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What Do We Do When the Internet Mob Is Wrong?
New submitter cornicefire writes "By now most people have heard the news and seen the picture of the boy who was killed over the new Nike sneakers. There are Facebook pages devoted to fist-shaking protests about materialism and greed. Yada yada yada. But while the scuffles over the shoes were real, the death was not. The photo was just a stock photo of some kid in a lab. We know this because of some old school reporters — Steve Earley and Justin Fentin of the Baltimore Sun. In the rush to celebrate crowdsourcing, many of us pooh-pooh the old media as 'gatekeepers,' but there are times when keeping that gate locked is a good idea. After all, if one of the crowd discovered the error, the signal would barely rise above the noise. There are people claiming that anyone questioning the facts is being disrespectful. Is there something we can do about the mobocracy? How can we support the best traditions of journalism while fixing the worst? How can we nurture accuracy?"
We had a similar event earlier this year near where I live. A kid, in that case, did die. Everyone thought the lad had over-dosed and died and the followed two weeks were a blur of cries for tougher drug control, better drug programs, editorials on how irresponsible youth are, etc etc etc. But a few of us, having read the report, noted the cause of death probably wasn't really drug related and the autopsy confirmed this. However no one wanted to hear it. Any comment about what really happened was shouted down in the anti-drug fervor.
There isn't much you can do against a mob, even one which is obviously wrong. Just wait it out and quietly try to educate people one at a time I suppose.
Looks very much like a PR stunt from Nike to me, to get out the message "our shoes are so good that people are fighting and killing each other to get them".
The real issue is whether Nike was behind the hype. Nike isn't that cool any more, and Michael Jordan is a has-been jock. They're the parties that would benefit from this. Follow the money.
People who have been proven right time after time, such as Snopes or the Bad Astronomy guy, are frequently cited as rebuttals.
Having an internet-wide identity, such as Open ID (and specifically not FaceBook or a government supplied ID), allowing people to gain reputation, and override other peoples' posts, or at least be placed higher, is really the only way to do this everywhere.
Just as with slashdot moderation, it will be possible to game the system, if you respond rationally everywhere except one issue where you feel strongly about. And it would be nice if your reputation could be classified so that you can have a good reputation on some subjects, but automatically junkpiled on other topics.
As it stands, fact checkers who don't have an axe to grind are the only voices of reason, and you basically have to educate people about the fact checker being cited, but not so much that it looks like you are unquestioning of their lack of bias.
Making the internet personal again, so you are talking with actual people (virtually, not their real identities necessarily). Not arguing with text on a page.
Well, there used to be this thing call "journalism". See, first you make up a story that Advances The Narrative, then you create evidence for it (in a font that wasn't invented at the time it was supposed to happen), and then you're Dan Rather. Truthiness rules!
Snark aside, the rules of the Old Journalism worked moderately well when they were followed. I think our current chaotic information pool will improve in quality as honest brokers of info bundling and verification services emerge and thus develop a reputation. Which will make them powerful, and interesting targets for corruption... Big wheel keeps on turnin'.
You should read "Flat Earth News", it offers a wonderful glimpse into the world of reporting and news agencies like Reuters and what passes for fact checking there.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
Flip side of the coin is the "old guard" burying stories because it doesn't serve their corporate masters and/or because the truth about a news story isn't sensational or lurid enough. Old journalism used to be relatively honest, because lets face it, there's always been plenty of corrupt/stupid/greedy corporations/politicians/public figures, and exposing them was sensational enough to sell copy without sacrificing integrity. That integrity can no longer be assumed and so "old" journalism has just as much upside & downside as "new" journalism. It's up to us to learn to separate the signal from noise when the name of the game is to bury us in noise.
When all of your wishes have been granted, many of your dreams will be destroyed - Marilyn Manson
... and what do we do when the traditional gatekeepers fail us? Same damned thing. Read critically. Read multiple points of view, including those who disagree with you, and draw your own conclusions. Nobody can do that for you, and no system will do that for you.
Its not just sensational news.
The modern media is He Said, She Said. Instead of investigative journalism and getting to the bottom of the story, all they do is tell you what people (such as politicians) are saying.
Name the media outlet that managed to inform us that in 2000, when credit default swaps were being deregulated, that the House vote for deregulation went 292 to 60:
133 to 51 on the Republican side.
157 to 9 on the Democrat side.
Instead of reporting that (simple to find facts), they cut to a sound-bites of either (a) Democrats blaming the Republicans or (b) Republicans defending themselves from the accusation.
Stop listening to them. Start watching them. You can't watch with the television on, because thats just listening to what they are saying rather than watching what they are doing.
"His name was James Damore."
I'm a bit puzzled as to why this is a story. Old media isn't any better as a whole at gatekeeping than the internet mob is. For example, most news articles are reprints with absolutely no effort to check that the reprint was accurate. And some "old media" are so biased and/or incompetent that I don't consider them a news source such as CNN or Fox News.
And for the old media sources that do real news reporting, such as the Washington Post, BBC, etc, we also have people in the internet mob doing their own fact checking as well.
For example, Slashdot does a fair job of real time fact-checking. If you're depending on You Tube (and You Tube comments!) for your news, then there is something very wrong with you.
It's just something that comes with freedom of information. I don't want other people deciding what I get to know about, so if I have to endure some falsities so be it.
Bad information will also correct itself on the Internet. (like, umm, now) because anyone can refute that too and not everyone subscribes to the mob mentality.
I never want to go back to gatekeepers like Rupert Fucking Murdoch controlling information, thank you.
There isn't much you can do against a mob, even one which is obviously wrong. Just wait it out and quietly try to educate people one at a time I suppose.
Doesn't work.
I shut up. Let folks stay ignorant - they won't believe you otherwise. And use their ignorance to manipulate them.
I'm not alone. Just look at what's happening in the Republican primaries. Here you have relatively well educated people spewing non-sense, lies and misinformation to pander to the ignorant masses. Does anyone really think Newt Gingrich is as stupid as he appears? Or Bachman? Cain? Perry (- Ok, maybe Perry is that stupid.)
I don't.
I see them as manipulating the public , using the public's own ignorance and contempt of facts and rational thinking and praying on their emotions.
That's what it has come to: emotional indulgence and the inability or lack of desire to gather the facts and look at an issue rationally. Careful study and self-education is out of the question. People want to be told what to believe. They don't want ugly truth - truth that's always a shade of gray and never black and white - right or wrong - good or evil - or any other childish binary thought.
Emotion and ego are like a drug. "I'm right - you're wrong and there's no two ways about it!" has become our society's mantra and it's leading us to a downfall. And some, Rupert Murdoch for one, have become quite rich and powerful taking advantage of this.
How do we get them to do this?
First you need to get them to shut up. Seriously. As long as they are talking, they have every incentive to not figure out that what they are saying is wrong.
The thing about humans is that they rationalize, even wrongly. Point out that the facts dont jive with what they just said (even with full citations and so on), and they will still just say something else or repeat the very idea that you just invalidated.
They will rationalize that even though they were wrong about the facts, that they are still right about the conclusion. That even though they dont know enough to defend their beliefs, that someone else must. The idea that someone else must is invalid because the entire chorus is just rationalizing.
"His name was James Damore."
It's not hard to find examples of Fox News dishonesty - for example, take this graph that's been carefully distorted to make it look like unemployment increased when it actually decreased as a way of attacking Obama - but the individual examples are beside the point. The problem is the pattern of behaviour they show.