Well how should we do with whatever comes from the White House now? Flag it as fake or not? Remember that we already had official downright telling lies in UN about WMDs in Iraq few years back.
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I think it depends on whether it’s fake. It would be irresponsible to assume that everything the President-Elect says is a lie (though they certainly have been so far), but if their statements are fact-checked by the press pool and found to be outright lies, then they should be reported as such.
There’s a big difference between a governmental organization that sometimes lies or misrepresents facts versus a website like InfoWars or RedStateWatcher that was specifically created to continually generate demonstrably false and made-up news to push a political agenda to people who see fake news re-blogged by friends.
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Real organizations have addresses, payroll and known writers.This is a global constant. Most real news isn’t as self referential and tends point to other sources. Fake news cites tend to cite themselves creating a feedback loop, they are WordPress based.
Look at this story, it claims a bunch of stuff abut neither links to WaPo or an official stating this is true:
Now look at their contact page:
http://m.breaking911.com/contact-us/
no real world info, just a form. with a bad captcha
now for the NYtimes:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/help
You can at least call them.
The real issue isn’t fake news exist but rather that the real world hurts so much that they refuse to listen.
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A friend posted this book on FB yesterday. Evidently fake news ends up trickling up to real news, and there IS a group of people who are purposely manufacturing shit and lies. Not just making up stories, but forging evidence and sources. I am bad at reading books, but am going to try to read this.
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Real corporations have fake addresses registered to P. O. Boxes in places like Ireland or Cayman Islands. FB and Google included. Conversely fake legal entities have whole boards filled with persons with fake identities. If you start going down that line mess gets just messier.
Snopes confirmed it.
edit:
@TheGreatParis I have to say I love your avatar and name. I remember watching reruns of Mission Impossible and seeing Paris show up on there. It was an interesting change for Leonard Nimoy after Star Trek
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I guess once you get on top, you don’t want to change the methods you used to get there.
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Again it’s the question who is going to fact check and whom can you trust with doing fact checking. We did have a situation where U.S. Secretary of State and PM of UK were using fabrications in the general assembly of UN just to instigate the war in Iraq. Determining what is the truth is in reality terribly terribly complex. It often takes time. Its a mess. Adding one more black box into the mix with explicit intent to suppress certain information is not going to help.
I know what you mean – and by no means do I advocate blocking specific news stories because an anonymous group at FB says they’re “wrong”.
However, there’s quite a few websites (like the ones I mentioned) that are specifically known for generating daily fake-news content – stories with no basis in reality, as fabricated as UFO stories or Bigfoot – and Facebook is very safe in blocking anything coming from them.
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Facebook already filters the feed you get daily.
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My problem is is that every solution I think of is slightly fascist we’re literally calling for “control of the press”
So we either be gamed by lying Alt-Right wannabes of pass a fascist law so that we verify that the news is true?
I’m probably missing something.
By your definition all Social Media is already fascist and will not be one iota different.
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It’s not, we let these fake stories go on for years. They infected my friends who don’t read, research or travel. We as a civilization allowed anyone with a keyboard and an internet connection to publish whatever with reckless abandon, which is fine we set it up that way, that shouldn’t change. But over time People drifted away from the press rejecting sources that are in some cases over 150 years old(Times, Reuters, AP) They rejected the TV news and turned glen beck and then to alt-right radio when they crucified him. It’s gotten so bad that this demographic thinks absolutely every Press outlet that’s not in their circle is a lying to them. That is dangerous for any group.
We then let journalism be watered down, these blogs have no accountability to the people, we apparently can’t sue them, protest them or half the time find them.They presented themselves as sources on par with the media and people believed it.
We need to make sure people reporting “news” are held accountable. Not to any party or faction but to the truth. probably with fines for deliberately false reportage and basic verification of Identity of an organization and people. At least the NYT puts the authors photo in the column. Anything else is either OP-ED or a blog. If a major news outlet can handle that so can social media.
In other news, I just found a story about how those same sites refuse to report on the crackdown, on a new site “news” site. Luckily for us they pass the test I outlined and qualify as at least a quasi-reputable establishment. There are real names, faces, location is provided and a direct method of contact to each writer is available(Twitter, in this case). Also the article has multiple cites with proper links.
I don’t “believe” it but offers far more authenticity than what’s out there.
In the meantime I’m going to reread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_(novel)
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Nobody is forcing you to give up that control to someone else.
@nungesser provided an algorithm (“fact-checking against AP/Reuters/etc”) that could be applied to any number of news sites.
Basically, he provided you with an infinite number of examples and you chose to reply to none of them.
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Me, too!
His amusing retrospectives of fake bullshit he has barely any patience for must go!
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I still use Google News to browse the headlines. Typically there are 4 or 5 headlines/links for a given story; more if I click on “Related.” Occasionally I’ll see an item (e.g. about HRC) and the only links are to Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller etc. I’m not sure how or why Google would float those to the top where I can see them, but if it’s only those sites and nothing from Reuters or even USA Today, then I know it’s only someone pushing a point.
I can’t remember last time I saw WND float to the top of Google News. In fact I’d all but forgotten about them until I was writing this. But on Facebook I’ll see that type of thing (if not specifically WND) float by sometimes (not because someone shared it, but in that feed on the right edge of the screen).
There was one site thru which I was getting news about Ethiopia, and on my phone it defaults to some other webpage telling me I’ve earned some kind of rebate etc. It doesn’t do that on a desktop/laptop browser but it does make me wonder what it’s at least trying to do sight unseen. But for that matter, any site might be doing just the same.
It’s the difference between a road being closed (that leads to Walmart, K-Mart, CostCo, KFC, Whole Foods, a farmer’s market, and your weed-dealer’s trailer) and Walmart refusing you entry because you have no pants.
Google isn’t a public utility, and it has significant competitors for search (some large like Baidu and some small like DuckDuckGo).
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If you keep going on in that direction, at some point we come to the obvious problem that we have no way of knowing if we are in a computer simulation or not.
I posit the following: that line of argumentation is either deliberately obtuse, or useless outside of academic discussions or late-night beer-and-weed philosophy sessions.
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Feel free to do your own, you act like Facebook is the only place to get your news and imply that your ISP is going to be doing filtering as well.
Well then ask for your money back in the first one and cancel the second one while spending that money on a subscription to the NY Times or Washington Post.
I only pray the the editors include every news story you find worthy, if they have to cut one thing or another due to time or space constraints… I shudder to see the hand wringing you’d engage in then.
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Yeah, he wasn’t bad as an actor.
But that guy never captured the real me.
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