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

#291

Post by octernion » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

sparkie wrote: post #262

octernion wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i will say that the mental gymnastics necessary to make "being nice" and "not being a shitty racist or misogynist" a "religion", so that you can say "i'm a proponent of a secular state" is just really impressive so congrats on that. really neat stuff.

The social justice religion is not "being nice" or "not being racist." Most of humanity fits into those categories. (Obviously there are some exceptions). Social justice is about action to force your version of morality or ethics on society, usually by whatever means necessary, or without concern about the collateral damage caused by such actions. It usually manifests as complete hypocrisy. Let's stop hate by being h…

> Most of humanity fits into those categories.

[citation needed]. "social justice" is absolutely that "most of humanity" does _not_ fall into those categories and in fact there are massive structural failures with society.

it's not "hypocrisy" to deplatform (& socially shun) racists & misogynists, and acknowledge white privilege. if you disagree with those basic tenants than you aren't worthy of being in the discussion, and, reasonable non-shitty people get to make fun of you.

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

#292

Post by nzealand » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

vinbreau wrote: post #282

zelon88 wrote: post #272

A almost guarantee that 100% of the people who believe clickbait fake news articles from bogus and untrustworthy sources also have never heard of the scientific method. I believe that many older people find critical thinking to be taboo, and prefer to take things at face value because they confuse passivity with wisdom. Why question something when someone will come along any minute to make you feel comfortable anyway…

My mother taught me to be autodidact. She would never answer my questions and instead told me to go get an encyclopedia (It was the 70's) and find out myself. When I spouted ignorance she would correct me. Now she's widowed. As my father declined with Alzheimer's he tuned into FOX news all day long. Oddly, he became less racist despite this because my wife is black. The more he fell in love with her as his daughter,…

The problem is Fox News. They have a cynical disregard for the truth.

Lies are sticky. If you passively listen to lies all day, it will affect even you.

Take an excerpt from this article:

https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/why-lies-often-st...

Suppose you hear of a family of four who died after eating at Golden Gate Chinese Restaurant. The authorities investigate, and release the information that food poisoning was not the cause. Do you go out for Chinese tonight?

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

#293

Post by octernion » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

soundwave106 wrote: post #249

octernion wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

old misogynists sharing "wikileaks CONFIRMS hillary sold weapons to ISIS!!!!" being fake news is absolutely a far-left take on reality, hahaha. how are you so bad at this.

I do disagree with the lazy "Buzzfeed is left wing therefore your result are automatically invalid" conclusion of the poster. :) But I do believe that bias could be a genuine concern here. Both the Buzzfeed article and the Stanford article ( https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf ) seems to focus strictly on political fake news. But Donald Trump fake news is not the only fake news out there. Given t…

i absolutely agree and was taking issue primarily with the lazy political framing of the parent than the broader conclusions of the article as a whole.

i also would like to see a more comprehensive study (esp. including scientific issues, which should actually be easier to measure and less contentious).

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

#294

Post by dkarl » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #168

dkarl wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

He taught college history at a small state school. Definitely equivalent of enlisted; same sense of institutional powerlessness and futility. Officers would be the university administration. He used to circulate ("anonymously") humorous hand-drawn posters and pamphlets about their policies, and they did not appreciate his sense of humor at all.

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

#295

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

QuotedForTruth wrote: post #240

Cakez0r wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. B…

What part of that sounds like BS? We know they have industrial scale operations to post propaganda now. [1] Obviously this had to start somewhere. I'm pretty sure many intelligence agencies have been researching how information spread on the internet ever since it was created. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/18/world/europe/russia-troll...

The US has been running its own industrial propaganda machine since at least the end of WWII. Carl Bernstein and other journalists uncovered a number of "influencer" and cutout operations in the late 70s which placed CIA-sourced stories in the supposedly respectable and independent mainstream media.

The line between honest journalism, state propaganda, and fake news has always been a very porous one.

In fact there are different propaganda modalities for different demographics. Rather like advertising - if you think a message is transparent, clumsy, and ridiculous, that doesn't mean you're clever enough to be immune to manipulation, it means you're not the target audience for it.

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

#296

Post by b_t_s » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:48 PM UTC

ideonexus wrote: post #126

rchaud wrote: post #29

Not at all a surprise. The first time my dad used the Internet to look at used car ads on Craigslist, I found him trying to fight off a cascading series of popups (this was in the mid-2000s) that launched when he clicked the "You are our 1 millionth customer" ads. Older people who are new to the Internet may simply think it's regulated like TV and Radio commercials are. Couple that with how easy it is to target these…

This reminds me of when my father-in-law got a fullscreen pop-up claiming to have seized his computer unless he paid $20. While I was looking at it to figure out how to close the window, he said, "I've already paid them twice now!!!"

It's a failure to understand how any of it actually works. There was a comment higher up how many older people have memorized steps to complete tasks, but have no understanding of underlying concepts. Despite 2 decades of effort on my part, my father has paper notebooks full of step by step instructions how to do things with his computer, but not a shred of understanding of any of the underlying concepts. Also, he was shocked to learn that the internet runs on money and advertising. He can do about 5 common tasks on it, and he has strict instructions never to enter any personal or financial information into any computer.

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

#297

Post by JKCalhoun » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

marton78 wrote: post #276

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.

It could be beginning dementia / Alzheimer's. At least that is the case for my father. Similarly to believing fake news, also lost his humour, he just doesn't get jokes any more, he takes them at face value. I hope this is not the case for your dad and I'm sorry if I scared you, but you could consider having him checked.

IDK, I think it might be fear.

Fear seems to come on as people see people their age dying of various diseases, etc. Mortality is staring them in the face.

And though it starts with the fear, everything that panders to fear follows....

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

#298

Post by michaelchisari » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

vinbreau wrote: post #282

zelon88 wrote: post #272

A almost guarantee that 100% of the people who believe clickbait fake news articles from bogus and untrustworthy sources also have never heard of the scientific method. I believe that many older people find critical thinking to be taboo, and prefer to take things at face value because they confuse passivity with wisdom. Why question something when someone will come along any minute to make you feel comfortable anyway…

My mother taught me to be autodidact. She would never answer my questions and instead told me to go get an encyclopedia (It was the 70's) and find out myself. When I spouted ignorance she would correct me. Now she's widowed. As my father declined with Alzheimer's he tuned into FOX news all day long. Oddly, he became less racist despite this because my wife is black. The more he fell in love with her as his daughter,…

"The Brainwashing Of My Dad" is a very personal documentary about this effect on the director's father.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh3TeTxgNVo

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

#299

Post by tivert » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

jgroszko wrote: post #124

magduf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is fair to all people over 65. It sounds like maybe your relatives are much like mine, and I agree, my relatives shouldn't be voting either. If we're going to put up a discriminatory barrier to voting, I think it'd be more effective if it was education-based. People with no education make poor voting choices, as we've seen in recent elections.

So under-represented or disadvantaged communities that don't have the resources to meet the education standards don't get to vote? Education requirements can very easily become a proxy for race/class.

> So under-represented or disadvantaged communities that don't have the resources to meet the education standards don't get to vote? Education requirements can very easily become a proxy for race/class.

Easily become a proxy for race/class? They already were used to disenfranchise people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test#Voting

> From the 1890s to the 1960s, many state governments in the United States administered literacy tests to prospective voters purportedly to test their literacy in order to vote. In practice, these tests were intended to disenfranchise racial minorities. Southern state legislatures employed literacy tests as part of the voter registration process starting in the late 19th century. Literacy tests, along with poll taxes, residency and property restrictions and extra-legal activities (violence, intimidation)[2] were all used to deny suffrage to African Americans.

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

#300

Post by JKCalhoun » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

bonestamp2 wrote: post #169

mcculley wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The part I fear most is that healthy dose of skepticism that most people used to have is being turned against those people.

That is my fear as well. "Believe nothing," would be the wrong takeaway from all this, but I'm afraid a cynical population of our youth might very well be following that course.

Be skeptical of skepticism too I tell my daughters.