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Comment by bondarchuk | Hacker News Reader

Given that political discourse so often takes the form of "I am right and you are wrong", it's easy to foresee that tools to prevent the sharing of misinformation will in practice end up as tools to prevent the sharing of information from people the wielder of the tool disagrees with. Then, it's just another propaganda arms race between the information sharing and information dissemination technologists of both sides. I think this is not the kind of research that will ultimately lead to a more healthy public debate.

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Another part of the problem is that you cannot unring a bell. For example, the WaPo issued a retraction yesterday:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-call-georgia-i...

The headline quotes from their original story were proven wrong when deleted audio of the call was recovered:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/recording-of-trump-phone-call-t...

But the harm was already done, the misinformation was already used, and the false quote can be seen on page 10 of this:

https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/house_trial_brief_...

This is a well-respected publication commenting on a matter of great importance that injected false information into it. Information that was somehow 'confirmed' by several other publications relying on their own anonymous sources.

>This is a well-respected publication commenting on a matter of great importance that injected false information into it.

And the [likely politically deliberate] regularity with which this has been happening for years makes me very uneasy to read articles by the same outlets crusading against "misinformation". This movement isn't about combating misinformation, it's about combatting their misinformation, and ensuring that people only see our "true" information

Yes, effectively all US media are propaganda for the elites at this point. After the way the mainstream media threw the election for Joe Biden this past election, I think many people will turn to less traditional sources.

It is simply too much of a coincidence that all these false stories about Donald Trump got published, yet any negative story about Joe Biden, e.g. the Hunter Biden scandal was thrown down the memory hole.

> Yes, effectively all US media are propaganda for the elites at this point.

With you up to here. This is not exactly a new development though.

Everything else in your post is disputable or dubious but I feel that I have little chance of changing your opinion on that.

Which false stories about Trump? This one was wrong in some details; what else do you have?

The real issue isn't the 'false' stories. Most 'false' stories are from hyper-partisan outlets that don't really matter. The mainstream media rarely writes 'false' stories, because lying is dumb. Lying creates blowback, which harms your credibility and hamstrings your ability to shape the narrative. If your goal is to mislead, the best path to tell the truth, the politically convenient truth, but never the whole truth. That way, folks like you can (plausibly!) ask "where's the lie?"

Well, it's hard to put my finger on a specific lie. Even if I did, you'd (plausibly!) argue "That's just one article!" Luckily, there are plenty of hard data out there about how the American people have been misled.

One great example is the Trump tax cuts. 64% of Americans got a tax cut, of whom 40% were convinced that they did not! [0]

Our media is incapable of informing the people about a matter of simple arithmetic!

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/14/business/economy/income-t...

> One great example is the Trump tax cuts. 64% of Americans got a tax cut, of whom 40% were convinced that they did not!

40% of 64% is 25%, which doesn't sound like a lot. That's a lot better than how many people don't know that Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing[1].

You're also not mentioning that the individual tax cuts begin to phase out in 2021, and end completely in 2025. Whereas the corporate tax cuts are permanent (until the next tax act, at least).[2] So some of those people may have been taking future taxes into account too (unlikely, but possible).

1. https://www.businessinsider.com/poll-obamacare-affordable-ca...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act_of_2017

To be honest, that's exactly the retraction that makes WaPo stand above the pack. They had a source, based the article on it (after verification). Then the primary source got available, certain details were different and WaPo changed the article. The core message, so, still stands. As a matter of fact, didn't the Georgia AG start an investigation into this affaire?

The damage is done though, so I don't know that I see this as a thing to be happy about. I am curious if the source is known or unmasked at a later date what does accountability look like?

If WaPo is the only one who can be held accountable and their only accountability is issuing a retraction, that seems like a gameable system.

What's the alternative? Stop reporting news altogether?

I feel as a news org, the best you can do is just report the data as it becomes available. Obviously later data could contradict prior data or clarify its interpretation. What matters though is the accuracy of the data reported, not in the data being a perfect predictor of the outcome, but that this is accurately the current known data, even if it later comes to be shown incomplete or misleading.

>What's the alternative? Stop reporting news altogether?

Maybe don't report something that one person told you and that you can't otherwise confirm?

That used to be the way that news was done, right?

> That used to be the way that news was done, right?

That seems like a bit of a rose colored view of news in the past.

I'm curious what damage you think was done here?

The damage on discourse primarily. If people are going to be able to have discussions then littering them falsities or non-truths from major media outlets would add needless friction to already difficult conversations. There's probably some amount of distrust each of these organizations gain when they affect a given group with misinformation that is close to them.

idk, this whole scandal ended up making me less trustworthy of WSJ.

If they didn't publish a retraction, they probably could have been sued. They're covering their ass, I wouldn't give them moral credit.

> If they didn't publish a retraction, they probably could have been sued.

Almost certainly not. (Well, anyone can sue, for anything. Winning is another story.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan

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

There is no perfect solution here, but at least they had to publicly acknowledge their error. This is much better than with the sources most people use.

I often see people say 'hey look at this terrible thing WaPo or NYT did' as an excuse for reading whatever garbage source is saying exactly what they want to hear.

It's not all of nothing.

Indeed, you can cherry pick individual examples of inaccurate reporting from literally any media outlet.

It seems suspicious to me that this commenter picked out a story criticising the right that had some innacuracies when it's largely media outlets on the right that have a history of actually repeatedly reporting outright lies in recent history (see Fox, OAN, Newsmax etc).

You can cherry pick single examples of inaccurate reporting from literally any media outlet. It would be far more useful to analyze which ones have a pattern of repeatedly publishing misinformation.

Readers should reward new publisher that take the time to do research from primary sources and properly vet them, rather than be the first to publish a scoop. There ought to be a system that tracks and rates a publishers by their accuracy and retraction rate (and lack there of when proven wrong).

They did not issue a retraction. They issued a correction. The precise language of the call is different, but the core of the reporting is unchanged.

The precise differences are that, what was quoted as "find the fraud" was actually find "dishonesty", and you'll "a national hero" was actually that you have "the most important job in the country right now". This doesn't change the overall story: Trump attempted to reach out to GA election officials and push them to overturn election results.

> But the harm was already done, the misinformation was already used, and the false quote can be seen on page 10 of this:

None of the citations on page 10 reference this reporting or any of the quotes attributed to Trump on this call.

Page 10 says this:

"December 23, for instance, President Trump reportedly called one of Georgia’s lead election investigators, urging him to “find the fraud”" and references, among others:

28 Amy Gardner, ‘Find the Fraud’: Trump Pressured a Georgia Elections Investigator in a Separate Call Legal Experts Say Could Amount to Obstruction, Wash. Post (Jan. 9, 2021).

This specific fake quote was used in the WaPo headline, in a charge of obstruction, and in a criminal referral. The call was secretly recorded, then deleted, so the source knew or should have known this was false.

The wording changes the call from implying some vague kind of quid-pro-quo arrangement to overturn an election to making a complaint because he (wrongly) believed he was a victim of fraud. The faked quotes are relevant to the legal charges brought against Trump. Their source had a recording, so there was no excuse for being inaccurate on something this important.

> Page 10 says this:

Ah, my mistake, was looking at the 10th page of the document, not page 10 of the document (no blame on your part here, I just hate that this is an ambiguity).

> The call was secretly recorded, then deleted, so the source knew or should have known this was false.

This doesn't follow. We don't know how many people were on the call, nor do we know that they all knew the call was recorded. We don't know who WaPo's source was. There are all kinds of possibilities where the person either was a second hand source (e.g. they weren't on the call, but were in the room when someone on the call, aghast, described it), or was recalling from memory having been on the call, but unaware someone recorded it.

> The wording changes the call from implying some vague kind of quid-pro-quo arrangement to overturn an election to making a complaint because he (wrongly) believed he was a victim of fraud.

It does not. Nothing was directly offered in either case. If you believed it was a quid-pro-quo before, you should still believe it. If you didn't before, than the headline doesn't matter.

Just to clarify, here are some things Trump said on the recording.

- “When the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.” - “whatever you can do, Frances, it would be — it’s a great thing. It’s an important thing for the country. So important. You’ve no idea. So important. And I very much appreciate it.”

If you thought there was a quid pro quo originally, Trump's words, as spoken, still support it. If you're looking for a way to excuse his actions, yes, this gives you a scapegoat. You can blame the WaPo for bad reporting, instead of Trump for committing a crime.

Notably however, WaPo didn't contend that Trump tried to negotiate a quid-pro-quo. They simply reported the facts, as best they could.

> Their source had a recording

This is, again, untrue. There's nothing to suggest that Frances Watson was WaPo's source. There's nothing to suggest that anyone who is not Frances Watson knew there was a recording.

> and in a criminal referral

And in the course of that criminal referral, the actual recording, which, to reiterate, isn't exculpatory, was found. What's your point.

This is what I mean by "unringing a bell" though. Due to the initial (false) framing, people end up with trapped priors: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/trapped-priors-as-a-ba...

In the end, it doesn't matter whether this is accidental or not, people are sharing the most salacious headlines and those are often significantly undercut by the story beneath them even at the time of writing because they get selected for "engagement" and A-B tested or similar.

So circling back to the story we're discussing, the problem goes deeper than just people trying to ensure that they share only the most accurate stories, there are significant problems with the supply even from the most trusted outlets.

I think you're more guilty here than WaPo. You're choosing to frame this as a larger mistake than it was, calling it a "retraction" is both factually wrong (WaPo didn't call it that, they called it a correction), and misleading (the change doesn't affect the article's main point[0]).

I'll reiterate: the framing didn't change. The precise quotes changed, but they don't affect the framing, and WaPo didn't alter the framing. This is consistent with a correction. The article headline, using only quotes that Trump actually said, could still have been "Trump told investigator that 'you'll be praised' for finding that I 'Won by hundreds of thousands of votes'."

That's a headline supported by the both the intent, and the precise words of the actual call.

You're trying to reframe a correction of precise quotes as a retraction, or a completely misleading story on the part of Wapo. But that's you doing that. Like I said, the correction is a great excuse if you already wanted the story to be wrong, but that's entirely on you. Similarly, you're framing of this as a "fake quote", which implies that it was a fabrication, as opposed to, what the evidence points to, an first or possibly second hand account, from memory, further charges a reader of your editorialization. But that's entirely your framing (and your assumptions), not a fact. I can't tell if you're intending to point out your own cognitive bias, but yes, you are showing that you're guilty of holding trapped priors. You're not demonstrating that anyone else is.

[0]: https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/correcting-or-retracting-yo....

If they weren't the main point of the article, why was that exact false quote used in the impeachment?

Because that's generally how you reference things.

Do you think the point of the article was

1. Trump said these exact words.

2. Trump attempted to convince GA election officials to sway votes, by suggesting that they'd be rewarded for marking democratic ballots as fraudulent?

If 1, why was this important to people? If 2, how does the precise wording change impact the overall narrative?

You've changed a fuzzy and incoherent quote about looking for evidence that the vote was tampered with into a clear directive. This is central, or it wouldn't be the thing that everyone uses to reference the event.

And to be clear, I am specifically saying they're wrong about it being a "correction" instead of a retraction as well. They can call it what they like, but when the central quote that they based the narrative on is false, the whole thing collapses.

There is still as much of clear directive in the recording. I'm not sure why you don't believe that.

Trump is seemingly incapable of being clear, as your own quotes of him being incoherent establish:

Not sure why you're being downvoted, the differences from the reporting and the actual call are exactly the sorts of differences you'd expect if their anonymous source was someone who had heard the call once and was conveying the wording based off of memory. There's no significant difference in meaning as far as I can tell - Trump was still instructing them to find him votes.

Bombholing.

> The innovation was to use banner headlines to saturate news cycles, often to the exclusion of nearly any other news, before moving to the next controversy so quickly that mistakes, errors, or rhetorical letdowns were memory-holed.

> As George Orwell understood when he created the “memory hole” concept in 1984, an institution that can obliterate memory can control history.

> The innovation of the Trump era was companies learned they could operate on a sort of editorial margin, borrowing credibility for unproven stories from audiences themselves, who gave permission to play loose with facts by gobbling up anonymously-sourced exposes that tickled their outrage centers.

> Mistakes became irrelevant. In a way, they were no longer understood as mistakes.

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-bombhole-era-0cb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIAWggqZQmE

Here's a video where an ex-lawyer goes through a NYT article on election fraud and absolutely tears apart the misleading language they use to build the case that there was "no" election fraud:

https://youtu.be/TmgMu5sefzA

The beauty of this style of reporting is that the writer's skill with words allows them to plant specific ideas into reader's minds, but if anyone was to call them out on the carpet, they can completely truthfully say that nothing in the article is untrue, or explicitly asserts conclusions that any typical reader would naturally draw.

The NYT is arguably one of the best news outlets going, so I'm not sure how one could hope that this situation will ever improve.

Oh, it's an ex-lawyer? Not just some random guy sitting in his car? Thanks for including that tidbit, so I know this arbitrary YouTube video is credible.

Or maybe, just maybe, you're doing the same thing you complain about, and cherry-picking your sources and relying on stories that support your existing biases.

The answer is not to reason every sentence from first principles, like the HHG2G character who is pleasantly surprised every morning to discover that a pencil makes marks on paper. At every point, new information builds on previous information, and that usually works out reasonably well. There are exceptions, perhaps most notably in the case of the NYT, the post-9/11 Iraq war, but most of the time it works better than any other solution, and more importantly, any alternative would work less well.

But the tool in the article is to ask people whether they think a certain headline is accurate and then looking at the effect that has on their sharing of other articles. If someone with the "I am right and you are wrong" mindset shares fewer articles they think are not accurate, they'll actually be right more often. (At least in their own opinion.)

If this gets weaponized to make people on "both sides" pay more attention to the accuracy of what they're sharing, I'd expect that to result in a more healthy public debate.

The researchers anticipate that concern, and specifically checked whether "information vs. misinformation" just boiled down to partisan disputes about what's true. They found that "our participants were more than twice as likely to consider sharing false but politically concordant headlines (37.4%) as they were to rate such headlines as accurate", suggesting that there really is a problem of people sharing things they know aren't strictly accurate.

This article focuses entirely on people regulating their own decisions to share an article, not any attempt by a "tool wielder" to selectively block any content.

To put their study into context, it suggests that if Facebook asked users to rate whether an unrelated article was accurate before allowing you to share their own, many people would pay attention to whether their own articles were accurate, and less misinformation would be shared. This could be applied universally to any news article, both for detecting people sharing it, and populating the pre-share accuracy judgement. Instead, Facebook streamlines the process to increase engagement, and people blitz through it without stopping to consider the article's accuracy at all, distracted by thinking of all the likes they'll get for posting it. According to the study, when users are already primed to judge the accuracy of an article, they are more likely to self-regulate their own misinformation.

Absolutely, what more, and I'm culpable of this too, often things are re-shared where you only read the headline, or even just skimmed through the article barely reading it or spending any time to think through it.

You should carefully read the paper linked. Your comment may be correct but it's not a valid criticism of the methods the study used.

What does this have to do with the article?

I don't think debate is the issue. The issue is people lying to each other to motivate certain problematic behavior like riots and elections. Moreover the echo chamber effect created by the information sharing technologists to increase clicks, makes having a meaningful debate moot.

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