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Comment by briholt | Hacker News Reader

"Fake news" appears to be "news I don't like" and has no correlation with the accuracy of the content. Conveniently, Facebook seems to agree with many major media outlets about what news they don't like, so they can present their arbitrary definition of "fake" as objective and conveniently no one can break through the bubble to prove otherwise.

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If anyone wants an example of this, look at the coverage of the crowd size at Trump's inauguration. That's still held up as the canonical example of the Trump administration's "alternative facts" (in fact that's when the phrase was coined, I believe). But there's high resolution video of the crowds during the ceremony that clearly contradicts the photos of sparse crowds. I also think the guy is a lying moron, but the fact that that photo is still the cover image for campaigns against him should give people pause...

Great example. FB is becoming a tool to assault rationality of gullible people ( mind you, I am an engineer, good exposure to various news sources, etc and I too have fallen for certain news articles), its extremely effective at nudging people into a fantasy comfort zone, and hold them there. The strength of its algorithm increases as a person is nudged further.

The crowds up close in the ceremony but further out Obama had more overflow.

I'm talking about images like this: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/01/20/us/politics/trump.... You can count the lanes that run across the mall before you see any open space, and the photo on the right was clearly not taken any time near the actual ceremony because my memory of live video and recorded video during the ceremony simply doesn't come close to matching.

I really don't care how it actually compares to Obama, and I really don't see why Trump cared so much, but the fact is the pictures are clearly not "facts" either. Yet disputing them is still held up as a common example of "deniers".

That's a photo by the National Parks Service, timestamped 11:51AM, according to the Washington Post. Frankly I trust high-resolution photographic evidence vetted by the National Parks Service and the Washington Post reporting staff, over your memory of unnamed, unsourced live video. But yeah both sides, totally.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2017/03/06/...

http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/01/politics/trump-in...

Really - there are stronger arguments against Trump.

And that photo is from the opposite direction, focuses on a different part of the crowd, and in no way contradicts the smaller crowd shown in the other picture.

You know you can rotate the image, right? There are clear landmarks along the mall, countable rows of people, and but a single section where it even comes close to matching up.

Of course I rotated it. And my point stands. The perspective is still different. The rows of people are countable, and looking at some of the further sections there is no way I would be able to count as many rows as at the other. There are 2 sections filled with people at the Obama one that are completely blocked off on the Trump one. That can't be argued with at all.

There are people who are good at estimating crowd sizes and I'll let them do their job. But, once again, this picture in no way contradicts the others.

Yea that picture definitely reinforces the original Parks Service one. You can see all the empty space and people milling around, not that far in the background. The Obama inauguration was shoulder to shoulder standing room only.

It's funny, I never bothered much analyzing these photos but now that I have it's obvious how much the Gigapixel backs up the WaPo photos.

And yet the parent seems to believe that pointing out optical perspective differences means we're calling those pictures "right-leaning".

They're using an increasingly popular derailment technique called the common ground fallacy.

The parent is asserting that the truth is merely a compromise between two different opinions, when in reality there's evidence enough to assert the truth, without making it a matter of 'right' or 'left' opinion. Their inability to provide their credible sources ("high def video") is because their opinion doesn't align with the reality of the situation.

Can you share this 'high resolution video'? AFAIK, those videos were debunked as fake news because the National Park Services photos showed sparse crowds during the ceremony.

Yeah - see the CNN Gigapixel linked to in another reply. I was watching ABC's live feed, which is 8 hours on YouTube I don't feel like sifting through. Much of the debate is over whether or not it was bigger than Obama's, which I really couldn't care less about, and I'm hardly defending Trump's obsession with the comparison, but there's reliable sources matching Trump at the podium with a good view of a very different looking crowd. It's just hardly the case I would make about how it's all just "alternative facts".

The Gigapixel is a 360 of the stage so you can see which politicians attended, and not of the crowds in attendance, which the National Park Service's drones captured.

You said 'high resolution video' which the gigapixel is not. Can you link these reliable sources you keep eluding to?

Nah I'm done commenting on this. There's clear imagery from both ABC and CNN I've referred to elsewhere in this thread. And it's a bloody 360 image - how hard is that?. If you want to pretend those sources are right-leaning and pretend this is actually a clear-cut case of people being willfully ignorant, whatever.

edit: knock yourself out then if you really couldn't find it from all my other comments on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nieiu8tmLIM.

If you're going to claim something is fake news and elude to 'high def video' proving it, then why can't you provide that video when someone asks for it?

I'm beginning to agree with you about this being "a clear-cut case of people being willfully ignorant."

Edit: The video you linked in your edit does not show the crowds. Why did you edit that video link in? Where is the high-def video you eluded to proving the NPS photos were fake news?

Some groups flat out make up news stories to fit some narrative. What else are you going to call that than 'fake news'?

'Candidate X comes out as gay.' 'Secret photos reveal candidate X at KKK lynching.' Are both rather over the top, but also the kind of lies that influence elections.

If you don't like that, you're going to hate the physical realm, where anyone can make any claim and you're left with nothing but your wits to discern the truth

> If you don't like that, you're going to hate the physical realm, where anyone can make any claim and you're left with nothing but your wits to discern the truth

So you're saying that we should let these organizations lie as much as they want, because people lie in your day-to-day life? The people you meet in your day-to-day life and lie to your face are much more limited in the number of people they can influence with lies.

Why shouldn't we make enormously more powerful institutions more accountable for lies?

This misunderstands the way technology, social media in particular, have exacerbated problems with misinformation. No one is claiming the media was perfect before. Obviously hoaxes and false rumors have always been a thing. But social media has made disinformation scalable.

Speed and scale of speech do not impact whether or not it's got an equal seat at the table. It just means you're cool with any expression as long as it's not threatening. Which there's nothing special about, it's how basically everyone is by default. There's no principle there.

Propaganda is used because it works and scale ends up changing type. Consider the difference from 1 dead cell vs 1 million dead cells at the tip of your finger vs 1 billion dead cells in your arm.

but look at how you're framing it. the undesirable speech isn't a disease the body has, it's a part of the body. we are the collective, even the gross parts. if we want to change what we don't like, we do it with competing ideas, not by cutting them off

These are not competing ideas, they are just lies. I have no problem with the Weekly World News being on a fiction shelf, but we have libel laws for a reason. The truth does not have a sign outside saying 'This is true' and lies repeated often enough get a following.

PS: There is a huge difference between blowing things that actually happened out of proportion to support an argument and saying anything that someone might believe.

So what is the definition of "fake news"?

For as long as I can remember, National Enquirer and other magazines like that adorned the racks of every grocery store and book store I've ever been to. Yellow journalism was coined as a term over 100 years ago. There's nothing new about "fake news". And it has been scalable since the invention of the printing press.

No one believed bat boy and even the plausible stuff in those was never the subject of design making. The National Enquirer is as much News as the Onion is.

The tragedy now is that there are sites that aren't neatly packaged as entirely false but are. The Internet has empowered people like Alex Jones and other people spouting pure falsehoods.

You can find the same crap with slightly better spell checking by the checkout isles in the grocery store.

This isn't new.

I find it actually kinda worrying that many seem to have a perception that making up news is a new thing. The only thing that has changed is the volume of information, people in control of news sources have been lying since time immemorial.

People believing in such vast quantities does seem to be new. I don't know anyone who believed the non-sense in the National Enquirer, but I do know a few people who buy because they think it is funny.

People, whole communities of people believe, non-sense today. Not small groups like Flat-earthers or chemtrail theorists who number in the hundreds or thousands (per their website/forums sign-ups). There will always be some people on the fringe.

We avoided truly ridiculous ideas for decades. Things like "911 was an inside job" or "Obama was born in Kenya" are believed by tens of millions of people. This is a new thing in my life at least. The last issue this big and this false was prevalent was McCarthyism.

"Some groups" includes the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Rolling Stone, etc.

"Some groups flat out make up news stories to fit some narrative. What else are you going to call that than 'fake news'?"

Thankfully we have a word for that, and it even has a relatively well agreed upon meaning: lies.

The problem with the label "fake news" is, as has been pointed out, that it can mean different things to different people.

I think the counter argument is tabloids are not simply called lairs.

Weekly world news can have 'Batboy returns' as a headline and sure it's false. But, bookstores also have fiction sections...

According to the article Facebook is using the term "false news" to try and sidestep that issue.

This seems an oversimplification.

Yes, some stuff is arguable, mostly when it involves politics, but there is a ton of stuff on facebook like "Bolivia expels McDonalds and Coca-Cola", or "check this video on why positive ions released by salt lamps can cure cancer".

Yes, there was an intentional campaign to conflate news that people didn't like with sites that were literal fake news, not mistakes or biased coverage, articles made up whole cloth to smear people and such.

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