We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs • Hacker News Board

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#171

Post by analog31 » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

zigzigzag wrote: post #164

analog31 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right. Or at least not without more proof? Not proof, but an interesting analogy: The relative success of right- and left-wing talk radio. Right wing talk radio is a huge industry, left-wing is practically nonexistent. Maybe it points to an asymmetry in how left- and right-wingers consume information. Granted, it could also be related to other fac…

Surely the left wing equivalent of talk radio is the newspapers?

Well, I suppose if you think that newspapers are the left wing equivalent of anything. I cancelled the Chicago Tribune when they endorsed George Bush, and my neighbor thinks the NY Times is right-wing. ;-)

But still, if one assumes that the left gets information from newspapers and the right from talk-radio, it would support my thesis that there are left-right differences in consumption of information, making it plausible that there are also left-right differences in the consumption of fake news. There's en entire industry (advertising) devoted to exploiting measurable differences in how identifiable groups of people process information.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#172

Post by JanezStupar » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 4:36 PM UTC

_nedR wrote: post #138

dmichulke wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It almost sounds as if you believe that silencing these fake news will stop people from believing fake news. I don't think so. Also, slaughtering millions in the 20th century was usually the job of a big government in a big country and I have difficulty recalling that "fake news believers" or any kind of people actually voted for a war or went on the streets in favor of a war. And practically always before and during…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib... The Rwandan genocide was in many ways a grass roots movement - Most of the killing was perpetrated by normal everyday people using farm implements and the like. It was also incredibly efficient. 800,000 people killed in just 6 weeks - more efficient than the Nazi Holocaust. A big reason for that was the unfiltered radio, spouting hate speech and misinfor…

How would government censorship and regulation help with the Rwandan genocide?

Or would the censorship actually help the perpetrators? I.e. by shutting down "fake news" reporting about the ongoing genocide?

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#173

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #114

atmosx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore." Legislation is a rather complex sport that requires deep understanding of repercussions. I've seen rather skilled blockchain hackers talking economics, finance, politics and monetary policy. Their understanding of the current system (in terms of structure) was appalling. One needs to know the role of central banks before…

> I am afraid that your average engineer will make a pretty incompetent legislator. So let's leave legislation to legislators... :-) I disagree. Aside from a few highly political engineers and/or software devs, almost all engineers I know insist on actually looking at the facts and evaluating them to the best of their ability, regardless of their political inclinations. This is a very rare characteristic in our socie…

>>Most engineers also aren't inflicted with the lust for power and status like so many (most?) attorneys I know.

And they won't be, until they get a taste for them.

The saying "power corrupts" exists for a reason, because it's true. Very few people in history have been able to resist the temptations that come with it and stay true to their principles.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#174

Post by mcbits » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 4:39 PM UTC

derrickdirge wrote: post #29

meritt wrote: post #22

Huh, weird, I actually looked into this exact same site (when it was being shared all across FB) and found something else telling -- a reused Google Adsense publisher tag ("ca-pub-1413743582782046") which I then found on a number of other sites: FireBrandLeft.com, NationalReport.net and some articles by this author http://www.liberalamerica.org/author/matt/ -- All were either owned by the same guy or he was a "journa…

Or "Jestin Coler" is just the name the author used to protect his real identity.

> as for actual employed writers, again these guys sort of make their own money through ad code.

He's probably just one of the contributing writers.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#175

Post by atmosx » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 4:41 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #114

atmosx wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public discourse anymore." Legislation is a rather complex sport that requires deep understanding of repercussions. I've seen rather skilled blockchain hackers talking economics, finance, politics and monetary policy. Their understanding of the current system (in terms of structure) was appalling. One needs to know the role of central banks before…

> I am afraid that your average engineer will make a pretty incompetent legislator. So let's leave legislation to legislators... :-) I disagree. Aside from a few highly political engineers and/or software devs, almost all engineers I know insist on actually looking at the facts and evaluating them to the best of their ability, regardless of their political inclinations. This is a very rare characteristic in our socie…

> Also, what exact lack of understanding in terms of "structure" of the current system did you find appalling in those blockchain hackers? Can you be more specific?

- How currencies are created by a population or state?

- How currencies are adopted/enforced to/by a population or state?

- What is the role of a central bank in a modern economy?

- How if the "Chair of the FED" appointed?

- What is the inflation rate?

- Why does a central bank get to decide the inflation rate?

- Why exchange currencies (e.g. USD, EUR, etc) are inflationary?

- What is democracy? (by extension is it in the best interest of a democracy having a CB-backed currency or a virtual currency?)

- Can a player with vast amounts of shares/bitcoins/USDs fix the price of the stock/share/btc?

- Can money be a-political?

> I think we need more scientists, engineers, software professionals, etc. in our political system, not less.

Two examples of technocratic governance are (A) Greece and (B) Economics/Finance:

(A) In 2015 Greece has been turned officially into a colony[1]. In essence it's been a colony since 2010. All major political decisions are taken from a technocratic board. Basically the Greek govenrment acts as the executive branch. The legislative power been delegrated to a supranational authority, which 60% of Greeks rejected btw. The technocratic board, known as 'Troika', has done mistakes[2]. While the IMF will issue a sorry we made a few mistakes statement and go home, people in Greece have to live with the consequences for the years to come. No Greek politician is capable of inflicting such MASSIVE amount of pain to an economy without getting a glimpse of hope in return, none. Only a technocrat can do that. Of course technocrats (much like neo-liberals or communists) will say that you're not technocratic enough, but this simply doesn't hold water: there's theory and practice. Practice shows that they've screw up massively, so massively that by the time they end-up with Greece, Greece may very well have been turned into a military-state of the worst kind.

(B) Currently finance relies on non-realistic financial models, to justify toxic asset risk dispersion/assessment. This dominance of mathematics in Economics (The queen of social sciences) has been going strong for the last 40 years or so. The problem is not that top university educated economists are not good with formulas. Some of those guys make rounds around your average engineer. The problem is that in order to explain social reality through a mathematical model they start accepting generilizations which are simply NOT true.

So in the end of the day, you have a mathematical model which is out of touch with reality and 2008 happens, Trump happens, Brexit happens... All these things happened because of the mathematicalisation of economics.

I think post-2008 it's really hard to argue replacing social sciences (and I believe legislation is a very social science, economics too) with technocratic counterparts. Everyone should have a say, but the final decision on social matters, should rest with social sciences.

[1]: https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2015/08/17/greeces-third-mou-memo...

[2]: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-04-21/imf-needs...

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#176

Post by fein » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 4:47 PM UTC

thenomad wrote: post #113

forgetsusername wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HackerNews happens to share your values and opinions on things like religion and politics. Donald Trump just won the election; did you read the opinions of people here on this happening? And while we may not be pushing a Flat World, there are plenty of conspiracy theories and ignorance on topics (eg. banks), and a fanaticism with regards to a other things (eg. Tesla) . Opposing views on these sorts of topics are smas…

I've seen a few Trump supporters posting. They weren't popular but in comparison to most other sites I visit opposing views were more tolerated.

We're around, we just keep it under wraps.

HN has a hard liberal slant. There are a lot of bleeding hearts in SV, so not much of a point to bring political views into tech discussions.

I try to avoid any "technical" convos on what people fear may happen when legislation doesn't even exist in the planning phases yet.

Too many irrationally scared people to have those exchanges.

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#177

Post by Inthenameofmine » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

mcone wrote: post #155

ryuker16 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google beat them to it. Ad words is insane.... wanna target by individual town? Yes you can and more

Facebook allows you to target by city too. In fact, several individuals have used Facebook to display ads to just one person. See this account, for instance: http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-pranking-...

That's insane. With de-anonymised data and some sort of personalisation engine a single person could change the results of an entire election that way!

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#178

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

JanezStupar wrote: post #93

JonnieCache wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about wars - I'm talking about the holocaust and the deaths from internal repression in the soviet union and maoist china. One of the preconditions for such things to take place is the corruption of truth in the public discourse. I'm sorry if this seems like exaggeration or scaremongering but I find these stories terrifying far beyond the election of donald trump. >the governments regularly shouted "f…

Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments show us that "ordinary good people" are the ones who turn into monsters if you give them the right incentives/conditions. What was one of major factors in bringing down the Soviet Union - was information campaign of which Radio Free Europe was a major part. While, indeed their policy was dissemination of truth. Undoubtedly it would have been seen as "fake news" by the Soviets.…

I wish people would stop touting the Stanford experiment as some sort of truism. It was a deeply flawed experiment that didn't observe proper scientific principles and the conclusions were largely subjective and anecdotal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Cri...

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#179

Post by Slothrop99 » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #152

greggman wrote: post #56

Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right. Or at least not without more proof? I suspect you'd need a right leaning person with a similar background writing left bait fake news to have the same impact though. Write fake news about charter schools doing something bad (charter school puts LGBT students in detention) or fake churches doing bad (church in Idaho found funneling funds to…

Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right. Or at least not without more proof? Not proof, but an interesting analogy: The relative success of right- and left-wing talk radio. Right wing talk radio is a huge industry, left-wing is practically nonexistent. Maybe it points to an asymmetry in how left- and right-wingers consume information. Granted, it could also be related to other fac…

I don't think that's correct. My mother is someone who watches left-wing biased news (MSNBC) all day, for example. And while I wouldn't call NPR specifically left-wing, they have a heavy establishment bias, and were running anti-Trump stuff continually through the election. Plus, there is a whole media establishment out there preaching to the far left (Democracy Now, "hippie" radio, etc.)

Re: We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs

#180

Post by enraged_camel » Thu, Nov 24, 2016, 5:17 PM UTC

veidr wrote: post #39

WhitneyLand wrote: post #20

Jestin Coler is a cancer and his actions should be made illegal. It seems possible such a law could be narrowly applied such that it would prove constitutional. Judicial review could weigh the value to society of false speech, or lying, against the erosion of integrity in the free press. One example of a false speech review was the stolen valor act. Lot of doors left open here; http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/…

As long as we're making up fantasy laws to solve this problem, why don't we just outlaw being lazy, stupid, and gullible?

They aren't as imaginary as you think. There are types of speech not protected by the First Amendment. Yelling "FIRE!!!" in a crowded theater, for example, is a crime.