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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

Just today I noticed "The Most Popular Health Articles of 2018, a Scientific Credibility Review":

http://healthfeedback.org/the-most-popular-health-articles-o...

Many articles from otherwise reputable sources are not credible, or accurate or are simply false. Journalists no longer do any fact checking. Sensationalism is more important than reputation.

So on to the idea that Google and Facebook should be regulated, I think it's an absolutely horrible idea. We are talking of censorship conducted by the government, the worst kind there is. And thinking of our own government, I can't think of people that are more corrupt or incompetent.

Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever.

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Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever.

Agreed, this is long overdue and the only sustainable solution that isn’t just tyranny in waiting. The problem is that teaching critical thinking to kids makes them less prone to bing manipulated, and governments want people they can push and pull, as do advertisers, and so do a lot of parents even if they don’t realize it. When little Billy comes home and starts questioning his devout parents about inconsistencies in their religion, that’s enough for Billy’s parents to be against it. It’s not a hard thing to imagine either, just look at anti-evolution campaigning.

I would guess that a majority of parents want kids that believe what they’re told by the parents regardless of merit. So it’s pushback from all sides, because so many people are strongly invested in manipulating each other. Critical thinking is like a broad spectrum antibiotic, insofar as you don’t really pick and choose what it acts against. From your and my perspective that’s the feature, but to a lot of people it’s the bug.

On the other hand, when your best solution is 'educate everyone', you're pretty hosed. You're looking at like ten or twenty year horizon on the payoff (if it works at all), at which point we'll have an entirely different set of problems, perhaps exacerbated by our inability to deal with the problem at hand...

(Also, come back when the teachers are paid appropriately.)

Competitive pay for teachers is a must, regardless of how we choose to approach the critical thinking aspect of things. You also don’t need to educate everyone, just a sufficient majority. As for the lag time, yeah of course it would take time, it took time to but the system in the first place. I would argue that whatever problems were facing by that time, a solid education and grounding in critical thinking skills would help. By contrast a pig-ignorant electorate that can be led by any group of random voices is always problematic.

The US is terrible at educating independent thinking, there are heavily religious curriculum being enforced in a few southern states and the government has backed off of viewing education as a funding priority. We need to change that because it's seriously impacting our ability to have a working democracy but... it has nothing to do with regulating Google & Facebook, both are news organizations and should be treated as such.

> We are talking of censorship conducted by the government, the worst kind there is.

Why the censorship is done by a corporation is so much better than the one done by an elected government? I think that censorship is the wrong thing not who does it.

> So on to the idea that Google and Facebook should be regulated, I think it's an absolutely horrible idea.

For what it seems the USA election was deeply impacted by a foreign hostile government using Facebook ads. There are countries where sectarian violence is on the rise thanks to how Facebook prioritises stories for engagement.

Facebook or Google need to be regulated because they are radicalizing people in search of more engagement to sell more ads. That is not a good situation, and there is no incentive for them to stop doing it. As it is the best way to get more money.

Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision? For me, the answer is no. It is unethical and it will impact negatively the people affected.

> Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic.

This supposes that the fault is in the individuals not in the system. And that it is easier to change all the population than to regulate a handful of companies. I am all for better education, but to solve the problem with the big tech companies regulation is needed.

> For what it seems the USA election was deeply impacted by a foreign hostile government using Facebook ads

I would still request evidence about the scope of this, because basic evidence suggests strongly that the influence was minuscule.

So I would heavily question "deeply impacted". Perhaps this whole story was just fake news?

I would even be satisfied with any ad from any country having the ability to significantly sway any election.

There are far more probable explanations for the result of the election.

If well documented manipulation of social media by foreign governments had a "minuscule" effect on the election, what are the "far more probable explanations" you speak of?

Revelations of systemic DNC bias and their actions to intentionally harm a democratic candidate destroyed public faith in the DNC establishment.

Hillary didn't take any non-screened questions from the press for a period of several months during the heat of the campaign.

HRC campaign was overconfident in swing states and chose not to campaign there.

All of what you write can be true without contradicting or minimizing the effectiveness of well documented foreign influence. These issues are not at all mutually exclusive. I was responding to the claim that foreign influence was "minuscule" in comparison to local issues. You cannot quantify the effect of foreign influence until all the facts are known.

That people voted for the candidate they wanted to win based on their own analysis, thoughts and free will.

If advertising can win elections, then Hillary would have won since she far outspent Trump on media. Let's not forget she had a much larger army of astro turfers (Correct The Record) pushing her message on the internet and it was all for moot. It turns out people aren't as easy to sway as advertisers would have you believe.

> Why the censorship is done by a corporation is so much better than the one done by an elected government? I think that censorship is the wrong thing not who does it.

Because a company can censor whatever they want, and you don't have to use Facebook if you don't want to. With the government, there is an inherent threat of violence if you don't comply. Very simple.

> and you don't have to use Facebook if you don't want to.

That must be a nice fantasy land you're living in.

Yes, currently they can. The argument is that this is not desirable given how much sway these companies have over politics. For example, I have read that Donald Trump was elected as a result of Twitter; I wonder if he can win re-election when all of his support inevitably gets banned? It will be interesting to watch.

If the public square has become the internet, it behooves the government to regulate it for political speech in the same way they do sex,race,religion, .etc.

> "Why the censorship is done by a corporation is so much better than the one done by an elected government? I think that censorship is the wrong thing not who does it."

Speaking as a child of communism, the difference is that in case the government is doing the censorship you're no longer free to build your own platform, you're no longer free to have your own voice.

In one case it's a matter of freedom, in another it's just a matter of cost. The difference is night and day.

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> "For what it seems the USA election was deeply impacted by a foreign hostile government using Facebook ads. There are countries where sectarian violence is on the rise thanks to how Facebook prioritises stories for engagement."

Introducing censorship won't help fix these issues and there's absolutely no evidence that regulation helps in increasing the quality of news. Worse, government mandated censorship is pretty much irreversible without a revolution.

This notion that people need protection from external influence has been the explanation for the censorship happening behind the Iron Curtain. It's the logic used by dictators and oligarchies.

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> "Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision? For me, the answer is no. It is unethical and it will impact negatively the people affected."

You still have the freedom to delete your Facebook account and note that I totally agree about privacy protections. I love the GDPR, but don't push censorship on me just because you are unable to distinguish fact from fiction.

Also don't lump privacy together with fake news, in order to appeal to emotions, because they are not the same thing. Why don't you throw a "think of the children" in there too.

> Introducing censorship won't help fix these issues

Regulation does not equate censorship. There are other things that can be done. What do you think about this one "The report also said social media companies should agree to "code of conduct" to govern their commercial agreements with publishers."?

It looks like a good idea that the tech giants should be held accountable for how they run their advertisement business that affects the behaviour of all the population.

"Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision?" is a valid question. It is not censorship. What do you think about it?

“That affects the behavior of all the population” seems a bit hyperbolic no? I can’t imagine everyone being equally affected by media operations since not everybody believes everything they are told by any number of news outlets. Accountable in what way? Who they sell their ads to? Seems like a big disadvantage to place on one portion of the advertising industry. And you think Congress is going to be up to the job of actually regulating here other than just bringing people in to grandstand and provide platforms for elections. I’m interested in how this would look, I just don’t see how government is going to be effective here for the people and not just for it’s own ends. Should these companies be allowed to run psychological experiments? I would postulate all advertising is an attempt at psychological manipulation and therefore an experiment by a group on the populace at large to see if that manipulation is effective. So.. no advertising then becuase some people are willing accept what they are told because it supports what they already believe or don’t have the tools/info/want to find opposing view points? When is the onus placed on the consumer to consume with some level of skepticism? I have a hard time believing the consumer is blameless here. Information is power and is expensive. Believing that any article is telling you any whole truth is entirely misguided — everyone wants to sell you something whether it’s a product or a way of thinking that supports someone else’s agenda.

Regulation isn't censorship. The FCC has been regulating broadcast news for decades in the US. The bullet points in the article are so far from "censorship" that anyone jumping to that claim is hard to take seriously.

Also "child of communism" is a combination appeal to emotion with an appeal to authority thrown in for good measure. It's an attempt to paper over a breathless strawman argument - so, triple threat, I guess.

By your own government you mean US or UK?

I have massive issues with UK politics but knowing a few civil servants, they're not (widely) corrupt, and they're not incompetent.

In any department, they will normally be the force for good policy based on evidence, it's politicians who push random expedient ideas. Take grammar schools, the entire department of education knows they don't work and are being forced to push it. Or Brexit, the whole civil service pretty much opposes it, and especially the treasury/trade people in detailed knowledge that it's going to be an economic tire fire.

Finally, regulation != censorship, there's such a thing as a middle ground.

If regulation controls what content they're allowed to publish, and enforces this with financial and/or criminal penalties, then it's the same thing as censorship.

Google and Facebook are news organizations, people get their news from them. Whether you agree or disagree with how the UK regulates news organizations is orthogonal to the point that the same rules should apply to them as apply to other news orgs.

If the companies don't like this they can either spin off their news related products into a separate company or stop actively trying to control the news narrative.

This is simple.

> Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever.

I was taught this back in the 90s, UK GSCE History so a mandatory class at least for the first 3 years. I can't quite remember if it came later or earlier, but early would make sense.

Consider the source, bias, first hand account / second / here say etc., find and compare multiple sources.

Maybe this isn't common and I was lucky? Maybe it doesn't happen these days. My history teacher was brilliant, one of the few I remember fondly.

> Sensationalism is more important than reputation

I would blame Google and Facebook for this though. G crafted the online marketing landscape to favor using their ads (since most brands use adwords the most), and Facebook's post model favors clickbait headlines so that users click them and continue to use FB.

Thankfully these news publications have figured out they can start charging a monthly fee, like it was before the internet, but I fear this will push out small players that don't get as many subscribers as the new york times.

Google and Facebook are responsible for sensationalist news stories? A practice that predates them by centuries?

(American) High school (13-14 years old) is far too late to start teaching logic if you want them to actually use it. I'd start teaching the basics of logic right along with the basics of math.

EDIT: I don't know what I'm talking about with age ranges. I was 13 years old when I went to high school in 1989; my daughter turned 13 today and is in 7th grade.

The idea of "regulating" google and facebook isn't to provide accurate news or facts. It's to make sure the elites get to control propaganda. So when the elites want to start an illegal war somewhere, the people are bombarded with pro-war propaganda only.

No government is interested in educating their own people on fact checking and logic because a truly educated population is hard to control. All governments want their population fat, dumb and brainwashed.

Also, we are constantly told the lie that news companies hold power to account. But what's interesting is that every major news company was created by the government, banker, politician, etc. So power created these news companies to keep themselves to account? If Trump created "Trump news", would anyone believe he created it to keep himself in check?

Name any "credible" major news company. They were all founded by either a government, banker, politician, etc. Power created these companies to constrain power? I find that hard to believe and it's historically false.

Counterpoint: Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill today from Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, to encourage media literacy in public schools...

“By giving students the proper tools to analyze the media they consume, we can empower them to make informed decisions...”

https://sd03.senate.ca.gov/news/20180917-governor-brown-sign...

I do think it's important to teach these types of critical analysis skills in grade school, however, this bill is quite limited in scope:

> On or before July 1, 2019, the department shall make available to school districts on its Internet Web site a list of resources and instructional materials on media literacy, including media literacy professional development programs for teachers.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

You mean a state sponsored indoctrination of which state approved media sources to trust?

It's funny how if alabama ran a state media indoctrination campaign, some people would be screaming propaganda. But california does it, some people think it is a good thing.

These kids should be thought logic and history of media. Not "how to analyze media". Teaching them logic and history helps them to analyze everything ( religion, media, science, literature, etc ). Not just "media".

What would be your opinion of china or russia running a media "literacy" campaign on their own children?

If this is how little trust you have in people then you probably shouldn't let anyone educate your children.

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