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Comment by civilized | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused about what "the rules" are for fake news. Once we a week we go to the supermarket, and lining the checkout aisle we see tabloids peddling what seem to be obviously false celebrity gossip stories, but presented as news. This has been going on for as long as I can remember - so, at least 30 years.

I guess we're supposed to be alarmed here because MSN was once not a tabloid? Not that I would know, I've never read it.

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Some people have been alarmed about this and did drag publishers to the courts over fake news parading as truth for much longer than three decades. That it has been having a constant presence for as long as you can think and doesn't do harm to you personally doesn't mean it's not a societal problem. Car exhausts haven't killed you in the past and have been around for ages, so... more car exhausts should be no problem, no? Especially when I choose to ignore them?

My comment is directed at our confusing historical norms. Personally I would be happy if all this nonsense would go away. Not quite sure what can be done about it though.

Seems like it would be good to have more nonprofit news organizations with credible dedication to integrity.

1440 is exactly what you’re describing. And they are wonderful.

https://join1440.com/

The corporate-loving legislation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 [0] signed by Beej Clinton axed the idea of keeping separate the mega corporations and our source for truth. For now, we Americans are very lucky that the internet has not been outright taken over by the same actors, although YouTube sure seems to think we all want to know what boomer news has to say, for example https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=FTX .

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996

Amusingly enough if you actually read the tabloids (or at least decades ago this was true) they often were just reprints of actual small-time news stories; the tabloids basically made the front cover out of "Bob in Bobville said what his brother done got et by a hornytoad".

And on the other hand, there's Weekly World News: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_World_News

Were they the ones who published the Bat Boy series? I loved it.

The research bulletin of Men in Black if memory serves, although wiki puts it more mildly.

Gossip is presented as gossip, fake news a news (or in this case facts).

(I read the article twice, the website being unknown to me I thought it was fake news, and it still seems weird to me that MSN uses AI generated content, otoh why not, the mess MSN forces on me in windows has been distopian for years, and the mentioned article appears on MSN. Sad times that these days I'm sceptical of anything. I honestly feel this is one of the biggest dangers of our times, the ease with which populations can be influenced and truth is just a matter of alternative facts, the common argument is that it is of all times but that neglects how much easier, more sophisticated, and larger the reach is)

If there's any doubt about the authenticity of Futurism, you can click through and read the MSN "articles" for yourself. It's definitely real!

I do think there's some confusion here over exactly what's happening. MSN's AI isn't generating entire articles like GPT-3; it's just using AI to curate articles for republication from across the web, but accidentally (or perhaps intentionally, in a sort of wink-wink situation for clickbait traffic) selecting ones that are clearly fake news (including literal stuff about mermaids and bigfoot.)

Ah yes, with all the GPT3 news I thought MSN was using it. Thank for correcting that assumption. Doesn't make the situation any better of course, it's just that MSN forwarding anything unfortunately is no news to me.

Tabloids are not different than much of the shitposting some people do on the internet. They'll take one small truth and extrapolate it into an entire learned lesson based on smoke and mirrors. The gossip end is just kind of gross to me, but I'm already the kind of person that doesn't hang out with people that tend to gossip.

Fake news are good for society because it forces people to triple check when they wanna know something. Not all people will triple check everything, but it's better than a society of people believing whatever comes from authority.

Also censorship is bad and all that.

Thank you fake news!

Unfortunately people are not as evolved as you think. They still believe fake news.

Worse than just believing it … these days they can (nearly) instantaneously share it to zillions of other people around the world many of whom will also believe (and re-share) it, and few in that chain will bother to fact-check it themselves, and of those few, even fewer will take the time to call out the error / misinformation, and even if they do, they'll almost instantly be shouted down and ridiculed by all those who just outright refuse to see facts when they really really want to believe a lie. This of course leads the average "volunteer" fact-checker to just sooner or later give up even trying to fight the growing waves of "fake news", and keep their fact-checking to themselves; Not good for anyone.

A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes

- Mark Twain

Actually it seems that quote may have originated from Johnathan Swift not Mark Twain, although almost everyone attributes it to Mark Twain. Which is rather nicely recursive given the subject of the quote.

https://professorbuzzkill.com/twain-lie-travels/

The quote doesn't look like Swift's style of English; so I read that buzzkill article. What buzzkill attributes to Swift isn't the quote (or its origins), but the sentiment. Swift has nothing to say about how long it takes to put on shoes.

That style of English looks to me like Twain.

Well the article also says there is no evidence Mark Twain ever said it.

There are actually quite a few quotes attributed to Twain (and Einstein, and Lincoln, and many famous "others") that may or may not have been said first (or at all) by the people they're attributed to. Interesting "rabbit hole" to explore for those into that sort of thing…

This only works well if people are punished with a short feedback cycle for believing fake news. Unfortunately this is not the case, so they don't learn in time to prevent had info from causing massive damage. I'm honestly inclined to agree with you for the really obvious stuff, but covid disinformation killed a lot of people.

Reminiscent of the broken window fallacy

IIRC the original term was coined for a specific type of misinformation where the aim is to erode trust in institutions and truth in general by bombarding people with incorrect news (kind of like a DDoS on truth). This is differentiated from salacious tabloid gossip or from propaganda (which seeks to push a specific, alternative truth).

However, now the vernacular use seems to be totally undifferentiated, yes.

Disinformation can go hand and hand with propaganda, look at the current European war. I get what you're saying, but just pointing out that it can be used in detriment to the morale on the other side of the fence.

Yes, of course

Yes? It is the steady and constant decline and spread that is the problem.

I tend to agree, just thinking out loud.

Filling grandma's trusted news page with nonsense is elder abuse, and could be much worse if they hit her with, say, antivax conspiracies at the right time.

I don’t see why the specificity is very relevant. Declining quality of reporting hurts everyone, grandma and kids and geniuses and morons all.

It's relevant because we can't imagine the impact on everyone. If we try, we simply imagine ourselves.

I certainly agree that grandma is not the only kind of person who could be harmed by this.

Its hardly steady and constant. There is a recent spike, but "yellow" journalism was a really big thing historically.

I was surprised learning from the article that MSN was considered as a respectable organization at any time in the past. My first glance long ago (around its induction), coupled with its push into the user's face, run by a software company, not any software company but Microsoft, whle there are reputable and reliable sources out there, it did not make it creadible to me. Actually was put in the way. This is the first thing I remove on getting to a new Windows install.

MSNBC was also started by Microsoft and later divested

My great Aunt use to spend her time in the 80s always seemingly reading a "news paper" that had a cover story about how Elvis was still alive.

Hysterical to me how the generation that fought REAL NAZIS were not concerned with any of this.

In Australia it's apparently legally fine for these magazines to publish false stories as they are entertainment and not news!

In the USA, MSDNC's Russia Maddow has a show that makes claims such as what if Russia attacks our power grid when it's cold and other completely stupid stories. On the other side of the aisle is [name anyone on Fox News]. In court, their defense is that no one takes their claims as truth and that it is a source of entertainment so they're not held to any standard basically whatsoever. It's so sad.

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