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Comment by jobu | Hacker News Reader

> For me, FB, TW, etc have become unreliable sources of news.

For me, it has shown that a large chunk my social network is incapable of detecting bullshit. Last year I tried linking to Snopes or Politifact when people would post obvious falsehoods, but most people just don't care.

What I want from FB is a feed that doesn't include shares or likes of any external content. Seeing and reading about life events of my friends and family is what got me hooked on FB, but right now that's all lost in the torrent of bullshit.

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I'd be careful, both Politifact and Snopes have been caught pushing their own slanted narratives. Example: When Bernie says black youth unemployment is ~50%, it's true. When Trump says the same, it's false.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jul/... http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jun/20/do...

I've had similar thoughts on where they draw the line between "Mostly False" and "Mostly True", but in this case it seems reasonable to give more credit to the one who responded to request for clarification and pointed to a specific study the number was drawn from. Still, I think "Mostly True" is a bit too generous for Bernie's claim.

You know, I've not paid attention too much when this argument is made since I usually keep my pony on snopes, not politifact, but I'm glad curiousity got me this time. This is a bit misleading in itself.

Bernie's saying its 50%~, Trump is saying its 60%~. Sure its a 8 percent difference at most, but that difference reveals how they got their number. The gist of both articles is that Bernie is inflating his number with people that have part-time work but want full-time while Trump is inflating with high school and college students.

The rulings on both articles basically point to this: Sander's number has more issue with semantics than actually including people that are not actively seeking a job like Trump's number. Trump doesn't get POF because of your objection: while derived wrong it's "decently" close. Quotes because an 8 point difference is very large when talking unemployment numbers.

Bernie's statement was limited to people with no education past high school; Trump's wasn't.

The inaccurate thing about Bernie's statement was that he cited U6 as a measure of "unemployment" when it would more accurately be called a measure of "underemployment". It includes people who want a full-time job but can only find a part-time job even though they aren't fully unemployed.

Trump cited 100% - labor force participation rate as a measure of unemployment, which is complete nonsense because it counts people who are full-time students or who are disabled as unemployed.

"Trump cited 100% - labor force participation rate as a measure of unemployment, which is complete nonsense because it counts people who are full-time students or who are disabled as unemployed."

Perhaps the point here is that what is "true" and what is "false" aren't entirely black or white. Depending on how you look at it, full-time students aren't employed; they are therefore unemployed. In some contexts, people who currently do not hold a job are an accurate representation of unemployed. And therein lies the rub: context is incredibly important.

I find recently that on political issues you need to read Snopes carefully. Often the real answer exists in what they carefully avoid saying. There is no such thing in politics as pure "fact checking". There could be; but there isn't

> it has shown that a large chunk my social network is incapable of detecting bullshit

Most people didn't have to. When they heard something, it had been filtered. We switched context on millions of people without warning.

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