Facebook on its Fake News Problem: 'There's So Much More We Need To Do' (theverge.com) 284
In the aftermath of election, news outlets are counting Facebook as one of the major reasons that drove Trump to victory. NYMag, for instance, had an essay Wednesday titled "Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook", in which it has documented several instances where lies were peddled as fact on Facebook's watch. The social juggernaut, which has over 1.6 billion people checking the website every month, has been spotted running fake stories on its platform numerous times over the past few months, something that President Barack Obama remarked about recently. This is critical because over 60 percent people in the United States consume their news on social media. When asked if Facebook had anything to say about its influence in Trump's victory, the company said:We take misinformation on Facebook very seriously. We value authentic communication, and hear consistently from those who use Facebook that they prefer not to see misinformation. In Newsfeed we use various signals based on community feedback to determine which posts are likely to contain inaccurate information, and reduce their distribution. In Trending we look at a variety of signals to help make sure the topics being shown are reflective of real-world events, and take additional steps to prevent false or misleading content from appearing. Despite these efforts we understand there's so much more we need to do, and that is why it's important that we keep improving our ability to detect misinformation. We're committed to continuing to work on this issue and improve the experiences on our platform.
Don't use Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a simple and 100% effective strategy for avoiding fake news on Facebook. I think it's a fairly common strategy for Slashdotters.
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Agree.
Also it wouldn't hurt to have much greater emphasis on critical thinking skills in public education. That's hard to do though, because some people really hate it and seem to have a deficiency there, and many parents hate it when their kids start asking really trenchant questions about their religious beliefs.
Re:Don't use Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, until Facebook goes back to less than 1 billion monthly users, your idea sucks for not impacting American politics.
Re:Don't use Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, until Facebook goes back to less than 1 billion monthly users, your idea sucks for not impacting American politics.
It's not just Facebook.
US elections were very different before TV. When voter made a decision based on mostly written information and the candidates actual policy positions, plus maybe seeing a candidate once address a crowd, elections weren't about sound bites and hot takes. But the Nixon-Kennedy debate [history.com] marked the beginning of a new era.
This way the same sort of "state change in voting", 56 years later. Trump was a master at getting free press in a world of 24-hour news coverage and social media and one-liners and tweets. Even less information being looked at than the TV era. Trump demonstrated that "any press is good press" as he rode the wave of "talking heads just can't stop talking about how bad he is" to victory. That's the new era - 140-character attention spans.
The content hasn't mattered much for 56 years, and matters less now. People aren't persuaded by "fake news", they've already decided based on the world around them, and grab any quote that looks good to defend that position. Clearly the media had very little actual influence this election. I doubt social media did either - people decide first, based on the real world ("it's the economy, stupid"), then talk about it on social media.
Re:Don't use Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
Populism never leads to responsible government or prosperity.
It's never pretty when the demos seizes the kratos. But it's worth remembering that democracy is primarily a circuit breaker. When the government ignores the concerns of the people too long, something ugly will certainly happen. I'll take Trump over Madam Guillotine any day.
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TV and Twitter have taken over not by force, by by virtue of giving people the soundbites and one-liners that they want.
They give ENTERTAINMENT. Or infotainment if you want to call it that. It's not informative. It's not thoughtful. It's salacious. It's shocking. It's also all about taking one sentence outside of the context that it was given in.
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trump was the perfect candidate for the facebook masses
You know, it wasn't Trump or the media supporting Trump that turned around and said shit like "Looking at wikileaks is illegal." That was CNN, there was also similar views being pushed in a very vague way NBC, ABC, and CBS. Those networks were all supporting Clinton, so were newspapers like WAPO, USA Today, Boston Globe, NY Times. All with a variety of messages like "well those leaks are because RUSSIA" now believe what we're telling you! Oddly it was organizations facebook and twitter as well, that was
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The DNC wanted to do it their way.
And they did.
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DNC wanted a "Pied Piper" candidate to run against and got him, unfortunately the moral of the "Pied Piper" story wasn't as much he led the rats as it was he had to be paid; the cost was finding a candidate that wasn't up to her eyeballs in corruption and an elitist asshole spotting memorized talking points.
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FB is a wasteland of contrived "keeping up with the joneses", people trying to make their lives look larger-than-life, weirdo political rants, cat pictures, endless posts about nothing or anything, and most importantly, almost nothing of any substantive value.
Actually, no, the worst part about FB is the time wasted scrolling through it...
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That's not caused by Facebook - that's caused by you having shit taste in friends. My feed is almost exactly the opposite. (Well, modulo the cat pictures but I have a lot of cat people among my friends.)
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I think it's a fairly common strategy for Slashdotters.
I doubt that's true. My guess is that the abstainers are just a very vocal minority. Like how people without TV love periodically announcing that they don't have TV and those of us that haven't cut the cable just keep our yaps shut.
WE FAILED!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Commit Sepuku in your hoodie Zuckerberg.
The platform that you built to limit the flow of information to the population and as a way to make advertising revenue for yourself and Hillary backfired on you.
Incidentally, Trump's expenditures per vote were about half of Hillary's.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09... [cnbc.com]
That's a story that Slashdot doesn't want to cover since they still want to paint this as Trump "buying" the election.
Re:WE FAILED!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, there's stories on slashdot saying Trump 'bought' the election? Did I miss something, or did you just post false tin foil hat bullshit in an article about false fucking news stories.
Re:WE FAILED!! (Score:5, Funny)
Here, now there is.
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Incidentally, Trump's expenditures per vote were about half of Hillary's. http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/09... [cnbc.com]
That's a story that Slashdot doesn't want to cover since they still want to paint this as Trump "buying" the election.
Trump didn't have to spend as much: he got free media coverage.
If you want your story to make the frontpage of /., you are welcome to submit it. There are enough Republicans here to promote it if they find it newsworthy for the /.ers. And if it doesn't make it to the front page, you don't have to turn it into a conspiracy theory, there is a much simpler explanation: sometimes /. is still "News for nerds".
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Two days of nonstop "Trump is evil and he's going to kill us all" stories makes me think that maybe it is going to take /. a while to settle down.
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They can't, for two reasons. The first is that their message is utter garbage to the core, and has been ever since Marx wrote it. This was recognized instantly by, among others, Bastiat, who wrote an excellent rebuttal [bastiat.org] which shouldn't take anyone more than an hour or so to read. The translation from economic terms to cultural terms [infogalactic.com] by the Frankfurt School [infogalactic.com] didn't make it any better.
The second is that they don't possess the equipment necessary for thinking.
And no, I don't mean brains. I mean introspection
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That tells me that Democrats are having a much harder time selling their message than Republicans. Maybe they need to re-think their message?
There are more interesting depths to plumb here as well. Trump won spending only $285 million. If that wasn't reality it would be pure crazy talk. That's a 1995 presidential campaign budget.
Hillary spent $609 million. The bulk of that was large donors; banks, IT companies and other corporate interests. Hillary took full advantage [publicintegrity.org] of the state of campaign finance post Citizen's United.
It is the best example in a long list of good examples that our recently obviated campaign finance laws are pointles
It's not just Facebook (Score:2)
Re:It's not just Facebook (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen news outlets do that my entire life. You'll always see the front page story "Local soccer coach accused of child molestation!", but the story six months later that all charges were dropped is buried somewhere on page four below a story about how a Suffolk County family's cat had nine conjoined kittens.
Re:It's not just Facebook (Score:4, Funny)
6 across (5,7) - Not a kiddly diddler.
Great idea! (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations to Facebook for stepping up against the spreaders of fake news and kicking CNN, (MS)NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, BBC and Fox off their platform! Oh, and all of the polling organizations that got everything 100% wrong for the last 18 months. Very happy to see them go too.
Enjoy your CSPAN and Breitbart News, facebook users.
You can't fix stupid (Score:2)
Let me tell you why this is a non-issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I like the implication that Trump won due to FUD but the Democratic FUD is of no concern--like the incredibly stupid story posted right here about Trump's server secretly communicating with a Russian bank [slashdot.org].
It was so obviously a non-story [snopes.com]... but read through the comments here and you'll see how eager people were to lap it up. (I linked Snopes as it contains a variety of credible sources debunking the article).
Re:Let me tell you why this is a non-issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, I like the implication that Trump won due to FUD but the Democratic FUD is of no concern
Yes. My own FB feed is curated a bit by my un-follows and follows, and no doubt skews a bit towards the conservative/libertarian bent - though I am FB friends with at least as many dyed-in-the-wool liberals who post to FB (or memegurgitate) about as often as they breathe. So while I saw no small number of silly re-posts and likes/shares of breathless fake/shallow news meant to draw in clicks from conservative types, I saw FAR more FUD-ish content from liberals trying to actually shame/change minds through the use of preposterously overblown fear mongering and outright lies.
So, yes: fake news on FB is a problem, or at least a significant annoyance. But the notion that somehow this is limited to stuff from and aimed at right-leaning people in some proportion that, compared to its lefty counterparts, cost Hillary Clinton the election... I call bullshit. The biggest purveyors and apparent consumers of that crap that I saw were outspoken Clinton supporters. So even if I'm wrong by a lot and the amount of it was roughly equal, that DOES NOT explain away the DNC/Clinton-Machine's huge loss. This is just another example of liberals - especially in the media - refusing to look in the mirror and understand that they're not nearly as clever and persuasive as they think they are, and that a whole lot of other people were just sick to death of the condescension, the holier-than-thou presumption of a Clinton coronation, and the deploying of finger-wagging celebrities telling people how to think.
And for those who are mystified that yelling at their non-racist, non-homophic, non-misogynistic friends about how racist, homophobic, and misogynistic they are didn't somehow make them vote for Hillary or feel apologetic following the election: maybe it's time to rethink what you were sure would get people to see things your way.
Re:Let me tell you why this is a non-issue (Score:5, Funny)
And for those who are mystified that yelling at their non-racist, non-homophic, non-misogynistic friends about how racist, homophobic, and misogynistic they are didn't somehow make them vote for Hillary or feel apologetic following the election: maybe it's time to rethink what you were sure would get people to see things your way.
I so close to voting for Hillary. If only someone had called Trump Hitler just two or three hundred more times I would have been right there.
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I so close to voting for Hillary. If only someone had called Trump Hitler just two or three hundred more times I would have been right there.
To turn this on you, clearly electoral system isn't rigged. That is, if Clinton could rig the elections, do you have any doubt that she would? So if we were demonstrably wrong with this, what else you are not getting?
Re:Let me tell you why this is a non-issue (Score:4, Insightful)
The system is rigged. We read the DNC leaks. They rigged the primary against Bernie, the debates are rigged, the news coverage is propaganda, this article is about how clearly the problem is they haven't rigged social media enough for the establishment. Oh and the congressional districts are gerrymandered by the Republicans. This is also a form of rigging.
If you're just talking about voting machines and such, there's analysis going into that right now, so we'll see. There are certain precincts of PA and Ohio where it looks like they were flipping votes, but they didn't do it enough to effect the outcome. Nobody cares much about this kind of stuff after your team wins though.
I would also not be shocked if some of the more blatantly fraudulent plans were stopped because of the spotlight O'Keefe and Trump shined on it. Foval and Creamer were smoked out and knew they were being watched, so that took out their men on the ground who would have actually been doing the dirty work.
Beating the rigged system doesn't mean the system isn't rigged.
Re:Let me tell you why this is a non-issue (Score:4, Interesting)
I used to care about this back in the 1980s. Only back then it was the Democrats who gerrymandered the districts in their favor to control the House for 40 years [wikipedia.org]. I admit a slight political bias (I tend to vote conservative). But it was mostly the principle of the thing - gerrymandering is bad regardless of your political beliefs since it manipulates that essential link between voter and representative.
In the 1990 election in California, a fix for this came up as a ballot initiative [ballotpedia.org]. It simply required a 2/3 majority vote of the legislature for redrawn districts to be approved, thus preventing a 50%+1 majority from leveraging their slim advantage into a bigger one in future elections. I helped spread the word about it, the problem it tried to solve, why it was good for everyone. I was delighted that once I explained the problem and how this fixed it, even diehard liberals grudgingly agreed it was the right thing to do and said they would vote for it. Early polls showed it passing.
That's when two groups I had up til then respected (if not always agreed with) stepped in. A bunch of environmental groups led by the Sierra Club and the National Organization for Women realized Prop 118, regardless of how fair it was, would reduce the number of legislators sympathetic to their cause in both the State and Federal government. They flooded TV and radio with ads telling people it was bad and to vote against it, without even explaining what it was or how it was bad. It ended up losing by a 2:1 margin.
The Republicans took the time to figure out how to undo the Democrat gerrymandering. First they worked on winning the governorships so they could veto the gerrymandered redistricting. That usually kicked the matter into the courts, who usually took it upon themselves to redraw the districts (since the had to be redrawn to reflect population shifts, and the legislature/governor were deadlocked). Which allowed more Republicans (or rather, the correct number of Republicans) to win office as state legislators. Which gave them more control over future redistricting. Which combined with the governorship allowed them to eventually gerrymander things in their favor.
I suppose I should still be concerned about this on principle. But the whole thing scarred my young, optimistic self and my belief that people are inherently good and fair, and will make the right decision if they're properly informed. I tried to help fix gerrymandering for all people, only to see my hard work shot down by unrpincipled groups who were only interested in their own benefit regardless of how unfair it was. Screw them. The shoe's on the other foot now. They made their bed. They can lie in it. If another ballot initiative comes up which makes gerrymandering harder, yeah I'll vote for it. But I'm not going to put additional effort into helping people out of a gerrymandered hole they put themselves into.
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100% of Sinijs agreed with the above post as the only valid opinion on this subject.
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But, but, muh vast right wing conspiracy!
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At the last check I made, Hillary Clinton was leading Donald Trump by roughly a quarter million votes.
And it looks like less than 30 electoral votes. Is calling it a huge loss really accurate?
Yes. Hillary Clinton losing the Presidency to Donald Trump and all his craziness is a "huge loss" for the Democrats, even if she had 0.2% more of the popular vote.
The only reason this doesn't seem cataclysmic to you is that you've already become acclimated. Put yourself in your shoes from 2, 4--heck, even 10 years ago, and you'd agree.
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If you voted for Trump, no matter what the reason, no matter what you believe, you have condoned racism, bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia making you no better then those people.
I think you may have been trolled by the next President. The media sure were.
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he ran on racism, bigotry, misogyny, and homophobia. That is what you voted for. That is what you support. That is what you are.
And your swallowing of that liberal meme, hook line and sinker, and believing it to be true, is exactly why the Democrats lost the White House and failed to get either house of congress. Because telling people who didn't want to see the Clinton family once again having the sort of power and influence selling access they so desperately craved that they're racists for thinking so, when you know that's not true, shows you to be EXACTLY the sort of lying, hypocritical, disingenuous phony that millions of peopl
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Who fact-checks the fact-checkers?
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You.
If so called fact checkers don't give links to reliable sources, they're not worth being called fact-checkers.
"the company said:" (Score:2)
Troll Wars (Score:2)
Why did the GOP (allegedly) out-propaganda the Democrats?
It's not realistic to police that much material before a heated election, being it's a periodic event. You don't want excess staff sitting between elections. That's not economical for Facebook et al.
There were probably more "intense" Trump supporters than intense H supports, and that's why the Trump trolls won. H did not "inspire" the way Trump did. Her supporters were more anti-Trump than pro-H and thus were not motivated to troll hard.
The convention
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Why did the GOP (allegedly) out-propaganda the Democrats?
It's not realistic to police that much material before a heated election, being it's a periodic event. You don't want excess staff sitting between elections. That's not economical for Facebook et al.
There were probably more "intense" Trump supporters than intense H supports, and that's why the Trump trolls won. H did not "inspire" the way Trump did. Her supporters were more anti-Trump than pro-H and thus were not motivated to troll hard.
My feed contained many more intense Hillary supporters than Trump supporters, but the volume of fake news from the pro-Trumpers dwarfed that from the pro-Hillary camp.
I don't think the difference is intensity, it's integrity, and it's starts at the top. The GOP has spent the last 8 years disavowing a health care plan they came up with. Their movement has been consumed by hair-brained conspiracy theories about birthers and UN proposition 21 and all sorts of nonsense, and the leaders either let them spread un
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I still have trouble with the notion that the DNC was actually hacked, my gut still says it was an insider pissed off about Bernie getting screwed over. That stuff is much more likely an insider than an outsider.
It's needed, but how to do fairly (Score:2)
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Can it be done fairly and with so much transparency that folks wouldn't confuse it with censorship? It's worth trying.
Strongly disagree. Such system has to fail open, instead due to intrinsic properties it will fail closed, resulting in censorship.
To put it other way, FB hiring a bunch of "fact checkers" in SV will result in censorship.
Extrapolating from that (Score:2)
I reckon I could sell the Brooklyn Bridge about [takes off shoes] 180 million times.
I'm sure that some people do want honesty (Score:2)
Deciding truth is not Facebook's job (Score:2)
Facebook just owns the website; the content on it is supplied by and judged by users.
If you want to discourage fake news then suggest they add a "Verifications" line similar to the "Comments" section for verified true stories, and
where people can contribute corroborating sources Or sources showing the story false.
And limit how large a picture, or how large a thumbnail or headline text can show in peoples' news feed, until positive Verifications accrue.
The lament is equivalent to arguing that chain-l
Facebook is a social platform (Score:2)
That means that the social contract is on the individuals as well as Facebook to vet the information.
Our own lack stupidity or laziness allowed for this to happen.
TRANSLATION: We're all dumb now. It's your fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
How about people stop being fucking morons and look a little closer at "the news". We used to absolutely LOVE disgracing our media when they spread bad info. Now we have opinion news, click-bait, and citizen journalists.
You won't believe how Batboy's all grown up love affair with Janet Jackson ended....
Orange clown runs for office and has THIS to say......
See HRC's hot new underwear...
Pointing out bad stories on social media gets you involved in whatever TOXIC topic it relates to, earns you name-calling, and general ass-hole-ry on response for all your "friends" to see. Those of us that know better just left. People really seem enjoy the dumb-shit-echo-chamber we left behind.
(the irony of post right?)
And now what, we are somehow surprised or something? This is exactly what we wanted. It's not on fb to censor bad news, its on us to not be fucking morons.
Is this REALLY not obvious?
You have to wonder (Score:2)
End Facebook Now! (Score:2)
This article is ITSELF false (Score:2)
What it isn't - a Trump victory explanation.
Not why Trump won though (Score:3)
There were various other stories doing the rounds. I don't have FB for personal use but I am working on software that curates feeds for businesses. Depending on your particular group of friends there were false H stories and false T stories, Trump did everything from rape a 13yo to being a secret Hillary shill, being in secret societies and cahoots with foreign governments and businesses etc.
The Clinton campaign came up with the Russians being behind Wikileaks and pretty much any activity in firewall logs (it was China during the Obama/Romney election cycle) as well as the various "things Trump said really means this", the females he supposedly molested etc
The media controlled this election cycle and lost... too bad for them.
Trump did NOTwin beacause of facebook (Score:2)
Trump did NOT win because of facebook.
Trump won because enough people were more than willing to believe even the most absurd stories they read on facebook or everywhere.
That only starts at "Hillary performing satanic rituals" and this is not where it ended. even if less than 1000 people believed that (or believed it enough to change their vote) it has to be multiplied with the amazing number of fake stories, that are clearly recognizable as fake. Heck even satire was taken at face value by more than 1000 p
I don't think that they should work on it (Score:2)
I don't think that they should work on the fake news problem for political stories. What I think they need to do for political stories is break down the echo chamber. If they can detect that certain stories are political in nature, stop silo-ing off people to only see what they will like. If someone is following politics, make them see stories from both sides.
Any fake news, that's seen by people outside of the echo chamber should get called out. Which hopefully will prevent it from spreading. Or if it does
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you aware that saying 'why' something happened isn't the same as blaming someone else for that 'why'?
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:5, Informative)
Saying "Trump lost because of misinformed voters" "Trump won because EVERYONE who voted for him was misinformed".
Trump actually lost the popular vote; his electoral victory came down to any two of three states where his margin of victory was 1% or less. This means it takes only a small number of people switching their vote because of misinformation to throw an election one way or the other.
As few as 131607 vote switches could have swung the result. -- that was out of 14159807 votes cast in those two states, or about 0.9% of votes cast in those states.
I agree that most people who voted for Trump voted because they liked him, not because of misinformation. But we're talking about a marginal effect with big consequences. Misinformation in close elections can be decisive, which is why people do it.
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:4, Insightful)
And what about on the Democratic side? My FaceBook feed is full of crying women who believe America just elected LITERALLY HITLER and that Trump is going to start deporting or murdering anyone who isn't a straight white male. Their level of delusion seems a little worse than your average Trump voter.
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to say that I get a lot of liberal noise, but I haven't seen anyone claim that Trump is literally Hitler or is going to murder people. The closest is the story that Trump kept a book of Hitler speeches by his bed. I initially discounted that since the source was his ex-wife, but there turns out to be corroborating evidence. Still, I consider that meaningless in itself because I have all kinds of "bad books".
I judge Trump on what he actually says and does, and that's enough. Yes he is not "literally" Hitler, but if you study the careers of authoritarian leaders he fits right in. People should be concerned.
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
There have been dozens of articles about how Trump is just like Hitler from the media. When Trump won New Hampshire and HuffPo's front page was all caps screaming "NEW HAMPSHIRE GOES RACIST SEXIST XENOPHOBIC!!!!" I wondered what would happen if Trump wins. Will the people who believe this kind of shit snap out of it and realize the media is lying to them? People voting Trump in New Hampshire want the drugs coming from Mexico stopped because they can't treat their people's addiction problems when you can get $10 heroin on any street corner, not because they're RACIST SEXIST XENOPHOBIC. Or, will they continue to believe that America just elected Hitler, and that half of their friends and neighbors are secret Nazis who are going to hang all the gays and rape the women now? It appears to be the latter. You may not be this delusional, but holy shit a lot of people are. It's psychological abuse what the media did to these people.
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You idiots in New Hampshire think your Heroin is coming from Mexico? lol
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That's Ohio and the midwest son. Your problem is the other border.
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I have seen it. Mostly in the LGBT crowd.
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That's what I've seen as well the LGBT community is have an mass anxiety attack, waiting for some Trumpian Gestapo to come and kick down their doors.
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"authoritarian leaders"... Leaders are by definition authoritarian, else they'd just be committee members.
To hint at dictatorial tendencies, I presume? Perhaps you could be more specific.
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"authoritarian leaders"... Leaders are by definition authoritarian, else they'd just be committee members.
To hint at dictatorial tendencies, I presume? Perhaps you could be more specific.
It appears you weren't paying attention to this election we just went through.
Did you ever watch Trump at his rallies?
Did you ever watch his interviews?
Did you watch the debates?
There are endless examples of his despicable behavior towards many different groups and individuals, but I guess you didn't see or acknowledge that.
Your question is hilarious, like when people ask quesitons on forums and they don't even know they themselves can look it up.
By asking your quesiton, you are making a weak
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"authoritarian leaders"... Leaders are by definition authoritarian, else they'd just be committee members
No, leaders by definition wield authority. That does not make them authoritarians "authoritarians [britannica.com]":
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The closest Trump came was saying that he'd make the military commit war crimes. During a debate on national TV. Then reiterated it the next day when asked about it.
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Not bad enough for you?
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It's awfully Hitler like.
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It's awfully Hitler like.
Well, these days you can't take it for granted when someone say something like that they consider it a bad thing.
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1 I must of missed that one and 2 Trump is only going to be the Commander in Chief, he can't force anyone to follow an illegal order.
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I have to say that I get a lot of liberal noise, but I haven't seen anyone claim that Trump is literally Hitler or is going to murder people.
Murder? Naw, he's still working on registering them. [nytimes.com]
"Asked later, as he signed autographs, how such a database would be different from Jews having to register in Nazi Germany, Mr. Trump repeatedly said, “You tell me,” until he stopped responding to the question."
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I have to say that I get a lot of liberal noise, but I haven't seen anyone claim that Trump is literally Hitler or is going to murder people. The closest is the story that Trump kept a book of Hitler speeches by his bed.
That might even be a smart move. Adolph Hitler was one of the greatest speakers we've seen in the modern age. Sure, he was evil as hell, and his policies were abhorrent, but he knew how to speak to a crowd.
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Are we seriously using FaceBook feeds to generalize entire populations now? Is that where we're at?
Because I'm pretty certain there was a large segment of people who were utterly convinced after Obama won that we'd be a Socialist workers paradise by now and nobody would ever be able to buy a Gun ever again.
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:5, Interesting)
And what about on the Democratic side? ... Their level of delusion seems a little worse than your average Trump voter.
Hammer, meet nail. It wasn't just the Trump side that was "misinformed" by Facebook; Clinton's supporters were equally in a bubble. "Fake" news did not impact only one side; it touched every single candidate. It was near propaganda levels, especially in the final week. Ad hominem was the normal response of the Clinton side; why rebut the argument when it's easier to attack the speaker. Straw man was the normal response of the Trump side; why respond to the actual argument when you can misrepresent it and have a slam-dunk rebuttal.
Maybe it's time for Facebook to realize that all their "algorithms" will be exploitable, and they should just go back to a perfect, unaltered timeline of everything a user is following. At least that way we can say it's the people choosing to be misinformed and not just a side-effect of an algorithmic choice.
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America just elected LITERALLY HITLER and that Trump is going to start deporting or murdering anyone who isn't a straight white male.
Many, many people thought that Trump getting elected wasn't possible.
They thought that there is no way a guy who said the things he said and behaved the way he behaved would get elected or even have a chance.
Those doubts have now been proven wrong, and the unthinkable happened.
So let me ask you, if Trump getting elected, which was so unthinkable and against all odds happened, why is it unthinkable and against all odds that Trump would or could behave as many on the left expect him to, as a demagogic
Re: (Score:3)
And I'm saying most of that is because the media painted him that way. Instead of repeating over and over and over again "TRUMP THINKS ALL MEXICANS ARE RAPISTS!!!!" they could have explained that 80% of the women and girls who cross the boarder illegally are raped during their crossing, and, as Trump said, "somebody's doing the raping."
Trump isn't Hitler. The media has made a bunch of hysterical women believe Trump is Hitler.
Opinion vs speculation (Score:2)
Not all discourses are equal:
When someone says: "Trump is the new Hitler", that's an opinion.
When someone says: "Trump is going to start deporting or murdering anyone who isn't a straight white male", that's an exaggeration.
When someone says: "Hillary killed her opponent", that's speculation at best, and presenting it as a fact is misleading.
As a side note, can we please stop with the random capitalization. There's an emphasis tag in html, that should be good enough. And I won't comment in the non-literal u
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are some facts.
1. Trump received about the same number of votes as Romney did in 2012.
2. Hillary received about 10M fewer votes than Obama did in 2012.
Neither was a remotely good candidate.
But only one was 'great' at exposing every little flaw of the other candidate. Meanwhile, the other one stuck to the traditional politician script in a decidedly non-traditional election.
They both won their primaries because they were the best politicians, not the best options.
Trump won the election because he was the best politician, not the best option.
Both the DNC & the RNC need to go back to square one and start promoting their best candidates, not the best politicians. The best candidates will serve more of the whole of America than either one of these candidates ever would.
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I agree that neither was a great candidate. But here's my theory: Trump is the first candidate ever to win by running a negative campaign -- against himself.
They were both candidates with enormous negative public perceptions. But Clinton had a lot of money. In a normal year she could have bought attention to start to shift perception, except that Trump's antics sucked all the oxygen out of the media space. And at a certain point the marginal cost of another revelation about Trump was nil.
Re:That's the funniest thing so far ..... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well she was counting on the Union vote, but forgot all the good Union jobs went to Mexico, and all of the Retirees saw it didn't matter how good the Union contract was when the company went bankrupt, so they were just getting strung along until the next election.
As they say "Atlas Shrugged"
Re: (Score:2)
Misinformation in close elections can be decisive, which is why people do it.
But nobody though the election was going to be close, at least nobody I saw. The Talking heads on TV were going along with the Clinton by a landslide and the alt-right echo-chamber were Trump by a landslide.
They want a thicker filter bubble next time. (Score:5, Informative)
The real question is who controls that truth meter and who they work with [wikileaks.org]. [1]
Are they going to ban lies like this one from CNN [youtube.com]? And yes, it is a clear lie [popehat.com].
Anyhow, it's clear they haven't learned anything whatsoever from this election, so you have 8 years of Trump to look forward to unless they figure it out.
[1] Refer to this old comment [slashdot.org] if you don't like reading raw HTML and for more context. It's an email thread of the DNC collaborating with Politifact.
Re: (Score:2)
Lies, Damned Lies, and Russian Lies (Score:2)
> Yes probably. Yet you didn't bother to provide a counter narrative. Or even a single link. Why do you think he's more effective at spreading his message than you are?
Funny how they modded you "Troll" for saying that, because it's completely true. They can't argue with anything other than just calling people names most of the time.
And on one of those few occasions they do bother to present a falsifiable claim? This happens. [slashdot.org]
Re:dont censor (Score:5, Interesting)
Well one thing we learned about the election.
We were seeing all the polls showing Clinton had a near certain victory. And we assumed trump was lying when he said that his polls are showing something different. Unfortunately that raises the question how good are the sources to figure out truthfulness.
Now Trump could had been lying about his sources, and gotten lucky. However the fact that he was saying that he was winning and the media is lying about that and actually won. Does bring up questions, on the fact checkers and truthfulness.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that people think that polls are accurate, because they use terms like "sample size" and "margin of error" to give the illusion that they are scientific. They aren't scientific. A poll is asking a bunch of people what they think, and assuming that all of them tell the truth. Guess what? They don't all tell the truth. When Nate Silver was publishing his numbers he showed 12% of people saying they were "undecided", but for some reason the margin of error was not +/- 12. How many of those
Re:dont censor (Score:4, Interesting)
We were seeing all the polls showing Clinton had a near certain victory. And we assumed trump was lying when he said that his polls are showing something different. Unfortunately that raises the question how good are the sources to figure out truthfulness.
Now Trump could had been lying about his sources, and gotten lucky. However the fact that he was saying that he was winning and the media is lying about that and actually won. Does bring up questions, on the fact checkers and truthfulness.
Clinton actually gained roughly the amount of votes that were expected. But what happened is the overwhelming majority of "undecided" voters voted for Trump. What we all forgot about, but should never forget about, is The Bradley Effect [wikipedia.org]. People didn't want to admit to a pollster that they were voting for Trump. It's a key example of Social Desirability Bias [wikipedia.org] where respondents answer questions in a manner which will be viewed favorably by those around them.
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I was kind of confused by the various reported poll numbers, but when you actually got to see the number of poll participants to population, then when I compared it to what I had learned was necessary polling wise to get a valid result, there were vast differences. Now I'm not a statistician and I went to College a few decades ago, so I suppose the numbers have changed over the years, but not by a factor of 2! So It's easy to see how most of the pollsters got trapped in their own echo chambers.
It's one thin
Re:dont censor (Score:5, Informative)
No it doesn't. It says that the polls are using flawed means that don't end up being accurate. People have complained about the way polls are conducted being skewed for a long time now. Polls only measure people who agree to be measured. They only measure what people say, rather than what they do in privacy.
There was a pretty decent interview on NPR last weekend where the interviewer sat down the heads of a view polling agencies to discuss how polling works and the challenges involved in getting accurate polling. The fact of the matter is that each year it has been more difficult getting an accurate cross-sample of people. 30 years ago, it was far easier -- everyone had a public land-line. Everyone picked it up on a ring. No one had caller id. Now it's far more self-selected, and it's easier to get penned in to one demographic.
The last time I checked they still only polled people who had land lines.
No, they use cell phones now. I received a poll call on my cell phone this election, the first time in 15 years I had been randomly polled about anything.
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I never heard of a voting machine changing a vote for Trump to Clinton, but I heard of several instances of votes for Trump getting changed to Clinton. Theoretically just a few vote can make a big difference, but looking at the result it didn't seem like the errors made much difference in the real world.
Re:dont censor (Score:5, Interesting)
And you're even leaving out the probably largest reason why polls divert from actual results. For the sake of the argument, assume all your assumptions and correction factors would be spot on and you could predict the outcome perfectly.
Now publish your prediction:
What happens? People who were bound to vote for the leading candidate stay at home because they think their candidate won't need their votes anymore, but people who want to support the second place candidate (by polls) are activated to actually vote.
Publishing a poll has a huge effect on election results.
Re: (Score:2)
Why does Facebook need to do anything? Why shouldn't people be able to share what they want? Why do we assume alternative sources of information are less accurate than large news monopolies?
Because the large news companies are usually BETTER at curating what is and is not accurate than your grandmother forwarding chain mail.
Re:The problem is not Facebook (Score:4, Funny)
"The problem is that there are lots of stupid people."
And they are all on Facebook, go figure.
Do they lack mirrors or reflections? (Score:3)
It's hilarious to see the media who got this entire election wrong [youtube.com] now trying to tell us whose fault it is.
Re: (Score:2)
But Facebook isn't part of the good-old-boys press club. Yet. It doesn't depend on some quid-pro-quo for future access to the Washington talking heads or an invite to the press club. It's just a pipeline that anybody can use to bypass the MSM editorial policies and get their (or third party) content out into the public.
It's up to the readers to apply some bullshit tests to what they find there.
Re: (Score:2)
The beatings will continue until morale improves.