Google Executives Are Floating a Plan To Fight Fake News on Facebook and Twitter (qz.com) 305
Fake news, bots, and propaganda were hot topics at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last month, and Google executives there floated an intriguing idea to some fellow attendees -- what if the company could tell users whether information is trustworthy before they shared it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter? From a report: Representatives from Google and its parent company Alphabet eagerly discussed how the company can play a greater role in reducing misleading information online, several Davos attendees involved in and briefed on these conversations told Quartz. A notification system, perhaps via an optional extension for Google's Chrome browser, was an idea that these people said was broached more than once. Such a browser-based system controlled by Google could alert users on Facebook's or Twitter's websites when they're seeing or sharing a link deemed to be false or untrustworthy.
Right now, this appears to be merely an idea company executives are discussing, not a product in development.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook and Twitter are not News sites, or even aggregators, in the first place.
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Yet they are scourge of society that enabled Trump and other like Modi in India to be elected. All of a sudden, this technology enabled bigot racists to unite in name of White power or Hindutva back in India. The folks who were rightly suppressed from bringing their hate agenda, marginalized because of racisit values were able to unite, empower with fake news and bought these monsters to power. Wrong kind of conservatives are pulling us back to 1900s
Yet, IMO, Facebook (whastapp) and Twitter should work alon
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Yet [social media is a] scourge of society that ensured Trump and Clinton were our only "viable" options
FTFY. During the election (and for months after) I saw a fair amount of bullshit being flung from both sides.
Nobody's a saint when it comes to US politics. Except maybe 3rd parties, but only about 6% of us actually vote for them.
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fake to who? (Score:5, Insightful)
The james damore case clearly shows us that google is not like a computer system that neutrally handles data, it has a specific narrative which is emotional and based on current political leanings and the soft 'gut' feeling of the population.
Would we be seeing things which google does not like, say perhaps that some of their hardware was being manufactured by slave labor et al? Or would this suddenly become 'fake news'
The problem is not really fake news, the problem is the lack of anything like a credible media source. Everyone has cross mergered to the point where what we see and hear as 'news' is generally only the things we are allowed to see.
See for example the court case in which fox news bought out WTVT and then buried a story about Monstanto's posilac product and the harmful effects it had on the animals and on anyone drinking it (hint, it is on the market, will remain so, and is not safe to consume)
Now try and look around at any major news corp that has mentioned that monsanto's roundup weed killer is also a known active carcinogen (again, on the market, not safe, will remain that way).
We are already living in the age of fake news from our highest sources. This whole thing just stinks of a way to cripple what little independent media is left so that the rich can write the narrative of our reality. I believe russians probably did purchase and attempt to sway public opinion on matters if only to create a divide, I also believe that corporations do this as a matter of daily operations like one might take a solid dump in the morning.
There is no cure for this situation save one which is unappealing....we need to start to kill the rich similar to the french revolution. The only reason we have rights today the way we recognize them is because an angry mob started to cut rich peoples heads off until an agreement of fair treatment was made. You may know such agreements as the bill of human rights, principle of equality, separation of church and state, congress and/or a group of representatives of the people, removal of the feudal system, etc. These effects rippled across the planet to give us much of what we know today as modern civil society.
Again, unappealing, but beneficial without a doubt. Perhaps the time has come again to remind those in power who we are
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1) FaceCrook has taken all the advertising from real news organizations, companies that used to vet people and sources. news papers hired editors and investigative journalists who did the diligence rather than burped garbage like the Star, National Enquirer or FauxNoise.
2) The death of real, vetted news, and millennial 140 character attention span has reduced our over all ability to di
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And who might the rich be? I guarantee you're rich compared to someone. Shall we then cut off your head as well?
Comparatively rich is not absolutely rich. A beggar with a loaf of bread is richer than another with nothing. That doesn't make the beggar rich.
Since we're talking about cutting heads off, let's use Marx's definitions. The proletariat consists of people whose only means of subsistence is to sell their labor. In other words, if you need to work to stay alive, you're part of the proletariat.
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And who might the rich be? I guarantee you're rich compared to someone. Shall we then cut off your head as well?
Comparatively rich is not absolutely rich.
Fuck that guy, and everyone else that claims that "first world poor isn't really poor."
CEO Schmidt explains... (Score:2)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "We're not arguing for censorship, we're arguing just take it off the page. Put it somewhere else. Make it harder to find."
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So, they're arguing for censorship. Their privilege, but I'd rather have less censorship rather than more....
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It's a bit Orwellian but while this is softer than radical censorship I think the collaborative effort of social media and Google could lead to a very potent form of incremental censorship. Once everything you say , link to or search for gets an automatic score for patriotic loyalty you get a strong effect of conformity where you avoid doing things which affect your (search rank, popularity)score or the score of the people you are linked to. It's incremental and deniable. The infrastructure behind it is jus
Oh Good (Score:5, Insightful)
We'll fight bias with even more bias! That'll fix it!
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Ultimately, you have to trust someone.
No I don't.
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Good, start by not trusting yourself.
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Ultimately, you have to trust someone.
No, you don't. Politics are just a form of insanity. Free yourself from the grip of delusions and live a free life.
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Ultimately, you have to trust someone.
No, you don't. Politics are just a form of insanity. Free yourself from the grip of delusions and live a free life.
Why are telling me that? What's in it for you? Apparently, I don't have to trust you, either.
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Not a firewall guy, I take it...
DENY ANY ANY
The road to hell is paved with good intentions (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure Google will start with removing truly fake news, but they will quickly slide into removing anything that reflects badly on Google or the people they support. They have already proven to put ideology first.
Modern journalism is about covering the important stories... with a pillow until they stop moving.
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The suggestion is for a notification, not removal.
Facebook did actually try this, adding something like "this article is disputed by such-and-such" with a link. Unfortunately this tended to have the opposite effect to the one desired. People assumed that the "mainstream media" disagreeing was just more proof of the conspiracy to hide the truth. In other words it made them even more gullible.
This truth-proofing has been one of the most powerful techniques used by the fake-news brigade. They don't just lie, t
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Seems to me the only solution... (Score:2, Interesting)
Is to start placing bounties on sites that run fake news.
In today's news market, it's a series of programs deciding what to put on your pages. Highly tailored to fit into your bubble of chosen topics and viewpoints.
So place a bounty on fake news like a bug bounty. For the sake of discussion, let's call it a $5,000 penalty for running a fake story. The bounty goes to whomever first proves it's fake with checkable facts and sources. The bounty is paid by the site that displayed the story.
Now you have inc
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The problem with this idea is that the fake news sites will never join the programme. They will just argue that it's run by the biased mainstream media alt-leftists or whatever and turn not being part of it into a badge of honour.
We already have a pretty good fact checking system for reputable news outlets. They check each other, they check themselves and they publish corrections. The problem is the disreputable ones who ignore all that stuff and don't care.
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As second problem is that any site who might have a bounty claimed against them could just have an employee claim it for them. The gamesmanship in stuff like this is infinite.
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The only solution is to let speech be free, and let people make up their own damn minds whether information is "fake" or not.
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I disagree. If the current situation has taught us anything, it's that people will select facts by confirmation bias rather than truth. Allowing the proliferation of false facts to create turmoil is not a desirable outcome.
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If free speech is not the answer and people cannot be their own gatekeepers of information then democracy is a failure.
Proliferation of false facts to create turmoil is not a desirable outcome but it is much better than abridging free speech under the misguided notion that there is such a thing as neutral gatekeeper of information.
partisan bingo (Score:3)
There's possibly a way to do this without taking a side on the accuracy of the information: to flag information with a partisanship score.
Google knows the distribution of information consumed, and it can probably already do enough sentiment analysis to score cliques on partisanship. Google definitely knows how to extract the trigger words from the discourse (subtype: click bait) and it could easily algo up a trigger score, too. However, Google will lay such a number bare not in my lifetime.
Failing a trigger score, an ad hominem score might be effective, instead. The scores can either be assigned to the documents, or to the primary cliques consuming the documents.
Turns out the distribution of an item is primary meta-data pertaining to its appropriate consumption.
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I've been thinking along these lines. You can't automate fact checking without choosing authoritative sources which itself would be biased. Many fact checkers will betray their biases by carefully choosing which aspects of a story or statement to fact check leading to very different results.
For instance the sky is blue is a fact (sort of). But saying "the sky is blue during the Trump administration" could be called a lie or truth depending how you parse it. Pro Trump and you simply agree that the sky is
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We've always had gossip ... (Score:4, Insightful)
... not sure we need commissars for it though.
{the scene: Myrtle and Ester, gossiping over their fence}
Myrtle: Hey Ester, did you hear the news? Hillary Clinton ran a private email server out of her bathroom, so she wouldn't have to use official government email!
Ester: Oh really? Well I think ...
{popping out of bushes}Ivan: Excuse me, comrades! Ha, no, see, this is not "news" as you say, this is "fake news"!
Ivan: Let me provide you with real news story about the perfectly legal activities of most excellent Secretary Clinton! This news has been verified by current federal executive, so you know it is unbiased and true!
"Big News" did it to itself (Score:5, Insightful)
So before "Big News" gets to complain about "Alt News" running with poor sourcing, "Big News" needs get their own house in order first.
Re:"Big News" did it to itself (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. But it's getting even worse now. I read an article the other day, 75% of the page was twitter quotes, like that tells me anything other than some dbag on twitter had an opinion. I see this shit in more and more news articles as if Twitter means dick to anyone.
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Part of the reason no one trusts NBC, CNN, etc. anymore is that half the stories they run with have no cited sources, just BS like "said one source with inside knowledge who was not allowed to speak on the record". And sometimes those leaks are just that - BS fed to reporters too lazy to check out the stories they were handed.
So before "Big News" gets to complain about "Alt News" running with poor sourcing, "Big News" needs get their own house in order first.
There is a difference between sometimes not doing your due diligence on your sources and deliberately and consistently outright fabricating stories with no basis in reality. There is also a difference between biased reporting that reports both sides of an issue with a preference for one and reporting that deliberately and consistently omits facts from the story to infuriate readers with how obviously wrong the opposing view must be.
The failure to see those differences is what infuriates people trying to co
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Unfortunately, people ARE saying that. That's the basis of the "credible source" bit in TFA: if story link X is from "Big News" it will be flagged credible but if it's from independent muckraker Y it will be flagged as questionable.
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>> Nobody is saying that NBC, CNN, or the like are shining bastions of journalistic integrity.
Unfortunately, people ARE saying that. That's the basis of the "credible source" bit in TFA: if story link X is from "Big News" it will be flagged credible but if it's from independent muckraker Y it will be flagged as questionable.
I read the entire article. There is no reference to any source being given preferential treatment on credibility based on whether it's from "Big News" or not. In fact,
a browser-based system controlled by Google could alert users on Facebook’s or Twitter’s websites when they’re seeing or sharing a link deemed to be false or untrustworthy.
The trustworthiness would be evaluated on a link by link basis. So if one story on CNN.com is factually correct, but another has been found to have no basis in fact, the second link could be flagged as untrustworthy. The same can apply to infowars.com on a per-story basis. Again, this is a story about spitballing ideas and even here nobod
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As second major issue is that with 24 hr news, they all have to have a LOT of filler.
Having to have filler means there is a real dilution between what's "real news" and what's "entertainews". The sensational but not really relevant becomes entwined with what's really important.
Unfortunately, news competes for eyeballs, and once the 24 hr networks embraced the sensational and the celebrity news, the "Big News" that wasn't 24 hr wasn't too far behind to start sliding in those stories. That makes it even harde
Wouldn't Work (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's suppose that Google goes ahead and makes a "Fake News Alert" Chrome plugin. Further, let's assume that they don't abuse their position (as someone else guessed they would by marking anti-Google posts as "fake" regardless of the truth) or engage in any partisan bias (marking true posts from one side as fake simply because Google workers tend to support the other side). Would this type of thing even be effective?
I'd argue that it wouldn't. This would be an optional plugin. You'd need to purposefully go and get the plugin. The only people who did that would be people who care whether a news source is fake or not. This would likely exclude almost everyone who posts fake news items. They don't care about truth as much as they care that the story fits their narrative. Even if they installed the plugin, they'd start seeing stories they agreed with marked as fake. Then, they'd either have to change their minds or just accuse Google as being part of the "establishment deep state conspiracy" (or something like that). Like Nigerian scammer victims, these people wouldn't want to admit that they were suckered by fake news in the past so they'd go with the "this news is real, Google's lying" explanation
While I commend Google for trying to figure out a way to fight stories that are completely fake, an optional plugin won't do anything.
Vast monopolies colluding with each other (Score:5, Insightful)
Such collusion among monopolies to control the flow of information should have been denounced by all Slashdotters, and attracted attention of the Justice Department enforcing anti-trust laws...
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Exactly. Am I the only one thinking, "Google doesn't want to police the thoughts of people in its own services, it wants to police the thoughts of ALL social media."
No way. Stay in your lane, Google.
meh (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure which is worse; government censored "news", or leftist techie executive censored "news".
"We play both kinds of music here: country, and western!"
Advertsing? (Score:3)
Bearing in mind that "fake news" is just another euphemism for public relations (PR) and propaganda:
Will Google also apply these algorithms of "truthfulness" and what they consider to be misleading to online advertising? And will they also censor "fake news" circulated by elected officials on topics such as climate change, evolution, and the "War against Christmas"?
Don't you find it ironic that the world's biggest and most powerful advertising and PR agencies, e.g. Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are claiming to be reliable arbiters of truth? I mean, it's not as if they get paid $billions for prioritising certain messages over others by their clients, is it?
It looks like we're going to have Silicon Valley executives deciding which is "good" fake news and which is "bad."
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No, not ironic. Chilling is closer to the mark.
What is the user PoV for this? (Score:2)
Let's ass/u/me the tech works. (Ok, hypothesize.)
I'm trying to understand how a user would be excited or interested in this. "You're about to step in it by posting something really stupid which will damage your personal reputation among everyone who knows you, covering you in a shroud of dishonor and making everyone whisper and giggle about you behind your back. Are you sure you want to make a fool of yourself?" Is it like that, but more charitably phrased?
I would think that most of the people who share t
Will it do any good? (Score:2)
You think they don't know that? (Score:2)
They know it is fake, but they like it so they let it slide. People who know it is fake stay silent.
The other day I came across an old gentleman in a party spouting some nonsense "all the laws of thermodynamics are in in Bhagwat Gita". Some kind of stretched argument based on very generous interpretation of metallic (i.e. malleable and ductile) sentences equating entropy with chaos with degeneration. Almost everyone around
Just stop. (Score:2)
Please, Google. Stop it.
Training ML, real v pretend (Score:2)
The accuracy of human's ability to detect fake news can be correllated with cognitive ability. [scientificamerican.com] Typically we look at the quality of the writing, formality of the language, citations, past knowledge of author or outlet, past knowledge of named sources and other qualities old fashioned real journalists and editors are well aware of. [americanpr...titute.org]
So instead of google rank purely by citation, create a Bayesian lie detector. Set the output to True and throw a math or physics textbook at a ML training network. Give it some wea
Re: wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Likely. Only slightly less desirable would be people that work for Google. No, thanks. The douches there sure think highly of themselves. You know what works every time? Stop getting your news from Google, Twitter, or Facebook.
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Likely. Only slightly less desirable would be people that work for Google. No, thanks. The douches there sure think highly of themselves. You know what works every time? Stop getting your news from Google, Twitter, or Facebook.
I have been noticing that Google is becoming extremely social Justice aware lately, and they are actively censoring search results no matter what your settings are. This is probably in large reaction to them becoming a feminist run organization.
I usually use DDG for searching. But there are a few times I switch over to google. I noticed that there were getting to be marked differences between the two.
So looking at the differences, I came up with a hypothesis that perhaps a person with sex negative fe
Re:wow (Score:4, Funny)
I for one welcome our new truth determining overlords.
Re:wow (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as their power extends to "Hey, that thing you are spreading has been determined to be bullshit, please do a little research and decide if you want to share it." I'm fine with it.
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And how will most people do that research? I know google it.
Meh (Score:5, Insightful)
The News has always been manipulated.
What has he media's panties in a bunch is the fact that the ability to do so is no longer limited to them.
Re:wow (Score:4)
Google, the people whose AI is behind YouTube Adpocolypse?
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Yes, but the rating should be presented as an opinion, not as a fact. An estimate of "believed" probability of correctness would also be useful.
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Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information
Bullshit. They politicize the hell out of it. Something is either true or false. They are both filled with "True, but" conditionals.
Many things are not simply true or false. Many times they are misleading. Both of these sites do a good job in identifying misleading information and label them as such.
misleading... (Score:3)
The expression 'fake news' is actually quite wonderful as a mis-director of attention. Saying a news story is fake news is not actually a claim that the news story is false, just that it shouldn't be a news story. The implication that is universally taken when the target of a story saying 'fake news' is that the target is denying the events.
Similarly, a statement prefaced by "If anyone took offence to my action/statement, I apologise" isn't an apology, because there's no acknowledgement of fault.
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The expression 'fake news' is actually quite wonderful as a mis-director of attention. Saying a news story is fake news is not actually a claim that the news story is false, just that it shouldn't be a news story. The implication that is universally taken when the target of a story saying 'fake news' is that the target is denying the events.
That's what it's been turned into by certain politicians and pundits, but that isn't the original definition. The term "fake news" was originally applied to stories that were completely invented and not based on something that occurred in reality. Typically, there's also the assumption that the publisher of the story is trying to convince readers that the story is about a real occurrence; without that assumption, The Onion would be classified as "fake news", and you can debate whether or not that's a fair c
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Most things are simply True or False.
Attempting to nuance it or explain how it's "misleading" is called spin.
It is also called editorializing.
"Yeah, but..." is not fact checking. It's spinning.
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Only the most simple facts can be simply true or false. Trying to force a question with a complex answer to be answered with true or false creates a misleading answer. It's one of a lawyer's favorite tricks when questioning witnesses. Makes me wonder why you think it's such a great idea...
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It is a one of their favorite "tricks" because the purpose is to burn through all the rhetoric and spin and get to the essential fact.
The answer to "Did you kill him?" is a yes or no answer. The circumstances surrounding the murder are separate considerations.
So it's not a, "trick", but a tool to arrive at the underlying facts stripped bare of spin.
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If the guy who did the killing did so because the person who was killed was aiming a gun at the killer, then it's kind of important to have that information, don't you think? Otherwise you might think the man was a murderer rather than acting in self-defense. You're arguing that all of that information should be hidden.
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That is irrelevant to the question.
I am arguing that the facts must be established, starting with the central fact...a killing occurred.
The defense attorney can argue the circumstances and clarify the situation.
Likewise, these "fact checking" sites should render a yes or no and in a separate section, editorialize on what they think mitigating circumstances are.
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That is irrelevant to the question.
I am arguing that the facts must be established, starting with the central fact...a killing occurred.
I understand what you're getting at, but you're proving his point. A death occurred. A gun caused that death. *Those* are central facts. "Killing" (in verb form) is not a legal term. Murder is. If the defendant shot an unarmed person on the street, it is a murder. If the defendant was a police officer, and the 'victim' was an active shooter in a high school, it is not murder.
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If we want to get into the weeds, it's a homicide.
Homicide can be justified or unjustified. But, "Did you homicide him" just doesn't really roll off the tongue, eh?
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Most things are simply True or False.
Attempting to nuance it or explain how it's "misleading" is called spin.
It is also called editorializing.
"Yeah, but..." is not fact checking. It's spinning.
No, plenty of statements are misleading. It's easy to make a statement that is by itself factual true, but leaves out other facts that are also important to understanding the situation. "Person X was killed in a car accident" is a true statement, but it can be misleading if you don't also state that Person X was drunk or that an overpass collapsed in the middle of heavy traffic.
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It's easy to make a statement that is by itself factual true
THAT is the purpose of Fact checking.
Everything after is an editorial.
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Most things are simply True or False.
Subsidies are bad.
Is that statement true, false, or does it require more thought than a simple binary response can offer?
There's a lot more grey area in the world than you seem aware of.
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"Subsidies are bad" has no objective determination. It is a value statement, not a factual statement.
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Precisely my point - most issues are value statements that have no objective determination, whereas the post I was responding to claims the opposite to be true.
"Most things" are complex situations that do not have valid binary response.
That said, I don't disagree that the majority of media outlets worry more about spin than facts.
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Even the statement:
Most things are simply True or False
is misleading, did you do a survey of all the statements made and or is it just your opinion. I assume the latter. And even if you found out 51% are either true or false making your statement true, that doesn't mean that a significant portion of statements are not misleading.
Even the most basic statement, like "I am sitting right" now is not 100% accurate, I don't have any way of proving that I am actually sitting not just imagining it. Anyway that is just philosophical impractical nonse
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Facts are facts. If you are sitting, then you are sitting.
I actually should have said that EVERYTHING is true or false...and perhaps it applies to specific statements that can be objectively measured to a binary solution.
If it cannot be, then it is not a factual statement and cannot be claimed to be right or wrong and instead, merely argued as a point of view.
"(some person) lied about (some thing)" is either true, or false assuming that thing they lied about can be evaluated to a binary condition.
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Those are all Value judgements. There is no objective measurement that can be made to evaluate their truthfulness.
And you can shove your Snark up your ass.
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While it's true not everything is black and white, the problem with sites like politifact is, after reviewing the facts, the final judgment of their meter is still subjective.
I've seen evidence of bias in their final judgments before, but the coffin nail for their objective credibility was, for me, when they rated Michele Obama's statement "slaves built the White House", as a very positive "Mostly True". Their own research concluded that slaves were used to quarry the raw stone that was used to form the bri
source of information for people on both sides (Score:3, Informative)
While it's true not everything is black and white, the problem with sites like politifact is, after reviewing the facts, the final judgment of their meter is still subjective.
I don't care about the "final judgement of their meter". I care about the fact that they cite sources that I can check myself.
I've seen evidence of bias in their final judgments before, but the coffin nail for their objective credibility was, for me, when they rated Michele Obama's statement "slaves built the White House", as a very positive "Mostly True". Their own research concluded that slaves were used to quarry the raw stone that was used to form the bricks of the building, which were further cut, refined, and placed by skilled masons. Slaves also did much of the white washing at the end. However, the rest of the labor were freemen, white and black, as well as European contractors: Architects designed the building. Masons carved and fitted the bricks (probably the bulk of the building aspect). Carpenters built much of the structure as well. Glass, marble, and tile workers did their thing. Skilled labor collectively did most of the building, yet her statement excludes them in totality.
OK. And, how do you happen to know that? Oh: you know it because you read the article! (which says exactly what you just said-- you are quoting them.)
So, you're really telling me you yourself personally use politifact as an unbiased source of facts. That's ironic. You don't want other people to use it, but you use it yourself.
Equating the quarrying of stone to "building the white house" is like claiming that Home Depot built your house, because that's where you got your building supplies from. Or claiming the people who painted your house built it. Her declaration was also slightly misleading in that the White House did not force anyone to directly work for free, the gov't paid for everything - the question is whether slave owners who got paid bothered to share it with the slaves or not. From what I can gather, some did, though I doubt their slaves had any say in whether they wanted to do the job or not!
and your source for this is.... Politifact.
In any case, the picture comes across as the country forcing slaves to build the White House, and without compensation, much like how we used to believe the pyramids were built. This is simply inaccurate and should have rated a Mostly False or maybe a Partly True at best.
So my judgment is, no, they do not do a good enough job when it comes to the bottom line, they let their bias affect their final score.
Interestingly
Re: (Score:2)
I don't care about the "final judgement of their meter". I care about the fact that they cite sources that I can check myself.
Well good for you. Atta boy. But most people look at that meter as the final word. They use it in their arguments and to form their opinion.
OK. And, how do you happen to know that? Oh: you know it because you read the article! (which says exactly what you just said-- you are quoting them.)
So, you're really telling me you yourself personally use politifact as an unbiased source of facts. That's ironic. You don't want other people to use it, but you use it yourself.
This is your argument? Gee, let's see how this would've gone if I hadn't actually read something before I criticized it.. probably something like " Did you even read it? OMG stop listening to Faux News! You don't know what you're talking about!".
Originally yes, I did read what they had to say. This is how I came to gradually realize they're not exactly as objective
fact checking part useful, opinion part subjective (Score:2)
I don't care about the "final judgement of their meter". I care about the fact that they cite sources that I can check myself.
Well good for you. Atta boy. But most people look at that meter as the final word. They use it in their arguments and to form their opinion.
I'd be interested in your data supporting your statement as to how "most people" read fact check sites.
But, if you modified your statement to say "the information and citations in the body of the article are useful fact-checking, but the final judgement of their meter is subjective," I wouldn't disagree.
OK. And, how do you happen to know that? Oh: you know it because you read the article! (which says exactly what you just said-- you are quoting them.) So, you're really telling me you yourself personally use politifact as an unbiased source of facts. That's ironic. You don't want other people to use it, but you use it yourself.
...
Originally yes, I did read what they had to say.
The important part is not that you read what they had to say, but that you then quoted the information you got from them. You are saying they are not a reliable source... but turns out you in fact do use t
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Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information
Bullshit. They politicize the hell out of it. Something is either true or false. They are both filled with "True, but" conditionals.
Snopes.com [snopes.com] and Politifact [politifact.com] both have categories of "mixed" (snopes) or "half true" (politifact), yes. And they explain what parts are true and what parts are false. You know what? Sometimes politicians (or other people) say things that are part true and partly not true. That's not "politicizing it"-- that is recognizing the real world
Many things are not simply true or false. Many times they are misleading. Both of these sites do a good job in identifying misleading information and label them as such.
Exactly. And, more important, they cite sources so you can go look at the information and decide for yourself. That's what I really want: links to data. And that's what th
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Yes, things are simply true or false.
I should clarify. For many statements, and likely most political statements, whether or not the statement is technically true or false is rarely enough information. Political statements are rarely completely false but misleading statements are common. Good fact checking needs to spend just as much time if not more time identifying potentially misleading statements than worrying if the statement itself is false.
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Right, and pretty much any truly-interesting political statement is going to be about what strategy is best. And what strategy is best, depends on what your goals and values are. They're totally subjective.
Imagine a political statement like "the federal reserve should raise [or lower, take your pick] the interest rate by 0.25%." You can't tell someone else whether or not that's true or false for them. At best you can tell them whether or not it's a good idea for achieving what you want.
"We should enact a
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Sorry, but while there are strong subjective elements, there are also strong objective elements. To say that a particular strategy is best is subjective, to say that it is likely to have certain particular specified effects is objective. It may well be wrong, but it's objective.
You can judge how reliable something is by the way that it accurately predicts objective facts and by which facts it fails to predict without considering whether or not you agree with their subjective evaluations.
E.g., I find that
you have your own opinion but not your own facts (Score:2)
Right, and pretty much any truly-interesting political statement is going to be about what strategy is best. And what strategy is best, depends on what your goals and values are. They're totally subjective.
Imagine a political statement like "the federal reserve should raise [or lower, take your pick] the interest rate by 0.25%." You can't tell someone else whether or not that's true or false for them. At best you can tell them whether or not it's a good idea for achieving what you want.
To be fair: neither snopes [snopes.com] nor politifact [politifact.com] fact checks opinions. None of the examples you made up are the kinds of things either one runs an article factchecking. They fact check only the things expressed as facts.
There is a saying "you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts." I agree with that.
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When you are fact checking you may have to report more than just a TRUE|FALSE due to not being able to actually lock down the facts.
Think of it this way If %thing% was a fish you have ...
1 Fresh off the Boat from a Blessed Lake fished by a Jesuit Priest
2 Sold by the Local Fish Monger
3 Sold by a Walmart in the same County
8 week old maybe properly frozen
9 weeks old
10 Fertilizer
some of the things running about FB and such are at stage 10
Re: wow (Score:5, Informative)
All of your "fact checkers" said that the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier... They screamed for months that it was a five-alarm pants-on-fire lie.
They had said there was no public evidence supporting this claim, and until October of 2017 that was a true statement. In October a Washington post article showed that while it was originally funded in 2015 by Republican donors, the Clinton campaign began funding the research in 2016 as opposition research.
Within 24 hours of the Washington post article, and other corroborating research from CNN and Fox News, Snopes updated their information on the topic. This is what good fact checking looks like.
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Snopes: right yet again [Re: Snopes is wrong a...] (Score:2)
Snopes [snopes.com] about was Trump or his campaign wiretapped before the election. They pretty much list it as false.
they do not. If you actuallty read the article you're citing, you'd note that it discusses the claim and the evidence for it, but does not rate it either true nor false.
https://www.snopes.com/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-of-tapping-phones/ [snopes.com]
The closest thing to such a conclusion is the statement "the President’s tweets offered no documentation or evidence for the charges he was leveling at his predecessor in the White House." Saying that "the president didn't offer documentation or evidence" is not
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I disagree. I *do* believe they do an admirable job. That it's far from prefect is also true.
OTOH, I also tend to believe that evaluations like "true" or "false" are almost always oversimplifications. Boolean logic is a fine computational simplification, and in a large number of areas it works better than most alternatives...partially because of limitations on time and energy...but it's almost always an oversimplification if you look closely enough. You can't even say exactly where any particular electr
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Of course, it's good that they're censoring "fake news" because as the gatekeepers, their responsibility is to make sure that people are properly informed with the correct news. It would be bad to allow chaos and divisiveness from intentionally false information.
FTFY
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There should never be gatekeepers that control information to such an extent. Intentionally false or not. The foundation of democracy is that people can be their own gatekeepers of information and they can act in their own self interest.
I am not saying it is perfect but the moment we cede to any kind of informational gatekeeper we cede power to that entity. We have to trust that people can view all kinds of information and decide on their own what is best for them. If we cannot do that then this experiment
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Somehow seeing yourself as fatter than you are (anorexia) is non-controversially viewed as a disorder, but seeing yourself as a male when you have ovaries and a vagina is seen as completely normal. Suggesting that it's a disorder not much different than anorexia is treated as sacrilege.
That is because biologists and psychologists disagree with your laymen interpretation of the similarity between these seemingly similar conditions. A mental disorder has a precise definition, and simply being abnormal does not automatically qualify. The American Psychiatric Association did at one time use the term "gender identity disorder", but as their understanding of this condition improved they changed it to "gender dysphoria". This is still a medical condition, just like being near sighted is, but it
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Gender dysphoria is classified exactly the same as schizophrenia and anorexia. It is even thought to be a subclass of schizophrenia, as over 60% of people with GD also have been diagnosed with both.
Citation needed. Even this paper [hindawi.com] discussing links between GD and schizophrenia shows either a very slight or more likely no correlation.
Gender dysphoria is simply not known to be a subclass of schizophrenia, and you are talking out of your ass.
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Are you aware that there's an on-going investigation into collusion? They're investigating to see if there was collusion and if any laws were broken. Even if you ignore the meeting in Trump Tower attended by Russians and Trumps son, Kushner, et al, on the promise of getting "dirt" on Clinton, and GP's drunken blabbing about Russians having "dirt" on Clinton to an Australian diplomat that sparked the collusion investigation, and if you ignore the RNC/DNC funded Steele dossier, even a dope has to notice tha
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Those who post fake news already know it is untrustworthy, but they do it anyway because they like/agree with it.
Not everyone who shares fake news stories knows it is untrustworthy. I generally check any information I see on Facebook / Twitter with snopes or politifact immediately, and I commonly see wrong information from both sides of the political spectrum. Left leaning misinformation tends to be misleading or exaggerations as opposed to right leaning misinformation which is more commonly outright lies, but it is hard to trust nearly anything you see online now.
On top of that difficulty is the attempt to discredit
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Quite, according to Alex Jones's Infowars, Snopes is the spawn of the devil funded by George Soros.
The alt-right have discovered that they can draw low information citizens into a cult where fake news becomes the truth and all MSM news is decried as manipulative propaganda from "Globalists". No marking of news with a likelihood of truth score is going to affect folks who have joined the cult. In fact they are more likely to take the inverse as the measure of "truthiness". On the left the bubble of identity
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"B-bu-but the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier!" said you, over and over.
Keep telling us who the fucking dupe is, dipshit.
And they were right to say that, because no evidence to the contrary came out until October of 2017. Fact checkers cannot see into the future. Spouting off conspiracy theories and being correct every once in a while is easy; basing your opinions and beliefs on verified facts is far more difficult.
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A huge swath of the populace have been convinced by [mainstream, corporate-funded media] that facts are opinions...
FTFY
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Could you point to that research? Somehow I doubt its existence.
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Reading the paper won't keep you from being mis-informed, if the people writing the paper are mis-informed.
What should actually be taught in middle school (and beyond) is the ability and capacity to engage in critical thinking.