This points to another pretty obvious problem with NewsGuard, though: flagging happens at the site level instead of the article level. It's obvious why that's necessary, but the result is a complete failure to deal with any source where quality varies widely. Fox's written reporting is sometimes quite good, but Glenn Beck's old videos are still posted under the same domain. The result is that NewsGuard happily puts a big green checkmark above a video declaring that the US is the only country in the world with birthright citizenship.
In the same sense that labels like "no added sugar" can actively mislead by giving the appearance of health, I worry that NewsGuard is going to warn people away from Onion articles while encouraging them to accept outright lies without due diligence.
...Though, that being said, the original idea behind X.509 certificates was quite different: you [the domain sysop] would use your critical thinking to pick a root CA you trust, and configure your machines to only use that single root CA; and then that root CA would either directly sign [code, server, client] certs they trust, or would cross-sign other CAs' root certs to indicate that they trust them to delegate to them. Essentially, a domain (like a corporation or university) would have a business relationship with a particular CA, who would "do their critical thinking for them" (and would also be legally liable if they failed to do that critical thinking.)
For X.509, we pretty much immediately moved away from that world, though, to a world where each application (e.g. OS HTTP API, third-party web browser, etc.) is acting as a root CA, you endorse that root CA by installing/using the app, and then the app devs make decisions on what to trust/delegate trust to.
Which is kind of what's happening here: you use your critical thinking to install an app/OS, whose devs are then your "truth source." Sadly, though, this isn't a business relationship where they can be sued for failure to deliver quality content through that channel. (For contrast, where a customer is paying a business for "truth", see: investment newsletters.)
And it's a good thing that fact checking exists as a service (now apparently also in independent fashion), because nobody has the time, knowledge or capacity to literally dig through every piece of journalism they read, on every topic.
This is such a tricky point. On the one hand I almost agree with you in the sense that it could have a dangerous outcome: ceding control to an entity who essentially influences what content users should read.
On the other hand, the amount of misleading information on the web is having a very real, very serious impact on the world. If used responsibly this might influence positive change.
I'm not convinced this is true. I'm more convinced many really want it to be true to explain results they otherwise can't. And as expected, they have convinced others this is true. It's just another in the long line of bogeymen.
And for reference, the group was called 'American Warrior Revolution', so you too can take a peek into the insanity I'm referring to.
Actually, I think whether something is shared and how prevalent that sharing is among the populace is a better indication of impact than many others.
For example, one (fairly binary) way of measuring individual impact might be whether it's viewed as worth spreading to other people. Things not worth sharing may or may not be impactful, but things worth sharing almost definitely are.
Scaled up, if a high enough percentage of people in a group view something as worth sharing, then it is impactful.
Disagree, but impactful can be seen as an overloaded term. We need to accept in modern situations that the ease of sharing something might be more of a reason it is shared than whether the sharer/recipient is impacted by it. Or there might be many other reasons. The important thing is accepting that we don't know what is impactful and not running to the heavy-hand of the law/censors assuming we do.
Maybe your mother is sharing fake information, or maybe your own information is fake and the problem is the inverse (or maybe you're both wrong in different ways).
"R.I.P. Justin Allen 23, Brett Linley 29, Matthew Weikert 29, Justus Bartett 27, Dave Santos 21, Jesse Reed 26, Matthew Johnson 21, Zachary Fisher 24, Brandon King 23, Christopher Goeke 23, and Sheldon Tate 27.... All are Marines who gave their lives this week for you. There's no media for them... not even a mention of their names. We’re too busy talking about trying to get “Baby It’s Cold Outside” off of the radio. Please honor them by copying and pasting this post."
Except obviously, they didn't die last week as of that post. They died seven years ago. Now why would a large group share literally fake information like that? And why would you immediately jump in and attempt to discredit my argument given that I even gave you the name of the group? Take a cursory glance at them and their actions.
I guess I don't see a need for a conspiracy, Russian or otherwise, to get people re-sharing posts on Facebook that explicitly say "if you don't reshare this you're a bad person".
Which, in my experience, "is generally about as on the level as their contemporaries", just concerning different stories and the way they're spun.
They've even received some praise from Sy Hearsh for having what he saw as one of the most promising investigative teams in the industry (I'll have to find the interview later today and update the comment with a link).
I do question the wikileaks rating, but wikileaks isn't a news site, and everything they publish ought to be a matter of 'buyer beware'.
I also question Microsoft's decision to include the plugin at all. I'd rather not have an arbiter of truth looking over my shoulders, reminding me what i should or shouldn't read.