Ask HN: Is anybody working on tech to improve objectivity in news reporting? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is anybody working on tech to improve objectivity in news reporting?

2 pointswestoncb21 comments

While I'm also curious about people working on incremental improvements (fact checking systems, integrations with existing media distribution platforms etc.), I'm especially curious whether anyone is working on something like a totally separate alternative to traditional news sources (or news discovery systems).

This feels like exactly the kind of thing we should really be applying lots of smart people to, building prototypes, seeing what works and what doesn't, iterating—essentially, intensely searching for some platform/mechanism/approach that could become a widespread source of necessarily objective information (of course that's always a matter of degree, but within more favorable bounds, let's say). Is this something YC cares about?

I think this is the most important thing I could potentially apply my engineering skills to. If you're doing something related, maybe I can help (see my profile for more info).

I have often thought it would be brilliant to have more of an objective source and to have this in the sparsest text format with images optional, all downloadable to your phone each morning in a small archive for browsing during the day. No ads, no ridiculous bandwidth consuming formatting, just the simplest usable hypertext format possible. I also think the media seems to have lost the plot over the last couple of years over Brexit and the US election for example, and there seems to be relentless and unquestioned promotion of certain ideologies over others. Whichever side you are on, I'd hope you would agree that it cannot be healthy to have the media controlled by a group that is overwhelmingly pro one side or the other.

I think there is a desperate need for a news source that communicates the facts, comprehensively in breadth and detail, and in an unbiased way, but I think the chances of us getting this are slim to none. How is a new entrant to discover what is being suppressed by the MSM? If discovered, how will it be gathered if no other organisation is prepared to cover it? How can seeded stories be identified?

I think there are serious problems with the idea. In consolation, I like to think that the general population are far savvier and less susceptible to manipulation than those that would try to manipulate us think. Going back to Brexit and Trump for example, the overwhelming majority of the media seemed to be anti-Brexit and anti-Trump - certainly in the UK the media spoke virtually with one voice warning us about the armageddon that would inescapeably follow a Brexit vote, and yet look what happened. I think the media have burned through people's trust with their bullshit.

It is not health for a very small few individuals and companies to own a large majority of the media (including radios, tv, mags, newspapers, internet sites, etc). Look at those at the top, and follow the money.

> How is a new entrant to discover what is being suppressed by the MSM?

The MSM isn't the only way of acquiring information about current events, so it isn't necessary to discover what they withhold. Not that that wouldn't also be valuable—I'm just trying to get at the potential range of approaches here. I'm only advocating that resources get put into a serious search for solutions. I think it's highly unlikely any of us would just be able to produce the solution in a few minutes of thinking about it.

Actually, a tool that compares texts from different sources on the same topic and ranks them on different criteria could be interesting, i.e. assertion, logical fallacy, emotive language, inclusion/exclusion of key details; very off the top of my head.

Additionally - over time you could build up a nice corpus for one source versus another source.

I guess you do see studies examining bias every now and then, but the whole thing could be automated and ongoing.

Yep, that's more like it. So what I'm imagining is a group of smart people just experimenting with and prototyping ideas like that until something very promising is arrived at.

I've yet to see anything successful or promising.

Unfortunately, this seems to be far more of a human social problem than a technical problem.

Consider how Facebook for instance has influenced the social problem. It's possible for tech to influence it in different directions—but much imagination will be required.

I agree. That's a good example, as is twitter in terms of speed of propagation.

The problem with objective news, I imagine is the objective part since sources, even if designed to be validation capable (which might reduce fake news) would be hard to validate for objectivity.

There is so much room for different approaches here, I don't think anyone has a solution at the moment. What I'm proposing is just a directed search for a solution. I don't think we know enough to rule one out either.

For instance, maybe it involves employing a large number of people (maybe Amazon Turk style), piecing together commentary on shared subjects from varied sources (e.g. different newspapers)

—not that I think that is a particularly good solution, I just mean to point out the potential range of solution-types possible here.

The problem though is the central control of info, WHO says something is a valid and trusting source, WHO determines what people should be lead to, there are several different sides to the same story, some are "right" and others are "right" as well. WHO is right. It would also need to be a decentralized system, otherwise it can be manipulated just like everything else, but then how do you properly agree on things to be trusting.

Would effect does speeding up news propagation have, if not for promulgating unsubstantiated speculation?

>Consider how Facebook for instance has influenced the social problem.

In what ways?

It's one of the most significant ways people get news these days: http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-...

Ah yes indeed. I suppose I was looking moreso for an example of how technology has helped create a net positive effect against misinformation and other major social problems.

Tech will not be able to stop people from saying what they want, even when they insist on lying to spread false narratives.

The solution should not stop people from saying what they want. It has to co-exist with that, and yet (maybe—just an idea) be better at funneling people to more objective sources of info, for example.

So you would like to control the information people receive and push them into different directions based on whether the "facts" are correct or not according to some set of rules? I think we need less reliance on tech and more common sense and independence of our own free thought. We should do our own research and investigative work before we believe the clickbait headline of the article we did not read.

We should also be very aware and cognitive of large entities pushing their own agendas with propaganda for the benefit of themselves at the cost of us. Think for yourself, and think about WHY something was said, rather than WHAT was said. We have to save the future..

While I agree, we have to also acknowledge the fact that people with entirely selfish intentions are already using tech for purposes opposite of what I suggest. So a big part of my motivation is just to combat tech being used to amplify capitalist motivations in news distribution.

Then you have to figure out how to take down the social bots, and the people paid to spread disinfo, and all the people who are wrapped up in the disinfo :/

Getting rid of the disinfo isn't the only approach; you can also increase people's probability of ending up at non-disinfo in various ways. See my other comments here: not saying I have a solution, I'm proposing a search for one.

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