The Science of Truthiness

E IS mC(Square) writes "Researchers at Indiana University have just launched Truthy.indiana.edu, which they humbly declare 'a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation leading up to the Nov. 2 elections.' According to their FAQ, they define 'truthy' thus: 'A truthy meme relies on deceptive tactics to represent misinformation as fact. The Truthy system uses Truthy to refer to activities such as political smear campaigns, astroturfing, and other social pollution."

Comments

summary:

[FuckingNickName]

If you are interested in the truth and have the required attention span to analyse detailed information, you won't be using Twitter.

Re:summary:

[cheekyjohnson]

Or shitty social networking websites, for that matter.

Re:summary:

[TaggartAleslayer]

That's a rather limited view. Twitter is a communication tool used by millions of people. It consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.

The "everything new is a waste of time" attitude just makes you sound like a dottering old fool.

Re:summary:

[FriendlyLurker]

Only a matter of time before someone smart will start pointing information tools like these at mainstream media, draw up some kind of influence chart. Like shining some sunlight into a dark, smelly infected place...

Re:summary:

[gilleain]

Twitter ... consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.

Minor status updates are just that - minor. 24hr news networks can cover the breaking news.

The "everything new is a waste of time" attitude just makes you sound like a dottering old fool.

There are new things that are not a waste of time. Twitter is not among them

Re:summary:

[BrokenHalo]

I'm not so sure that that is a limited view. Take this from the submission: "a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool". Damn, that just sounds so convincing, those researchers deserve tenure.

Re:summary:

[the_humeister]

tl;dr

Re:summary:

[geekmux]

That's a rather limited view. Twitter is a communication tool used by millions of people. It consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.

The "everything new is a waste of time" attitude just makes you sound like a dottering old fool.

And the fact that you would rely on any social networking portal for anything that would even remotely resemble "truth" doesn't make you look much different.

There is "data" (a.k.a. noise, lies, bullshit, or the random "I just farted" post), and then there is "information", with the latter being the only useful part. Unfortunately, "information" on most social network portals represents itself as a tiny needle in a haystack the size of Texas, and thus I see little point in relying on a tool that is churning through that much hay hoping to find a useful needle.

Re:summary:

[FuckingNickName]

My post including subject was exactly 140 characters. Not that I expected anyone to notice ;'(.

Re:summary:

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

Twitter ... consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.

Minor status updates are just that - minor. 24hr news networks can cover the breaking news.

So why don't they do that? Heck, they either re-tweet or are the origin of the truthy information found by this tool.

Re:summary:

[jesset77]

If you are interested in the truth and have the required attention span to analyse detailed information, you won't be using Twitter.

Or shitty social networking websites, for that matter.

I don't see how these critiques are relevant to adding an "I call bullshit" button to such services, and an aggregator which charts the currents of bullshit across these mediums. All forms of communication deserve the benefit of fact-checking. Whether you use them or not, they are popular, and I guarantee you're related to people who will believe what they read there. Leave them alone and they'll all rise up as one to elect Sarah Palin for president, and then the terrorists win.

Re:summary:

[neokushan]

How dare you defend Twitter! OHhh I'm so angry at you right now, I'm going to write about it on my Livejournal!

Re:summary:

[Jedi Alec]

I use twitter to speak directly to my elected representatives. No media or anything else inbetween to spin words, direct 1 to 1 contact(with the rest of the world watching).

Re:summary:

[Sodium Attack]

I find it amusing that you were able to express this sentiment in fewer than 140 characters.

Bears!

[dangitman]

...which they humbly declare 'a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation...

Deceptive tactics, such as using data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing?

Re:Bears!

[Nocuous]

Deceptive tactics, such as using data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing?

None of those are deceptive tactics, certainly not in themselves. The researchers mention one, astroturfing, but why should you bother to RTFA when you can toss off something that looks clever as long as one doesn't think about it?

Hmm, I do believe you employed a deceptive tactic. Bravo.

Re:Bears!

[dangitman]

Calling your tools "sophisticated" just because they use the latest buzzwords seems rather deceptive to me. Hell, there's something very fishy about promoting your research in that way.

uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation...

[John Hasler]

> ...leading up to the Nov. 2 elections

What's to uncover? Just look at anything published by or in support of any politician.

Twitter used for anti-smear campaigns

[CrashandDie]

We're fucked.

Hope they've got a big server

[Joce640k]

'cos that's gonna be one huge dataload.

Social Pollution

[foobsr]

What is bad about it? In analogy to pollution, leading to climate change (not a catastrophy, beware), it just leads to social change, and is not change (equated with progress) just the thing we want?

CC.

Re:Social Pollution

[CrazyDuke]

Not all change is progress. But, of course, you already know that. So, why are you asking? Oh, yeah... political pollution.

PR teams inject memes

[AHuxley]

They have learned from Fox news not to use day long talking points.
Undercover, well funded efforts by governments, .coms, .orgs and faith based groups can flood any 'space'.
A random set of users twisting and distorting, voting down and attacking.
They will then just drift back down, waiting for the next mission.
At best you expose 1 ip with a users who has x post over y months.
They are quickly back with a new ip and 'old' users name even if detected.
For best results shine light on their masters, infiltrate their funding and hidden support networks, link into their millionaires, billionaires or gov funded ops units.
They have to spin up links fast on any new issue, that needs a network ;)

Re:PR teams inject memes

[Culture20]

PR teams inject memes

It works best when they rhyme.

Hmm.

[CarpetShark]

I don't believe them.

Truthiness is truthy

[Saint Stephen]

Truthiness is truthy. The cake is a lie :)

Yep

[egibster]

Wow... I saw that when I went to UT. It was a cyborg heaven.

Can they scream their bias any louder?

[Shivetya]

Really, this should be fun to watch, to see just how ridiculously one sided that they will be.

Re:Can they scream their bias any louder?

[Anonymous Coward]

CONSERVATARD SPOTTED.

Where is the reference to the words origin?

[Zero__Kelvin]

OK. "Truthy", and "Truthiness" are terms coined by Steven Colbert (or one of his writers), so why don't I see him getting any acknowledgment?

Re:Where is the reference to the words origin?

[the_humeister]

Truthiness was not coined by him as it was already a valid, albeit obsolete, word. He just attached a new definition to it.

Re:Where is the reference to the words origin?

[Rui Lopes]

Maybe truthfulness should be used instead.

Re:Where is the reference to the words origin?

[JabberWokky]

And you're ignoring Senator Lloyd Bentsen as well... they don't cite him for his coined term "astroturf". And Congress of the 1760s is getting ignored for their contribution of the coined term "Indiana" for the Land of the Indians. Gah! And they missed explaining Jeff Howe's contribution of "crowdsourcing", Richard Dawkins' term "meme", and... wait... YOU! You are ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING for not having explained that your own nom de web is thanks to the 13th General Conference on Weights and Measures and the essays of William Thomson, the first Baron Kelvin! Why aren't you giving the good folk of the 13th GCWM any acknowledgement? Hunh? HUNH? ...either that, or coined words simply enter the popular vocabulary and become used as a regular part of the language.

Re:Where is the reference to the words origin?

[shellbeach]

OK. "Truthy", and "Truthiness" are terms coined by Steven Colbert (or one of his writers), so why don't I see him getting any acknowledgment?

OK. "Coin" and "Coined" are terms originally used by George Puttenham (in 1589), so why don't I see him getting any acknowledgement in your post? :)

Seriously, are you suggesting that every word we write should include an acknowledgement of etymology and coinage?? I don't think that's gonna work, somehow ...

First post!

[cupantae]

...but this is just part of the shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns

Re:First post!

[cupantae]

In my defense, the comment system broke completely and this appeared to be the first post when I posted it.

"Science"?

[Jawnn]

In the same sentence with "crowd sourced? Fail.
Look, I detest astroturfing as much as the next person who values "truth", but anyone who cares to look, can see lies and half-truths for what they are. Detecting them, then, is not the problem. The problem is that so many people can't, or won't.

Re:"Science"?

[MacGyver2210]

When most of the science is sociology - a science of human interaction - I think crowd-sourcing is an acceptable way to do experimental data collection.

Re:"Science"?

[Nocuous]

...anyone who cares to look, can see lies and half-truths for what they are. Detecting them, then, is not the problem. The problem is that so many people can't, or won't.

It gets worse when you consider the studies that show that debunking lies tends to reinforce those lies in the people who believe them.

Re:"Science"?

[twoallbeefpatties]

Look, I detest astroturfing as much as the next person who values "truth", but anyone who cares to look, can see lies and half-truths for what they are. Detecting them, then, is not the problem

Let's not talk about the brigher people out there, the ones who always can see political doublespeak for what it is. Let's also not talk about the, uh, less bright people out there, the ones who are absolutely set in there ideas and eat up any reports that fit their viewpoints. Let's talk about Joe Average, the average voter.

Right now, there are PR people in Washington. There are people who are trained in psychology or sociology. There are people who have spent years running advertising campaigns. People who have large networks of contacts in the media, businesses, activist groups who can spread their messages when told. People who are smart enough to understand what the arguments are against the messages that they distribute and know how to counter them.

That is to say, there are people out there that are deliberately skilled in changing the mind of Joe Average. You can call it propaganda or messaging or outright lying, but these people know what they're doing. To say that everyone could stop this if they just stopped to think about it is asking everyone to be above average, a Lake Woebegone sort of thing. And even then, even if everyone figured out what the lies were and starting listening different, then these skilled PR people would figure out what the new average person is doing, and they would figure out how to change their minds in a new way.

Re:"Science"?

[Jawnn]

It gets worse when you consider the studies that show that debunking lies tends to reinforce those lies in the people who believe them.

Good point. Thanks for brightening my day. :/
Seriously, that does make for a grim outlook when it comes to that "informed electorate" that a functioning democratic republic relies on so heavily.

Re:"Science"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackstone the magician had a great anecdote about that phenomenon. He was in a church where the reverend was demonstrating powers granted to him through his incredible faith. He was reading letters from his congregation in sealed envelopes without opening them. Congregation members would be astounded by the feat as he read their letter simply by holding it to his forehead. After reading each letter this way, he would open it and scan through it, then move on to the next one. It's a simple magic trick, done by having one audience shill. The reverend would grab the first envelope, hold it to his head, then "read" the contents of a different letter, belonging to the shill. The shill would then tell everyone that what the reverend read was, in fact, the contents of their letter. Then the reverend would open the letter and read and memorize it, then grab another letter, hold it to his head and recite the contents of the last letter. Blackstone, recognizing how the trick was done easily, hopped up and tried to expose the reverend, explaining how it was done. This didn't go over well with the congregation and Blackstone was basically booed out.

Many people are not objective. Those of us who value objectivity and truth tend to think that people who are being deceived will value an injection of truth and objectivity. But the truth is, many people really are incapable or unwilling to think critically. Due to their difficulties facing reality, they'd rather be made to feel good about themselves instead. Clever manipulators take advantage of that. If you brand the manipulators as liars, people have a choice of discounting your proof, no matter how absolute, or having to face up to the fact that everything their hero has told them is a lie. That may often include all sorts of things about how the deceived are great, terrific people. Better than everyone else in fact. Their dreams will come true if only they believe. Oh, and all their problems stem from external force X (illegal immigration is a popular one lately) which is holding them down and suppressing their natural greatness. Basically, we have a lot of Fox Mulders. They want to believe. Especially when it's good things about themselves. Step on their heroes and you're stepping on their own egos.

Re:"Science"?

[Shotgun]

How can we believe anything thing you say, when your sig is such a blatant lie.

Re:"Science"?

[twoallbeefpatties]

How can we believe anything thing you say, when your sig is such a blatant lie.

Well, my sig is somewhat related to the topic, after all.

I've explained my sig to someone before. Most libertarians believe that government regulation restricts and impedes business, that the free market is being strangled by market and employer regulations. The inevitable response to that is, what will you do when an employer is treating its workers unfairly, or if a business is harming consumers? Then, libertarians say, employees will refuse to work there, or consumers will refuse to buy the product. There will be boycotts and labor shortages. It's a situation in which we imagine that government will not be strong enough to stop a corporation's bad habits, but average people will.

The fallacy here is that people can be fooled. You can run PR to make people feel a certain pride in buying a product even if the product if inferior to others. You can run negative PR against union advocates or anyone else who tries to improve working conditions, leading people to believe that things get better if they just keep working under poor conditions. You can have skilled lawyers who know how to write up labor and business contracts in a way that people who sign them don't know exactly what they're getting into. Or you can just put out an inferior product and treat workers poorly, and when that becomes an industry standard as every other business in the industry copies you, then no one sees it as wrong. Again, there are people out there who are paid to convince average Americans to act or think in different ways.

On top of that, there's also an economy of scale. If you want to get a tea party nominee into Congress, or if you want to organize a boycott against a company, you have to rally people together, you have to select a candidate to get behind, you have to get your message out. You have to build an infrastructure - like a bus to take your campaign around to speak to people, and a website to keep your main talking points, and a process for keeping volunteer staff fed and motivated as they go out and do this for you. This takes a huge amount of time, effort, and money to do on a grassroots level. But when a corporation, political party, or other organization wants to counter you, what do they do? They just pick up the phone and call Steve, and Steve takes care of it, because Steve knows how PR works, and the company goes back to its usual business. A grassroots campaign against a large national target can succeed, but it is highly difficult under most situations because the corporation/party will already have the infrastructure and network to deal with the pushback. (The times that a grassroots effort does succeed, it often has large anonymous/semi-anonymous donors.)

Some people say, oh, we'd have a better government if people would just think critically about what government officials are saying. And we'd have more savings if we'd just not run out and buy so many useless things. And we'd have better wages if people just went to college and got better degrees and started their own businesses. And we wouldn't need business regulation if people would just stop buying products from those businesses that screw people over. You know, everything would be better if only the average person was better at everything. But not only would they have to be better at everything, but the PR people would have to not get better at dissuading people from those actions.

Re:"Science"?

[Shotgun]

I find your post to be very patronizing of the average person. You portray everyone as helpless, stupid animals, and your answer to people not being willing to leave a crap job for a better one, is to allow a self-selecting crew of patronizing, self-absorbed PR people run our lives down to deciding how many handicap parking spaces must go into every business? Politicians must be PR hacks. They won't get elected otherwise.

Grass-roots campaigns are difficult? It took 3 people to bring down the ACORN organization, and they had millions of dollars of public money to work with.

You have the illusion that government is on your side. It's not. It's on government's side. Proof: 1)Watch any Presidential debate in the US. Does either candidate EVER say, "Government can't fix that problem." 2)Indications are that Obama's Justice Department will move to stay the decision of the judge prohibiting the DADT policy. Why would he challenge a ruling that supports a policy he is trying to advance? Because the ruling is a challenge to HIS power. 3)Why is Obama's Justice Department suing Arizona over a law which supports federal law? Because the law is a challenge to HIS power.

I could go on, but it just gets monotonous. Suffice it to say that unbridled economic power is a threat to freedom. We have valid anti-trust laws to deal with that. Unbridled political power is just as much a threat. We have a Constitution to deal with that.

Paging Mr Orwell...

[vague disclaimer]

So truth is a lie?

Re:Paging Mr Orwell...

[dargaud]

So truth is a lie?

Well, according to Fox News, a lie is the best alternative there is to the truth, and as such is worth the same level of 'respect'.

Oxymoron?

[picoboy]

> a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool

Lost me right there...

Bloomington, IN

[Culture20]

The bastion of pure balance. I'm sure the truthiness meter will see no bias creep.
~

Buzzwords

[Calydor]

BINGO! What do I win?

But ...

[WrongSizeGlass]

But how can anyone trust their results if they're gathering their data and posting their results via the internet? Everybody knows you can't trust anything you find on the internet, right?

Because the majority is always right...

[niftydude]

Ignoring the inherent dangers of crowdsourcing - why are we supposed to believe that this site is more reliable, and has less bias than your average twitter channel?

I always find myself suspicious when people claim that they have some sort of uncontested claim on truth - politicians who start sentences with the words "believe me" spring to mind.

Re:Because the majority is always right...

[jadavis]

Ignoring the inherent dangers of crowdsourcing - why are we supposed to believe that this site is more reliable, and has less bias than your average twitter channel?

Exactly. Even if sites like politifact are well-intentioned, it often turns into more of a counter-argument (e.g. presenting additional, possibly relevant facts from another perspective) than fact-checking (that is, something is actually false in the original claim).

Nothing really wrong with that, except that they present the site as though it is somehow above the fray. It's not.

Progress report

[sakdoctor]

Is there any progress in the field of internet technology that isn't about twitter/failbook social data mining crowdsource analysis network social social social cloudsourcing?

If there is, why is this all that makes it to slashdot these days?

Not the first post

[Rockoon]

This is not the first post. Honest.

Re:Not the first post

[hedwards]

First Post!!!

Re:Not the first post

[cupantae]

Hey, I got first post above, up in the middle there!

Re:Not the first post

[blcss]

Can it be said to have the quality of firstiness?

Okay....

[koterica]

So why are they calling misinformation "truthy"? Is this some sort of Steven Colbert reference?

Re:Okay....

[hedwards]

It is, and I'm sure he's thrilled with the implication that his "truthiness" is just a cover for lies. I'm sure this project is going to be funded entirely by Canadian grizzly bears. In an effort to smear his good name.

Smart. Kinda.

[Shaltenn]

The belief that none of us is smarter than all of us is not always true. For something like this I do not know if crowd-sourcing it is the way to go. Once 4chan gets a hold of it, that's it either way.

First?

And their list of facts is displayed where?

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're going to have a group of social scientists run a negative points scoring system it would be great to start out with them saying which views of the world are false and which are true. "Obama is a communist" or "Obama is a muslim" is no different from saying "Republicans are racist" or "Bush was uneducated". Although based on my existing prejudices and the examples they use I suspect they disagree.

learning about memes

[hort_wort]

This could be useful info. It'd be good to know the type of places where the memes turn up. A group of us were talking in Star Trek Online the other night trying to think up how to start:
Keanu (verb) ________, he said "Woah."

Keanu suddenly understood the 2-party system was borked and invented false issues to discuss that weren't important, he said "Woah."

Uninterested

[biryokumaru]

Wow, this story has been up for nearly an hour and there's still no comments? Slashdotters are clearly deeply concerned with highlighting the dishonesty of politicians. Maybe because it's so hard to spot...

Re:Uninterested

[dangitman]

Wow, this story has been up for nearly an hour and there's still no comments?

No, posting wasn't working properly for the first hour or so because of slashdot's shitty code. As you probably discovered if you refreshed the article page after you hit "submit" and found that your comment had not been posted yet.

Re:Uninterested

[biryokumaru]

Indeed I did.

Benchmarks?

[flyneye]

And what shall we use to benchmark this tool?
We have been constantly lied to by both Democrats and Republicans for around a century or so since Wilson and Roosevelt took us into this age of swinging socialism and declared the lie of democracy.
We are so gullible we have been talked out of rights and into atrocities without even the benefit of reflection of the wrongs done over long periods of time and lies so old no one recalls the truth.
Suddenly someone finds the "magic 8 ball" algorithm to divine cheese from crap in a world where people pay for imaginary items on Farmville? Let's get hold of ourselves a moment before we get too happy over an erstwhile National Enquirer story.

 

Re:Benchmarks?

[operagost]

Lie #1 was calling the USA a democracy; in fact, it is something much more remarkable. Lie #2 was FDR claiming the word "liberal" to describe progressives like he, when the only "liberal" thing he ever did was to end prohibition.

Better solution

[Anonymous Coward]

They should license the Slashdot moderation system, which flawlessly identifies truth and legitimate opinion (which are highlighted to according to their objective worth) from lies, disinformation and trollery (which are cast down to the lower levels where the ACs dwell) and succesfully filters out any mocking sarcasm.

Sounds interesting

[Bruinwar]

As much as this sounds interesting, I'm not sure how it can replace basic research that is (as far as I know) done on sites like FactCheck.org. Is it true or not? Is it mainly a tool to identify that which may not be the truth?

Obamas already did it

[JesseHathaway]

"Send us any fishy e-mails about Obamacare that you get," anyone?

Seems like a similar concept, only on Twitter, instead of e-mail.

I can't wait for the researchers to conclude that liberal tweets are 100% true, and conservative tweets are astroturfing. And that the users who are all astroturfers remind them of Nazis, too.

mandatory

[hort_wort]

This is clearly biased toward democrats because they used Al-Gore-rithms.
If I'm the first person to write this, there's something wrong here this morning.

Seems handy

[durrr]

If i understand it correctly it sortof adds a layer of transparency to information on twitter, however either i'm dense or it's a bit tricky to understand what it really means.

The word

[frozentier]

is truthfulness.

Re:The word

[n6kuy]

No it's not. See this.

If these guys would just join the BSA...

[John Hasler]

...they could get these pirates raided and shut down.

Science is truth

[KillAllNazis]

"There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method" - Karl Pearson

Hmm.

[Cornwallis]

"Sophisticated" and "Twitter" in the same sentence.

Yep.

First question

[ronocdh]

Do Colbert's comments count as "deceptive tactics and misinformation"? Satire might be rather difficult to account for without broadly categorizing based on the cited source, but a well designed data-mining tool should be able to handle it.

Why would they call misinformation Truthy?

[albertid]

Wouldn't "Falsy memes" be a better name for misinformation?

Re:Why would they call misinformation Truthy?

[khallow]

Wouldn't "Falsy memes" be a better name for misinformation?

Because misinformation isn't necessarily false informaton. It may be selectively true information.

Re:Why would they call misinformation Truthy?

[myowntrueself]

I like this.

One would say to an obvious liar:

"I can see your falsies from here, they stand out a mile!"

or:

"Your truth is like a really obvious boob-job"

Hmm.

[Cornwallis]

"Sophistication" and "Twitter" in the same sentence.

Yep.

Truthy

[He who knows]

sounds childish even though it is an old word, and will therfore not be taken seriously by many people.

What ?

[captain_dope_pants]

I think I counted every buzzword currently in use in TF summary - got to read the TFA - I might win the buzzwrod bingo :-)

I want the Truthy!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't handle the Truthy!!!

yawn

[fitteschleiker]

who cares? I mean buzzwordtastic but seriously boring

It's so good

[antifoidulus]

It deleted all the comments for this. Tory(at least for the server I am on)

Lies

[MasterPatricko]

This is clearly astroturfing on behalf of the truth

Why?

[koterica]

Why are they calling dishonesty "truthiness"?

first post

[costing]

But is it truly?

So ... "truthiness" eh ?

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Do they declare which party THEY vote for ? Seems somehow relevant.

No Market

[Thunderstruck]

There will be no market for this product. Nobody wants to listen to reason, and it does not sell advertising.

We want to hear that grandma will be put out of her home by the evil "OTHER" candidate.

We want to hear that the highways are riddled with drunks and unsafe cars.

We don't want to hear that grandma's income is actually quite safe, or that highway fatalities today kill fewer people than suicide.

Re:No Market

[John Hasler]

> Nobody wants to listen to reason...

Don't worry. There will be no actual reason involved. This will just be another source of "truthiness".

Crowdsourcing the truth

[Tisha_AH]

Crowdsourcing may be great for evaluating the popularity of a particular statement but it has nothing to do with the truthfulness of any statement, ideology or belief. I cannot think of a worst way to evaluate the accuracy of any piece of data.

Another "left vs. right" voting system.

[Israfels]

How well will it determine half truths? Will a person voting something as truthy actually know if the tweet is the truth or will it simply be a vote for or against a political party? I feel it will be the later. Does it include SEIU memos along with Twitter feeds? How about Acorn memos? DNC news feeds?

From the FAQ, it says that it uses crowdsourcing to determine a tweets truthiness. So it's basically a competition between left-wing and right-wing truthiness voting.

The problem is that liberals use unions and political organizations to organize astro-turfing while conservatives seem to use word-of-mouth and social networking to a much larger degree.

I guess the best test will be the upcoming "Million Moderate March" on Oct. 30th.

Well, we can see where this is going

[medcalf]

I cannot see any indication that they have done anything to root out their own prejudgements and assumptions, or even to justify their inclusion. So like most politically-driven attempts at "science," this will doubtless just show the ideological conclusions reached by the creators of this tool (the tools behind the tool, if you will) before they even created it.

Not Truthy

[saxoholic]

That's not what truthiness is though. Truthiness is the purposefuly following of what one wants to be true, ignoring logic/reason.

Re:Not Truthy

[bunratty]

Yes, that's what truthiness is. What people do is make up fake reasons to believe in what they want to be true, and these fake reasons are called misinformation.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[hedwards]

There's varying degrees of truthiness involved. Some things that politicians say are complete rubbish and somethings are mostly correct.

Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

This post is kind of a trifecta.
It is funny, it is on topic, and it is accurate (currently modded -1 Troll).

(It is a tad inflammatory but hey...)

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[Gription]

The category of "mostly correct" is where the biggest, most destructive lies are.

What's the point?

[MaWeiTao]

Aren't there already sites out there that do this, much more effectively? Snopes.com and FactCheck.org are two that immediately come to mind.

I'm really having a hard time figuring out how this uncovers anything. How would it account for some actual event that causes a shift in the nature of associated tweets? It also seems like it might be subject to the old, persistent problem that if people repeat something enough eventually it's considered fact. And what's the benchmark for spotting astroturfing? Is it going to come down to cherry picking information? Anything someone doesn't agree with is dismissed as astroturfing. It also seems like this information, at least, currently is not presented in any meaningful manner that would allow anyone to take away anything useful.

Just because 50 billion flies think....

[rimcrazy]

....shit tastes good does not mean it does.

Re:Just because 50 billion flies think....

[John Hasler]

It does, if you are a fly. Of course different kinds of flies like different kinds of shit, and so we have political parties.

I just like the song.

[ExRex]

Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
That's the site I'm gonna surf.
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Tells me if it's astroturf.
If you need to get political explication,
Or to know whether it's data manipulation,
Or perhaps it is an outright prevarication,
There is just one page to fuel your outrage.
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Not O'Reillyana, Beckistan,or Hannitone,
But Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
The real spin-free zone.

My apologies for Hannitone, but once I'd thought of the last line I really needed to make the rhyme work.

Twitter. New? Ever hear of IRC?

[HornWumpus]

Twitter is not new (just a much worse implementation).

Signal to noise ratio about 0.

That isn't new ether. Twitter takes it to a new low.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[M. Baranczak]

Some politicians are honest, some are liars, some are incompetent, some are just fucking nuts. If you say "who cares, they're all crooks" it just means that you're too damn lazy to do the research.

Wow, bad news for Democrats!

[SuperKendall]

"'A truthy meme relies on deceptive tactics to represent misinformation as fact. The Truthy system uses Truthy to refer to activities such as political smear campaigns, astroturfing, and other social pollution.""

So here of course they are talking about things like the claim Palin said "she could see Russia from her house" (said by Tina Fey playing her), or the notion that Tea Party protestors are racist when in fact they simply represent individuals wanting smaller government that spends less, or the notion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen despite having at least one parent who is so obviously he must be?

I look forward to what they discover with "science", which must be bipartisanly bad and in that way bad news for Democrats, used to having news flow on their side... but of course the discoveries would never be themselves a kind of astroturfing, unveiling only what they thought would help the right people....

Re:Wow, bad news for Democrats!

[Ksevio]

Probably more like Palin saying the health care reform with create death panels for old people, since that was a lie said for political purposes, not just entertainers.

Re:Wow, bad news for Democrats!

[SuperKendall]

When you put together panels that decide to withhold some medications due to cost...

The term "death panel" is certainly sensationalistic, but not inaccurate.

Wouldn't it be nice though if we could all have a rational discussion about what it meant to have a single government panel deciding why could get what medications without using sensationalistic terms or demonizing those who thought it a bad idea?

Re:Wow, bad news for Democrats!

[Shotgun]

Yeah, because there was no way death panels could ever happen in the real world. No way at all.

There is, and never was, a need to villify the messenger. Socialized medicine has its insurmountable problems. The big one is who gets to decide how much to spend keeping a random person alive. Palin was attacked for this, because you and the left dislike the unavoidable aspect of this ridiculous legislation and would rather not have a rational discussion about it.

Re:Wow, bad news for Democrats!

[Ksevio]

A clear example of the mis-information that it caused. The term "Death Panels" referred to the part of the bill that would provide end of life counseling to people - help them plan their will and funeral and prepare for the end of their life.

The site itself is pretty "truthy"

[Dahamma]

For trying to even pretend it's remotely useful.

I tried it out by clicking on a few "memes", and apparently they are just collecting twitter posts with the same tags in them, and trying to correlate them in some way.

But in practice - wow, who knew that the most common tags would be 3-4 letters long, and mean something completely different to every person who uses them? That along with so many people indiscriminately using tags to try to get their posts noticed. Useless! (or truthy?)

great thing about this research

[yyxx]

The great thing about this research is that, no matter what you find, you can't be proven wrong.

Why is this in Science?

[John Hasler]

It belongs in Idle.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[John Hasler]

I've been observing politicians for half a century. I was even actively involved in politics for a decade or so.

Re:Truthy

[John Hasler]

It isn't serious.

Research of only Politics

[SEWilco]

Their careful analysis has produced a tool whose only meme category is "Politics".
First time I've seen @justinbeiber and @akibablog as being political. For a chuckle, run @akibablog through Google Translate. There isn't enough context for it to translate short Japanese messages well.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[geminidomino]

Some politicians are honest

Name one. Extra credit if they hold an office at any level above "Municipal"/"Town council"

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[riverat1]

I would say both Rep. Ron Paul and Sen. Bernie Sanders are pretty honest about their politics. They probably hold their nose and vote for things at times but they'll tell you why they did it.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[Eunuchswear]

It's easy to be honest when you're insane.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[M. Baranczak]

Jesse Ventura. I get the impression that his honesty isn't really a moral principle, he just really doesn't care what people think of him, so he can't be bothered to deceive them.

Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation..

[M. Baranczak]

Jesse is also a much better actor than Schwarzenegger. He should have gotten the lead role in "Predator".

Define "ALL"

[SuperKendall]

I'm sure all those signs they wave depicting Obama as a witchdoctor with a bone through his nose, or the ones emblazoned with "WHITE SLAVERY", or maybe all those comments about how Barack is a "thug" and Michelle is an "ape"

You say "all" like they are common.

I have yet to see one thing you mentioned at a Tea Party event.

Perhaps you will be the first to trigger the "bad meme" meter.

Like it or not, my friend, but the Tea Party movement was founded in ignorance

The only ignorance I see at work here is those against the Tea Party, apparently judging the whole group by a handful of photos they managed to find on a leftwing blog, instead of actually going to one and listening to speakers. At the one I attended the speakers were very intellectual, and in fact said things that at times made different parts of the audience boo and cheer. That is how a truly bipartisan movement works.