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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

#411

Post by magduf »

apocalypstyx wrote: post #195
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.

I know people with masters and doctorate level of education in medical and chemistry and other highly technical fields who believe in UFOs, creationism (the 10,000 year old Earth variety), among other things (I even once met a physicist who thought everything about quantum mechanics was bunk and classical mechanics could explain everything). And I'm by no means alone in that. So that may be anecdotal experience, but…

>I know people with masters and doctorate level of education in medical and chemistry and other highly technical fields who believe in UFOs, creationism (the 10,000 year old Earth variety), among other things

There should be a registry of doctors who are creationists or believe other nonsense (I'll give the UFOs a pass depending on just how fervent their belief in them is; I mean, can you prove we haven't been visited? The evidence isn't very good but you can't prove a negative. If they believe they've been abducted, however, that's a whole different level. Of course, I also can't disprove their claim but I'd rather err on the side of caution and assume they have mental problems and find another doctor.).

I don't want a doctor giving me medical advice when they don't even believe in basic science.

>It all comes down to that better decisions are the decision I agree with, whoever the I in any given instance is.

Perhaps, but I think it should be obvious by now that people who decided to vote for Trump have had an extremely detrimental effect on the nation's economy and well-being.

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

#412

Post by magduf »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #305
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.

Great, then we can rule out the people with the wrong sort of education as they make poor voting choices, and the people from the wrong sort of colleges, and the wrong sort of courses... People can be hugely educated and aware on some topics whilst being ignorant, blinkered and bigoted on others. You and me included. Plenty of highly educated people voted for the choice you didn't. Even in those recent "surprise" ele…

>If you want to balance the ageing of society and the electorate, open up voting to the young by way of balance.

As I pointed out in another post here, I personally do NOT think the problem is age, despite the thrust of this article. As I said before, the alt-right is not full of geriatric people, it's full of men in their 20s-40s, mostly men with poor education.

As a man in that age group myself, I hate to say it, but I think the country would actually be better off if only women (of all ages), and men over the age of 60 could vote.

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

#413

Post by asabjorn »

EpicEng wrote: post #406
asabjorn wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/buzzfeed/ [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/10/21/le...

I meant in the list, not for buzzfeed itself.

The claim of the study is that they can investigate prevalence of fake news sharing of different groups, so the concerns is more expansive than that and puts the scientific validity of their conclusions on dubious grounds.

There are four questions that need to be answered:

  1) are the classifications complete over the data set in the study, not an arbitrary different data set

  2) is the populations studied representative of the populuation in general

  3) are the classifications unbiased

  4) are the classification structure sufficiently granular to represent uncertainty
On #1 they did their study on a three-month segments beginning 9 months from election day, while the study by YouGov is over a different set of voluntary users in a different time period.

On #2 the population was chosen by voluntary particiation and I don't see any mention of them doing necessary statistical analysis to make sure it is representative of the general population.

On #3 and #4 buzzfeed said they collected the classifications by searching for fake news of interest to people of their ideological tilt. Some of which is admittedly not fake news, such as hillarys mishandling of government emails:

-- BuzzFeed News used the content analysis tool BuzzSumo, which enables users to search for content by keyword, URL, time range, and social share counts. BuzzFeed News searched in BuzzSumo using keywords such as "Hillary Clinton" and "Donald Trump," as well as combinations such as "Trump and election" or "Clinton and emails" to see the top stories about these topics according to Facebook engagement. We also searched for known viral lies such as "Soros and voting machine."

and

-- Two of the biggest false hits were a story claiming Clinton sold weapons to ISIS and a hoax claiming the pope endorsed Trump, which the site removed after publication of this article. The only viral false stories during the final three months that were arguably against Trump's interests were a false quote from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false report that Ireland was accepting American "refugees" fleeing Trump, and a hoax claiming RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.

I am sure many other problems could be found if I looked more, but just one of these would put a nail in the coffin of their conclusion and together they just put it on dubious grounds.

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/viral-fa...

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

#414

Post by taeric »

burfog wrote: post #398
api wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but I think the parent is correct. I grew up with the Internet. I was reading wacky conspiracy theories in my teens. It made me more skeptical of virtually anything I see in print since I learned how easy it is to create a BS narrative and fit details into it. I also learned what propaganda is, how it works, and how prevalent it is. Older generations grew up with a one-way opaque screen preaching to them. Obvious…

Older generations didn't trust things on screens. They cursed at things on screens. They could and did seek alternative opinions, though often it cost more. Subscribing to newsletters has long been an option. For example, the John Birch Society's TheNewAmerican was created in 1985 as the merger of two older newsletters that date to 1956 and 1965. It's now available at https://www.thenewamerican.com/ but you can still…

This is in stark contrast to the evidence of the article.

That some folks from older generations did this, I can accept. But you will need more data than this to counter the facts presented in the article, no?

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

#415

Post by Chris_Chambers »

hkt wrote: post #395
marton78 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm sorry about your father, but your comment made me wonder how common this is. I wonder: could an aging population endanger democracy by not being able to distinguish truth from falsehood?

That thought is precisely what the people who created this article wanted you to have. They asked themselves “how can we get as many people as possible to call for banning the elderly from voting?” and worked backwards from there. Ironically if you couldn’t see this unassisted then you’re the one who should be banned from voting.

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

#416

Post by Chris_Chambers »

leetbulb wrote: post #389
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 all happened when my father got an iPad and a Facebook account. Now he sits around and consumes the cancerous vomit spewed by "old friends" and predatory "news" outlets. He doesn't understand how any of it works; he has fallen victim, and there's nothing at all that I can do about it. He takes pride in his involvement, even if it's just consumption. It's tearing him away from reality and his family. It's almost as…

I wonder what the rest of your family says about you behind your back.

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

#417

Post by iheartpotatoes »

rfinney wrote: post #197
iheartpotatoes wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK, support for the Vietnam war was sky-high for over a decade, despite the lies coming out of multiple administrations.

Please check: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=support+for+vietnam+war+chart++&t=...

(this supports my claim. was that your intent?)

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

#418

Post by burfog »

jmanderley wrote: post #403
duckMuppet wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure most news agencies consider anything remotely conservative fake news now. I rarely ever see corrections or retractions from ANY of the big outlets. It's largely become infotainment, and everyone drinks from the fire hose of their own perspective. It's no wonder there is so little tolerance of any other perspective. This will likely lead to another push for controlling the internet/media a la net neutralit…

This makes no sense, but is a common talking point. How is net neutrality "another push for controlling the internet/media"? If anything, it's the pure opposite, ensuring that all views can be accessed equally.

The old "net neutrality" did nothing directly for end users. It did not ensure anything for all views. Before it was even terminated, mass censorship (privately by the internet giants) had already started.

Instead, it benefited the likes of Netflix at the expense of the telecom industry. It also put the internet in a legal classification that would allow more government control of speech, though this had not yet been much of an issue in practice.

None of the above seems to have made much of a difference to end users.

It would be great to have a new sort of net neutrality, focused on end users. A nice thing about the end of the old one is that a new one could replace it, giving people what they mistakenly thought they had.

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

#419

Post by burfog »

taeric wrote: post #414
burfog wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Older generations didn't trust things on screens. They cursed at things on screens. They could and did seek alternative opinions, though often it cost more. Subscribing to newsletters has long been an option. For example, the John Birch Society's TheNewAmerican was created in 1985 as the merger of two older newsletters that date to 1956 and 1965. It's now available at https://www.thenewamerican.com/ but you can still…

This is in stark contrast to the evidence of the article. That some folks from older generations did this, I can accept. But you will need more data than this to counter the facts presented in the article, no?

The facts misconstrued in the article: older people are more likely to spread news found on a set of 21 conservative web sites identified by BuzzFeed.

A better way to interpret those facts: older people lean conservative.

The research showed that political outlook was a far better way to predict sharing these web sites than age or even party affiliation.

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

#420

Post by burfog »

danabrams wrote: post #59

Overheard during the 2012 campaign in florida, between some octagenerians: I’m voting for that Mitt Romney because he’s a nice Protestant boy, not like the others. (Not that it matters, but Obama was the only Protestant in that race, Biden and Ryan are catholic, Romney is like the most famous Mormon).

They may be aware of all that and still disagree.

Romney: technically, Mormons are protestant

Biden: he isn't a believable Catholic unless he opposes abortion

Obama: he actually slipped up and said "my Muslim faith" in an interview

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