Hit Piece on Snopes.com

[Aepervius]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

It does not. It simply assign a degree of veracity to a story. It does not stop its publication, it does not stop people spreading it. There is no censorship here.

 

[crescent]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

Totalitarian governments traditionally generate fake news to help cement their hold over people.

Remember the Iraqi Baathist party official (can't remember his name) who held press conferences detailing the great victories of the Iraqi Army over the U.S. right up until the U.S. forces took control of Bagdad?

Remember Stalin's efforts to edit people out of old photos?

Remember Hitler's many stories of Jewish atrocities, Blood Libel and all that.

Fake news has always been a tool of oppression, and I am supportive of any effort to verify news and to debunk and expose that which is false.

 

[Davidm]

The right has been attacking Snopes for a while now. When I attempt to debunk some meme by posting a link to Snopes, someone responds that it's a left-wing site funded by George Soros. When I ask them for some proof that Soros is connected, they demand proof that he isn't. When I show them instances where Snopes has debunked left-wing claims they say that they only do that in order to appear credible.
How can you possibly reason with someone who thinks like that?

 

[blutoski]

It a yelling fire in the theater issue. You release a fake story and some idiot with a gun shows up to free the trafficked kids at a pizza restaurant.

Also, label something as fake news does not censor it, it's just another person's free speech. But then of course you will have competing political interests, some of which will no doubt, label real news they don't like as fake.

I think this will be the biggest challenge for outlets that decide to take on the mantle of qualifying postings for legitimacy: the problem doesn't lend itself to crowdsourcing, and curating internally just doesn't scale.

It's not a technical problem, so they're stumped: the problem is people who want to game their product, so the solution stands outside their core competence.

 

[marplots]

The right has been attacking Snopes for a while now. When I attempt to debunk some meme by posting a link to Snopes, someone responds that it's a left-wing site funded by George Soros. When I ask them for some proof that Soros is connected, they demand proof that he isn't. When I show them instances where Snopes has debunked left-wing claims they say that they only do that in order to appear credible.
How can you possibly reason with someone who thinks like that?

Have you tried bible verses?

 

[lomiller]

The idea of anyone arbitrating on "fake news" has the stench of censorship and potential for totalitarianism about it. No thanks.

Wow, this is pretty much bass ackwards. Totalitarianism and corruption depend on not allowing fake news to be questioned. Questioning fake facts is the one of the biggest reasons why free speech is essential to a free society.

 

[blutoski]

Totalitarian governments traditionally generate fake news to help cement their hold over people.

Remember the Iraqi Baathist party official (can't remember his name) who held press conferences detailing the great victories of the Iraqi Army over the U.S. right up until the U.S. forces took control of Bagdad?

Remember Stalin's efforts to edit people out of old photos?

Remember Hitler's many stories of Jewish atrocities, Blood Libel and all that.

Fake news has always been a tool of oppression, and I am supportive of any effort to verify news and to debunk and expose that which is false.

Having said that... fake news is different than propaganda in the sense that fake news is not necessarily partisan. A lot of it is strictly commercially driven or even just hoaxes for entertainment's sake.

An example of the former, going back a couple generations, is Bat Boy.

An example of the latter, going back a couple more generations, is the anonymous amateur radio operators who broadcast that the Titanic was not really sinking, so no need to send rescue, everybody turn back. 1912's version of trolls.

The third type, which you have examples of, is propaganda. It's designed to convince the public to support one party over another, but is dependent on people paying attention to media.




The new type is sort of flooding, with the intent of destroying the concept of reliable news entirely. This is a post-propaganda strategy. As I mentioned, I have a lot of relatives who used to live behind the Iron Curtain. For example, East German relatives, who knew three things: 1. the government controls the media, so it's all lies. 2. some of your friends are paid to inform on you, so don't talk politics. 3. the only things you know about politics are what happened directly in front of you.

Flooding with fake news doesn't explicitly help any particular party, but it does help totalitarian leaning politicians regardless of party because it corrupts the marketplace of ideas. This is why it's a threat to democracy.

 

[phiwum]

An example of the latter, going back a couple more generations, is the anonymous amateur radio operators who broadcast that the Titanic was not really sinking, so no need to send rescue, everybody turn back. 1912's version of trolls.

Never heard of that. Any good references?

 

[blutoski]

Never heard of that. Any good references?

I came across it in [A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet], but I don't recall their primary sources. I'll see if I still have the book.

The Titanic wasn't the first tragedy to be marred by hoax radio operators interfering with rescue operations, but it was the last straw, and very high profile, and proved it was a growing problem with mortal consequences. The problem of 'malicious interference' inspired [The Radio Act of 1912].

People don't change, it seems. Why do we have regulations for medicine and radios? Well, we didn't at first, but go back to the introduction of the Acts in question, and there was usually some asshat malignant sociopath who killed people for lulz and ruined it for everybody.

("That's why we can't have nice things.")

 

[Davidm]

The problem of flooding is especially insidious now because it costs very little (often costing only time and effort) and once a story catches on it costs the originator nothing for it to spread.

 

[blutoski]

The problem of flooding is especially insidious now because it costs very little (often costing only time and effort) and once a story catches on it costs the originator nothing for it to spread.

I'm not an expert programmer by any means, but I have seen the source code for apps that can automate this process quite nicely and it looks very accessible. Bordering on scriptkiddie quality.

The only missing piece of the puzzle is A|B monitoring to score relative propagation success, in order to learn how to tweak the next one. At the moment, that's a human activity.