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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."
If you are interested in the truth and have the required attention span to analyse detailed information, you won't be using Twitter.
...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?
... and then they built the supercollider.
> ...leading up to the Nov. 2 elections
What's to uncover? Just look at anything published by or in support of any politician.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
They have learned from Fox news not to use day long talking points. .coms, .orgs and faith based groups can flood any 'space'. ;)
Undercover, well funded efforts by governments,
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
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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.
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?
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.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
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.
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.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
CONSERVATARD SPOTTED.
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.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
The category of "mostly correct" is where the biggest, most destructive lies are.
"'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....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It belongs in Idle.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.