Even more reputable sites like Snopes tend to draw absolutist conclusions about things which I find are certainly not absolute.
I live in Sweden. How do I fact check what happens in a neighborhood in the USA? How do I know that a result of a clinical test is reliable?
Do I check it on another on-line source? Do I spend millions on R&D and do my own analysis? Or just few thousands going to Las Vegas and gathering my own data? Or do I need to wait for a Newspaper that actually has fact-checking?
> Even more reputable sites like Snopes tend to draw absolutist conclusions about things which I find are certainly not absolute.
Billions of citizens fact-checking every single news is not cost effective. It will be good to have a minimum of quality, and then you can apply any correction to the inherent bias of that medium. There is a difference between someway biased information and bullshit.
I question the utility of you having any opinion on US politics, especially at the local level. You are certainly entitled to one but I don't know what it gets you without a vote.
(Not to mention that a Swede can have a very legitimate, personal, vested interest in what's going on in the US, maybe the GP had family vacationing in Vegas. - I had family vacationing in France during the Paris bombings, my mother-in-law called me up frantically that day.)
https://travel.state.gov/content/passports/en/abroad/legal-m...
Maybe I have friends and family there.
Maybe I used to live and work there.
Maybe I have a long distance relationship with someone there.
There are millions of reasons why someone would be interesting in knowing what is happening in a place other than which they current live.
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9423/did-charli...
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-write...
If you want real fake news, Google any semi-obscure health issue. You'll be lucky to find one or two .gov's among sketchy sites peddling homeopoathic cures.
I believe that's only on /b/.
You can check facts the exact same way we've been doing for many years - find corroborating sources, view first hand evidence (and no, you don't need to do this in person), look for analysis from trusted sources etc etc.
Even if a newspaper claims to do fact-checking or is somehow legally obligated to do fact-checking, that's absolutely no guarantee that it's facts are accurate or free from bias.
To make this statement is akin to saying that the opinion of experts is useless. This is exactly what has lead to the flood of conspiracy theories, malicious mis-statements, and general degradation of the media commons that has put us in our present state.
I do not have the infinite amount of time necessary to fact check the flood of bullshit in social media, much less deliberate BS in politically motivated media. I rely on curators and fact checkers, experts and analysts to winnow the very narrow set of confirmable facts and conclusions from the vast sewer that you would prefer.
That's not at all what I'm saying - absolutely, look at the opinions of experts, just don't expect a news service to present all the ideal experts to you in one place. Go out and seek those experts on your own and verify who you think is credible and where their existing biases are.
This very quickly becomes more than a full-time job, much more even than a single full-time person can handle. Asking every person interested in world events to spend more than eight hours a day determining the veracity of everything they read, well, it's not a reasonably proposition.
If you expect some single organization or worse, crappy AI to put together the perfect list of experts for you, I'd be deeply concerned about your susceptibility to this kind of thing in general.
You simply cannot take this position in the comments section about a story in which Google very, very specifically fails quite badly to represent factual information.
To say that the information distributors can publish whatever they want and the responsibility of information accuracy and quality must fall on the layuser, that's just poppycock. That's just a way for the giants to save money while we all get questionable data with which to live our lives. Unacceptable.
Better systems might require more work to mark a story as false (such as how reporting a story as false currently works in Facebook.) Over time, Facebook can see on their end which domains are pushing fake news and choose not to surface unreliable sources on people's news feeds.
I sort of think the radical idea is that a "news aggregator" is some new thing that can operate without editorial standards. People should be mocking Google for the shit job they do highlighting content.
The worst offenders were typically politically slanted (as would be expected in any human run system or ideological subject) but not only that as many academic subjects are full of internal debates with varying priorities depending on context, which made me question the utility of relying on 'trusted' 3rd-parties like Snopes for fact-checking.
If the fact-checking sources are as editorialized or based on the author's worldview on what is 'true' then it's just as bad as the root source. What then is the point?
The utility is that they offer a bit of extended research on specific claims, which larger articles or speeches often can't go into for the sake of brevity, lack of research, or occasionally (and likely less so) intentional deception. Their utility should not be fact-checking in any absolute terms.
4chan has had useful research on a number of occasions, that have gone beyond other journalistic sources, but more often the motivation is not the truth but entertainment and like any open forum has it's share of conspiracies. It should neither be entirely dismissed or given some inherent 'authoritative' credibility. This is why context matters, a context currently beyond the scope of machines, and too dangerous for a few 'trusted' humans. There's no absolute authorities on a general internet-wide scale.
Like what?
From the text : "These guys weren't ISIS, just opposing Assad and Russia."
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/22/repost-the-non-libertar...
Google and Facebook are culpable, but the news consumer is the problem. If you believe any information put in front of you, we've already lost.
EDIT: @mikeash: We don't give up. I just don't know what the solution is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@projekti: If "it doesn't scale", your only option is to meet with your representatives with a lobbying group, and introduce legislation to bring Google, Facebook, and other tech companies under US government oversight with legislation. They will not do this willingly, except possibly under the threat of regulation.
29% of LA Republicans blame Obama for the federal government's response to Katrina. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/polls_show_lo...
It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y".
The problem is beyond repair then.
> It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y".
The first amendment has no such exceptions.
EDIT: (hn throttling limits kicked in)
> I said "it's fundamentally responsible", not "they should be legally compelled by the government".
If your policy doesn't exist in law, it doesn't exist; it's an unfunded mandate with no teeth. We might as well wish for unicorns that bring us gold.
That's silly. I said "it's fundamentally responsible", not "they should be legally compelled by the government".
One of two things will happen: 1) They want a summary, and denied that, will lose interest. 2) They will look for the summary that reaffirms their viewpoint and discard the rest (echo chamber/bias).
I mean, sounds to me like you're both saying roughly the same thing. The question is what is the solution to the problem of an electorate which is unable or unwilling to think critically?
I'm of the opinion that fact checks from reputable sources are beneficial when tackling moderate/undecided voters. No, hard-core "Sandy Hook was a false flag" folks are never going to be convinced, but they're not the audience for sane coverage anyways.
"Think of the children", etc.
A centrally controlled whitelist has as many (or more) risk than a pagerank algorithm. Moral panics about the gatekeeper's blacklist not being all-encompassing is also of questionable value... especially in regards to an event in the very early hours of a high-traffic news story which are generally full of incomplete information.
We have the right to a free press. Our responsibilities include vetting our information sources, responding to bad press, and providing better press should the existing press fail in its duties.
We have the right of free speech. Our responsibilities include countering dishonest speech, being mindful of our own speech, and defending the right to free speech.
We have the right to bear arms. Our responsibilities include keeping our arms reasonably repaired and secured, being educated in their safe use, and encouraging safe use from others.
The list goes on. To paraphrase a certain superhero, with great rights come great responsibilities. The system appears to fail when people ignore their responsibilities. It seems to fail when we rely on others to fulfill our duties. Every member of that society is obligated to those responsibilities, though shirking their duty has become the norm.
I don't have a solution and I am not a skilled writer, but hopefully this gibberish makes sense.