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How is peer-to-peer misinformation any worse than centralized misinformation?

I've seen a lot of hand wringing from the Legacy media over every other source's misinformation but I've yet to see a story from the NY Times calling bullshit on their own bullshit.

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> How is peer-to-peer misinformation any worse than centralized misinformation?

“So by Facebook suggesting all these accounts, they were essentially creating this vortex in which conspiratorial ideas can just breed and multiply,” Ms. DiResta said.

> I've seen a lot of hand wringing from the Legacy media over every other source's misinformation but I've yet to see a story from the NY Times calling bullshit on their own bullshit.

Of all the media outlets you could target for blatantly misleading the public and breeding FUD, do you really want to call out the New York Times? "Everyone is doing it" is just not true, and it's a viewpoint that lacks nuance. There's a huge difference between the NYT and Fox News, a huge difference between Fox News and Infowars, and a huge difference between Infowars and RT. If you don't believe that, then, well, not much else to be said here.

I think one major point here is that reputation is tied to the ability to mislead. Unlike most media today the The New York Times still has an air of integrity. And their writing quality is, if not the best, then certainly near it. These things combined result in ability for the things they say to have a much bigger impact, and they've been becoming somewhat looser with their standards of publication and often in a biased way.

As the eulogy on the events of today has yet to be written, let's look at an older issue. This [1][2][3] is the NYT's reporting on the rape claims against the Duke lacrosse team. Read those articles, and then consider that it was eventually found that the entire event was completely and literally fake. Not as in a 'it happened, but not like that' but literally - it did not happen, at all.

The 'what eventually happened' is nearly as sordid as the reporting on the event itself. The prosecutor who brought charges likely did so for political reasons. He was in the midst of a tightly contested election and needed the black vote, which coming out strongly against the players helped him to gain. They are white, the person that made the claims is black. He won the election by 883 votes with large black support. He was disbarred shortly after his victory as a direct result of his actions in this case. The individual who made the false claims is now in prison after being charged with attempted murder of one boyfriend in 2010. She was let out of prison a few months later after getting off on lesser charges. In 2011 she went all the way and killed another, different, boyfriend and is now in prison serving a sentence for murder. The police supervisor who led the investigation killed himself in 2014.

[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/sports/rape-allegation-aga...

[2] - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/sports/duke-players-practi...

[3] - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/17/sports/sportsspecial1/2-du...

I've yet to see a story from the NY Times calling bullshit on their own bullshit.

https://www.nytimes.com/section/corrections

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the...

And I'd give NYT a lot more credit than Disney/ABC in that department. Not a peep from ABC News over the Disney/LA Times brouhaha.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-mov-di...

Sure, it only took the NYT 58 years to issue a retraction of their whitewashing of Stalin.

http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/24/opinion/the-editorial-note...

I dunno - are you really serious about criticizing them for something they published between then 1920 and 1940s? When already "the editorial page vigorously dissented from his accounts."

And I'd also note that the NTTimes post WW2 wasn't pro-Stalin at all, and it's only in the modern era that people seem to expect a whole mea-culpa about that kind of thing.

But I guess it is a credit to them for going back and writing about something everyone else had forgotten, 27 years ago, 50 years after it occurred.

I guess we are still waiting for the corrections from Hearst and Pulitzer over the US/Spanish war, though. Any day now....

> When already "the editorial page vigorously dissented from his accounts."

Yeah, that's just ass-covering and weaseling.

> But I guess it is a credit to them for going back and writing about something everyone else had forgotten

Stalin was murdering and enslaving people within living memory, and his successors continued the process until 1991.

I assure you that the surviving victims and their friends and families have not "forgotten".

And the NY Times reported that murdering and enslaving that whole time, including while that dodgy reporter was reporting otherwise.

Here's one from the year before that apology (ie, from 1989): http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-s...

This isn't a complaint, but the irony of me being downvoted to obliteration for posting a link to the NY Times calling bullshit on their own bullshit when someone claimed they never did it is gloriously amusing.

It's almost like people don't like bullshit being called on their allegations of lack of bullshit calling.

Here is an NYT editorial (from the editorial board, not an external opinion) doing just that:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the...

The NY Times has its problems and biases (it is, as Chomsky notes, the Establishment Paper). But it also takes its journalistic mission seriously.

Covert and targeted disinformation campaigns can be far harder to detect and counteract.

If a media campaign, even a deceptive or attacking one, is made by way of broadcast or display advertising, or flyers or mailers, it leaves traces and can be detected. As it moves to a whisper campaign -- rumors, direct phone calls, etc., the traces become harder to find or demonstrate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whispering_campaign

Targeted online advertising -- urban black males in Philadelphia is an example from the 2016 US presidential election -- becomes very hard to detect. If you're not specifically in the targeted group, you don't see the campaign, and unless someone captures a screenshot or audio message, there's no trace left. The scope, size, and targets are unknown regardless. Just such targeting, aimed at discouraging voter turnout, is what happened.

The source is the Trump campaign itself:

Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-th...

I'll never understand why people with this mindset always seem to harp on the NY Times. Out of every other available option, the NY Times isn't really an outlet that has noticeable blemishes on its credibility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller

Pretty obvious blemish.

I said it in another comment, but ability to spoof source and identity at scale.

Last time I checked, the NY Times was still publishing as the NY Times and placing their writers' names on the byline. When someone catches them printing up counterfeit copies of the Wall Street Journal designed to discredit we can talk about some sort of equivalence.

Whether it's worse or not doesn't change the fact that it's new and needs to be better understood. Misinformation isn't good for society, reasonable people should want it stopped or at least reduced.

The NYT issues corrections

Because it's a lot more extreme and hidden.

If sunlight is the best disinfectant then these highly targeted campaigns are impossible to stop, because only the vulnerable people ever see them.

You're implying that people are too stupid to know what they want so we have to prevent politicians from advertising to them because they'll be fooled. That's very arrogant. The idea of democracy is people get whatever they want - if they're stupid and get something bad, they'll learn their lesson next time. If they don't learn their lesson, they'll continue to suffer from their own personal choices. That's freedom - you don't have the right to dictate to somebody else what's best for them. They might value things that you don't value and are actually better off with what you think is a wrong choice.

I think this is a common attitude of democrats about Trump voters - nobody could be that stupid, so they must have been fooled by Russian interference or fake news or secret targeted ads. But actually they voted for what they wanted and are very happy now that they've got it. They're not going to get their coal mining jobs back, but that's not the point. The point is to give the middle finger to the "liberal elite" who seem to be oppressing them. That gives a genuine sense of satisfaction.

No, not at all!

The issue isn't when people are dumb, it's when they have biases confirmed and expanded by groups with a hidden agenda and no interest in the truth.

For example, [1] is an advertisement published for an anti-Trump protest by a group called "BM" (ie, a BLM variant).

The same group was also running this advertisement [2] blaming a "BLM Movement Activist" for killing a police officer.

Then they also run [2]: "Don't shoot", a "we aren't against police we are against police brutality" promotion.

They get engagement on the reasonable sounding things, then slowly ratchet it up until groups which sounded reasonable originally are doing things like claiming that the Black Panthers should be celebrated[4]. You can bet that will be used in ads on the other side too, just like "AntiFa" is used as a bogey man at the moment by the right, or "the Mercers" is by the left.

Just look at it yourself: https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/hpsci-11-1/hpsci-mi...

Most of these are things you'd never ever see unless you were targeted.

[1] https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1509564403505-S...

[2] https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/polic...

[3] https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/dont_...

[4] https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/black...

There's no such thing as an unbiased source, but some sources are a lot more biased than others.

There is hardly a source more biased than NYT.

Do you honestly believe this? While ignoring your biases can you say, without a doubt in your mind, that the New York Times is near the top of the list of biased new sources? Thinking of all the other places to get your news, you can't think of a more slanted source? None of MSNBC, Fox, Breitbart, RT, Huffington Post or WorldNetDaily come to mind?

Wow.

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