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Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

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Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#51

Post by dfxm12 »

hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along with everything else.

I wonder what's easier: Curbing the dissemination of fake news on the web or understanding the allure of & preventing people from wanting to believe fake news in the first place.

I honestly think it is the former, so I think there is value in combating it from that angle (in addition to others).

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#52

Post by XCabbage »

krapp wrote: post #48
coldtea wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along with everything else. Contrary to the claim that the internet legitimized it, it made us more aware of how common it is, delegitimizing all news sources in the way that multiple clocks delegitimize clocks. It's also that those in power would love it for their opinions to be the "authoritative" ones and only ones permitted to be heard. Same…

The narrative you're expressing, that the mainstream media as a complex exists to further propaganda on the part of the "elites" and that only the web has been able to provide an honest and unbiased form of news is undermining the actual subject at hand, which is the degree to which the web and those unwashed masses are being employed as tools for propaganda by the same elites. The implicit (and arguable unjustified)…

But is it equally unjustified?

I trust alternative media because they show me the primary sources they rely upon. Mainstream media basically never does this; gatekeeping access to knowledge is, for whatever reason, a key part of how they operate, noticeably imposed upon all their writers. The following things are, as far as I've witnessed, universally true of every mainstream media source out there:

* If they report on what's said in a new government report, they'll avoid including a link to it or even including its name, to avoid you Googling for it.

* If they attack a politician over a short snippet of a speech he gave, they'll only embed the snippet and won't link to a video showing the full context, thus ensuring you can't verify that the removal of context hasn't changed the meaning.

* If they report on an academic paper, they won't mention its title or link to it, nor report on any of the raw data or explain its methodology - they will report only the conclusion (or their spin on it)

The alternative media is more trustworthy, because it has links, which means you can independently verify its claims. The mainstream media is unique in having a strict standard of not permitting rigorous substantiation and referencing of claims made in its articles, maximising the difficulty of auditing them for truth. They deserve the distrust the public directs at them for that reason alone.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#53

Post by afandian »

hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

Does the clock show today's date as 30th May 2019 or 24 Ramadan 1440?

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#54

Post by dmurray »

gregmac wrote: post #31
hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

Building on that analogy, the trouble with one clock is you only know what time it is if it's correct . If you take the time to verify and/or set it against an accurate time source, then this is no problem. However, it seems more and more people are skipping that verification step, and just assuming the clock is right. When presented with two conflicting clocks, instead of questioning what's going on and trying to fi…

> they pick a side, rejecting one of the clocks as "fake" and continue using the one that most aligns with what they think the time should be.

People do exactly this with clocks, too. If I had one clock reading 9:10 pm and one reading 1:45pm, and I just had lunch, I'd assume the second one was right rather than look for a third source.

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#55

Post by NeedMoreTea »

gregmac wrote: post #31
hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

Building on that analogy, the trouble with one clock is you only know what time it is if it's correct . If you take the time to verify and/or set it against an accurate time source, then this is no problem. However, it seems more and more people are skipping that verification step, and just assuming the clock is right. When presented with two conflicting clocks, instead of questioning what's going on and trying to fi…

In attempting to dismiss the point Bill Gates gets it partly right. 'you'll only receive a piece of text through levels of direction, like a friend who says "Hey go read this"...', and says so as though it is some arbiter of quality as they would have verified first.

Not that people generally verified that much anyway, but if it comes from people we trust and like we probably don't engage natural scepticism. Not like you might if you doubted the source, or heard a wild claim on the news. The friend has become the source, and reinforced the veracity. The sharing model did that. It probably also explains the amplification effects of social.

So I suppose the meta question is did they pick a side, or was it picked by the random connections within the peer group?

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#57

Post by NeedMoreTea »

dmurray wrote: post #54
gregmac wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building on that analogy, the trouble with one clock is you only know what time it is if it's correct . If you take the time to verify and/or set it against an accurate time source, then this is no problem. However, it seems more and more people are skipping that verification step, and just assuming the clock is right. When presented with two conflicting clocks, instead of questioning what's going on and trying to fi…

> they pick a side, rejecting one of the clocks as "fake" and continue using the one that most aligns with what they think the time should be. People do exactly this with clocks, too. If I had one clock reading 9:10 pm and one reading 1:45pm, and I just had lunch, I'd assume the second one was right rather than look for a third source.

Then you notice it's dark outside... ;)

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#58

Post by pjc50 »

gregmac wrote: post #31
hirundo wrote: post #7

> Captioning his find, Burrows said that the fantasy writer had “accurately predicted how the internet would propagate and legitimise fake news” It's like when you have one clock, you know what time it is. When you have two clocks they're always somewhat different, and so you're no longer certain of the time, and have less faith in clocks. Fake news has always been with us and the internet just propagates it along wi…

Building on that analogy, the trouble with one clock is you only know what time it is if it's correct . If you take the time to verify and/or set it against an accurate time source, then this is no problem. However, it seems more and more people are skipping that verification step, and just assuming the clock is right. When presented with two conflicting clocks, instead of questioning what's going on and trying to fi…

And a stopped clock is right twice a day. So all the stopped clock merchant has to do is wait for the clock to line up, then shout from the rooftops that they have the right time.

It's not enough to be correct by coincidence, process matters. We see this often enough in scientific papers where the statistics come into question. News process is different, especially given how sources work. Not everyone is willing to be recorded, and recordings are increasingly untrustworthy anyway, so at some point you have to start believing that the reporter heard person X say Y.

The worst part of the whole fake news fiasco has been people using the (very real) problems of the established media as an excuse to switch to consuming total nonsense from fabricated sources.

Interestingly, time itself is a social construct. Not just in the sense of relativistic time, but in the sense of how we came to move from individual local clocks ("decentralised time") to using time from the communication network which had to coordinate internally ("railway time").

Re: Terry Pratchett warns Bill Gates about fake news (1995)

#60

Post by argd678 »

The internet increased the synchronization of what people believe at what time, fake or real. It’s like around the world everyone knows the same 30 news stores every day and has one of just a few standard opinions about them. That then influences what a huge number of people think and do in all aspects of their lives at the same time. I think before it was more out of sync at what time people knew something and that knowledge started affecting what they do.
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