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Comment by giarc | Hacker News Reader

I can't help but think of a story (and a company) that helps people out when they can't escape a bad Google search result. For example, you search Bill Smith and only bad things come up.

For a long time, the play book to improve your online reputation was to get rid of those bad links. However, a company (and I can't remember the name) decided it might be easier to just create better links/stories about the person and let google bury the bad stuff. Therefore when someone searches Bill Smith, they see the good stuff.

Anyways - back to the topic at hand here. Perhaps the solution to these bad bots isn't to try and stop them, but to build better bots that spread #realnews and aren't as toxic? Maybe it wouldn't work, clickbait and catchy headlines are more "share worthy" than the latest WSJ front page article, but maybe we need a new strategy?

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Can #realnews actually exist in a completely objective and non toxic manner?

There are entire journalism courses on the topic of objectivity. AIUI, the takeaway is that humans are inherently biased and a part of good journalism is recognizing that and minimizing its effects to provide the best coverage one can. The idea that there can be something completely objective here is in some ways naïve. You can get a good overview in the Wikipedia articles on Journalism[0] and Media Bias[1]:

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias

As for non-toxic, I definitely think that's possible, but involves a bigger conversation as to how people communicate with each other: the same self-awareness that's necessary for good journalism is necessary when people talk with each other day-to-day. It's not clear to me how we rebuild our ability to engage each other in a non-toxic way about important and divisive topics, but I think it's necessary and well-worth trying to figure out.

When you take away everything that is perceived as toxic, are you left with anything other than confirmation bias?

I don't know - a guy on InfoWars was talking about how Hitler is still alive (sorry can't find the link). Getting rid of conspiracy type stuff like that would be a good start.

Who decides what's a conspiracy and what's an uncomfortable truth that powerful lobbies are effectively covering up? e.g. the broadest NSA SIG INT collection efforts, sub-concussive hits from football causing CTE, and sugar-rich "low fat" diets causing rampant diabetes were all at one point in time called baseless conspiracies by experts in these fields.

Actual evidence decides that. My general rule of thumb is, how easily supporters/detractors of an 'idea' let a third-party audit/research their findings and how they react to the results.

The choice of what constitutes "news" and how much prominence it should be given is inherently and unavoidably subjective.

I honestly think this postmodernist take that equates TheHill with the New York Times, and Breitbart with the Wall Street Journal is toxic.

There is a such thing as journalistic integrity, it is possessed in wildly different amounts by different news sources and it matters. A lot.

I don’t think it’s toxic to apply the utmost scrutiny to outlets like NYT. There have been many events that have demonstrated their decided lack of journalistic integrity (silently editing articles after publication, overt bias, playing with release timing...).

The internet has broken mainstream media’s monopoly on “the truth” so it seems a natural next step that they are viewed objectively based on their actions instead of their perceived and heavily marketed position of authority.

Postmodernism itself is the byproduct of the Information Age giving people access to multiple viewpoints. I’m glad to see the playing field leveled.

Unfortunately, it's been leveled so much, we're below sea level.

I despise propaganda as much as... Well, I despise it.

Unfortunately, the winners of 'breaking the MSM's monopoly on Truth' aren't any better then what they replaced (And are in many ways, much worse.) Their output is, by far and large, the worst kind of yellow journalism.

Unsurprisingly, nobody actually wants the truth. The people shouting from the rooftops about corruption and bias, and collusion in the NYT turn around and uncritically read about how Hillary is in cahoots with gay alien pedophiles operating out of the back room of a pizza joint. Or, alternatively, how this is totally the week that Trump's finished. (And did you see the great burn some celebrity gave him?)

I think that’s a bit of a straw-man. You can be critical of the NYT _and_ Brietbart (I know I am!).

the enemy of the good is the perfect.

There is no "objective" news; people will always have different ideas of truth; however, i think in this case it's easy to discern a difference by the objective of the actors.

Some actors are purposely attempting to distort colloquial understanding via persuasion and misinformation, others are attempting to describe that colloquial understanding to the best of their abilities.

Our modern shortcoming is that we've just lumped all of these things under the shorthand "News" and thereby implicitly gave them all the same credibility and importance. It used to be that the Editorials and Opinions were clearly denoted and segregated in the newspaper... not anymore.

Though we may disagree on the semantics of what constitutes #realnews determining whether someone is attempting to describe the world through the prism of their own perspective or proactively trying to persuade others to think the same as them is pretty easy to see.

We can get mired in the idea that nothing is perfect, so why bother, or we can make the best of what we have & understand that it will never be perfect.

(apologies for the offtopic nature of this diatribe, this is something I've been spending a lot of time thinking about lately)

There is a big difference between "possibly biased" and "spreading verifiable falsehoods". There is a big difference between "reporting on corruption" and "inciting violence".

This kind of false equivalence is almost as toxic as the verifiable lies being promulgated by various "media" sources.

I think the question is if there is a real desire for #realnews and how they can survive.

It won't work because people want to read stories that confirm their biases.

I haven't had a lot of disagreements with liberals, but I've had a fair number of discussions with republicans/conservatives who discount anything that opposes their worldview no matter how grounded in facts or science it is, and accept anything that reinforces it regardless of how unreliable or artificial the source is.

In fact, studies have shown that being shown facts that contradict our biases reinforces our biases rather than weaken them[1].

So bots that tweet facts that contradict the fake news people want to believe makes things worse and helps no one. It feels as though the only way to help someone overcome those biases is to prevent them from experiencing reinforcing information and to expose them to situations that contradict them.

[1] http://archive.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07...

Fight bots with bots. I like it.

Was it BrandYourself?

Perhaps. I heard about it in a podcast awhile ago. The store was about a women who twitted something, got on a place and during the flight her tweet went viral. I can't remember the details for the life of me, but she can't escape that incident since it's the first thing that appears when people Google her name. So the idea was to create better news about her and push those results down to page 2 (where no one goes).

If its the one I'm thinking about, its a lady who basically tweeted, "Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS!".

edit: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-t... maybe?

Yep - that's it.

Yes, that's it. https://brandyourself.com/ offers some free help in avoiding negative search results, also in promoting positive results.

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