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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

#331

Post by asabjorn »

octernion wrote: post #293
soundwave106 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I would also like a comprehensive study, but this article is not it because it is using classifications of fake news made by tabloid media that does not satisfy any scientific requirement of rigor.

It is ok that buzzfeed is politically biased, but its conclusions and work should also be treated as such with the limitations that presents in the applicability of its conclusions.

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

#332

Post by oasd1011 »

wil421 wrote: post #86
CodeCube wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really really loathe to say this ... but in today's climate, "memes are news". I have 100% had the contents of memes thrown at me in a political discussion. I happen to be online a lot, so in many cases, I've seen the meme scroll by and it's easy both to realize what it is (fake propaganda), and easy to debunk ... but to those folks, it's as real as if delivered by Walter Cronkite's lips.

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.

> both sides

Sure.

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

#333

Post by fzeroracer »

tropo wrote: post #315
wbronitsky wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you referring to the dossier that a court found was in the public interest to publish because it had so much merit? The same dossier that two presidents were briefed on and was a subject of an active government investigation? That dossier is now, provably, not fake. It seems like you might be unintentionally spreading fake news yourself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/12/20...

The existence of the dossier itself is provably not fake. The content however is, along with the original story of how it came to be funded, created, and disseminated. It's not even plausible. The man is a germophobe. He had to overcome a handshake aversion (Where has your hand been today? Eeeew...) to even run for office. It was trivial for the people in power to brief presidents or start a government investigation,…

You keep saying the content is fake, but again, we've seen various claims made within it prove true over time. Why are you keen on peddling fake news yourself?

The pee tape may or may not be real, almost any intelligence dossier like that is going to contain information across multiple sources some of which may not be correct. This does not invalidate the document as a whole, especially because again, we've seen many claims within it bear fruit over the past few years.

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

#334

Post by deadmik3 »

protomyth wrote: post #322

My Dad (mid 70s in age) shares the fake news articles because he thinks they are funny. He still cannot believe that people take so much of this crap seriously. Of course, when you have an elected representative that thinks an island will tip over if you put too many people on it, its not hard to understand where critical thinking has failed.

I've been realizing more and more as I grow up that many of the old people I thought were retarded are actually playing dumb and punking me hard into getting trolled by their shenanigans, making me the retarded one

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

#335

Post by asabjorn »

fzeroracer wrote: post #238
asabjorn wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Buzfeed believes in far-left progressive views and is not known for objective reporting, so using this as a primary source for classifications of fake news would predetermine this outcome. With this in mind I think we can't trust the studys conclusion.

Why don't you address the actual study instead of disregarding it on a partisan basis?

To show that the classification system used as a premise for the study has problems is addressing the methodology of the study, and exactly what I learned in my scientific training.

The fact that the classifications are likely to be politically biased due to them being made by buzzfeed does not make the statement of that fact necessarily political.

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

#336

Post by sonnyblarney »

pjc50 wrote: post #67
sonnyblarney wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are taking Dominique Strauss-Kahn down for exactly that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn

Details and priors matter here. He seems to have been involved in the "procuring" middleman role, as was Berlusconi (who largely got away with it until one of the girls was underage). "Male French or Italian politician involved in sexual misconduct" is well within the range of plausible news; the whole pizzagate thing relied on all sorts of alleged implausible details. Then there's the UK's "Dolphin Square" controver…

Of course of course. Context matters. Reality matters!

My point is it's a mess out there, and most people don't have insight into how the world really works, so I usually don't go blaming retirees for passing along false information of the Tabloid kind. It is what it is.

Facebook is not new, it's just now we have digitized banal gossip. I guess the difference now is we can measure it.

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

#337

Post by oasd1011 »

ThomPete wrote: post #239
jmcqk6 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fake news first and formost is a clickbait scam to get advertising dollars, NOT a political propaganda approach and this tendency to keep using it as if it's an actual political issue is really absurd and itself an example of what is probably more an example of sloppy news. That's a pretty bold assertion. Let me make sure I'm getting this right. According to you, there is not a problem of people creating and spreadi…

By all means. Please show me this new problem that didn't exist before and please show how this is actually convincing people to change their minds about a subject matter. There is nothing what so ever that makes "fake news" worse than your or mine self-delusional idea of what is true ESPECIALLY in politics which has nothing to do with truth but perspective. The actual problems with social media platforms like FB and…

You're completely delusional if you believe this.

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

#338

Post by octernion »

sparkie wrote: post #313
octernion wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 discussi…

Who draws the line of what these categories are? Let's say for example, you are not racist, nor sexist, but you also do not subscribe to the "positive discrimination" (oxymoron) bullshit, and instead of hiring people to meet diversity quotas, you hire people purely based on their fitness for the role you are hiring for. When you reject certain "unprivileged" individuals because others are more fit for the role, they…

i really can't tell if you are responding in some weird attempt at playing devils advocate (in some sad alt-right personality), but in case you are actually responding in good faith...

sadly it's impossible to be both "not racist, nor sexist" _and_ against "positive discrimination". not sure how much more simple i can make it for ya. sorry.

no one is angry because one person of color or woman is rejected from a position; it's not a simple first-order investment but rather a structural, generational change and people are mad because folks in power are not (occasionally, and thankfully increasingly less) acknowledging that. again i know it's almost certainly too complicated for someone who is pro-structural racism and misogyny to understand.

and, it's not possible to be "racist" in the way that racism is used in this structural way against white people. white men are sadly still in a position of structural power and as such you can't be racist against white people (especially white men). sorry for your lack of understanding here as well.

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

#339

Post by BeetleB »

maldusiecle wrote: post #121
ben_w wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't tell the difference between The Daily Mail and The Guardian based on stylistic cues, I don't know what to tell you. Then you missed my point. Of course I can tell the difference , but which one is true — the one founded in 1821 or the one founded in 1896?

Don't look at the founding date, that's completely irrelevant. Look at the Daily Mail homepage. Does it look like a news site, or does it look like a tabloid?

>Does it look like a news site, or does it look like a tabloid?

I think you've just demonstrated why many people believe fake news. A lot of them are set up to look like regular news sites.

Fake news sites have been around for a lot longer than people think. I remember quite a few years ago reading an article about an event where some minority Christians were being mistreated in some non-Christian country. It looked like any other news article. The incident in question was reported in multiple news sites.

Then one person (or a team?) exposed it all. The event never happened. It was not obvious, and he/they had to do a lot of sleuthing to find out who owned the sites - a Christian advocacy group. All the other sites reporting on the incident were likewise (perhaps all under the same company - can't remember).

Years before 2016.

The only thing that may have clued me into it being fake news was that I hadn't heard of the news site. But then again, most people have not heard of most news sites.

Don't look at style or appearances. Really. Don't.

Oh, and as bad as The Daily Mail is, it is full of accurate (albeit misleading) material - compared to a typical tabloid in the US. I can easily dismiss nonsense I see on tabloids in the grocery store. With The Daily Mail, I have to work to find out if it is true or not.

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