"Pink slime" local news outlets erupt all over US as election nears | Hacker News Reader

"Pink slime" local news outlets erupt all over US as election nears

arstechnica.com

29 pointscarride40 comments

This problem isn't just websites and social media.

Not mentioned in the article but pink slime sites also send out printed newspapers that look like what traditional newspapers look like except a lot thinner.

It arrives in your mailbox and plenty of people have no idea it's a complete partisan advertisement disguised as news. Some assume it's just partisan news like most news is now.

They saturate mailboxes and are probably effective at reaching older voters who are much more likely to vote.

Nobody seems to remember that the original newspapers were also...partisan tripe.

If you’ve already had lunch today, here’s a fun read on the origin of the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime

For those who remember, weren't these sites actually the origin of the term "Fake News" back in 2016, before you-know-who quickly co-opted the term to use it against actual journalists? Before that, that's what these hastily-erected, phony sites were called.

Yeah, then everyone kind of realized most journalists are partisan.

Except "fake news" didn't originally refer to the partisan bias of journalists, but to explicitly and purposely false and misleading information presented as legitimate news. Equating partisan bias to falsehood by way of a leftist media conspiracy was part of the Trump administration's redefinition of the term.

> Equating partisan bias to falsehood by way of a leftist media conspiracy was part of the Trump administration's redefinition of the term.

Yup. We should never forget the Bowling Green Massacre.

The article mentions NewsGuard rated these outlets. It is important to note that the former CIA director, Michael Hayden, is involved. Maybe NewsGuard is legitimate, but having a CIA director on the board is very weird.

He’s an advisor

https://www.newsguardtech.com/our-advisory-board/

> NewsGuard’s advisors provide advice and subject-matter expertise to NewsGuard. They play no role in the determinations of ratings or the Nutrition Label write ups of websites unless otherwise noted and have no role in the governance or management of the organization.

>unless otherwise noted

I'm not sure why I should trust that they always accurately describe when they listen to the CIA on issues. I don't trust the CIA and I don't trust a board that has a former CIA director as a member.

If they wanted to be secretive, then they just wouldn’t say they have a CIA director as an advisor.

Maybe, or they are just claiming they report all the articles where the CIA influenced them as a cover.

define weird?

The CIA and truth don't usually go hand in hand unless the word not is between them. The CIA is known for manipulation, coups, killing, etc not for spreading truth.

The CIA is an organization that specializes in destabilizing governments. That's how it's weird.

The CIA destabilises (not only - it also props up some) foreign governments to further US interests. In the US it's the FBI's job to thwart the efforts of foreign governments (who support these outlets directly and indirectly) to manipulate US elections to their interests (which might or not align with the interests of Americans).

All the big ones play this game with everyone eles.

Trust me. I grew up in a US-made military dictatorship because the US didn't like the idea of a less US-aligned democratic government.

I'm fully aware that this is how statecraft works. It's still disturbing to see CIA influence on a US-centric "fact-checking" organization.

I take it as a sign the CIA believes some "news" outlets in the US are fronts for foreign threats and at least part of their command structure is outside FBI's jurisdiction.

Or just that someone decided to hire a seemingly competent intelligence officer for a fact-checking organisation.

Interesting. My answer would not be "trust the CIA and whatever they're doing".

I certainly shouldn't, as I am not American and don't live in the US, but I can trust that they'll do whatever is best for the US, even if it's unreasonably sadistic and murderous for, say, Chileans of the 1970's.

what is difficult, IMO, is the know whether or not you're seeing news that have been carefully curated for you, with some partisan motive - or if it's just some recommendation algorithm that's serving you stuff it thinks you will like.

I've seen some news sites that will seemingly push (news) content on the front-page that is aligned with the stuff you read most about. So if such a site only pushes, say, immigration crisis news - is it because you have a history of clicking on such articles, or is it some partisan news website that is pushing negative stories regarding immigration?

Can confirm:

We're spinning up a local newspaper site that covers the crime, decay and the hope filled people that are correcting the problems. The local incumbent paper refuses to cover any of it.

Of course, this is considered right-wing.

Perhaps it's considered right-wing not because of the topic, but the angle on which you cover the topic. In my experience, the most partisan people lack self-awareness about how partisan they are and your post sort of smells like that. Of course, I could be wrong.

Their response to me below is equally baffling.

> Of course, this is considered right-wing.

In what way? You stated something generic without really explaining it. For example, maybe at the end of all your articles you have an advertisement for Trump? That's effectively what this pink slime does.

Where were are, there are no trump-aligned politicians that have any chance of getting in office.

Usually we're highlighting a liberal who what's to fix things for the working class. As opposed to a leftist that wants to control things for the activist class.

> highlighting a liberal who what's to fix things for the working class. As opposed to a leftist that wants to control things for the activist class.

That, without more information, sounds VERY partisan to me. Painting the left as wanting control when some of their most salient policies are things like universal healthcare and higher taxes for billionaires, or getting more funding for schools in disadvantaged communities, or even making sure police does not disproportionately dispenses violence against specific communities seems disingenuous.

This is, of course, ignoring other leftist policies more relevant to crime such as cashless bail, not prosecuting for "petty" crime, releasing multiple conviction violent criminals early, fighting against institutionalization for mentally ill homeless, and essentially ignoring nuisance crime. (Next comes the part where you say "these aren't leftist policies," as if I have conjured these up out of fiction.)

"Universal health care" is a phrase that basically means "everyone is on medicare" by now and to a right-wing listener is synonymous with losing control of your health care decisions.

"Institutionalization" is a weird synonym for "imprisonment" to any left-wing listener, since those are the only "institutions" we put homeless people in, mentally ill or not.

This is the kind of bullshit fight that makes me miss the fairness doctrine in media. People still disagreed, but they at least focused on making their case instead of misrepresenting the other side. Now not only does the fight go on, it's full of shitty rhetorical tricks designed to appeal to emotions instead of any kind of actual policymaking. It's exhausting and I had hoped Hacker News to be a sanctuary from this.

Institutionalization necessarily involves imprisonment, but should not be limited to just that, I don't know why you are considering this to be some rhetorical flourish. I am not misrepresenting anyone, nor am I playing word games. Homeless people are often experiencing chronic, severe mental health issues and should be put into a psych ward that helps them regain control of their lives. They will not do this on their own, so this is where the rest of society comes in, say "yes we do actually know better than you," and take them off the street.

> Homeless people are often experiencing chronic, severe mental health issues and should be put into a psych ward that helps them regain control of their lives.

Can't you see you are denying agency to a whole population because they live in a way you don't agree with? And keep them like that until they do?

I know homelessness takes a huge toll on mental health, but to incarcerate homeless people until they are "cured" without focusing on the causes for the mental health problems some experience is just that: taking them off the streets to somewhere people aren't forced to acknowledge they exist.

Yes, these people are so mentally ill (and potentially drug addicted) that the state needs to supersede their agency so that they can rejoin society. I have no issue with this morally because I know beyond the shadow of doubt that if they can rejoin society they will experience a far better quality of life than they could ever hope for homeless. I explicitly acknowledge they exist, that is why I want them to be helped.

The man that lives under a bridge on the walking path near my house, who alternates between screaming for hours on end and being in a fentanyl trance, is not making logical decisions and would be better served by a psych ward and addiction treatment.

> Yes, these people are so mentally ill (and potentially drug addicted)

Please, stop. You didn't say depriving the seriously mentally ill and the terminally drug addicted of agency. You said it about homeless people, justifying with a plausible, but not confirmed, argument that they are mentally ill, drug addicted, or both.

I too want the mentally ill and drug addicts to be helped, and even conced that, in those cases, it might need to be necessary to treat them against their will, but to just incarcerate (because good psychiatric care is expensive, and the US, it seems, can't even afford universal healthcare on par with the average European country) them even though they have not been convicted of any crimes.

> "Universal health care" is a phrase that basically means "everyone is on medicare" by now and to a right-wing listener is synonymous with losing control of your health care decisions.

I live in a country where there is universal healthcare and I still am in full control of my healthcare decisions - I can still see a private specialist, and I have private insurance on top of the public service precisely for things like that - and to have a private room in the hospital. This also causes the private insurance to be very cheap, because the risk it deals with is much smaller.

I too miss honest debate, and news focused on providing reliable information instead of just blindly listening to anyone who wants to have a platform.

This is why I put "to a right-wing listener." It doesn't matter what happens in your country. In the US, for decades, Medicare has been known as a miserable nightmare of cost-driven inefficiency and denied service. Nobody is afraid of the system you describe; they're afraid that all health care will be worst-case, and they're not willing to risk worst-case in the pursuit of universal healthcare.

This is a good example of why we no longer have that honest debate. Words that one side uses to describe their goals get sabotaged by the other side to mean the worst possible interpretation of the results of the policy. So, in one direction, "universal health care" gets heard as "worst-case Soviet doctor hell" and in the other direction "freedom of speech" gets heard as "permission to promote literal Nazis." As long as twisting the language remains profitable, we'll never get past this.

> In the US, for decades, Medicare has been known as a miserable nightmare of cost-driven inefficiency and denied service.

The reasons for that are many, and all of those are completely artificial - there are almost no political incentives to make it work well (and compete with private healthcare), and plenty of incentives to make it not work at all (because private healthcare donates a lot to politicians).

> and in the other direction "freedom of speech" gets heard as "permission to promote literal Nazis."

That's one feature of absolute freedom of speech - and that makes the freedom of speech a complicated issue with a lot of grey in the middle. OTOH, agencies such as the FCC and the FDA exist that could be a model for one that prevents the soviet-doctor-hell scenario.

Good to here that no Trump aligned politicians have any chance.

One of my bigger concerns with AI is its potential to spread misinformation, but does anyone know of folks using the models for detecting it? I'm not into the AI hype but I feel that's one area that has some potential benefit.

I find trusting AI to detect misinformation to present essentially the same problem as using AI to spread it - both cases require implicit trust in an untrustworthy system, and both remove the impetus to educate people and have them practice critical thinking and skepticism (as opposed to cynicism and contrarianism) themselves.

Although there was a paper posted here recently that suggested AI was effective at deprogramming conspiracy theory[0,1]. No idea about its credibility but claims like being able to reduce belief in conspiracy theory by "20%" seem iffy to me.

The most effective system I've seen so far, ironically (given who now runs the site) is the community notes on Twitter. But even that gets gamed by activists and bad faith actors. Still I think removing human beings from the loop isn't always helpful.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39927578

[1]https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/xcwdn

The article suggests that this is primarily a right-wing phenomenon and then throws a mention about a left-wing group without any indication of how much money is involved in each direction or whether the left-wing version is spewing the same kinds of lies the right-wing does all the time. It's this kind of both-sidesing of fascism that makea media in the US untrustworthy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com