[HN Gopher] Bad News
___________________________________________________________________
Bad News
Author : jbegley
Score : 134 points
Date : 2021-08-17 13:29 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (harpers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harpers.org)
| smitty1e wrote:
| Contra Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web had no magic effect on
| the signal-to-noise ratio of human information.
|
| Sorry, boss.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Contra _MANY_ early boosters of the Internet, WWW, and global
| connectivity generally. I 'd especially pin accountability on
| Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold, and others of the
| Whole Earth / WELL crowd. They were among the loudest and most
| influential advocates, though not at all alone or controversial
| at the time.
|
| Simply wrong.
|
| Adam Curtis's _Hypernormalisation_ and _All Watched Over by
| Machines of Loving Grace_ are among the best explorations and
| critiques of that viewpoint I 'm aware of.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and:
|
| Many like The Well netizens assumed a Platonic Philosopher
| Kings future. A select group (such as themselves) of
| educated, erudite, elites would converse amongst themselves,
| reach some kind of consensus, and then lead the way. Which
| were unlike the prior self-annointed thought leaders in
| broadcast and print medias, of course.
|
| While totally ignoring the grim reality of usenet, forums,
| BBS networks, etc. As former compuserve moderator and hub for
| a modest BBS network, nothing about today's cesspool
| surprises me. Trolls, bots, flamewars, all of it.
|
| My only surprise is that other people are surprised. The
| recurring amnesia, feinting spells, and pearl clutching.
|
| One small bit of progress is we're no longer suffering the
| technotopian blather of those pollyannas.
| naasking wrote:
| It did for awhile, until commercialization really took off.
| Then the incentives became skewed.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| There was no plausible pathway by which the Internet didn't
| become commercialized as access become ubiquitous. Blaming
| "commercialization" for the Fall of Eden is like building a
| shoddy bridge that collapses, and then blaming that on
| gravity: if you didn't take into account the inevitable,
| omnipresent force, that's on you.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > There was no plausible pathway by which the Internet
| didn't become commercialized. Blaming "commercialization"
| for the Fall of Eden is like building a shoddy bridge that
| collapses, and then blaming gravity for it: if you didn't
| take into account the inevitable, omnipresent force, that's
| on you.
|
| All bridges will collapse eventually, but we blame the
| people who build shoddy bridges, not the people who build
| bridges that someone else comes along and willfully knocks
| over. It was inevitable that the internet would decay, but
| not this quickly, nor into this state.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > It did for awhile, until commercialization really took off.
| Then the incentives became skewed.
|
| Yes--I remember the web as I experienced it in the '90s. It
| was a much different place from today's web. I'd hate to
| trade away all the amenities and conveniences of the modern
| web, but I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to choose the
| social environment of that internet over today's.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| > I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to choose the social
| environment of that internet over today's.
|
| The social environment of that Internet was a product of
| access being limited to tech nerds, the wealthy, and
| college students (in the same way that HN is a more
| bearable debate environment than Facebook, not because of
| any moderation choices but because HN is a self-selecting
| population of people with mostly the same job, class, and
| general education level). This was never going to endure
| once Internet access became ubiquitous, as my other comment
| alluded to.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > In the same way that HN is a more bearable debate
| environment than Facebook, not because of any moderation
| choices but because HN is a self-selecting population of
| people with mostly the same job, class, and general
| education level.
|
| I think this underrates the importance of moderation, at
| least at the community level (my experience of HN
| moderation from the top has been nil, so I can't speak to
| it). Sure, HN is the way it is because of its community,
| but that community was not an accident; it was created.
| Spaces can be made welcoming without becoming cesspools,
| and to point to the tendency of public spaces to become
| cesspools doesn't mean that moderation makes no
| difference.
|
| (Long delayed response because I was posting too fast.)
| h2odragon wrote:
| > not because of any moderation choices
|
| Beg to differ. HN's moderation is incredible; and the
| active and exemplary involvement they have is a public
| service that keeps HN what it is.
| prvc wrote:
| Based on what evidence? And is the "signal to noise ratio" (I
| guess something like the ratio of "impressions" containing all
| true vs. at least one false statement) really measuring
| anything useful? And need that necessarily be the case? Now
| information which used to be difficult, expensive, slow, etc.
| to obtain is accessible to all people with internet access
| within seconds should they ever try to find it.
| blauditore wrote:
| A BuzzFeed reporter talking about ethics of news reporting, this
| is so ironic it hurts. For an excerpt of his articles, see:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/josephbernstein
| _kst_ wrote:
| I suggest that the title on HN should include the subtitle:
|
| "Bad News, Selling the story of disinformation".
| _huayra_ wrote:
| Ironically, "Bad News" is exactly the type of clickbaity title
| that is endemic in the bad news that the article talks about,
| e.g. "Bad News! You won't believe what happened next!"
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| _> In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were
| good. Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours
| of work and turn on his television and know where he stood in
| relation to his wife, and his children, and his neighbors, and
| his town, and his country, and his world. And that was good._
|
| Is this meant to be sarcasm? There are a ton of mid-century
| examples of journalism sowing baseless panic and hatred: the Red
| Scare, Vietnam War disinfo, etc. I understand the issues with the
| news today, but there was no idyllic Before Time when it was
| Good.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I was remembering a time during the fairness doctrine when the
| news media seemed more fair and balanced but as I have watched
| various news broadcast s from the past I found that what I
| remembered was just the way they wanted me to see them. The
| news has always been very opinionated and they would use facial
| expressions and tone of voice to influence your opinion.
|
| It is quite disturbing to watch the old news and see that
| things are not as I remember them.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Insert obligatory reference to Chomsky's _Manufacturing
| Consent_ here.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Exactly. What's disturbing is how many contemporary writers
| seem to believe that the "Fairness Doctrine" had anything to
| do with "Fairness," that it's even remotely compatible with
| the First Amendment, or that anything like it would be
| workable today.
|
| Forcing Fox News to run strawman counterarguments to satisfy
| the letter of the law is not going to magically turn them
| into the Fair and Balanced(tm) news outlet they've always
| claimed to be. A better approach would be to establish and
| enforce a legal definition of "news" and apply deceptive
| trade practice law to any broadcaster who has to go to court
| to argue that no one takes their commentators seriously.
| r00fus wrote:
| Even the seeds of modern "journalism" were yellow. Hearst
| didn't just build a crazy castle in California, he essentially
| drove the US involvement in the Spanish-American war - and that
| was not mid-century, but at the beginning of the 20th century.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| The following paragraph literally begins by talking about _red
| baiting_.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| They're referring to fringe sources (in contrast to the
| mainstream sources that were Good).
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| From the second paragraph:
|
| > For him, information was in its right--that is to say,
| unquestioned--place. And that was good, too.
|
| They're saying that the pre-Internet media felt reliable to the
| average American because they were blissfully ignorant. Which
| is to say they agree with you.
|
| Personally, while I agree that there were issues with the media
| before, I do get the impression that the issues were fewer and
| farther between. It was usually the media going to bat for the
| establishment on issues of major policy (e.g., a war effort),
| and today it's the media going to bat for an ideological agenda
| (or rather 2-3 ideological agendas) for _every single little
| thing that can possibly be framed along that particular
| ideological axis_. Of course, there were publications that
| skewed liberal or conservative before (and someone will
| certainly respond to this with a short list of such examples
| before dropping the microphone triumphantly), but they hewed
| closely to the standards of journalism or else they were widely
| discredited.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| The entire analogy to the Book of Genesis is meant to
| illustrate a fallacious belief in the goodness of before times.
| There was no Eden. That was just the perception of a certain
| reader with a very limited perspective that this writer is
| trying to describe.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I'd move the time machine about 20 years later to the 70s. Yes,
| we still had 3 networks then. And all three (plus AP, UPI &
| Reuters) gave us a pretty middle-of-the-road view of the world.
| And, I would argue, we were a much more cohesive society
| because of this. By the 70s there was much more sensitivity for
| minorities then there was in the 50s and that was starting to
| show in journalism as well. Women's rights were making great
| strides - the ERA came very close to passing (something that
| likely couldn't happen now with so many state legislatures
| controlled by the right wing ). We were becoming very aware of
| environmental degradation and staring to do something about it.
|
| Having grown up in the 70s I find that era much preferable to
| today's 24/7, highly partisan news cycle. News outlets now are
| highly politicized and ideologically specialized. There is no
| cohesive vision for how to live together at this point. Sure,
| there were outliers back then (as the article suggests) - I
| vaguely remember John Birchers, but nobody took them seriously
| - now it's like Bircher views are mainstreamed and we're
| supposed to accept them as a viable view with some kind of
| equal footing among all the other views.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Here's a dirty secret: when the economy is growing people
| tend to be content and not too partisan. No need to be too
| concerned who is in power since it's unlikely they'll make
| your good life much worse. Maybe you won't benefit as much
| versus the other candidate but either one will result in a
| good life. The 70s are roughly when that stopped being the
| case in America.
|
| The actual income adjusted for inflation hasn't increased
| since the 70s despite economic growth. Income disparity has
| increased as wealth was concentrated in a small percentage of
| the population. Technology has made many jobs obsolete and
| it's only getting worse. College and medical costs have
| skyrocketed.
| kjsdfghj wrote:
| "Good" like when you're eating steak in The Matrix.
| kriskrunch wrote:
| Exactly my thought! Yellow journalism is another 20th century
| example. Disinformation is as ancient as writing.
|
| Articles on some topics are more commonly colored by the
| reporter's personal beliefs, and those change with the times.
|
| To fight this, I figured out how to block specific topics and
| sections from Google News, creating a simple prefilter with a
| browser plugin. Now, with most of the click bait distractions
| removed from my screen, I'm surprised to find that Google News
| actually has some interesting stuff in it.
| _vertigo wrote:
| Clearly sarcasm if you read beyond the 5th paragraph.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's clearly sarcasm at the first sentence, if you see the
| allusion to Genesis.
| mc32 wrote:
| This article parodies the mid-century American (which they are
| framing as a prototypical cosmopolitan white), however, they
| fail to acknowledge that this was typical of the medium
| everywhere.
|
| It was typical in mid-century Cuba, France, Japan, Brazil, etc.
| It wasn't a uniquely American quality.
|
| It was the product of the times and the technology --just as
| today the problem with disinformation and information control
| is everywhere and not just in America.
| [deleted]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > however, they fail to acknowledge that this was typical of
| the medium everywhere. It was typical in mid-century Cuba,
| France, Japan, Brazil, etc. It wasn't a uniquely American
| quality.
|
| They aren't arguing that this state of affairs was uniquely
| American...
| mc32 wrote:
| No, it's heavily implied. As if Americans are uniquely
| qualified to generate "the bad things".
|
| "In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they
| were good. Midcentury American man..."
|
| "Over frequencies our American never tuned in to..."
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| That doesn't imply that these things are _uniquely
| American_ , it only means that the article is scoped to
| America. If you write an article about the sky and point
| out that it's blue, it doesn't imply that the sky is the
| only thing that is blue.
| watwut wrote:
| I read these as American writing about America and issues
| there. It is ok for Americans to write about America
| itself, it is ok for them to not have to make
| international comparative study from every opinion piece.
| mc32 wrote:
| This is true but the piece is relying heavily on tropes
| to support its arguments.
| jscipione wrote:
| "In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were
| good." No they were not, these three organizations have always
| been in the business of top-down centralized information control
| where a few rich and powerful individuals use these organizations
| to control and subjugate the powerless masses.
|
| Since the social media revolution we now have alternatives to
| these centralized control structures. The push back to their loss
| of centralized control of information is labelled as
| "disinformation" and it is a disingenuous attempt for the cabal
| to maintain their power over us.
|
| Hundreds of millions of people have been killed by this cabal of
| ruling elites and their thirst for war and power. ABC, NBC, and
| CBS are the real sources of disinformation in this world from the
| Gulf of Tonkin incident to a Kentucky Gun Show misrepresented as
| Syrian warfare. By breaking their oligopoly on information we are
| for the first time in human history achieving real freedom and
| this is scaring the elites who seek to maintain their power over
| us by writing articles like this one.
|
| Break your chains, block out corporate media, seek real truth,
| and you will find it. And when you do, come back and we will
| fight side-by-side together against our corporate overlords and
| we will win our freedom.
| vmoore wrote:
| > Since the social media revolution we now have alternatives
|
| Yet ABC, NBC etc all have a Twitter feed with just as much
| contrived BS on their accounts
| jasonlotito wrote:
| "Break your chains, block out corporate media, seek real truth,
| and you will find it."
|
| Or you could try reading beyond the first sentence. Seriously,
| your first remark on the article makes it clear you didn't read
| any more. You made up your mind before you read the article.
|
| In fact, your comment is an example of what you rail against.
| What motives do you have that run counter to truth? What are
| you selling?
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| I am happy someone worded it for HN. Here in the trenches, we
| constantly mock the blatant "inaccuracy" (intended bias) of
| corporate information, but there is a disconnect in society
| with people who have never been confronted with the systematic
| bias of some topic in the media.
| starfallg wrote:
| When people argue that there shouldn't be a downvote option on
| HN, this is the type of comment that I'd point to as a
| counterpoint.
|
| It's the same type of populist drivel that led people to
| believe that they are fighting for their freedoms by rejecting
| food standards, environmental regulation and vaccinations.
|
| Everybody has an agenda. At least with large centralised
| organisations their position is relatively clear, compared to
| the murky dark money world of political influencers. Not taking
| sides, but this approach to the topic is absolutely toxic to
| civil discussion.
| paganel wrote:
| > At least with large centralised organisations their
| position is relatively clear,
|
| Unfortunately I don't see that as being the case, especially
| the "relatively clear" part. My first job in my early youth
| (~20 years ago) was to professionally read newspapers, I did
| that for about 3 years to get me through school, and even as
| a professional newspaper reader I couldn't get the "position"
| for most of the newspapers. Of course, the political rags
| were pretty obvious, but the mainstream newspapers seemed
| objective and with no clear bias.
|
| That has changed dramatically in the last few years (I had
| taken a break from reading the newspapers/magazines shortly
| before that). Now I open the Economist and I can see that
| almost every article on the likes of China or Russia has to
| include something, anything, that can be seen as negative,
| like "why don't are they like us, Westerners? Why don't they
| are ruled by a democracy? Because of that they are beneath
| us".
|
| That goes the other way, too. Major negative stuff happening
| in the US and in most of Europe is not presented under its
| true colours, there's always an undertone of "we will get
| through this, because we are a democracy and the the will of
| the people will finally prevail".
|
| And the Economist is on the soft side, just reading the
| headlines of the NYTimes makes it clear as day how biased
| they are, while the WashPo is owned by a literal oligarch
| (btw, why isn't anyone in the West up in arms about that?).
| The only mainstream newspaper that still retains a modicum of
| neutrality (or which manages to hide its biases pretty well)
| is the Financial Times.
|
| Again, it took me many years to realise all of this, I'm
| afraid lots of people are still blind to the biases I
| exemplified above.
| starfallg wrote:
| Not sure how your comment relates to that point. The bias
| of the Economist is well known. Same for the NYT and the
| Guardian, for example. Who their readership is and how they
| are funded is more or less public knowledge. The tint of
| their lens is more or less a given. So it's a known
| quantity, we can deal with that.
|
| What isn't so well known is who is funding the people
| making content on Youtube, or Facebook or TikTok. It's a
| unknown quantity, with the potential to do a lot of damage
| (to whoever the target is, good or evil), so much so that
| regimes like the China/CCP (and Russia to an increasing
| extent) are adamant that it must be controlled at all
| costs.
|
| Information is a tool. It can be used to do good, but also
| do terrible things and this is regardless of whether it is
| traditional media or social media.
| xkeysc0re wrote:
| If you read past the first two paragraphs you'd realize this
| was an ironical statement. But I guess this is HN now, where
| everything's made up and the points don't matter.
| md_ wrote:
| Heh.
|
| I subscribe to the New Yorker. Every week I open it on Monday
| and I probably read about half of it by Sunday. I live in
| Europe, so I'm keenly aware of when the weekly issue comes
| out. (Due to timezone differences, it's typically not
| available in the app until Monday afternoon, so I start
| reading over afternoon coffee, not morning coffee.)
|
| Every few weeks, within minutes or hours of a good 20-page
| article coming out--an article that will take me the week to
| digest--I see it posted on HN.
|
| And of course, all the top commenters have strong, strong
| opinions on it.
|
| Guess they're all just faster readers than I am.
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| Please delete your bashing of the HN community at large, so I
| can upvote you without reservation.
| jscipione wrote:
| Foot in mouth. I think you're right that the article is
| arguing against censorship in the name of combatting disinfo.
| I still can't tell but I think so. Go ahead and downvote me
| to oblivion.
| [deleted]
| lovich wrote:
| >By breaking their oligopoly on information we are for the
| first time in human history achieving real freedom...
|
| Didn't realize that seeing my aunt telling hundreds of people
| that there are microchips in all modern medicine was part of us
| experiencing real freedom for the first time in human history
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > Why, then, do buyers love digital advertising so much? In many
| cases, Hwang concludes, it's simply because it looks good at a
| meeting, blown up on an analytics dashboard: "It makes for great
| theater."
|
| This is the case with a lot of corporate "information". We've
| become gluttons for information but most of it absolutely fails
| at the task of informing. It just gives a false sense of
| confidence that we know what's happening and why and in what
| direction things are moving.
|
| I don't work anywhere near the ad industry, but this sort of
| behavior is hardly unique to them. It's part of a broader set of
| cultural behaviors.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >Indeed, it's possible that the Establishment needs the theater
| of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still
| makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump and the loss of faith in
| the decaying institutions of the West
|
| Pretty good conclusion, especially in light of the absolute
| disaster that is Afghanistan. Easier to blame social media for
| "disinfo" than acknowledge that decades of horrible leadership
| are what has caused lack of trust in institutions
|
| a few days ago the military said Kabul would hold for 90 days,
| within hours the Taliban was sitting in the Presidential Palace.
| US leaders either flat out lied or were horribly wrong, not sure
| which is worse. Either way, why would you put much faith in these
| people after being horribly wrong on so many decisions?
| WalterBright wrote:
| The article's author repeatedly presumes that disinformation is
| only coming from the right. This discredits the article, given
| that the author is apparently unaware of all the disinformation
| coming from the left.
| drewcoo wrote:
| What a strange distortion of history, beginning with the golden
| age of media. Somehow this piece seems to posit that if the same
| news was broadcast to the public on all the networks, then that
| was clearly the one real truth [TM]. The reality is that was
| heavily scrutinized, controlled American propaganda. Not only was
| there no far right wing news there, but there was also none of
| the actual left (red baiting and all).
|
| The difference is that in those days there was government control
| of many smaller media outlets. Now there is corporate capture of
| government and there are only half a dozen major media outlets.
| But that's a very different article.
| only_as_i_fall wrote:
| This is not very readable. It seems to mix irony and sarcasm into
| a long and meandering informative piece.
|
| The effect seems to be that this is a real slog of a read unless
| you share a bunch of preconceptions and assumptions with the
| author.
| marto1 wrote:
| It might be just me, but the typeface they're using isn't very
| readable either.
| Covzire wrote:
| It's also, perhaps ironically a "disinformation" piece in
| itself, like so much supposed introspection on the left, they
| are quick to point out and label right wing conspiracy theories
| and perceived attempts to deceive, but they completely ignore
| their own including the biggest ones, like Russian Collusion.
|
| It also has a built-in presumption that Brexit and Trump's
| election were somehow break downs of the Democratic system,
| even if it takes the "disinfo" angle to task somewhat. Those
| are only breakdowns from one then-minority viewpoint, but the
| minority is constantly claiming they have an absolute monopoly
| on what is real and true when they dismiss populism out of
| hand. Hint: They don't.
| yung_steezy wrote:
| I work in digital advertising analytics and we do try to mitigate
| the repeat customer phenomenon the author mentions. Typically we
| only record the first web visit from a household during the
| campaign window for example.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| People who are skeptical about the effectiveness of, say, the
| Covid vaccine are passionate about sharing what they've thought
| of, uncovered, or believe they've uncovered. People who believe
| that the vaccine is effective and worthwhile appear to be... less
| enthusiastic about backing up their claims. They'd rather just
| ban the people who disagree with them than address them in
| debate.
|
| Why is it that, consistently, on specific issues that come up
| over and over again, the side labelled "disinformation" is so
| willing to spend so much time explaining rationally why they
| believe what they believe while the other side is always so
| uninterested in making their case?
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| People believe we're storming the beaches at Normandy. There is
| no time for careful consideration. There is no time to question
| authority. Do what you're told or we're all going to die. This
| is not a completely unreasonable position for pandemics or
| other large scale emergencies. I think most people felt this
| way during the first round of "15 days to slow the spread".
| Since then the number of people who view the situation through
| this lens has waned.
| beervirus wrote:
| > Why is it that, consistently, on specific issues that come up
| over and over again, the side labelled "disinformation" is so
| willing to spend so much time explaining rationally why they
| believe what they believe while the other side is always so
| uninterested in making their case?
|
| We're tired of wasting our breath on irrational morons.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > We're tired of wasting our breath
|
| If you ever had, you'd be more convincing. I never believed
| that the earth was flat, or that the moon landing was a hoax,
| or that 9/11 was an inside job, but I have seen fascinating,
| engaging, intriguing, careful takedowns of all the "evidence"
| that the true believers of those conspiracy theories believe.
| My kids actually _did_ believe that the moon landing was a
| hoax at one point (thanks, YouTube!) until I pointed them to
| an article that debunks each of the conspiracy theory claims
| one by one in a way that appeals to rational intuition.
|
| We're - what, 20? - comments into this thread and I'm being
| downvoted for suggesting that more people are willing to
| question Covid and climate change, being called an irrational
| moron, but nobody has yet linked to an analysis of their
| principal claims about, say, urban heat zones and mRNA
| vaccines.
| beervirus wrote:
| Climate change is at least a complicated subject.
| Reasonable people can quibble about how the computer models
| are constructed, etc.
|
| For the vaccine, all you need to do is observe the millions
| of people who've gotten vaccinated, who almost without
| exception have not had serious reactions. And observe
| further that the vaccinated people are not dying of covid.
| mistermann wrote:
| > For the vaccine, all you need to do is...
|
| Serious question: all you need to do _to accomplish
| precisely what_?
| beervirus wrote:
| To understand that failing to take the vaccine doesn't
| make you a brave patriot. It just makes you a moron.
| mistermann wrote:
| What if there's a flaw in your premise: what if their
| goal isn't to be a brave patriot, then what?
|
| Think of it as if you are writing code for a simulation,
| that way you may be intuitively more focused on avoiding
| bugs.
| beervirus wrote:
| What do you think the goal is?
| mistermann wrote:
| In many cases, I doubt there's any particular goal. Who
| knows, this is millions of individual minds, unlike
| normal people I have no means of reading them.
| chasd00 wrote:
| you were this )( close to making a good argument. all you
| had to say was "to understand that taking the vaccine
| products you from covid" instead you have to turn it
| around and insult those who have not had the vaccine only
| furthering the divide.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| It comes down to power. power doesn't need to explain itself.
| Why expend the energy? just turn off their mic, ban their
| Facebook, disappear their YouTube, kick them off patreon, put
| them on the credit card block list, remove positive takes on
| them from search results, refuse to route their domain, then
| mock them when they complain.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than
| address them in debate.
|
| Personally, I'm not in favor of banning. On the topic of COVID
| and COVID vaccines, I've just avoided every "debate" and
| "discussion" from all sides and when someone at work wants to
| talk about it, I tell them to shove off (in more polite terms).
|
| However, I once made the mistake of trying to engage in a
| serious discussion/debate with Young Earth Creationists. That
| experience is what convinced me that it's better to just ignore
| certain groups, and, for better or worse, the COVID anti-
| vaxxers and anti-maskers have exhibited the same kind of
| behavior so I just ignore them as well.
|
| With YEC what I found was that:
|
| 1. They were perfectly capable of making a cogent, reasoned
| argument.
|
| 2. They were almost always starting from demonstrably false, or
| at least very questionable, axioms.
|
| 3. They would never entertain a discussion about the axioms,
| only about the conclusions.
|
| (3) is why no progress could be made. There was logic in the
| discussion, and I could follow their logic and understand how
| they reached their conclusions. Without the opportunity to work
| backward toward the axioms, though, we could never reach a
| satisfying conclusion to the discussion (even if it was just,
| "agree to disagree").
|
| In the situation of COVID, the anti-vaxxer and anti-masker
| crowds are somehow even _more_ emotionally charged than the
| Young Earth Creationists I used to know. Which further
| disinclined me to engage in the discussion, even if they have a
| point that 's worth listening to. And the nature of social
| media discussions is that, well, they mostly aren't. I mean,
| we're engaging in a discussion here on HN and even on this
| forum it gets pretty dicey at times. The stricter moderation
| (compared to, say, Reddit) helps a bit, but we go off the rails
| all the time and fail at the objective of coming together to
| form a discussion board.
|
| As to why the side labeled "disinformation" is so willing to
| spend the time, because of the belief that they are right and
| everyone else is wrong and needs to be set right, and the
| corresponding emotional charge that the belief brings with it.
| When the world is out to get you, you end up with a fight or
| flight response. Ever had someone tell you you were wrong and
| felt a small surge through your body? That's adrenaline, it's a
| natural response but then the choice is how to deal with it.
| Take a breath and calm down or lean into it and fight or flee
| from the situation. The _visible_ part is the "lean into it
| and fight" group, there are probably plenty of people that fit
| into the other two categories who just don't show up as often.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| It is unreasonable to expect every spurious claim to be engaged
| with. They are endless and an awful lot of them are based on
| irrational fear and tribalism so they likely can't be persuaded
| no matter.
|
| I am not pleased about the "both sides" rallying cry heard on
| every topic. It presumes that there are only two sides (recall
| that the objections will be endless) and it presumes they are
| both in earnest and have a reasoned predicate for their
| existence. This is not usually the case.
|
| There is of course real, actual debate going on about the
| safety and efficacy of the vaccines. These are based on
| research and data and there is no shouting. Then there's the
| "anti-vaxx" movement, rooted in party politics and paranoia.
| Screw that.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > It is unreasonable to expect every spurious claim to be
| engaged with
|
| It is absolutely reasonable, and if you, personally, want me,
| personally, to get a Covid vaccine, wear a mask, and drive an
| electric car, you, personally, will have to engage each and
| every spurious claim that people are _risking their
| livelihoods and overcoming censorship_ to share with me. If
| you don 't care, leave us alone to wallow in our
| disinformation until we die of Covid.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| No, it isn't reasonable and I don't care on an
| interpersonal level what you do as an individual, I only
| care about policies informing me on what I can expect in
| communal spaces.
|
| As more businesses, employers, and institutions arrive at
| policies one way or the other regarding the vaccine, then
| you can make a personal decision about what to do about
| that. No, you will not be able to raise any random
| objection and override the entire enterprise. It doesn't
| and can't work that way.
| mistermann wrote:
| > No, you will not be able to raise any random objection
| and override the entire enterprise. It doesn't and can't
| work that way.
|
| As an individual, you're correct. But a large enough
| group of such individuals seem to be able to have a
| noteworthy effect, at least based on all the complaining
| I hear about them.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Definitely. We all stand to be disappointed by the
| direction the wind blows, depending on how we feel about
| this issue.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than
| address them in debate.
|
| The anti-vaccine crowd doesn't engage in a fair debate, because
| they don't understand the rules/parameters of a debate or in
| some cases because they're not interested in a fair debate.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Climate change skeptics will talk your ear off about why
| climate change is a hoax - you literally can't get them to
| _stop_ telling why you should make no change whatsoever to
| your life.
|
| Climate change true believers, on the other hand, refuse to
| waste even one single word convincing the rest of us as to
| why we should all drive electric cars, stop using straws, and
| not run our air conditioners in the summers - things which,
| if they're serious, are necessary to ensure the survival of
| the species.
|
| That observation alone makes the skeptics look more
| compelling.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Climate change true believers, on the other hand, refuse
| to waste even one single word convincing the rest of us as
| to why we should all drive electric cars, stop using
| straws, and not run our air conditioners in the summers -
| things which, if they're serious, are necessary to ensure
| the survival of the species.
|
| I think this simply isn't true. Am I, personally, out there
| evangelizing for a greener life style? Absolutely not. But
| are there people out there doing so? Well, yes, to the
| extent that it becomes a comic trope among climate-change
| denialists (who are having a harder and harder time in the
| face of the increasingly evident reality of climate
| change). Think, for example, of all the hate for Greta
| Thunberg.
|
| I think it's just easier to remember vocal denialism--one
| can always shout "no" louder--than to remember the quieter
| and, frankly, boring recital of the same evidence.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I think this simply isn't true.
|
| It isn't, of course, something that is easily realizable
| through simple logic. And yet, so many _genuinely smart_
| people make this mistake - what could be going on?
|
| Of course, it is "a logical fallacy" of some kind, and
| most people seem more than content to point out their
| favorite and leave it at that. But a problem is: _people
| keep doing it_.
|
| In this case, what I think is going on is (for lack of a
| better term) "subconscious tautological categorization".
| They start by committing a standard logical fallacy (I'm
| not sure which one his would be), but when their
| attention is drawn to that fact (not all people behave
| like that), they ~pivot to something like "yes of course,
| I know that, I was just speaking loosely, you know what I
| mean don't be pedantic, etc etc etc". But what they are
| ultimately relying upon (once their conscious, logical
| mind has had its attention focuses on their error), is
| tautological, or _by definition_ categorization: the
| people that they are referring to _is limited to only the
| people that do those things_ - which is, of course,
| correct. But what they don 't notice is, it kind of takes
| the wind out of their argument, as they are essentially
| saying "some people (they will not say specifically who,
| or how many (in percentage terms), or describe a
| predictive model of any kind) do bad things". While this
| observation is literally true, it doesn't seem to be very
| important/useful to know, presumably less important than
| they had in mind when initially making the comment.
|
| I often wonder what the world would be like if people
| were as concerned with meta-cognition as they were with
| (for example) their physical appearance. My intuition
| suggests the world would be a very different place,
| considering that the world largely runs on top of human
| cognition.
|
| And this is just one example of the various funny ways in
| which people think, there are many others (like the
| percentage of even intelligent people's perception of
| reality that is based on their imagination). I think the
| reason no one notices is that it's just a constant in the
| environment, it's completely normal, it is The Water that
| we live in, similar to how we typically do not have
| conscious awareness of our breathing, or the background
| noise of a city, or the millions of other things going on
| around us that is filtered out by our consciousness. But
| a problem is: some things that the consciousness filters
| out might actually be very important, and the only way I
| can think of to deal with this problem is try to bring
| _some_ people 's conscious attention to the
| phenomenon/idea (although, it would be nice if there was
| a way to scale it up beyond making individual forum
| comments here and there - if anyone has any ideas on that
| or related ideas, please let me know).
| tzs wrote:
| https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
|
| https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-
| chan...
|
| https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/what-
| eviden...
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/article/climate-change-global-
| warmin...
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/weather-
| s...
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2995507/
|
| https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/clima/change/consequences_en
|
| https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-
| collections/climate/...
|
| https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/effects-of-climate-
| cha...
|
| https://www.myclimate.org/information/faq/faq-detail/what-
| ar...
|
| https://www.ucsusa.org/climate/impacts
|
| https://www.epa.gov/arc-x/implications-climate-change
|
| https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/effects-of/climate-change
| commandlinefan wrote:
| This is much more helpful and constructive than a
| downvote or a ban. Going through it now.
| watwut wrote:
| > Climate change true believers, on the other hand, refuse
| to waste even one single word convincing the rest of us as
| to why we should all drive electric cars, stop using
| straws, and not run our air conditioners in the summers -
| things which, if they're serious, are necessary to ensure
| the survival of the species.
|
| Oddly, I heard ton about those. I heard about climate
| change over 20 years ago and did not stopped periodically
| hearing about it. They haven't talked about electric cars
| and straws back then tho. The big topic used to be
| industrial pollution and opposition to those regulation is
| serious source of climate change skepticism.
|
| But as of now electric cars are subject of talk quite a
| lot, so are consumer lifestyle changes. There was mania
| around straws, tho I found that one unconvincing.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The same reason scientists don't write books to debunk
| pseudoscience. They don't sell and a negative is nearly
| impossible to disprove.
|
| Frankly, the correct information is mundane while the
| conspiracy claims are much more fun--ready made for the bored
| and unfulfilled, just add belief.
| Ardon wrote:
| I think how we got to this position is key - people _did_ try
| and explain why vaccines are safe and you should take them.
|
| And it didn't work.
|
| The thing that _does_ lover vaccine hesitancy is banning people
| spreading misinformation.
|
| It's unfortunate, but it's the discovered strategy for saving
| lives.
| chasd00 wrote:
| if you're going to ban information then you better be right
| 100% of the time. The bans on the lab leak thing blew all
| censorship credibility. That's the problem, if you're going
| to claim to be a "truth expert" then you better be right 100%
| of the time because the moment you're wrong you become part
| of the conspiracy.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > people did try and explain why vaccines are safe
|
| When? Where? I _avoid_ vaccine debates and even so I can 't
| help but come across all the conspiracy theories about the
| effectiveness of mRNA vaccines. The only counterpoint I've
| ever seen is "the science is too complicated for your feeble
| brain to comprehend, take the vaccine".
| 12elephant wrote:
| On the contrary, banning people makes people seek out their
| narrative even more.
|
| This idea that people aren't smart enough to make their own
| decisions and need you to spoon feed them the "right"
| information is the real problem here.
| evgen wrote:
| No it really doesn't. This has been demonstrated repeatedly
| online and the research so far is quite clear: if you make
| it harder to disseminate and discuss disinformation and
| hate speech then fewer people engage in the discussion or
| share the information. People may believe in stupid things,
| but lazy is even more powerful than stupid.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I'm more inclined to pay attention to the skeptics because
| _they 're the only ones saying anything_. Their opponents
| are just saying "obey".
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Yup, when you tear out someone's tongue that just makes
| the skeptic community more adamant about finding out what
| they have to say and why they are saying it.
|
| The people who are just saying "obey" are the ones who
| want power over everyone else.
| me_me_me wrote:
| > address them in debate
|
| Wow, i think this might be a standup routine.
|
| Have you ever interacted with facebook crazy people? People
| shouting at you their 'research' with smug superiority is one
| way communication not a debate.
| [deleted]
| ertian wrote:
| I think the difference is faith in authority figures. People
| who trust those in authority will believe what they're told
| (quite correctly, in this case), but they won't understand the
| full argument--they're not authorities themselves. That is,
| after all, the whole point of having authority figures and
| experts: the world is far too complex to understand everything
| yourself.
|
| People who don't believe the authority figures need a reason
| _why_, and will concoct something. They need to validate their
| skepticism, both to themselves and to others.
|
| If a skeptic really wanted to understand the argument for the
| COVID vaccine (in this case), all the information is out there
| to be had. But to really understand it they'd have to become
| experts themselves--actual experts, with an understanding of
| epidemiology, statistics, immune responses, and so on. Years of
| study. A google search that points out a few problems in
| isolation doesn't cut it.
|
| A certain degree of skepticism for authority is definitely
| healthy, but I'd say it borders on pathological in modern
| American society.
| chasd00 wrote:
| The problem is anyone can be an "authority" if they're
| persuasive enough. Trust in authority is dangerous from any
| point of view. Evaluating authority is the hard part, my
| mother in law sees my brother in law as an authority on
| everything because he has a PHD from a prestigious school. I
| see him as an authority on fossilized turtle teeth but that's
| about it.
| guerrilla wrote:
| This doesn't match up with reality though. Most anarchists
| are in the science camp and thus wearing masks, getting
| vaccines and, fighting deforestation, fighting climate
| change, etc. I can't think of any group with less trust in
| authority.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Disinformation aside, let's just consider for a second that
| people may be simply consuming information that they want to
| hear, rather than taking in information that the media thinks or
| wants them to hear.
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| You're probably correct.
|
| The problem I see is one "alternate reality" starts to censor
| another "alternate reality".
|
| It's just a new form of warfare. The war for control of your
| mind and the shaping of beliefs about reality.
|
| A world where truth isn't part of the information or power
| structure means that He which controls the narrative controls
| reality. Arguably more terrifying that some false options and
| beliefs in the world.
| blinkingled wrote:
| Isn't it all the same really - people want to hear narratives
| that confirm their bias. Internet/modern communications makes
| it easy for media and politicians to both pick up on that and
| reach out to the right group of people with the targeted
| misinformation.
|
| People are too much in love with their beliefs - critical
| thinking problem.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| My primary issue with public choice theory is omission of
| information asymmetry. How are consumers supposed to choose
| options which are not presented?
|
| See also the power of the default option.
| silisili wrote:
| I'm not so sure it's specifically that always, maybe initially.
|
| Perhaps someone has a strong opinion about a thing. They -know-
| they are right, and every news source is wrong. Until they find
| one also right. So far, we agree, that's what they want to
| hear.
|
| But they keep turning to this source, who is spreading wild
| theories and untruths in other facets. But they were so right
| about issue X, they must be right about this too!
|
| I think this pretty much sums up why so many 'conservatives'
| ended up unvaccinated. I cannot imagine that they set out
| wanting to hear that vaccines are unsafe or will give you
| microchips. Something/someone they trusted led them down this
| awful path.
|
| As much as I support free speech, the last few years have
| really shown me the dangers of it, as well. But how can you
| regulate? Any arbiter is going to have a bias.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/4WpXO
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| TLDR for the article: Disinformation has less impact than we
| think. Societal / institutional problems are the real culprits
| for our dysfunction. Disinformation is just a convenient
| scapegoat.
|
| Counterpoint: QAnon, incel terrorism, Plandemic, other fully-
| internet-driven extremist ideologies.
|
| You need look no further than religions, often invented by single
| charismatic individuals, to see how powerful isolated claims of
| Truth can be.
|
| I think that societal / institutional problems has indeed created
| a powder keg. But disinformation itself, its presence, lights the
| fuse.
|
| With disinformation's "answers", it provides targets for people's
| pent up rage. Whether it's police officers or liberal elites or
| billionaires or Muslims or Chads, people learn who the _enemy_
| is, as well as their _evil deeds_. If you defeat this enemy, your
| problems will go away.
|
| The concrete result is wars, interpersonal violence, riots,
| hamstrung governments, and insurrections. All stirred up because
| of explicit falsehoods.
|
| Ideally, we'd fix both the powder keg (societal and institutional
| problems) and the lighting of its fuse, disinformation.
| didibus wrote:
| Agreed, I think it's missing the chicken/egg issue.
|
| Societal and institutional problems might be the real cause,
| but is disinformation the way out? Or is it how you get locked
| into even more glaring societal and institutional problems,
| which will then reinforce the disinformation once more, causing
| even more problems, etc.
|
| For me, a lot of this is a downward spiral, and you can see a
| lot of countries that are just stuck in this state as well, all
| ideology, constant tyranny, they can never get out of. Try to
| break free and only make room for a stronger ideology to take
| over.
|
| At some point the people need to have enough common sense
| together to stop this cycle, and get themselves out of those
| societal and institutional problems.
| golemotron wrote:
| Talk about clickbait.. I thought Harpers was shutting down.
| pixxel wrote:
| > Selling the story of disinformation
|
| FYI
| [deleted]
| djanogo wrote:
| "Joseph Bernstein is a senior reporter at BuzzFeed News", would
| have saved few minutes had they put that info at the top.
| javajosh wrote:
| Great beginning, because this captures perfectly the feelings of
| so many, especially older, Americans. Even _dissent_ feels like
| it was easier back then, when it was hippies vs. squares, a
| simple yes or no on Vietnam, yes or no on the Civil Rights Act.
|
| There are two glaring omissions from this article. First is any
| mention of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent [1], which the author
| spends a lot of time loosely recapitulating. The other is a lack
| of sensitivity to the Boomers and the (non-geek) Gen Xers that
| were simply not exposed to online anything and so do not have
| immunity, and they generally don't have a good _feel_ for dealing
| with modern information systems.
|
| The upshot is that I think this is a transient, but because of
| better health outcomes for the elderly, it's gonna be a long and
| painful one, because easily manipulated Boomers are going to be
| voting for a long, long time.
|
| The problem is largely Fox News. Fox has a strangle-hold on the
| older minds and gives cover and support to the online insanity,
| specifically because it's format isn't the news, it's a news
| walk-through (like a game walk-through), which makes you feel
| like you're good at consuming the news, feel like you have the
| right opinions, all while saving you the trouble of actually
| having to think.
|
| The solution, I'm sorry to say, is not teaching critical
| thinking, or appealing to better emotions, but rather an equal-
| and-opposite channel: a news walk-through with the same emotional
| profile, but with opposite opinions to Fox.
|
| With luck, such a channel would become equally popular and cancel
| out the Fox effect, and leave the actual political decision-
| making to the critical thinkers.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
| 1-6 wrote:
| > Fox has a strangle-hold on the older minds
|
| When most people think of Fox News, they think boomers. You
| might be right considering that the commercials they repeat
| target that demographic. As a non-boomer, however, it is
| refreshing to escape away from the blame Trump on everything
| narrative. I have a profound respect for older Americans and
| enjoy asking about history from their perspective. It's always
| engaging and fun when things are discussed in hindsight.
|
| > The solution, I'm sorry to say, is not teaching critical
| thinking, or appealing to better emotions, but rather an equal-
| and-opposite channel: a news walk-through with the same
| emotional profile, but with opposite opinions to Fox.
|
| Isn't that the point of CNN (or the point of Fox whichever way
| you look at it)? Cable news is exactly that, a commentary of
| today's news. Unfortunately all the news broadcasts have gone
| to cable especially during a time when there are cord-cutters
| everywhere. News isn't free over-the-air anymore. You have to
| belong to a certain segment to enjoy (or be susceptible to)
| that news.
| javajosh wrote:
| Some of the nicest, most generous, good-hearted people I know
| are Fox-addicted boomers. THE biggest assholes I know are
| liberals. My objection to Fox and it's audience is not
| personal. Fox is exactly like heroin: it's dangerous to the
| users, but it doesn't mean the users are bad people. In fact
| the users are in a lot of pain and are doing their best to
| manage it with the drug.
|
| Fox represents an extraordinary disconnect from reality - and
| increasingly, just watching it, and buying into it,
| represents an act of proud American defiance, even if it's
| wrong. And yet the underlying goals are sound: they want a
| safe, healthy, wealthy country. Yes, they also prefer white
| people, and Christians, and resent being forced into
| accepting crazy diversity shit like new pronouns (one I agree
| with, actually - only transfolk should get to switch
| pronouns!). They see the way the left attacks men, and
| masculinity, the way #MeToo equates allegation with guilt,
| and object to it by going too far in the other direction. But
| the resistance to liberal excess is real and comes from a
| good place - and liberals themselves can't do it lest they be
| lumped in with rapists and abusers and ostracized.
|
| But goddamn, those Fox lies, big and small, come fast and
| furious from Fox, 24/7, and it's _terrible_. Their agenda is
| clear for anyone to see, and there is nothing Fox won 't say,
| no tortured argument or shameless innuendo they won't make,
| to forward that agenda. It's actually painful for me to
| watch, even if I think there are plenty of valid things to
| criticize modern American liberalism about.
| watwut wrote:
| > a news walk-through with the same emotional profile, but with
| opposite opinions to Fox.
|
| You wont find truth in the middle of two lies. Issue with Fox
| is not merely that they have different opinions. It is
| staggering amount of lies. Opposite of it are lies in another
| direction.
|
| And in addition, you can actually find lies in different
| direction then Fox. It is just that, more lies dont solve these
| issues.
| javajosh wrote:
| It's not about finding truth, it's about solving the
| practical problem that Fox controls older minds and their
| votes. If the key to older minds is naive emotional
| manipulation, then it makes sense to use the same techniques
| for the opposite positions. If you use different techniques,
| more rational ones, less manipulative ones, more honest ones,
| then it will fail because people just won't watch. There is
| clearly a demand for what Fox provides; my idea is to keep
| giving it to people, but neuter it's real political
| influence.
|
| FWIW, this is not a happy thought. I want people to be
| better, to want to know and understand, to recognize when
| they're being manipulated, lied to - when they WANT to be
| lied to. But I think that's asking too much, and it's tried
| again and again and always fails.
|
| It's the emotions, and it always has been. They want a bad
| guy, they want simple explanations, they want to feel like
| they have special, non-obvious insight, and they don't want
| to earn any of it. So give it to them.
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| I'm with you. CNN is trying to straddle the fence between being
| a legitimate news source, and being a Fox-equivalent for the
| not-very-smart masses. Only Fox is fully cynical about it,
| knowing precisely how credulous their audience is and spoon-
| feeding them fabricated infotainment in harmony with Murdoch's
| worldview.
|
| I think we, as the intellectual "elites", need to accept the
| following ugly reality:
|
| 1) A huge portion of the human population is _highly_
| susceptible to propaganda.
|
| 2) Exposing them to nuanced reality doesn't help them. In fact,
| anything complicated turns them off. They want simple truths.
|
| 3) This subpopulation is never going to change, and they're
| always going to be with us.
|
| Given this reality, the only realistic option to protect our
| interests, aside from totalitarianism, is to feed this
| subpopulation counter-propaganda. To provide an alternative,
| easy-to-digest narrative that's aligned with humanism /
| Enlightenment values, but that is _extremely_ dumbed down: The
| Voltaire Factor for the Hopelessly Credulous. The irony here
| isn 't lost on me, but I see no gentle alternative.
| gambler wrote:
| Too many words, but the basic analysis is good.
|
| A lot of what's being currently said about "disinformation" is
| completely incoherent and makes little sense if you just track it
| over time. As late as in 2014 social media was presented as a
| force for good. ("Wisdom of the crowds", etc.) Just couple years
| later it was rebranded as some kind of machine where evil people
| brainwash idiots into becoming evil people. Who are the idiots?
| Well, given that YouTube and Facebook have _billions_ of users,
| it seems most humans on the planet are shoved into that category
| now. Everything they see and say needs to be carefully curated by
| professionals, lest the crowds go mad.
|
| Meanwhile, what are the incentives to, say, post an intelligent
| and comprehensive YouTube comment? There were none in 2014 and
| there are none right now. The UI, the up-voting process, the very
| (lack of) structure in how comments are displayed and sorted all
| encourage verbal vomit, and that's exactly what YouTube gets. In
| general, social media _structure_ usually provides zero
| incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don
| 't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what
| the executives say.
|
| I recommend everyone to read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding
| Media. Despite being written in 1964 it presents a much more
| useful analytical framework to really understand social media
| than anything I've seen published in the last few years.
| autokad wrote:
| Liberals loved social media when they were using it to their
| benefit, remember the Obama Universities? how he was praised
| for using organized efforts to bring up content you want and
| burry content you don't want. Someone who worked for his
| administration came to us and showed us some of the dasboards
| that they use and some tips and tricks (including buying fake
| accounts to get followers that will lead to organic followers).
|
| They got so good at it, they berried dissenting view to the
| point they didn't even hear it anymore, and were completely
| blind sided when they found out people actually disagreed with
| them.
|
| The real subversion of democracy was the blaming of 'fake news'
| for Trump beating Clinton. It was used do discredit the
| election and discredit the views of the millions that voted for
| him.
|
| To be clear, the dems/liberals dont want to get rid of fake
| news and control, they just want to be the only ones
| controlling it. This is why its 'no surprise' that big tech
| agrees with them, big tech was helping them in the first place!
| they just want more power to silence the right.
| didibus wrote:
| > As late as in 2014 social media was presented as a force for
| good. ("Wisdom of the crowds", etc.) Just couple years later it
| was rebranded as some kind of machine where evil people
| brainwash idiots into becoming evil people. Who are the idiots?
| Well, given that YouTube and Facebook have billions of users,
| it seems most humans on the planet are shoved into that
| category now
|
| I don't think that's true, because from what I remember there
| is less than 1% of viewers who leave comments.
|
| So the "idiots" I guess would be small vocal minorities. The
| question is how far their influence goes?
|
| But it's very possible that a ton of people don't engage in the
| comments and discussions on social media, because they don't
| find the design of it suitable for intelligent discourse, and
| maybe that leaves you with only idiotic comments.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I've seen some informal analysis that claims that the ubiquity
| of smartphones and the successful transition of the massive
| social networks to mobile is what specifically led to many of
| the alleged negative societal effects (increased political
| polarization, for example, although there are many other
| examples). The thinking goes that it's the all-day thumb-
| scrolling addiction loop on a tiny device that leads to these
| negative outcomes even more so than what was supposedly already
| happening with the pre-smartphone rise of social media.
|
| Your mention of 2014 might be compatible with this line of
| thinking. Facebook famously abandoned its mobile HTML5 stack
| and "went all in" on mobile in 2012. They also acquired
| Instagram in late 2011, and WhatsApp in 2013.
| rectang wrote:
| What if what drives YouTube profits isn't necessarily
| substance, but _engagement_ (to a first-order approximation)?
|
| Perhaps the comments are already optimized, each as a sort of
| micro-clickbait? There seem to be a lot of users who are highly
| motivated to participate in the "U! No U!! NO U!!!!" back and
| forth.
| foobarian wrote:
| > In general, social media structure usually provides zero
| incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I
| don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter
| what the executives say.
|
| That makes me think of the Russian math culture. Imagine if
| there was some way to create incentives via some Social Media
| NG to encourage that kind of thoughtful discourse.
| mistermann wrote:
| > The UI, the up-voting process, the very (lack of) structure
| in how comments are displayed and sorted all encourage verbal
| vomit, and that's exactly what YouTube gets. In general, social
| media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in
| real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being
| addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives
| say.
|
| I think you might be literally the first person I've ever
| encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I
| mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement or
| negative. Very often, people "know" that it is not the problem,
| yet oddly have a very strong aversion to sharing how it is they
| know that.
|
| I think it would be kind of hilarious if this was in fact (but
| unknown) one of the root causes of our problems, but no one has
| the ability to even consider the idea.
| notanzaiiswear wrote:
| I thought it was well known that the algorithms optimise for
| stress and anger, because it drives more engagement. I think
| it might even be involuntarily - the algorithms may have been
| set to train for enhanced engagement, and hate and anger
| happen to be the solution.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > I think you might be literally the first person I've ever
| encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I
| mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement
| or negative.
|
| So they give you a downvote, a quippy snarky Tweet in
| response to disagree with you that there is a lack of
| thoughtful, deep thinking about topics.
| vngzs wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is the joke in multiple John Oliver web
| segments [0]. It's pretty well-understood that the YouTube
| design is not conducive to long-form discussion.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbw0gJHHBk
| kerblang wrote:
| It's kind of hard to find the article's point, so TLDR: People
| hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see, and so
| "disinformation/misinformation" is just giving them what they're
| asking for, not some dark sinister ingenious plan that
| masterfully brainwashes otherwise reasonable folks.
|
| I noticed this back during the infamous Comet Ping-Pong incident,
| where a random foreigner concocted an Onion-esque joke article
| that was obviously ridiculous, but people hated Hillary so much
| they bought in anyhow. Even after the author admitted it was a
| complete fabrication people wouldn't give up on the idea, and of
| course one guy arrived at the restaurant with a rifle intending
| to kill some sex predators and even fired bullets in the ceiling,
| then gave himself up when he couldn't the sex predators and went
| to jail.
|
| Anyhow it's not a perfectly convincing argument, but even a
| sociopath will readily tell you: Some people can be easily
| manipulated, and some can't. Attacking the information itself is
| really not getting at the root of the problem.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information
| must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some
| standard. Otherwise, why care what people read and watch?"
|
| This is the most interesting point in the article. Why _should_
| we care? People believe all kinds of crazy stuff, and still do
| good things nearly all the time.
|
| Strange beliefs rarely cause violence... certainly not often
| enough to worry about it. Sept 11 was probably the worst case of
| that, and we worried way too much.
|
| Maybe day to day there are more minor things that add up, but
| there's not a lot of evidence that these minor things are any
| worse than before. As far as I can tell gay marriage is very
| widely accepted pretty much everywhere in the country. The SCOTUS
| decision declaring sexual orientation as protected under the
| Civil Rights Act was written by ... a Trump appointee.
|
| So it really comes down to voting. That's what everyone is
| worried about: if you believe the "wrong" things you'll vote for
| the "wrong" person. It's all political.
|
| And that makes the war on disinformation seem a lot less noble,
| and a lot more prone to abuse. After all, everyone already knows
| who the "right" candidate is, so disinformation is anything that
| might get the other one elected. That makes the algorithm easy.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > This is the most interesting point in the article. Why should
| we care? People believe all kinds of crazy stuff, and still do
| good things nearly all the time.
|
| Storming the Capital, loss of faith in our election system,
| believing vaccines & masks are a personal choice that doesn't
| affect others, a loss of common beliefs in America, etc - those
| seem like rather undesired changes in belief/behavior because
| of bad information.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Your list includes only one real action: storming the
| capitol. The rest reinforce my point; you are worried about
| what other people _think_ out of proportion to what people
| actually _do_.
| [deleted]
| pcmoney wrote:
| This article could have been 1/3rd as long and contained way more
| data. Overall, I agree that online ads and disinformation have
| been give a god like aura that is not deserved.
|
| As a percentage of views on platforms like facebook the amount of
| outright misinformation is miniscule, 10s of millions vs the 100s
| of Billions. Now if you deign misinformation as "information I
| disagree with/dont like" then sure that number goes up.
|
| There was no "black magic" at Cambridge Analytica, those guys
| were idiots with data they didn't understand selling promises
| they couldn't deliver.
|
| FB and Google are not "grimly secretive" compared to other F500s
| or say Apple? They are pretty transparent and their employees are
| still notoriously loose lipped. Also there has always been
| "yellow journalism".
|
| I agree that the fight against disinformation is likely to be
| worse than the disinformation itself.
| fortuna86 wrote:
| > I agree that the fight against disinformation is likely to be
| worse than the disinformation itself.
|
| It what way?
| pcmoney wrote:
| Censorship is bad. Once we start allowing it it only
| increases.
|
| Misinformation is subjective. There is nobody we can trust to
| be the arbiter of what is misinformation and what isn't.
|
| Also the first attempts have failed terribly.
| npilk wrote:
| I'm saddened by the harsh reaction so far, which seems based
| mostly on the first couple of paragraphs of a thoughtful and
| well-written essay. The discussion of online persuasion being
| used by both advertisers and spreaders of disinformation, and the
| many incentives that exist for different parties to accept that
| "social media" is an all-powerful manipulation machine, is
| particularly interesting.
|
| I like this in part because the conclusion is strangely
| optimistic - we have more power than we think, if only we can
| recognize it.
| mc32 wrote:
| It would help if the author refrained from poor framing and
| abusing the trope of the blithe self-centered American
| presented as if we were the only ones culpable of such
| infraction.
|
| Let's have a 360 review, I'll taint it by first talking about a
| bunch of bad stuff everyone has done, but I'll pin it on you
| for this review, after I've said a bunch of bad stuff, I'll
| redeem you a little by offering some hope, how does that sound?
| exo-pla-net wrote:
| The first out of the gate on new submissions are the knee-jerk
| crazies who didn't read the article, and who want to push their
| agenda instead of thinking about and discussing things.
|
| Comment quality improves over time. As your own comment
| reassuringly demonstrates.
| specialist wrote:
| > _the many incentives that exist for different parties_
|
| Someone(s) should update the Five Filters models from
| Manufacturing Consent to account for social medias. Compare the
| social network media ecosystem to the prior broadcast and print
| medias.
|
| Here's my stab at it:
|
| The Five Filters are Owners, Advertisers, Sources, Flak, and
| War.
|
| Owners (social networks) took most of Advertisers' economic
| power for themselves, flipping that power relationship. With
| loss of status, Advertisers' power to control dialog and shape
| opinion largely disappeared.
|
| To reduce costs, prior Owners debased Sources by replacing news
| with infotainment and drama/comedy with reality TV. The current
| Owners reduced costs even further by making the audience their
| own Sources. Trolling, conspiracy, karma, gossip, outrage _IS_
| the new content. Genius.
|
| While social media Owners became the biggest economic winners,
| Flak became the cultural winners, displacing Advertisers.
| Social media eliminates provenance (authenticity) by laundering
| (disintermediation) content. Flak now enjoys impunity that
| Advertisers could only dream of.
|
| For lack of a well defined enemy, War turned us against each
| other.
|
| --
|
| Two aspects of the rise of social media confuse me.
|
| Why haven't Advertisers revolted? Owners and Flak continues to
| steal their lunch money, and they just take it.
|
| The battle lines for the free speech haven't been updated for
| social media. New lines had to be drawn with the advent of
| broadcast media. (Duh.) No one anticipated the function and
| impact of algorithmic recommenders. Total game changer. So we
| should recognize and accept the new reality and update Section
| 230 accordingly.
|
| Of course, Flak benefits most from this willful blindspot, and
| is best able to shape the dialog, to better defend their
| spoils.
|
| Owners will oppose any change by default, because why not? The
| status quo is pretty terrific.
|
| --
|
| Manufacturing Consent's Five Filters
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent#Propagan...
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| > So we should recognize and accept the new reality and
| update Section 230 accordingly.
|
| The Owners have successfully convinced their subjects that
| this is a bad idea.
|
| That said, we must tread lightly with the precarious Section
| 230 and any new modification.
|
| Edit: Owner's are down voting you fast.
| specialist wrote:
| No worries. Arguing on HN is batting practice.
|
| After reading and listening a lot, I honestly still have no
| clue if or how Section 230 should be updated.
|
| Best I've come up with is restoring provenance
| (authenticity). Which then triggers the Freedom
| Speeches(tm) advocates, who purposefully misconstrue any
| constraint or accountability of Owners or Flak as an
| existential threat to Sources. The faux outrage is all so
| banal, predictable. As if our society has never had this
| argument before, ad nauseum, and this iteration is
| something really special.
| prvc wrote:
| >I'm saddened by the harsh reaction so far, which seems based
| mostly on the first couple of paragraphs of a thoughtful and
| well-written essay. The discussion of online persuasion being
| used by both advertisers and spreaders of disinformation, and
| the many incentives that exist for different parties to accept
| that "social media" is an all-powerful manipulation machine, is
| particularly interesting.
|
| I have read more of it that that, and I found it to be lacking
| in original thinking, and poorly written. As for the
| effectiveness of persuasion, this has been studied
| quantitatively for quite some time now, and it can't be hand-
| waved away.
| npilk wrote:
| Persuasion on social media is certainly effective. But I
| think it's also worth reflecting on the number of people who
| would still believe false news stories/conspiracy
| theories/etc in a hypothetical world without social media,
| and what techniques we might use in that world to combat the
| issue.
|
| As for original thinking, I may not be as well-read on these
| topics as others. Some of the ideas seemed obvious once I
| read them, but I didn't think I'd seen them before. Example:
| "disinformation" becoming a catch-all word for "things I
| disagree with".
| goatlover wrote:
| We don't have to consider a hypothetical world. We can just
| look at history from before social media. And yes plenty of
| people believed in conspiracy theories and spread
| misinformation. Witch trials, the red scare and satanic
| panic were a thing prior to social media. So was the fake
| moon landing and alien abductions.
|
| So with social media, the question is whether the problem
| is magnified significantly, or it's just more visible now.
| froh wrote:
| "social media" has simplified and amplified spreading
| disinformation/biased worldviews significantly:
|
| in the paper communication age not inly did it require
| layout/typesetting and printing.
|
| in addition ad profiling and individalized targeting now
| allows dissimination to exactly the desired audience,
| world wide at very low cost.
| andyxor wrote:
| TLDR "anything I don't agree with is disinformation and needs to
| be silenced, also orange man baaad"
| ArtDev wrote:
| If you read the whole article (and please do before you comment)
| you will see the main point of the article.
|
| I agree that the problems with pithy hyperpartisan sound-bite
| media is nothing new. Social media is just another form of media,
| with all its problems, it just does it faster. It is also harder
| to track and easier to create.
|
| I had to quit Facebook because I found myself policing my friends
| shared content that was factually wrong. Fake tiny-home
| giveaways, distorted facts that I agreed with politically but
| were factually just plain wrong and other junk. Unlike other
| forms of media, the difference was that I could police this
| disinformation, if I wanted to be "that guy".
|
| I don't work for Facebook and didn't want to police their
| platform. So I just quit the stupid platform altogether along
| with their sister site, Instagram.
|
| Side note: Its ironic that this guest writer on Harpers actually
| works for Buzzfeed; where journalistic integrity is a joke.
| werber wrote:
| Buzzfeed news has some suprisingly good content. Like, Pulitzer
| Prize winning journalism now coexists with listcles and quizes.
| prvc wrote:
| The article author's role in the media, up to this point, was to
| perform the same function as what he terms "Big Disinfo", but in
| a pettier, vigilante fashion (i.e. pursuing "cancellations"). I
| suppose, in the view of the article, it boils down to the
| question of who owns that turf.
| cubano wrote:
| So let me get this straight...
|
| Facebook is the reason that Trump got elected?? This is possibly
| the most asinine thing I've heard in a very long time.
|
| Trump got elected for several reasons, and Facebook had nothing
| to do with it.
|
| 1. H. Clinton was perhaps the worse presidential candidate in the
| history of the Republic. She rarely if ever campaigned in the all
| important Rust Belt states, she could not even articulate a
| reason, when asked, about why she wanted to be President.
|
| 2. She and her husband were sitting on a _very suspect_ war chest
| of like $168mil US...remember, these were the same people who
| complained 15 years earlier when Bill left the Presidential digs
| that they were like totally broke with little or no savings.
|
| So this couple had earned WELL over $160mil (not counting their
| quite significant expenses) in 15 years since Bill left office?
| Why? Why in the world were so many people just giving them
| millions of dollars?
|
| To many a hard-working US voters who have struggled their entire
| lives to save a small amount for retirement, this smelled of "pay
| to play" on-the-come corruption...and she didn't even try to hide
| it!
|
| For these reasons, and several more but I don't have the time to
| post them, H. Clinton did not get elected President in 2016,
|
| Just to keep the record straight.
| joezydeco wrote:
| On top of all of that, the Obama recovery from the 2008
| meltdown started the K-shaped split. People came back from the
| recession, but not everyone got back to where they were. Many
| were just plain left behind.
|
| It was very fertile ground for Trump to come along and address
| the anger of the lower middle class and promise them that they
| could get their share again.
| notanzaiiswear wrote:
| My takeaway from the article is that at last there is study
| showing Facebook had little effect on the election.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| Yeah, well... It'd be child's play to write a list like that
| about Trump. Using a foundation's money to buy a second-rate
| portrait of himself comes to mind, and that was found illegal
| in an actual court. Or, if you are speculating about respective
| finances of the candidates, that HC's tax returns for the last
| 20 years were public, while your squeaky-clean candidate is
| litigating to this day to keep them secret.
|
| But the article isn't about re-litigation of that election, or
| the next one. It starts from the premise that the result of the
| election was unprecedented, and that someone like Trump would
| not have had a chance in earlier times.
|
| In a way, the article indeed doesn't so much speak _to_ you,
| but _about_ you, wondering what cultural factors are needed to
| support the sort of emotional state that would lead people to
| glorify a half-bit wannabe gangster.
| kneel wrote:
| The mainstream media blasted the entire populace with a cold war,
| KGB thriller, pee tape conspiracy theory for 4 years straight. It
| wasn't just cable news, it was NYT/WSJ/WashPo piling onto the
| misinformation.
|
| In the end it turns out there was much hoopla about nothing, a
| giant psyop by the establishment powers that now want to earn
| your trust back.
| guerrilla wrote:
| True but I think you might be getting downvoted because that
| fails to account for the time leading up to the election (and
| Brexit I guess) which is what a lot of the people commenting on
| this subject are interested in.
| rat87 wrote:
| He's probably downvoted for being wrong about collusion
| rat87 wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're trying to say but evidence
| overwhelmingly suggests that former President Trump colluded
| with Russia (a hostile foreign power) for personal electoral
| gain in exchange for decisions which benefited the Russian
| government. The problem isn't with the news media reporting on
| this it is, far from nothing, the problem is with Republican
| leadership refusing to put country ahead of party and get rid
| of Trump
| TrispusAttucks wrote:
| Your comment is proof that the disinformation campaign the OP
| is talking about worked.
| didibus wrote:
| I think that actually points towards the issue of social media.
| Even without explicit collaboration from US actors, Russian
| actors are able to interfere in elections and other processes
| through reaching a large US populace on social media.
|
| Prior media would have been a lot harder to coerce by foreign
| agents. New social media are way easier to take advantage of as
| a foreign power.
|
| For example, I'm able to participate in this debate without
| even being American. I have new reach and influence over
| Americans I never had before. How many people commenting here
| aren't American? Half the comments could be from Russians all
| we know.
|
| That Trump didn't ask for their help doesn't mean that he
| didn't play into their hand.
|
| In a strange way though, you can't dissociate them anymore. He
| could very well have won all by himself, hacked email or not,
| fake accounts or not, etc. But they did hack and leak her
| emails, and they did create fake accounts, and had troll farms
| targeted at American voters.
|
| I can see the hesitancy to acknowledge that, because it could
| discredit your own win, but it's also a very interesting new
| scenario that didn't exist before, which is that foreign powers
| didn't have direct means of communication with such a large
| portion of your citizenry as we do now.
|
| If I were to speak for the past, it was actually the US media
| that were one of the few to be able to reach into other
| countries populace through movies, books, games, and all that.
| But it was very hard for non-US media to reach Americans, and
| that's no longer the case.
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