Fake News

[doodle]

Interesting read on the construction and dissemination of fake news surrounding election: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/f ... .html?_r=0

I was also stunned by how lucrative this can be. I had no idea this much money could be generated by ad revenue.

[Jack Jones]

A recent reason.com podcast interview w/ Glenn Greenwald [1] talked about the fake news phenomenon, but they were mostly talking about how and why fake news makes it's way out of the big publications like the Washington Post. This article was about fake news coming out of a fake news site.

[1] https://reason.com/blog/2017/01/06/greenwald-podcast

[WiseOne]

So there's disinformation on the internet. Wow that's news :-) It's always been a buyer-beware kind of place. I'm constantly hearing the following from my 81 year old mother:

"They say that .... " (insert some wildly unsupported claim here that my mother is proposing to follow through on)

I usually respond by asking who "they" are. That's often enough to give pause.

I'm not sure Google is the agent I'd pick to police disinformation, nor do I think it's even possible without severely limiting the usefulness of the net. For example, this forum could be targeted depending on just how far the anti-disinformation campaign might go. I can also easily imagine the short leap from disinformation to points of view that are not officially sanctioned.

If the media really wanted to do something about fake news, they'd simply run educational pieces on Internet disinformation in general and how to avoid it. Instead of just whining about it.

[whatchamacallit]

This shouldn't be a criminal issue. It is a Civil issue. Sue them.

[Mountaineer]

Interesting set of headlines on CNS this morning. http://www.cnsnews.com/

[WiseOne]

One more thought about the fake news complaints. The people pushing this and related lines are playing a dangerous game: de-legitimizing a President is serious business. There's almost no precedent for the scale and depth of what's happening now. The closest is the endless investigation of Bill Clinton while he was in office, "cigar" and all. In that situation though, it was the Republican congress and their buddy Ken Starr, the lone-wolf special prosecutor with a mandate that everyone understood was nothing more than "find us some dirt on Clinton that we can use". That didn't completely destroy Clinton's second term, but it certainly crippled it. This is far worse, because the media themselves are pushing the effort and it's leaking into official government actions.

Basically, I can't imagine how "fake news" could have had any significant influence on the election. A vote swayed by internet gossip is not a well-considered one, and could easily sway in either direction. The Russian hacking is a more legitimate complaint, but then anyone who doesn't know that any email can become public has been living under a rock.

[WiseOne]

And as far as trying to delegitimize the President, I hope they keep it up. If they do, in 2018 the Republicans will have supermajorities in the Senate and state legislatures and will be able to pass Constitutional amendments for term limits, a balanced budget, and probably some other improvements.

Trying to read between the first two phrases of the above...can you elaborate?

Trump has been president for just two days and war has already been declared between the administration and the press, with a good amount of crazy talk and thinly veiled anger on both sides (e.g. the briefing that was not a briefing reported this am). Wonder just how fast and far this will escalate. And I'm not sure either side will come out of it looking good, which is generally what happens in mud-wrestling.

[I Shrugged]

One more thought about the fake news complaints. The people pushing this and related lines are playing a dangerous game: de-legitimizing a President is serious business. There's almost no precedent for the scale and depth of what's happening now. The closest is the endless investigation of Bill Clinton while he was in office, "cigar" and all. In that situation though, it was the Republican congress and their buddy Ken Starr, the lone-wolf special prosecutor with a mandate that everyone understood was nothing more than "find us some dirt on Clinton that we can use". That didn't completely destroy Clinton's second term, but it certainly crippled it. This is far worse, because the media themselves are pushing the effort and it's leaking into official government actions.

....

I agree completely. It's very disconcerting.

I have never seen such an organized effort here to generate unrest. Maybe the VietNam protests but I was pre-teen. But as you point out, this is a very mainstream effort.

[Tyler]

Now as to why I think this will result in enormous gains for Republicans in 2018, the main reason that the left is going batshit crazy is the demonization of Trump by the press. And the more batshit they go, the more they repel anyone who has the faintest shred of sense, thus the more they hurt the chances of Democrats in the next election.

Agreed. I also found this pretty insightful:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2 ... /96155458/

And now that Trump has won, people are, in fact, a lot less respectful of the traditional academic and media and political elites. Trump didn’t just beat them, after all. He also humiliated them, as they repeatedly assured everyone (and each other) that he had no chance. It’s a huge blow to the self-importance of a lot of people. No wonder they’re still lashing out.

Of course, lashing out doesn’t exactly bring people around. A lot of people who cast their votes for Trump reluctantly are likely to conclude that they did the right thing, as Trump’s opposition (who during the election cast Trump as the unstable, crazy one) keeps going berserk. In response to the New Yorker cartoon, Sean Davis tweeted: ”Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.”

[dualstow]

Great thread. By the way, Sean Davis has been busy tweeting a link to a Federalist piece on fake news for the past half hour or so.

The first red flag for me was when my Dad, who usually appreciates my running all his dubious email fwd's through snopes* dot com, one day told me that his friend said snopes is just a "liberal mouthpiece." Uh-oh.

*a reputable fact-checking site

[Libertarian666]

Great thread. By the way, Sean Davis has been busy tweeting a link to a Federalist piece on fake news for the past half hour or so.

The first red flag for me was when my Dad, who usually appreciates my running all his dubious email fwd's through snopes* dot com, one day told me that his friend said snopes is just a "liberal mouthpiece." Uh-oh.

*a reputable fact-checking site

Snopes is about as reputable as The Onion.

[dualstow]

Whatever you say, Dad.

[dualstow]

snopes was reputable when they stuck to debunking urban legends and email scams, they have little or no credibility when politics is involved..

Interesting. I don't know that I've ever used them for politics, but I see this in wiki

David Mikkelson, the creator of the site, has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias,[22] but insists that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends. In 2012, FactCheck.org reviewed a sample of Snopes' responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com#Accuracy
Full Disclosure: I edited that wiki entry, or should I say Mikki entry.
Warning: the above disclosure is false.

[Libertarian666]

snopes was reputable when they stuck to debunking urban legends and email scams, they have little or no credibility when politics is involved..

Interesting. I don't know that I've ever used them for politics, but I see this in wiki

David Mikkelson, the creator of the site, has said that the site receives more complaints of liberal bias than conservative bias,[22] but insists that the same debunking standards are applied to all political urban legends. In 2012, FactCheck.org reviewed a sample of Snopes' responses to political rumors regarding George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama, and found them to be free from bias in all cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snopes.com#Accuracy
Full Disclosure: I edited that wiki entry, or should I say Mikki entry.
Warning: the above disclosure is false.

"FactCheck.org" is also a left-wing hack site.

So that claim that Snopes is "free of bias" is exactly as valuable as if Keith Olbermann validated MSNBC's "news".

[dualstow]

I thought someone might say that.

Well, I guess this thread is a microcosm of what's going on. Everyone's got their own perception of what's reliable and unbiased, who's got an agenda and a bankroll, and so on.

[doodle]

snopes was reputable when they stuck to debunking urban legends and email scams, they have little or no credibility when politics is involved..

So take the hullaballoo regarding Trumps inauguration numbers....

How far does the conspiracy go? Is Nielsen implicated? Or did Snopes just make those numbers up? How about DC metro transit? Fabrication? And the photographic evidence? Photoshop? There is a lot of deception on both sides and I get irritated with the spin the liberal media uses just the same as I do with conservative leaning news sources, but at some point the evidence is overwhelming: http://www.snopes.com/trump-inauguration-viewership/

Then again, that hasn't stopped global warming deniers...

[Tyler]

Yes, much of the press seems to be against Trump in a batshit crazy way. However, I would also expect this to die down somewhat. Furthermore, I'd also say that election prospects of Republicans for the 2018 midterms depends more on Trump's ability to make headway on his promises, especially to the sorts of voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan who gave him his Electoral College victory. And he won in those places because candidate Trump was not the candidate of the Republican donor class, nor of the libertarian free-marketers. The main reason he won was his promise to bring back jobs - in other words, provide some hope for the struggling middle class. Those voters won't really give a crap about whether or not Trump repealed the estate tax.

I agree. Considering the near daily stream of news about how companies are purposefully rethinking offshoring plans and/or creating new American jobs that started even before Trump was sworn in, it sounds to me like he knows what he's doing on that front. Dems can kick and scream all they want, but if he keeps that up it will only alienate them more in the face of rust belt voters. The guy actually bringing back jobs vs. the people doing nothing but protesting him daily.

[doodle]

Yes, much of the press seems to be against Trump in a batshit crazy way. However, I would also expect this to die down somewhat. Furthermore, I'd also say that election prospects of Republicans for the 2018 midterms depends more on Trump's ability to make headway on his promises, especially to the sorts of voters in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan who gave him his Electoral College victory. And he won in those places because candidate Trump was not the candidate of the Republican donor class, nor of the libertarian free-marketers. The main reason he won was his promise to bring back jobs - in other words, provide some hope for the struggling middle class. Those voters won't really give a crap about whether or not Trump repealed the estate tax.

I agree. Considering the near daily stream of news about how companies are purposefully rethinking offshoring plans and/or creating new American jobs that started even before Trump was sworn in, it sounds to me like he knows what he's doing on that front. Dems can kick and scream all they want, but if he keeps that up it will only alienate them more in the face of rust belt voters. The guy actually bringing back jobs vs. the people doing nothing but protesting him daily.

Havent we had the technological obsolesence conversation here before? I think this jobs situation is bigger than Trump has wrapped his weave around. The very relationship of labor and capital is being shredded by the ever increasing range of technological possibility. Forcing multinational corporations to bring jobs back to America will only hasten the demise of the worker. Trumps policies in an ironic twist will inevitably harm the very workers he is seeking to protect.

[Tyler]

Forcing multinational corporations to bring jobs back to America will only hasten the demise of the worker. Trumps policies in an ironic twist will inevitably harm the very workers he is seeking to protect.

IMHO arguing that fighting for domestic jobs will harm workers rings pretty hollow to the average voter who lost his job due to offshoring or H1B abuse. Regardless of how effective you think Trump's policies will be in the long run, embracing the demise of the middle class is horribly bad politics.

[WiseOne]

Forcing multinational corporations to bring jobs back to America will only hasten the demise of the worker. Trumps policies in an ironic twist will inevitably harm the very workers he is seeking to protect.

I confess I don't understand the logic here. A job shipped overseas or lost to automation has the same result for the American worker who formerly did that job. The main issue is that they operate on different time scales: several years to develop new automation technology vs months to small # of years to bring back exported jobs. Obviously the longer time frames provide more time to adapt to the situation.

I agree that the overall trend needs a viable long-term solution, and that no one has offered it yet. "Retraining" is a grossly insufficient response. The fact that already 25% percent of the population is on Medicaid and another 15% is on Medicare (total 40%) tells you what will happen absent any reasonable action: a minority of people working their butts off to keep everyone else from falling too far below poverty, with obvious anger and resentment on both sides.

Doodle, glad to see you back!

[dualstow]

"FactCheck.org" is also a left-wing hack site.

I wanted to look at some specific cases to see if this is true. There's an article from a few days ago:

In his final press conference, President Obama falsely claimed that a treaty he signed with Russia in 2011 “has substantially reduced our nuclear stockpiles, both Russia and the United States.” The U.S. has decreased its deployed strategic nuclear warheads since the treaty took effect, but Russia has not.
Also, the nuclear arms treaty does not require either country to destroy nuclear weapons or reduce their nuclear stockpiles. Instead, it limits the number of warheads that can be deployed on strategic (or long-range) launchers and bombers.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a similar claim...

Obama...false, Obama..wrong, Clinton wrong. If these guys are a left-wing hack site as you purport, they're not doing a very good job of it.

simonjester, you wrote:

snopes was reputable when they stuck to debunking urban legends and email scams, they have little or no credibility when politics is involved.

So, this is about Snopes and not Factcheck, and it's also a little trickier to refute.

Did you mean that they are outright lying, or more that they look for anti-Republican/Conservative nuggets while letting slide anything that might make the liberal left look bad?

Snopes cites its sources, so it would be easy enough to check. Yes, you'd really have to know something about the sources too, but to paraphrase doodle, how far down the rabbit-hole are we going to go, here?

If it's the latter criticism, there's an interesting debate about it here (transcript). Looks like PolitiFact takes more heat than FactCheck. See Mark Hemingway's comments.

a couple points from that article that i think apply as well to snopes as to factcheck and politifact (notice the word "fact" in both names)

And it just becomes this thing where, you know, one person's presenting an opinion, but because you have this pseudo-scientific marketing gimmick, where you're saying it's false, or you're assuming someone's intent or, you know, no disrespect to Glenn, you know, the Pinocchio itself does sort of imply lying and intent and other things like that.

you know, there are facts that are vaguely true but are taken out of context, or there are facts that are not very illustrative of the point you're trying to make.

that combined with "more that they look for anti-Republican/Conservative nuggets while letting slide anything that might make the liberal left look bad?" each of the above done even in small doses add up to creating or giving an certain impression about the "facts" and "truth" of their rating or conclusion. it all leads me to think they have little or no value or credibility as a quick go to for a yes/no answer to the veracity of a political comment...
that doesn't mean that they cant be useful. for example if you have an understanding of the difference between an exaggeration for effect and a generalization and then look at fact checkers calling a statement a lie because the exact number is actually x - i would expect that the exact number they came up with is exact, just not that the maker of the statement is some horrible deceiver, as your fact checker may be implying...

or in tldr terms "warning critical thinking must be applied to get value"

[Tyler]

IMHO, it's best to assume that any organization claiming to be the final arbiter of the truth is almost certainly biased one way or another.

[FarmerD]

IMHO, it's best to assume that any organization claiming to be the final arbiter of the truth is almost certainly biased one way or another.

I'd go even further. All organizations are biased in some way just like all people are biased too, All information you get emanates from some human source so all information you get is biased. About the only solution to this dilemma is to read up on both sides of the issue then use your own best judgement to determine which side is closest to the truth as you understand it.

[doodle]

It appears now that fake news is driving presidential policy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/p ... .html?_r=0

[Tyler]

It appears now that fake news is driving presidential policy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/25/us/p ... .html?_r=0

Meh. The more likely explanation, IMHO, is that Trump is really good at changing narratives. We've gone in just a few weeks from the media blaming the Russians for influencing the elections and loudly calling for investigations to the same people defending the sanctity of the vote and calling for any investigation of voter fraud to be shut down.

Fake news is really just one subset of the narrative that people choose to push. Sadly, all we have anymore are narratives and open-minded discussion is mostly an antiquated concept.