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

Check your fucking sources, people

brodzinski.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 88 posts

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#41

Post by RajT88 »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #30
RajT88 wrote: post #16

Facebook, ever the wasteland of bullshit and scams, has gotten even more bullshit and scammy in the AI era. I have found the single best way to avoid being pissed off by this shit is to just avoid Facebook. It dramatically cuts down on the amount I am exposed to. I also run with adblockers, and consume news via brutalist.report, which also helps. (I avoid the Fox News section at the bottom)

Not just Facebook, but also make sure to avoid TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, along with YouTube Shorts. Many of them are just nothing but fake AI content, and these days people are using AI to create fake profiles of good-looking, cute girls doing impossible things or actually showing off their bodies, and so on. At least 50% of what you see on your feed should be considered AI-generated content. I would say save yo…

I don't do TikTok. My instagram feed doesn't seem too bad by comparison.

Youtube shorts also seem OK for me, but of course definitely elevated compared to regular videos recommended to me.

Lastly:

> I would say save your time and energy, and invest that into something else - forget all this social media.

Agree. The promise of social media hasn't worked out. It was nice during the early Netflix streaming days, but has gotten progressively worse since then.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#42

Post by andai »

When Bard (now known as Gemini) first came out in Europe, I think mid 2023, I tested it out. AI search was still a new thing in those days, and I was excited to see what Google's solution would be like. I had high hopes.

I asked it a question I knew the answer to. It searched the web, and told me the opposite of the truth. (Not nonsense, but a logical inversion of the actual fact. A common failure mode with earlier LLMs.)

Puzzled, I checked the sources. It cited two. Both AI SEO slop.

Bizarrely, I Googled it myself and couldn't even find those pages on Google. Maybe it was using a different search engine? ;)

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#43

Post by [deleted] »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #32
throw310822 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking is different from finding, though. Source checking means just "verify that this information is actually present in that document". Much harder to hallucinate in this case.

A quick smoke check takes just a few minutes. "Follow each link in this document. Read each link's contents against the contents in this document. Create a report: for each link list a working hyperlink, whether it exists, what claim it supports, whether it supports or fails to support it, and why" If it returns a report claiming all correct? That's promising, but human verification is important. You've got a list of…

[deleted]

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#44

Post by ourmandave »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #30
RajT88 wrote: post #16

Facebook, ever the wasteland of bullshit and scams, has gotten even more bullshit and scammy in the AI era. I have found the single best way to avoid being pissed off by this shit is to just avoid Facebook. It dramatically cuts down on the amount I am exposed to. I also run with adblockers, and consume news via brutalist.report, which also helps. (I avoid the Fox News section at the bottom)

Not just Facebook, but also make sure to avoid TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, along with YouTube Shorts. Many of them are just nothing but fake AI content, and these days people are using AI to create fake profiles of good-looking, cute girls doing impossible things or actually showing off their bodies, and so on. At least 50% of what you see on your feed should be considered AI-generated content. I would say save yo…

My favorite is the 83-year-old AI grandma on youtube giving retirement advice. They put her in various settings and she looks and sounds very real.

The only obvious tell is the eyes don't track right. But once they fix that, it's really going to be hard to know.

All the comments are how great her advice is, etc.

Every video has a link to a book she "wrote" on amazon. I didn't waste my time trying to figure out what the scam is.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#45

Post by Upvoter33 »

"Links No Longer Mean Credibility" - did they used to? I mean, I mostly agree with this article but a person could have written this about the internet. I remember people linking to all sorts of random web pages and using that as a source of credibility.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#46

Post by tinfoilhatter »

wat10000 wrote: post #35
tinfoilhatter wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there is no independent media, it's not difficult to find sources that back up the lies that Snopes and other fact-checkers peddle. https://fair.org/home/the-digital-media-oligarchy-who-owns-o... https://swprs.org/the-american-empire-and-its-media/

What lies exactly?

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-4730092/Snopes-brink-...

https://foodbabe.com/do-you-trust-snopes-you-wont-after-read...

There's a plethora of examples on the internet of Snopes engaging in this type of behavior, if you're actually interested in learning about their problematic approach to their work.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#47

Post by throw310822 »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #32
throw310822 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking is different from finding, though. Source checking means just "verify that this information is actually present in that document". Much harder to hallucinate in this case.

A quick smoke check takes just a few minutes. "Follow each link in this document. Read each link's contents against the contents in this document. Create a report: for each link list a working hyperlink, whether it exists, what claim it supports, whether it supports or fails to support it, and why" If it returns a report claiming all correct? That's promising, but human verification is important. You've got a list of…

I would love to do it at scale on many online publications, and publish the results. That would teach 'em.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#48

Post by Thrymr »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #2

Ironically, 'source checking' is something AI is quite good at.

I mostly disagree with this. You can request sources, you can ask it to check, but no LLM I have used can do this correctly more than 50-75% of the time, and some of the major models are extremely bad at this: giving broken links 90% of the time, incapable of giving actual links rather than search engine links, etc. Constant supervision and repetition of requests can sometimes get results, but it is exhausting. The "sources" it finds are often Reddit posts or other questionable secondary or tertiary sources, not actual original sources.

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#49

Post by pessimizer »

ourmandave wrote: post #18
6stringmerc wrote: post #3

Also relevant: the derision and mockery directed at JD Vance as a “couch fucker” even used by John Oliver. I read “Hillbilly Elegy” and wondered why it wasn’t in there. Snopes cleared it up in a matter of minutes. Why he hasn’t sued people into oblivion is his prerogative, but it’s a fascinating case study that we are, indeed, living in a Post-Truth environment.

Tucker Carlson set the precedent when he was sued for libel by Karen McDougal and won because Fox New lawyers successfully argued he wasn't a reporter and no reasonable person would believe he's stating facts. Unless he's repeating Trump's lies, then 77M people apparently believe it.

> The challenged statement was an obvious exaggeration, cushioned within an undisputed news story. The statement could not reasonably be understood to imply an assertion of objective fact, and therefore, did not amount to defamation.

"Rachel Maddow Wins in 9th Circuit; OAN Loses Appeal in Defamation Case"

https://timesofsandiego.com/business/2021/08/17/rachel-maddo...

-----

> Maddow’s show is different than a typical news segment where anchors inform viewers about the daily news. The point of Maddow’s show is for her to provide the news but also to offer her opinions as to that news. Therefore, the Court finds that the medium of the alleged defamatory statement makes it more likely that a reasonable viewer would not conclude that the contested statement implies an assertion of objective fact.

https://timesofsandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/MADDO...

-----

The statement in queston: "[...T]he most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda."

Re: Check your fucking sources, people

#50

Post by irishcoffee »

dugidugout wrote: post #39
vslira wrote: post #28

People like to blame social media for this kind of bullshit, but social media is just the vector. Just this week I read a "study" because someone claimed on social media that it was made by (Public, famous) Unis A, B and C and reported as an effect an increase in 30% of revenue for the companies that participated in the experiment. The "study" was commissioned by an interest group (bad sign). It was conducted by peop…

Why not link the study?

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Spreading fake news isn't great. People also want you to prove what you say is true.
Post reply on HN