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President Obama On Fake News Problem: 'We Won't Know What To Fight For' (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a TechCrunch article: President Barack Obama spoke in Berlin Thursday during a visit to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and during his remarks he addressed concerns about fake news circulating via social platforms like Facebook. On the subject of fake news, Obama noted that the ease with which we can make false information seem like genuine facts on platforms including "a Facebook page" means there's a great risk for audiences. Here's is what he said, "Because in an age where there's so much active misinformation, and it's packaged very well, and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television, where some overzealousness on the part of a U.S. official is equated with constant and severe repression elsewhere, if everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect. We won't know what to fight for. And we can lose so much of what we've gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we've come to take for granted.
How the biggest peddler's of fake news are also the biggest complainers of it.
I guess it's easier to believe that people bought the clickbaity fake news about lizard people than to admit that you lost the election because people are sick of being lied to, when they can prove from DKIM authenticated emails that you're lying to them, both about the email and about it being modified.
Exactly. Ever read a story you have even a passing personal knowledge of what happened? You'll realise then how shit journalists are, before we even get into bias
Propaganda is most effective when it's least expected. Citizens of the USSR knew the government was lying to them regularly, and developed a healthy skepticism of its statements. I think many Americans believe their free-speech society is propaganda-free, and as such, have a poor "immune response." Maybe a pervasive fake news problem will hone the citizens' bullshit detectors. Here's hoping.
Sounds like someone is testing memes to use in "improving" the First Amendment.
Personally, I like that one the way it is, so I'll have to give him a "fail" on his first attempt to spin things as "if only we didn't have that nasty Freedom of the Press..."
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
This new narrative is doing nothing more than trying to lay the groundwork for later action. You see, if information can be labeled "fake" - using whatever standard they plan to use - then the next logical step is to put legal limits on the "fake" information.
Ultimate, AM talk radio will be the in the gunsights. The left is PISSED that their usual main stream media tricks and gotchas didn't work this time so instead of changing their message, they want to change the rules of the "news" game.
P.S. It won't work. They blew their wad on Trump and now nobody believes what they say anymore.
Russia spends over $1B annually on disinformation, and that's just the money we know about.
Facebook and Twitter build them the perfect playpen.
Their obvious political bias all in one direction does nothing to help them, of course.
I read an interview this morning with a guy who runs of the "fake news" sites. He would refer to what he does as parody or satire, but other people don't see it that way. For example, he wrote a story that someone who was protesting a Donald Trump rally in Arizona was paid $3500 to protest. He thought that was satire. But it was picked up by ABC and tweeted out by Trump's campaign manager as if it were true. He thought that they would fact check and find out that it was fake, but no one ever did. He mentioned how he makes $10k per month from ad revenue, and it's because people share his stories that fit a conservative Trump supporter narrative without ever bothering to fact check anything (or even think critically about whether something is believable - like the "Amish lobby" that was claiming that all Amish people were going to vote for Trump). People eat it up, don't question it, and if it ever does get questioned people have moved on and don't pay attention to the correction, they just assumed it was true and move on.
Here's the interview if you're curious.
Is that it? You posted on Facebook a couple weeks ago that you had a lot of ideas for satirizing Clinton and other figures, but that "no joke ... in doing this for six years, the people who clicked ads the most, like it's the cure for cancer, is right-wing Republicans." That makes it sound like you’ve found targeting conservatives is more profitable.
Yeah, it is. They don't fact-check.
That "bias" that you're referring to is a product of the free market. If conservatives seem to be more gullible, then you write things targeting them. It's not "bias" so much as knowing your audience.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The Breitbart site, just so you know, is a bit of an embarassment to the mainstream internet-savvy right. Breitbart was a hero, exposing the lies of the left (and mostly, the unwillingness to cover any story that hurts the left in any way). I think he'd be appalled at the web site's low bar for editorial fact-checking.
I think it will take another 10 years or so before it happens: people stop giving clicks to clickbait sites. Once the financial incentive to constantly invent clickbaity stories dies, integrity will climb.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
As fallout from that story, Dan Rather apologized on air, CBS fired one producer, asked 3 others to resign, and Dan Rather resigned as well. Meanwhile, the alt-right & leftist fringe sites keep churning out false stories with nary a retraction.
People cared plenty about Clinton, don't know where you were living in the 90s, but my friends in victim's rights groups were _pissed_ and that was before the rape allegations surfaced. He also had to pay a settlement and was disbarred. Trump appears to have gotten the presidency despite 10+ allegations of sexual assault. I guess that's the same exact thing for you though.
Just think what CBS' Dan Rather did with the Bush reports years ago. They made them up out of thin air.
Yes, Dan Rather of 60 Minutes did report a story based on documents that were turned out to be fake. And, guess what? A day and a half later, The Washington Post, The New York Times. USA Today and the Associated Press all ran stories disputing the documents. If you're tallking about the mainstream media running fake stories-- how about the mainstream media reporting that fake news was fake. 60 Minutes eventually ran a public retraction of the story, and subsequently fired the people responsible.
This is the mainstream media doing self-correction. That was back in those halcyon days of yesterday when integrity in journalism was actually an ideal that the media tried for, before all the internet media started going with the plan "who cares it it's true? If it gets clicks, run with it!"
Do the fake news sites ever run retractions? Has Breitbart ever retracted anything they've said?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Ahhh, I see you've used facts to rebut my biting comment that left your inner racist child whining.
Fine, here's a few other definitions:
"a group of people with various far-right and often racist opinions who are active especially online"
http://www.macmillandictionary...
"the "alt-right" — is considered to be a subset pushing for a "white ethno-state," as Republican strategist Rick Wilson"
http://www.businessinsider.com...
But please, if these aren't suitable to your tastes, find a definition - outside of alt-right sites - that says anything different.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure