which was created with seventeen original rules, one of which is the following:

>Every document can contain a royalty mechanism at any desired degree of granularity to ensure payment on any portion accessed, including virtual copies ("transclusions") of all or part of the document.

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