Wow. This was almost a non issue like two weeks ago. It is pathetic that the very media who tried so hard to distort perceptions is trying to blame fake news.
The problem is that social media has created 2 different countries that live next to each other.
It's kind of crazy, honestly. It's also sad - the brightest mind of an era, lying to me to increase Dwell Time.
Clicked on Obama, got 2 stories from the left about the Michelle Obama "Ape" comments, and on the right a story about Obama supporting a border fence.
Then a bunch of other stuff from each side.
The one about the fence was from Breitbart, and it's an interesting example of the problem. Something that seems to have happened a lot with these emails is "BREAKING NEWS! SOMETHING HORRIBLE OR HYPOCRITICAL!" and then you read it and what the article is saying is "true". It's "true" because you can pick and choose sentences and build that narrative, but in context things are more complex.
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2016/10/22/wikileaks-podest...
That's one I saw yesterday.
> WikiLeaks Podesta emails: Clinton Foundation works with Big Pharma to keep AIDS drug prices high
Pretty horrible sounding title. That would be a big deal.
> the Clinton Foundation opposed lowering the costs of AIDS drugs in the United States.
Sounds pretty horrible and corrupt. I should hate her for this.
But if you read the email
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/24440
> As you will see when you read this memo, we think that publicly pressuring the US and European AIDS drug companies to lower prices and bringing pressure to allow generic AIDS drugs into the United States will have limited if any success and could seriously jeopardize our negotiations to continually lower prices in poor countries. We also believe that there are other more impactful ways to address the US AIDS crisis today.
There is much more to it, it's a paragraph from an email not the entire thing. It still shows a very different picture.
So this isn't fake news, but to me it's still shitty journalism. It's very shallow, it doesn't really present any data (just the link to the emails, no analysis). I feel like you could make an argument from the America first perspective that we should be arguing for generics and lower prices, and worry about the effect elsewhere later. It doesn't do that though.
I seriously can not look at news online anymore. I used to use news.google.com religiously (I've never used FB or Twitter for my news) but even that shows the same shit. It's so bad now and has me very concerned. During the 80s and early 90s CNN Headline news did a good job I thought...it's garbage now.
FB and Google are kidding themselves if they think they can fix this as their bottom line demands it to function as is.
Simply stop giving them the page loads...boycotts work wonders my friends (and no, ad blocking will not suffice).
One could argue about how much a bubble there is on the left... think for example the difference between CNN US and CNN international - one is relatively vapid lowest common denominator infotainment, and the other is hard news. I feel like infotainment/tabloidization and an uneducated populace is the biggest contributor to ignorance. Granted, its hard to know how much of a factor that's always been.
I'd love to actually see tags on facebook posts. "Extremely conservative", "Mostly Neutral", "Mostly liked by liberals" etc etc. At least make people think about why they're seeing these sources.
They are obviously incredibly talented people, switching their editorial focus and delivery for the different audience. Not just the hosts, everybody.
I'd love to see that and a lot more. "Read by your neighbor twenty minutes ago.", "Shared by 40 people within 1 mile of you", "Most liked by self-identified christian conservatives between 42-59 that make 70-90K in combined household income"
But really, your suggestion will just allow people to self-filter even more. BreitBart readers aren't avoiding articles from Daily Kos because they think they are just copies of each other.
Hell, even a browser extension giving you a bias bar with a sliding scale for each source would be super neat.
I try to read and listen to content from multiple perspectives but I avoid things that I "know" are wrong and/or ridiculous. It's not so much a judgment call on the validity of their viewpoint as it is the fact that I have limited time to read and ... oh wait, it is totally a judgement call on my part.
My thoughts have just turned way too philosophical for a comment to a comment on HN but why the heck do I read anything. I don't know. I need to think now.
This is the smartest suggestion I've seen so far.
I think the only thing you can realistically do is encourage metacognition.
Telling idealogues from either side 'Your Wrong' will almost certainly have the opposite effect to the one you intended.
Are you now in favor of fake news just because Trump won?
I don't understand why Hacker News has so many people defending fake news today. Should be a non-partisan issue, except for those looking to benefit from lies.
Pardon my tu quoque, but isn't that equivalent to "Are you now against fake news just because Clinton lost?"
A "verified news" (fact checked or otherwise endorsed) scheme could backfire for the intended demographic. It's not like most FB users are seeking news from verified publications.
It's even kind of a badge of honor: "we're bringing the news THEY don't want you to see!"
And frankly, I don't trust FB to not want to hide something.