Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 437 posts

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

#371

Post by EpicEng »

asabjorn wrote: post #326
EpicEng wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not linked to in the verge article for whatever reason, but you can find the study here: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau4586.full >Posts containing links to external websites are cross-referenced against lists of fake news publishers built by journalists and academics. Here, we mainly use measures constructed by reference to the list by Silverman (7), but in the Supplementary Materials, we show that t…

soundwave106 replied in another message with the sources. Buzzfeed seems to be the primary source of the classifications, a far-left organization, so the conclusion is with all likelihood predetermined by politically motivated definitions of fake news. These are the classification sources according to soundwave106: A) The primary source was a list of fake news sites compiled by Buzzfeed Media [1] B) The study was cro…

Do you have any specific examples of bias?

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

#372

Post by paulie_a »

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.

I've seen quite a few previously open minded and intellectual people fall into an echo chamber and choose less outlets as they age. They get locked into one or maybe two similar ideological outlets and everything else is wrong.

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

#373

Post by _mul0 »

porpoisely wrote: post #364
infradig wrote: post #353

A day after an article about fake-news research being retracted and here are people commenting enthusiasticly and gullibly about another piece of fake-news research being promulgated. It's like no one has heard of the social sciences reproducibility crisis. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

No less from theverge. It's amazing that people take theverge seriously after their "how to build a pc" fiasco. The one thing about the "fake news" hysteria is that one side consuming the fake news is accusing the other side consuming the fake news. As far as I can tell, it's all fake news and propaganda.

Donald Trump's presidency is weird because the "mainstream media" (a term used by many, regardless of their political spectrum) began to be treated as "real news" simply because Donald Trump was calling it "fake news".

People have been talking about the issues with the "mainstream media" (in particular, whether their profit motives line up with their ethical duty) for a few decades, and it all it takes is one clown to suddenly restore faith in the media?

I have seen people talk about Bush like he was an okay president. It feels like many have forgotten about the responsibility of the media in promulgating the Iraq war narrative. People don't really seem to get the media actually continues to profit from its interaction with Donald Trump (those sweet, juicy views!), and continues to pass on useless information to the public, rather than actionable information which might stir the public into something other than apathy.

...something is so weird, and I am struggling to put my finger on it...

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

#374

Post by fzeroracer »

sparkie wrote: post #368
octernion wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm not going to keep responding because it's clear you haven't understood any of the above comments around the structural and generational concerns. there is plentiful literature to better educate yourself and be less ignorant about this.

I understand the concerns, but your "solutions" are deeply flawed and faith based. Your idea that whites won't be discriminated is a joke, because it's already reality. Whites are actively discriminated against. This is what "positive discrimination" is. It means that if you have 9 white candidates and 1 non-white candate apply for 2 jobs, and you have a diversity quota to fill, then the non-white candidate has a 100…

White People are not actively discriminated against, period. Your fears are absurd and unfounded, considering white people still compose the majority of tech and that has changed very little.

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

#375

Post by bilbo0s »

pixl97 wrote: post #350
bilbo0s wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think the ability to ascertain truth from falsehood is uniquely age related; I believe it comes down to the age of media you were raised in... I don't know man? I think it has a whole lot more to do with the common sense of the individual. If you're the type of person who will believe that the US never landed on the moon, or that Hillary, congresspeople and bankers are sexually molesting children who are he…

>congresspeople and bankers are sexually molesting children who are held captive in the basement of a pizzeria, then there's not much that changing a media source is gonna do for you. Let's adjust that a little bit. Movie producers are sexually molesting children and women, and the police are helping covering up and not investigating it, for decades.

...in the basement of a pizzeria?

A story like that would make sense to you?

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

#376

Post by atypicaluser »

mcbuilder wrote: post #302
aero142 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure /r/the_donald started out as a joke and slowly turned real at some point. I still don't quite understand what happened. It would make an interesting investigation.

/r/T_D was such a strange mix of Russian bots, trolls, true believing incels, and meme spitting grandpas that I'm sure it could be studied for years by social scientists.

As could /r/politics, /r/srs and other extreme subreddits infested with bots, trolls and other societal rejects.

How unfortunate that this generation's social scientists are interested only in grinding and swinging the axe in one political direction. ;-)

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

#377

Post by wmeredith »

aero142 wrote: post #270
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'm pretty sure /r/the_donald started out as a joke and slowly turned real at some point. I still don't quite understand what happened. It would make an interesting investigation.

This is true. The same thing happened with the r/pcmasterrace subreddit-parody subs that were taken over by people not getting the joke.

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

#378

Post by wmeredith »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #357
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.

There are multiple levels of trolling happening in these situations. Many read Infowars as satire like the Onion, and they get off pretending to believe its true just to mess with people. It’s the whole flat earth thing.

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

If someone’s hobby is pretending to be an asshole or stupid... they might actually just be an asshole or stupid.

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

#379

Post by ezoe »

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.

Same here. My Japanese father who speak English and regularly traveling foreign countries for the job is now became extreme nationalist and far-right fanatics.

I know he didn't have that kind of personality before. It's quite shocking.

And yes. I'm worrying to become like him one day.

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

#380

Post by ryandrake »

beetwenty wrote: post #310
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…

This is definitely where my mom has gone. She thinks Alex Jones is very funny, but then ends up buying the books of conspiracy theorists and interjecting paranoid right talking points into everyday conversations. Given that it happens so commonly around retirement, I think this is a function of not wanting to struggle or achieve anything anymore, and therefore succumbing fully to a convenient view, one which gives yo…

Of the people I know who have fallen into this right wing vortex, regardless of age, all of them are retired. But it’s not everyone who’s retired! I know retirees who travel, stay engaged with hobbies, etc who did not end up in the vortex. It’s the ones who just sit there in retirement, immersing themselves in this stuff all day long, doing nothing else, that are getting sucked in.

I’m getting up there in age and I’m worried about this myself. My criteria for retirement is not just that I have enough money to stop working, but that I also have enough to travel or do a hobby and stay mentally engaged with something.

Post reply on HN