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

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

#161

Post by PaulHoule »

sametmax wrote: post #87
PaulHoule wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some oldsters have been using the internet since before there was a world wide web so they may have more experience than youngsters. Some of them have been sharing memes on AOL since before some HN readers were born. So far as cognitive capacity, I don't know. I've seen young people refuse to learn from other people's mistakes, take deadly risks, etc. When it comes to the epistemology of these people the right way to…

Go to a school and an old folks house. Ask them to create an instagram account, take a picture, crop it, and post it online. Would you really try to defend the point of view that the kids wouldn't do much better ?

That's instagram, which does lean young.

My aunt Lucy in a nursing home has a phone and thinks that Facebook is the bee's knees -- she can keep up with what her family is up to.

I get many "This email was sent with an iPhone" messages from oldsters. Nothing gets talked about in breathless tones in the New York Times (e.g. Apple products) unless it appeals to the 50+ set. Note how "fall detection" is a selling point of the new iWatch.

If you'd been around long enough you'd notice that selling things to oldsters based on recapturing their youth or vicariously enjoying the youth of youngsters has been a big business for a long time. It had a lot to do with how baby boomers were celebrated in the 1960s (e.g. hippies did not read the New York Times, but oldsters did) Eventually boomers became the target audience and the breathless talk was about millennials.

Gen X got skipped mercifully because there were too few of us to move the needle.

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

#162

Post by mbostleman »

nabla9 wrote: post #69
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.

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 major mainstream media source that has completely turned news into dishonest influencing operation.>>

To me, it's ideas like this that perpetuate the problem. It clings to the idea that journalists and journalism - at least that which is sold via mainstream media channels - are capable of some kind of pristine objectivity. They aren't. It is much healthier in my opinion to understand that news is not special within its medium. It's entertainment like everything on every other channel. It's somewhat less fictional obviously, but the entertainment motive is what lies behind it.

I would suggest instead that Fox News was the first major mainstream media source that dropped the pretensions and openly did what "news" has been doing since Walter Kronkite but with an equal and opposite bias. And to that extent, it has had a beneficial effect on society: we now know to watch carefully what a given journalist decides to report on and what they don't and we work harder to extract facts, if there are any, from the pre-determined narratives they are wrapped in. Whether purposely or not, they made news look like a joke. And we are smarter now because of it.

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

#163

Post by abakker »

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…

Exactly right, except one of my grandmas only sends me articles from Snopes. It's kind of like reverse fake news. The only online contact I get from her is articles debunking fake news, but, never any actual real news.

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

#164

Post by strken »

bilbo0s wrote: post #152
dandare wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean "Don't trust mainstream media, watch this shocking video instead"?

Well, that's the great conundrum. You consume media no matter where you get it, so not getting it from one place or another is not really gonna help you avoid "fake news". What you see on blogs is no more reliable than what you see on FOX, which itself is no more reliable than what you see on youtube. It's pretty much all rubbish a lot of the time. So yeah, you stay away from mainstream media, then you'll likely be c…

One thing I've noticed about the blogs I read is that they usually provide sources, while even reputable media outlets like the NYT or WSJ will often publish articles about the results of a new study without naming it or linking to it. Having a source or sources is a key differentiator between good news, news that misinterprets or exaggerates the data but is still loosely related to reality, and completely fake news.

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

#166

Post by theWheez »

Brakenshire wrote: post #140
trgn wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe rather as in, stay away from mainstream media because the hosts will literally talk to you as if you were a toddler, yell at you really, constantly flash colorful thingies in your face, blast stupid loud jingles, and drag out idiotic news stories over days as if they were soap operas. I cringe when I visit my parents and CNN is on in the middle of the day. I'm convinced that that loud, obnoxious infotainment co…

That’s more 24 hour news than the mainstream media.

Could you expand on what you mean by this separation?

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

#167

Post by ergothus »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #132
dev_dull wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stay unplugged from social media and especially mainstream media and you’ll be just fine.

Data journalism and long-form deep investigative journalism is fine, or least less bad. With the caveat that data journalism that illustrates past or current events is fine, but that which tries to draw correlations or make predictions should be taken with a grain of salt. Short form journalism I ignore, or seek the primary source (like a president’s speech or similar).

>long-form deep investigative journalism

I like the distinction you put here, as I've found most "long form" journalism to be focused on superficial details and to try to emphasize innuendo and rumor into emotional plays rather than focusing on facts. As soon as I hit a physical description of one of the people involved that covers more than a sentence (when the article isn't covering a topic involving a physical description), I know the author isn't focused on the parts I care about.

Which is a shame, as there is plenty of investigative journalism that benefits from deeper coverage. Just a lot fewer people doing it. (likely as a consequence of fewer people caring enough to make it financially viable, to properly place blame, but from my end I want the material, not to place blame)

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

#168

Post by bilbo0s »

dkarl wrote: post #148
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 foun…

I'vs seen this proclivity in a lot of older military guys. Korea and Vietnam vets. They just split their sides laughing at this stuff. Also, at least in the case of my father and uncle, the fact that people believe a lot of this stuff is what makes it all funny. I honestly don't believe they would be at all interested if no one believed it.

I wonder if your dad is ex-military?

Of course, all of that's older enlisted guys, (think vietnam era NCOs), which are the only ones I know. It would be interesting to find out if ex-military older commissioned guys find the same humor in any of what the country's going through. I'd like to think they wouldn't, but who knows?

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

#169

Post by bonestamp2 »

mcculley wrote: post #122
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.

You are not alone. I have witnessed similar changes in people older than me. I have also been wondering how to prevent that.

It's not surprising. That generation grew up as the conventions in media itself were being developed. Those are my parents and they have a much different view and trust in media than my generation, and my kids have even less trust in media. My dad flipped. My mom hasn't (yet) but I think that's because she's overly skeptical of everything.

The part I fear most is that healthy dose of skepticism that most people used to have is being turned against those people. If you're not with us, you're against us. Nope, that's a false dichotomy. My father doesn't know what a false dichotomy is. That wasn't something he was taught in grade school or business school. That is something I was taught.

I think the best thing we can do is not argue with the older generation about the subject matter itself, but simply arm them with the tools to find flawed arguments in the subject matter. If you're reading this, and you're not familiar with the concept of logical fallacies, that's a good place to start because fake news is almost always built on logical fallacies that are easy to disassemble once you can spot them:

https://thebestschools.org/magazine/15-logical-fallacies-kno...

Once everyone has the tools to debate effectively, then we can have civilized discussions about the actual subject matter itself.

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

#170

Post by octernion »

asabjorn wrote: post #157

Does anyone have a link to the source used to classify some news as fake and other news as real in this paper? Whomever control that definition can shift any conclusion, similarly to how hate speech definitions is used to silence speech on platforms such as Patreon [3]. I think we should treat any conclusion made by YouGov with caution because on at least on one occasion YouGov associated themselves with people belie…

lmao i love anti social justice warriors. bless your tiny, ice-cold hearts and backwards ways.
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