Comment by JacobJans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JacobJans | Hacker News Reader

You'll notice so many posts here that deny the existence of fake news, or attempt to redefine it as "bias."

Frankly, I find it disturbing that so many well educated people aren't able to objectively think about an actually objective problem.

The fake news that started the concept of "fake news" is not a subjective problem. The problem is literal invention of facts not even related to reality, combined with the mass distribution of those invented facts. It is a problem of mass deception.

The classic example: Millions of people shared a post saying the Pope endorsed Donald Trump.

This is objectively false. It's not about liberal vs. conservative. It's not about whether it fits your worldview or not. It simply isn't true.

During the election there were so many literally false stories that got a very large amount of attention.

That is the problem. And yet, so many people seem to think it is a political issue.

It's a sad world we live in where even objective facts no longer matter.

I think that is why so many people are terrified of the direction things are headed.

> You'll notice so many posts here that deny the existence of fake news, or attempt to redefine it as "bias."

That's a hyperbole -- most of the dissidents here do not deny that completely fake stories occur, but express valid concerns about what kind of things will be labeled as facts or not. Based on what we've already seen (the WaPo list, for example), there are publications they would like to censor with very good track records, including the "Ron Paul Liberty Report." Production budget aside, that's often the first source that reports on interesting new bills submitted to the House, such as the recent pre-authorization for invasion of Iran bill. This is not a fake fact -- you can see it on the House website. And there aren't supporting examples of fakeness provided by WaPo for their list, even though I could find numerous factual errors by WaPo or NYT, like the power grid hacking or Aleppo (usually fixed within a few days, but still).

And of course, there's the fact that powerful propaganda does not need to stem from provably false facts -- it uses selection/omission of stories and crafting heavily-opinionated narratives to 'mislead.' That is just as concerning as fake facts, and a poor attempt to stem the latter would most likely end up stifling unpopular opinions and further empower the propaganda you see on major sources like WaPo/FoxNews.

I think the issue is a lot of the complaints about fake news are not of the objectively false stuff, but of the kind where you report what some crackpot analyst says. It's objectively true that "PERSON X THINKS THIS" but it used to be journalists wouldn't print that because it was nonsense. For an example of this consider the Trump intelligence report or the Pizzagate analysis. In the internet age a lot of these analysts are getting a voice and people with agendas are listening/promoting those voices.

It is true that when the average crackpot thinks something, it is not newsworthy. However, when the POTUS thinks (and especially when he tweets) something crazy/abnormal, it is newsworthy. If the leader of the US believes something crazy, the citizens should hear about it. Unfortunately, Trump doesn't like to be made fun of by the media so he just lies and says it's fake news when someone reports on his abnormal tweets and comments.

A non-trump example. Millions of people shared a post saying that the police were using facebook check-ins to "track" protesters at Standing Rock, and encouraging people to check in at that location in order to "help". Of course, this makes no sense at all when you think about it and was indeed totally made up.

Millions of people have branded Trump as a "homophobe", where in reality he's the most pro-gay president of all time at the start of his term. Not just republican, any US president, period. Obama was against gay marriage before he was (reluctantly) for it. Trump sees no problem with it.

Same with xenophobia: a xenophobe doesn't marry an immigrant.

Same with misogyny: a misogynist does not appoint a woman to run his campaign.

Same with antisemitism: his daughter converted to Judaism to marry a Jew, who also had a hand in running his campaign.

Same with racism: he wasn't in any way called "racist" by anybody until he ran for president, and there are numerous photos of him with prominent members of the black community dating back decades.

Much of the slander we've seen about the guy is totally fake. It seems HRC had very little of substance other than the pussy grab tape (note that there's no evidence it was anything other than talk), so they just made shit up and told CNN to air it 24x7. And CNN gladly obliged.

When the same people that manufactured and spread fake news start lecturing us about the harm of fake news, I just facepalm.

You don't really understand how racism, misogyny, etc. works.

It's prejudice against a class, and it's extraordinarily common for otherwise small-minded people to befriend or get close to (and defend!) individual members of that class. That does not actually make them less racist, misogynistic, homophobic, etc. It just makes them a hypocrite.

"I can't be racist I have a black friend" is basically what you're saying, writ large.

But that's the problem with those labels, isn't it? There is no possible way for anyone to prove they aren't a racist/sexist/whatever. And yet it's very easy to accuse people of them. And the accusations are never about what they actually do or say. They are accusations that they have secret beliefs they don't talk about, as if anyone could possibly know that.

> When the same people that manufactured and spread fake news start lecturing us about the harm of fake news, I just facepalm.

This is exactly what I'm talking about.

The reason we're talking about fake news is NOT because of the traditional mainstream media. It's not because of left wing websites such as Alternet or extreme websites such as Breitbart.

The reason we're talking about fake news –– and the real problem that absolutely has to be addressed –– has nothing to do with those websites, or with nearly any media organization that has an easily identifiable group of people running it.

Sure, those websites might post factually incorrect information on occasion. But that's not why we're talking about fake news.

We're talking about fake news because there were –– and are –– websites that repeatedly posted blatantly false "news", during the election, and got massive distribution on social media networks such as Facebook.

That is a problem that has nothing to do with your opinion of Donald Trump. It is not clear why you brought him up, except to distract from the issue.

Breitbart is less insidious imo. If you go there, chances are pretty good you know it's mostly horseshit. When it comes to e.g. CNN, way too many people take it at face value.

I'm just pointing out that the "legitimate" news sources aren't that much better than Breitbart these days, except a lot of people treat them as though they are.

> Same with racism: he wasn't in any way called "racist" by anybody until he ran for president

Pretty sure people were calling him a racist when he was running around promoting the Birther hoax - I know I was - or even before that when he called for the death penalty for the falsely accused Central Park 5 in 1989.

Just because you didn't hear people call him racist for years doesn't mean it didn't happen.

I am willing to be that people called him racist when the Justice Department filed a housing discrimination lawsuit against his company in 1973. Or when his company settled that suit but in 1978 the government filed another complaint claiming his company didn't meet the terms of the settlement. https://www.salon.com/2011/04/28/donald_trump_discrimination...

This comment also shows another problem that is harder to solve than "fake news," which is the interpretation of facts. What you call just talking, I call bragging about sexual assault and even if it didn't happen is something that I would call someone a misogynist for bragging about in the first place. Other people don't.

Say the company your work for or have shares in discriminates on the basis of race. Does this make _you_ a racist? Is there any evidence that he was in fact the decision maker when it comes to these policies? FWIW, the very same article you linked to (in a despicable fake news rag, BTW) says "Donald testified repeatedly that he had nothing to do with renting apartments". :-)

Once again, you are showing why it is so hard to talk about the actual problem. You've managed to distract from the issue by bringing up inflammatory statements about Donald Trump. You go on to accuse Salon.com to be a fake news site, which it is most definitely not, at least not in terms of the problem that lead to the issue of Fake News in the first place.

This, in a sense, is Donald Trump's fault. He is so good at controlling the conversation; his bombastic style demands a response; this is the same style you're using in your posts, and it has successfully redirected the discussion. It doesn't matter whether you're right; the topic has now changed.

How are my statements in any way "inflammatory"? They're as factual as it gets. Is there anything in them that's even up for debate?

I read general_ai's comments. I don't think your summary's fair and submit that your tone's a little aggressive.

This doesn't get things back on topic. Though, it took minimal effort to find instances of Salon running ridiculous reports. [0]

Here the real problem: these companies can't get their hands on content fast enough. WaPo produces 500 articles/day and 1200 items/day. AFAIK, because there's no real punishment for quasi-spurious claims, there's no incentive to spend marginal time vetting sources. Today, the story can be shared 100K times in the time a retraction takes place. But by then, the damage has been done, and again, the punishment isn't material. I don't think a retraction fully undoes the damage of spurious reporting.

[0] http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/01/23/salon_trut...

Slate.com is another example of a despicable fake news rag though. :-)

> Salon.com to be a fake news site, which it is most definitely not

Hence the problem. It is, it's not rocket science this is true.

But AI or not you seem like you won't change your mind. This is what the right thinks about Fox.

The issue is not whether or not he had anything to do with it. You stated, "he wasn't in any way called "racist" by anybody until he ran for president."

I gave evidence from a 2011 article that has a number of links describing how he was involved in things in the 70s that would make someone call him a racist.

"Would", if he ran for president against a democrat back then. As things stand, the article you linked to doesn't directly call him anything of the sort.

> Same with racism: he wasn't in any way called "racist" by anybody until he ran for president,

Trump was first sued by the government for racial discrimination something like 40 years ago; he's been being called a racist for a long time before he ran for President.

Of course, a lot more people paid attention to him and talked about him at all, and a lot more people paid attention to what was said about him, once he became a Presidential candidate.

Not "Trump", but "one of Trump's companies". There's a difference. Trump would only be really at fault here if he was the author of the discriminatory policies in question, and there's no evidence that he was. Moreover, he testified under oath that he wasn't.

Whether he was at fault or not isn't the issue I was addressing, people were calling him a racist in connection with that, and in connection with many other things in the time between then and his run for President.

Obviously, the national attention on people doing so was less before he ran for President, but the idea that he only was accused of racism due to his Presidential run is false.

Trump has stated several times that he supports traditional marriage and is not comfortable with gay marriage (http://www.politifact.com/new-york/statements/2016/aug/14/se...). These comments show he has a problem with gay marriage. Just because Trump married an immigrant from one country doesn't mean he can't be a Xenophobe. It is pretty clear based on his comments that he intensely dislikes and fears immigrants from Mexico and from Muslim countries. As far as misogyny, he has made several disparaging comments about women. These comments show that he has a lack of respect for women, and that does not change regardless of whether he has hired women or is married to a women. Simply put, you cannot go around speaking about women as if their only value is their body and then claim you are a feminist. I have not seen outright evidence of antisemitism so I can't comment on that. In fact he is too pro-settlement in Isreal for my liking. For racism, there have been documented cases where his businesses have shown discriminatory and racist behavior. He also speaks of (and likely treats) hispanic people very poorly and claimed Obama was from Kenya for several years. That is not fake news. That is just taking examples of Trump's comments and behavior and applying appropriate descriptors to them.

This is again business as usual, an issue which has its own space and time.

But fake news is not the same and it's a whole different issue which also needs to be resolved.

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