It's more like blaming Ford for the Pinto ("unsafe at any speed"). Deliberate design choices are what made fake news effective.
Think of Fake News as spam email: Gmail (and others) mostly solved spam email because they decided to. Apple made a deliberate decision to manually review apps in the AppStore. Twitter made the deliberate decision not to ban spam bots in its ToS(!). Facebook made a deliberate decision to reward engagement on links.
Spam is simply marketing emails that a user never asked to receive. If you ask users themselves for a definition of spam, you’ll get some variation on the above. If users were asked to mark emails they considered to be spam, they would generally mark the same kind of emails as spam. Some would mark more, some less, but all around a common center. Users and companies are basically in agreement about what spam is.
Compare with fake news. If you asked users to mark stories they considered fake, some would mark info wars and some would mark huff post. And those groups would rarely overlap. Given that users and companies fundamentally disagree on what fake news even is, I can’t see how any piece of technology can solve this.
Next time you hear an attack on "the mainstream media" remember that the attack is targeting organizations that do their own independent verification of stories (or at least try to) instead of regurgitating talking points. The people are angry that those organizations are making it harder to lie to you.
TBH, those are not exactly shining examples of "objective truth". I've repeatedly seen different ratings given to different politicians on essentially the same statement, because in one case the reviewer felt sympathetic to the politician and went out of the way to explain why it could be considered accurate, and in the other case was hostile, and went out of the way to point out why it is not true. Neither was, strictly speaking, incorrect - almost with any statement that is interesting enough to discuss you could find, if you look thoroughly enough, something to confirm and something to reject, especially if you consider not only the bare statement, but the context and implications, as those sites frequently do. It's inherently subjective business.
> the attack is targeting organizations that do their own independent verification of stories (or at least try to)
Or sometimes not :) Yes, the MSM does reporting and verification, but also does irresponsible reporting, exaggeration, conjecture, moral panic, sensationalizing and distortion. And people that are angry at them for that are trying to keep them (a little bit more) honest.
TBH, it doesn't even have to be a different politician - here's Obama saying famous "77 cent on the dollar" and gets "mostly false" http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jun/... here is essentially the same getting "mostly true" http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/jan/... Did women pay drop significantly in these two years? Probably not. If you read the conclusion, it's saying practically the same thing - yes, raw statistic is saying that, but it does not mean what people quoting it mean (that women are routinely discriminated in pay - i.e. maybe they are, but that specific statistic does not point to that conclusion and should not be used as an argument). But one time it gets "false", another time it gets "true". Why? Who knows. Certainly very short of "objective truth".
And then there's this: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/oct/... Yes, the famous "if you like you health plan, you can keep it". Rated as True. Or is it "Lie of the Year"? http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/dec/12/... You can read the whole evolution of this "objective truth" here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/12/27/in-200... I think this objective truth is a tad less than objective.
A very quick reading makes it pretty clear. The "True" one was in 2008, and based on the law as it was written. The second was in 2013, and based how it turned out after it met the real world.
The 2013 article outlines this process pretty well - the whole thing is worth reading. But a good pull quote: Yet Obama repeated "if you like your health care plan, you can keep it" when seeking re-election last year. In 2009 and again in 2012, PolitiFact rated Obama’s statement Half True, which means the statement is partially correct and partially wrong.
This is exactly the problem. They made some predictions about the law (which turned to be completely wrong, but that's not even the point) and tried to pass it as "objective fact", not as their private conjecture, implying that those that disagreed with it (and turned out to be right) are just lying.
This is the exact opposite of objective fact. This time they got caught because their predictions didn't come true and their subjective opinion disagreed with the facts so obviously that they were forced to flip. But many other times they do not get caught because there's no such sharp contrast between their private opinion and facts, and you can always muddle the waters and spin the arguments to try and present why your opinion is "objective truth" and anybody who thinks otherwise is just "truth denier".
As a political propaganda, it's fine - everybody tried to prove their opinion is correct and the other guy's opinion is wrong. But it takes special kind of hutzpah to call one's opinion "objective fact" and try to paint all the other opinions as lying. Exactly the kind of hutzpah the "fact checker" sites are swimming in.
My point is not that fake news isn't real. It is that when Gmail marks a weird Nigerian prince style scam email as spam, there is nothing controversial to the user about that. The user and the spam filter share the same opinion of what is spam.
The problem with fake news is that many conservatives disagree with tech companies on what fake news means. So if a user wants to share a BS info wars article, and is told he or she can't because it's a load of crock, they are not going to like that. People don't use social media to be told they are wrong. From the perspective of these kinds of conservative users, the spam equivalent would be Gmail marking an email from your mother as spam.
It's a hard problem because, unlike spam, it requires companies to disagree with their users.
I have met lots of journalists. I have been interviewed for stories (on Bitcoin and blockchain stuff) many times. I have never met, heard of or encountered anyone whose job was to independently check facts or talking points provided by sources.
More likely explanation: people mistake personal bias for "common sense" or some kind of factual information, and then attack what they assume is "fake news" based on these faulty starting points.
It's possible that's the right answer, and that there should be more scepticism of stories from both of those sources.
Fake news didn't start online, though. There have been many paper publications which lie outside of mainstream scientific and ideological orthodoxy, e.g: Fortean Times, Daily Worker, Sunday Sport, which today we might call "fake news". Some of these had quite wide circulations and were available in many shops, and yet didn't precipitate any kind of crisis.
It would seem that fake news is perhaps a symptom of something deeper. It's possible that the mainstream press has lost the authority to suppress the fringes as public figures have learned to control their image in the media more (i.e: spin), presenting at least the appearance of collusion.
EDIT: It would appear that Joseph Pulitzer, creator of the prestigious journalism prize, was deeply involved in the rise of "yellow journalism", the "fake news" of the 1890s. Perhaps in a century from now, journalists will covet the Bannon Prize?
I'm not arguing it is easy, but there are plenty of things which make it worse than it has to be.
The alt-right is already aware that scholars, scientists, and generally educated people believe their news sources to be bunk and that has not changed their opinion. So even if facebook or whoever makes perfect software that blocks crazy info wars articles or other news meeting the definition above, conservatives will cry censorship and find another platform because their chosen platform fundamentally disagrees with them on what is true. People don’t use Facebook to be told they are wrong.
These choices are made by whoever makes the fake news site. They are (ab)users of technology and not its creators. It's like saying encyclopedias are evil because you can take a heavy tome of encyclopedia and hit somebody in the head with it.
I am not saying solving fake news problem (if it exists) would be a bad thing. I am saying just like email is not evil because spammers exist, no technology is evil because fake news exist.
These last 2 sentences seem contradictory.
While they may not have created the exploitation of human psychology, they have definitely amplified it like never before which seems substantial to me.
The internet still has plenty of amazing sites, but compare and contrast these two lists of sites and you'll see what people are talking about - not the whole internet, but the new Internet(tm):
Good Internet:
- Education sites (wikipedia, duolingo, coursera, khan academy, etc)
- Big-box or indie games
- Research sites (SciHub, Examine.com)
Bad Internet:
- Engagement-optimised social media (Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat)
- Bank-account-draining skinner boxes (Pay-to-win games, Mobile F2Ps, lootboxes and microtransactions)
- Fake news and hidden-bias politics (Facebook, Twitter, a growing number of other sites)
- Spying and unethical practices (Google, Amazon, Uber)
That's to say nothing of the Good/Bad SV dichotomy illustrated by some of the shadier companies that are often parodied on the TV show.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Albert Einstein
I think it's nothing like that. It's more like blaming cars for decades of pollution. It seem like you are trying to make the "post office" argument, but I don't see the relevance in this case. "Fake news" type problems are nothing new and they have been discussed frequently, especially since the Internet became popular. It's just that it doesn't take much to not be aware or not understand the problem.
"While some may treat the news with certain degrees of skepticism, we as a nation depend on a free press to give us a dose of daily facts. We rely on their filters and verification processes to weed out the dubious (or at least label it as such) and blatantly false. That is why an Internet hoax that is picked up and disseminated as fact by reputable news sources should do more than raise an eyebrow. All media are vulnerable to unverified facts, something Internet users need to keep in mind when they evaluate news reports."
Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet (2002) https://books.google.se/books?id=uS3p9iDooc8C&lpg=PP1&dq=%22...
"The blogosphere resembles an interconnected set of nested circles. Much of the time bloggers on one site only talk with each other. The conversation often resembles an echo chamber with heavily biased information and misinformation simply reinforcing previous biases At times ideas and information spill over from one circle to another, and the audience gets broader and broader. [...]. 'The average blog isn't that widely read, but it is the ripple effect when a blog catches fire in one news outlet and another at a news outlet, and it sort of mushrooms from there'.
Citizen Democracy: Political Activists in a Cynical Age (2008) https://books.google.se/books?id=2Tji-v7u7O4C&lpg=PA73&pg=PA...
"If the web has opened up possibilities for communication and access to information, schools need to do so, too. They need to learn from the examples the internet sets, both good and bad: of the dangers of creating an environment where misinformation can triumph, of providing new venues that can be used for deceit as well as illumination, of allowng reduction of the level of discussion too often instead of enhancing it. they need ot learn that opening access to information does not itself lead to knowledge. The egalitarianism promoted by our new online environments is all well and good but it is not always sufficient."
Beyond the Blogosphere: Information and Its Children (2011) https://books.google.se/books?id=i02cd-CAIbEC&lpg=PA214&pg=P...
"Like open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, because they enjoy it. Like open source hackers, bloggers compete with people working for money, and often win. The method of ensuring quality is also the same: Darwinian. Companies ensure quality through rules to prevent employees from screwing up. But you don't need that when the audience can communicate with one another. People just produce whatever they want; the good stuff spreads, and the bad gets ignored. And in both cases, feedback from the audience improves the best work."
What Business Can Learn from Open Source (2005) http://paulgraham.com/opensource.html
Internet is still incredible learning tool. If you want to learn. Much better actually than it was 10 years ago. You have free university-level courses, you have Duolingo where you can learn two dozen languages or so, you have Wikipedia, you have SciHub, you have enormous quantity of scientific and scolarly content available absolutely free... But of course if you insist on going to sites with fake news, nobody can prevent it.
Same for games - which tech industry doesn't design, or careerism - which sure as heck tech industry did not invent, it existed way before Hero of Alexandria invented world's first steam engine.
Of course, the grass was greener, the sky was bluer and the internet was interneter when we're young. Everything was better when we're young. That has also been invented sometime between wheel and fire. But tech companies have nothing to do with all those faults of human nature - they are not free from them, of course, but they did not create them and did not change them in any substantial way. They did, however, make many things cheaper, faster, easier, more accessible and more affordable.