People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds • Hacker News Board

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#141

Post by akiselev » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

sonnyblarney wrote: post #53

akiselev wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did his pizza shoppe actually have a basement, though?

Allison Mack, some other prominent actors, and several members of the Bronfman family are going down for running a sex ring. Some of the circumstances are crazy. It would seem like fake news at first glance surely. It's downright bizarre. I certainly would have written it off as 'National Enquirer' were it not out of super credible institutions. Sometimes it's hard to tell what is 'truth' and the major 'credible' new…

Oh I don't doubt the depravity of some human beings. The stuff that's public knowledge about the lollita express alone is horrific, basically putting it a few rungs short of 100 days of sodom.

The problem is that accusations of pedophilia and molestation are emotional warheads so we get nutcases trying to shoot up pizzerias because of a rumor that makes absolutely zero sense because it is physically impossible. There's a reason we have gag orders in high profile trials and why we sometimes sequester juries: every time the public gets involved in such an emotional issue, justice is at risk of getting perverted.

People like Epstein must be brought to justice and everyone who covered for them like Dershowitz and Acosta must feel the full force of the law and society they betrayed, but we have to do so deliberately. Otherwise, they'll just get away and continue to hurt people while qanon and Breitbart continue to radicalize a vulnerable segment of the population using easily disprovable lies.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#142

Post by zrobotics » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #123

rfinney wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. Time magazine, the morning newspapers and CBS/ABC/NBC evening news was much more middle of the road than today's Drudge/Huffpost, CNN/Fox and google/reddit (and HN) type ideological bubbles. More straight news. Back farther in the past, the many competing newspapers were very partisan. Perhaps we're just back to that situation.

I remember when CNN launched. News all day was a novelty; no other TV network was like it. I was a kid, but it did seem to me to be much more conservative (in the sense of not overtly sensational) and "straight" news at the time. I guess today's CNN and their much more pronounced left-wing orientation is just a response to the right-leaning stuff from Fox? Or it just seems more left-wing now in comparison.

I think it is partly a reflection of increasing polarization in society.

That, and even if journalists are actively attempting to avoid bias the faster news cycle simply leaves them less time for polish. Thus, more and more stories are the equivalent of first or second drafts.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#143

Post by devy » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #110

Anecdotal evidence: I remember how my 65 years old dad changed from a large-minded, world-traveling retired professor to an avid consumer of fake news in the span of fewer than two years. Yes, it was a shock, but most of all I am mortified that this could happen to me as well when I get to his age.

> Yes, it was a shock, but most of all I am mortified that this could happen to me as well when I get to his age.

I find this incredibly uncomfortable that the OP and you are attributing the spreading of fake news to ageism. No, I don't believe so. Since your evidence is an anecdote, I have many many more anecdotes to disapprove that assessment.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#144

Post by CodeCube » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

iheartpotatoes wrote: post #104

wil421 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last election really turned me off of social media. The amount of absolutely false memes and screenshots being shared by both sides was way too much. I recently saw some of the ads and memes being churned out by the Russian propaganda machine. I was not so surprised some of the stuff they created was the same crap people I knew were sharing as truth by intelligent yet older people.

Where is the primary source of this, where can I go to see popular memes? I read HN, Reddit and sometimes /., and I guess due to my settings I miss a lot of stuff. I'm not on FB, IG or snap, is that why I'm missing these memes?

Mainly facebook, twitter, and some of the seedier areas of reddit (AFAIK, depends on who you follow) ... it's also quite concerning how many of these memes and conspiracies seem to originate in 4chan; a literal hive of scum and villainy (and trolls, foremost). I never would have imagined I'd see the day when I would see prominent personalities and politicians literally tweeting screenshots of 4chan threads

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#145

Post by hunter2_ » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #123

rfinney wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. Time magazine, the morning newspapers and CBS/ABC/NBC evening news was much more middle of the road than today's Drudge/Huffpost, CNN/Fox and google/reddit (and HN) type ideological bubbles. More straight news. Back farther in the past, the many competing newspapers were very partisan. Perhaps we're just back to that situation.

I remember when CNN launched. News all day was a novelty; no other TV network was like it. I was a kid, but it did seem to me to be much more conservative (in the sense of not overtly sensational) and "straight" news at the time. I guess today's CNN and their much more pronounced left-wing orientation is just a response to the right-leaning stuff from Fox? Or it just seems more left-wing now in comparison.

Probably the latter: neutral, unbiased, centrist viewpoints are now given -- by folks throughout the entire spectrum -- a "left" label.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#146

Post by nabla9 » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

starik36 wrote: post #131

nabla9 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media distortion and truthfulness are not the same thing. People and media will always have a viewpoint that distorts their objectivity. That is just fact of live and not necessarily bad thing as long as it's honest belief. Media used to be more reliable and truthful in the past with the normal distortions that people had. Mainstream media is still like this. Their problem is the lack of money and time that lowers th…

> Fox News is the only Seriously? Pretty much all major networks have been caught making stuff up. CNN has been caught giving debate questions ahead of time to their pet candidate.

CNN fired Donna Brazile as a contributor after that.

CNN's statement:

>"On October 14th, CNN accepted Donna Brazile's resignation as a CNN contributor. (Her deal had previously been suspended in July when she became the interim head of the DNC.) CNN never gave Brazile access to any questions, prep material, attendee list, background information or meetings in advance of a town hall or debate. We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor."

When mainstream media catches individual journos making stuff up they get fired as it should be. Brazile was not even a journalist or employee. She was running the campaign.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#147

Post by JChase2 » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:47 PM UTC

iheartpotatoes wrote: post #104

wil421 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last election really turned me off of social media. The amount of absolutely false memes and screenshots being shared by both sides was way too much. I recently saw some of the ads and memes being churned out by the Russian propaganda machine. I was not so surprised some of the stuff they created was the same crap people I knew were sharing as truth by intelligent yet older people.

Where is the primary source of this, where can I go to see popular memes? I read HN, Reddit and sometimes /., and I guess due to my settings I miss a lot of stuff. I'm not on FB, IG or snap, is that why I'm missing these memes?

My personal experience has been it's almost exclusively on FB in the U.S. I've heard it's big on WhatsApp in Brazil which is strange, but believable.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#148

Post by dkarl » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:49 PM UTC

dandare wrote: post #110

Anecdotal evidence: I remember how my 65 years old dad changed from a large-minded, world-traveling retired professor to an avid consumer of fake news in the span of fewer than two years. Yes, it was a shock, but most of all I am mortified that this could happen to me as well when I get to his age.

My dad was similar, but he thought it was all a joke. He thought sites like rense and infowars were today's equivalent of the counterculture political satire from when he was young. He knew there were people on those sites who weren't in on the joke, and people with mental illness, but I think he thought it was maybe 5% or 10%, and it just added to the fun for him. He got reverse-pwned by Poe's Law. Yet still he found it absolutely compelling, more fun than following the real news. Underneath a layer of gallows humor he always seemed really patient with humanity's stupidity, much more so than me, but I think late in his life his patience started to run out and to stave off despair he decided to find some nihilistic fun in it.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#149

Post by SkyMarshal » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

sillyquiet wrote: post #31

Like other commenters, this study jives with my experience with older relatives. I mean 'forwards from grandma' has been a thing forever, right? 'Bill Gates will give a nickel every time this is read' (remember email chains?), 'naked women get shared, but this heroic child won't get a single like', 'Like and Share if you stand with politician X', etc etc. Combine this with the targeted scamming of elderly from variou…

I suspect it’s at least partly that the elderly didn’t grow up with Internet, never really understood its culture, didn’t hang out on 4chan, Reddit, etc, and never developed a highly attuned BS/scam detector like more of the younger generations did.

Many of these folks don’t even really understand how the Windows UI motif works, they’ve just memorized enough procedures to get stuff done on it.

I also suspect that many of those artfully worded and subtly manipulative email forwards of the late 90s and 2000s May have been Russian psyops experimenting with viral information. They were always just a little too clever and effective while trying to look colloquial and organic, and I always suspected it was some PR outfit somewhere cranking them out, but could never divine a reason for the non-political ones. But maybe it was psyops testing and learning techniques in a long game just coming to light now.

Re: People older than 65 share the most fake news, a new study finds

#150

Post by zrobotics » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

stochastic_monk wrote: post #48

dragonwriter wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes sense - they grew up in a time where news was (relatively) reliable/truthful, No, they grew up in a time when media distortion was less likely to be revealed because the major media was narrower and it's ideological biases more consistent, and voices outside the major media had major barriers to reaching any substantial audience.

It's both. There was spin, but there also weren't dedicated propaganda outlets (e.g., Fox News). You are right, though -- it took a lot of work to get content to a large audience. That reduced the number of malicious agents who could and the speed with which they could successfully gain broad influence.

>>There was spin, but there also weren't dedicated propaganda outlets

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

While I agree that journalism is in crisis, this isn't the first time. While Hearst was famous for yellow journalism, his papers weren't the only ones, and often the emotional sensationalism was intended to support a particular candidate (or denounce their opponent).