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Google Executives Are Floating a Plan To Fight Fake News on Facebook and Twitter (qz.com)
Fake news, bots, and propaganda were hot topics at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last month, and Google executives there floated an intriguing idea to some fellow attendees -- what if the company could tell users whether information is trustworthy before they shared it on social networks like Facebook and Twitter? From a report: Representatives from Google and its parent company Alphabet eagerly discussed how the company can play a greater role in reducing misleading information online, several Davos attendees involved in and briefed on these conversations told Quartz. A notification system, perhaps via an optional extension for Google's Chrome browser, was an idea that these people said was broached more than once. Such a browser-based system controlled by Google could alert users on Facebook's or Twitter's websites when they're seeing or sharing a link deemed to be false or untrustworthy.
Right now, this appears to be merely an idea company executives are discussing, not a product in development.
Likely. Only slightly less desirable would be people that work for Google. No, thanks. The douches there sure think highly of themselves. You know what works every time? Stop getting your news from Google, Twitter, or Facebook.
Of course, it's good that they're censoring "fake news" because as the gatekeepers, their responsibility is to make sure that people are properly informed with the correct news. It would be bad to allow chaos and divisiveness from intentionally false information.
FTFY
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Facebook and Twitter are not News sites, or even aggregators, in the first place.
Research shows people who are told something is fake tend to believe it even more.
The james damore case clearly shows us that google is not like a computer system that neutrally handles data, it has a specific narrative which is emotional and based on current political leanings and the soft 'gut' feeling of the population.
Would we be seeing things which google does not like, say perhaps that some of their hardware was being manufactured by slave labor et al? Or would this suddenly become 'fake news'
The problem is not really fake news, the problem is the lack of anything like a credible media source. Everyone has cross mergered to the point where what we see and hear as 'news' is generally only the things we are allowed to see.
See for example the court case in which fox news bought out WTVT and then buried a story about Monstanto's posilac product and the harmful effects it had on the animals and on anyone drinking it (hint, it is on the market, will remain so, and is not safe to consume)
Now try and look around at any major news corp that has mentioned that monsanto's roundup weed killer is also a known active carcinogen (again, on the market, not safe, will remain that way).
We are already living in the age of fake news from our highest sources. This whole thing just stinks of a way to cripple what little independent media is left so that the rich can write the narrative of our reality. I believe russians probably did purchase and attempt to sway public opinion on matters if only to create a divide, I also believe that corporations do this as a matter of daily operations like one might take a solid dump in the morning.
There is no cure for this situation save one which is unappealing....we need to start to kill the rich similar to the french revolution. The only reason we have rights today the way we recognize them is because an angry mob started to cut rich peoples heads off until an agreement of fair treatment was made. You may know such agreements as the bill of human rights, principle of equality, separation of church and state, congress and/or a group of representatives of the people, removal of the feudal system, etc. These effects rippled across the planet to give us much of what we know today as modern civil society.
Again, unappealing, but beneficial without a doubt. Perhaps the time has come again to remind those in power who we are
I don't want anybody deciding what is news to ME. Are we in a "new situation" with digital giants? I do not think so, just more giant, faster. "Reading the Paper" SHOULD be taught in Middle School.
Those who post fake news already know it is untrustworthy, but they do it anyway because they like/agree with it.
Not everyone who shares fake news stories knows it is untrustworthy. I generally check any information I see on Facebook / Twitter with snopes or politifact immediately, and I commonly see wrong information from both sides of the political spectrum. Left leaning misinformation tends to be misleading or exaggerations as opposed to right leaning misinformation which is more commonly outright lies, but it is hard to trust nearly anything you see online now.
On top of that difficulty is the attempt to discredit main stream media so that no one trusts the fact checkers. Once you accept that narrative it is nearly impossible to be well educated on any topic.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
I for one welcome our new truth determining overlords.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
what could possibly go wrong there?
Google CEO Eric Schmidt: "We're not arguing for censorship, we're arguing just take it off the page. Put it somewhere else. Make it harder to find."
Any who will determine is it is trustworthy, let me guess... AI...
Fact checking is a real thing and it does work. Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information, and augmented with AI sites like Google, Facebook, and Twitter could significantly reduce the amount of false information in social media and Internet searches. It certainly wouldn't be easy, but neither is anything else these large Internet companies are doing day to day.
For the foreseeable future you will still need human researchers to investigate false claims, but AI would be very useful in finding instances of these false claims once they have been verified.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
We'll fight bias with even more bias! That'll fix it!
I'm sure Google will start with removing truly fake news, but they will quickly slide into removing anything that reflects badly on Google or the people they support. They have already proven to put ideology first.
Modern journalism is about covering the important stories... with a pillow until they stop moving.
Sadly, you didn't. Facts no longer matter in today's political climate.
What one side can proof, the other side just calls "left wing conspiracist bigly failing to dispute blue collar gut-feeling truth with FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS! FAKE NEWS!".
It's the real-life version of the three wise monkeys.
You mean Hillary! didn't have classified data on an illegal email server?
You mean Hillary! didn't exchange emails with President Obama on that server?
You mean the FBI - the same FBI that illegally spied on Martin Luther King for YEARS - didn't cover that up?
Executives coming up with innovative ideas! Let's apply them right away! What could possibly go wrong? If more executives had their voices heard, there wouldn't be problems in the world! I want an executive in my life! Anyone knows where can I get a discount one? LOL.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
The only way to solve the problem of false information is to beef up the education system and teach people critical thinking and how to evaluate sources. ANY other attempt becomes propaganda based simply on the fact that the consumer of information is not individually evaluating the information but having someone else tell them if it is true or not.
FFS, Teach people to think, stop telling them how to think!
Quite, according to Alex Jones's Infowars, Snopes is the spawn of the devil funded by George Soros.
The alt-right have discovered that they can draw low information citizens into a cult where fake news becomes the truth and all MSM news is decried as manipulative propaganda from "Globalists". No marking of news with a likelihood of truth score is going to affect folks who have joined the cult. In fact they are more likely to take the inverse as the measure of "truthiness". On the left the bubble of identity politics brings its own dangers of totalitarian cults though the news that feeds is often true all be it cherry picked.
I don't know what the answer is but the jackboots of Nationalism are shortly going to be stamping on everybodies faces and I don't think anyone can stop them. It is a long time since the likes of Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini walked the earth and people have forgotten that flag waving alone does not build a sane society.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Is to start placing bounties on sites that run fake news.
In today's news market, it's a series of programs deciding what to put on your pages. Highly tailored to fit into your bubble of chosen topics and viewpoints.
So place a bounty on fake news like a bug bounty. For the sake of discussion, let's call it a $5,000 penalty for running a fake story. The bounty goes to whomever first proves it's fake with checkable facts and sources. The bounty is paid by the site that displayed the story.
Now you have incentivised folks to think about the news, and to dig into the correctness of stories. At the same time you have incentivised sites to stop posting fake news. This will also spawn a cottage industry of folks who become very good at fact checking and maybe we'll find a few companies we can trust.
Start off with a bounty value, and keep raising it until the desired results are met,
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
There's possibly a way to do this without taking a side on the accuracy of the information: to flag information with a partisanship score.
Google knows the distribution of information consumed, and it can probably already do enough sentiment analysis to score cliques on partisanship. Google definitely knows how to extract the trigger words from the discourse (subtype: click bait) and it could easily algo up a trigger score, too. However, Google will lay such a number bare not in my lifetime.
Failing a trigger score, an ad hominem score might be effective, instead. The scores can either be assigned to the documents, or to the primary cliques consuming the documents.
Turns out the distribution of an item is primary meta-data pertaining to its appropriate consumption.
... not sure we need commissars for it though.
{the scene: Myrtle and Ester, gossiping over their fence}
Myrtle: Hey Ester, did you hear the news? Hillary Clinton ran a private email server out of her bathroom, so she wouldn't have to use official government email!
Ester: Oh really? Well I think ...
{popping out of bushes}Ivan: Excuse me, comrades! Ha, no, see, this is not "news" as you say, this is "fake news"!
Ivan: Let me provide you with real news story about the perfectly legal activities of most excellent Secretary Clinton! This news has been verified by current federal executive, so you know it is unbiased and true!
Part of the reason no one trusts NBC, CNN, etc. anymore is that half the stories they run with have no cited sources, just BS like "said one source with inside knowledge who was not allowed to speak on the record". And sometimes those leaks are just that - BS fed to reporters too lazy to check out the stories they were handed.
So before "Big News" gets to complain about "Alt News" running with poor sourcing, "Big News" needs get their own house in order first.
Somehow seeing yourself as fatter than you are (anorexia) is non-controversially viewed as a disorder, but seeing yourself as a male when you have ovaries and a vagina is seen as completely normal. Suggesting that it's a disorder not much different than anorexia is treated as sacrilege.
That is because biologists and psychologists disagree with your laymen interpretation of the similarity between these seemingly similar conditions. A mental disorder has a precise definition, and simply being abnormal does not automatically qualify. The American Psychiatric Association did at one time use the term "gender identity disorder", but as their understanding of this condition improved they changed it to "gender dysphoria". This is still a medical condition, just like being near sighted is, but it is no longer considered a disorder (which has a precise definition).
The APA still considers gender dysphoria as something which needs to be treated, but the treatment does not include ignoring the patient's gender identity. Treatments such as hormone therapy and surgery are more common.
These really are facts, not opinions, because they are backed up by decades of research and clinical practice. We will never know with 100% certainty what the best course of treatment is, just like no fact can ever be 100% verified, but our current understanding of gender disphoria comes from a significant scientific effort.
You on the other hand use your laymen understanding of the psychiatric profession to form opinions which are not based on the wealth of evidence which shows your opinions to be false.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Let's suppose that Google goes ahead and makes a "Fake News Alert" Chrome plugin. Further, let's assume that they don't abuse their position (as someone else guessed they would by marking anti-Google posts as "fake" regardless of the truth) or engage in any partisan bias (marking true posts from one side as fake simply because Google workers tend to support the other side). Would this type of thing even be effective?
I'd argue that it wouldn't. This would be an optional plugin. You'd need to purposefully go and get the plugin. The only people who did that would be people who care whether a news source is fake or not. This would likely exclude almost everyone who posts fake news items. They don't care about truth as much as they care that the story fits their narrative. Even if they installed the plugin, they'd start seeing stories they agreed with marked as fake. Then, they'd either have to change their minds or just accuse Google as being part of the "establishment deep state conspiracy" (or something like that). Like Nigerian scammer victims, these people wouldn't want to admit that they were suckered by fake news in the past so they'd go with the "this news is real, Google's lying" explanation
While I commend Google for trying to figure out a way to fight stories that are completely fake, an optional plugin won't do anything.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information
Bullshit. They politicize the hell out of it. Something is either true or false. They are both filled with "True, but" conditionals.
Many things are not simply true or false. Many times they are misleading. Both of these sites do a good job in identifying misleading information and label them as such.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Snopes has a pronounced left wing, mainstream media, government bias.
Such collusion among monopolies to control the flow of information should have been denounced by all Slashdotters, and attracted attention of the Justice Department enforcing anti-trust laws...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Not sure which is worse; government censored "news", or leftist techie executive censored "news".
"We play both kinds of music here: country, and western!"
Unless they are going to buy Facebook and Twitter and then shut them down like a good product, this will not stop on these sites.
The millennial that doesn't like most of the stuff designed for millennials.
You mean like when they reported that Clinton *did* have American flags on stage from day one using a photo from day two? That kind of good job? This is by no means the only time they've been caught lying.
The expression 'fake news' is actually quite wonderful as a mis-director of attention. Saying a news story is fake news is not actually a claim that the news story is false, just that it shouldn't be a news story. The implication that is universally taken when the target of a story saying 'fake news' is that the target is denying the events.
Similarly, a statement prefaced by "If anyone took offence to my action/statement, I apologise" isn't an apology, because there's no acknowledgement of fault.
Bearing in mind that "fake news" is just another euphemism for public relations (PR) and propaganda:
Will Google also apply these algorithms of "truthfulness" and what they consider to be misleading to online advertising? And will they also censor "fake news" circulated by elected officials on topics such as climate change, evolution, and the "War against Christmas"?
Don't you find it ironic that the world's biggest and most powerful advertising and PR agencies, e.g. Google, Facebook, and Twitter, are claiming to be reliable arbiters of truth? I mean, it's not as if they get paid $billions for prioritising certain messages over others by their clients, is it?
It looks like we're going to have Silicon Valley executives deciding which is "good" fake news and which is "bad."
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
CNN came up with the term fake news, not Trump. He just applied it back to them.
Are you aware that there's an on-going investigation into collusion? They're investigating to see if there was collusion and if any laws were broken. Even if you ignore the meeting in Trump Tower attended by Russians and Trumps son, Kushner, et al, on the promise of getting "dirt" on Clinton, and GP's drunken blabbing about Russians having "dirt" on Clinton to an Australian diplomat that sparked the collusion investigation, and if you ignore the RNC/DNC funded Steele dossier, even a dope has to notice that Trump has insulted everyone on the planet except Putin.
I'm in favor of waiting to see what Mueller finds. Then we'll all know. If he says there was no collusion and no laws broken I'll accept it.
Are you retarded?
All of your "fact checkers" said that the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier... They screamed for months that it was a five-alarm pants-on-fire lie.
Fuck them, fuck their lies, and fuck you.
As long as their power extends to "Hey, that thing you are spreading has been determined to be bullshit, please do a little research and decide if you want to share it." I'm fine with it.
Google, the people whose AI is behind YouTube Adpocolypse?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
The News has always been manipulated.
What has he media's panties in a bunch is the fact that the ability to do so is no longer limited to them.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
All of your "fact checkers" said that the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier... They screamed for months that it was a five-alarm pants-on-fire lie.
They had said there was no public evidence supporting this claim, and until October of 2017 that was a true statement. In October a Washington post article showed that while it was originally funded in 2015 by Republican donors, the Clinton campaign began funding the research in 2016 as opposition research.
Within 24 hours of the Washington post article, and other corroborating research from CNN and Fox News, Snopes updated their information on the topic. This is what good fact checking looks like.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Most things are simply True or False.
Attempting to nuance it or explain how it's "misleading" is called spin.
It is also called editorializing.
"Yeah, but..." is not fact checking. It's spinning.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yes, things are simply true or false.
I should clarify. For many statements, and likely most political statements, whether or not the statement is technically true or false is rarely enough information. Political statements are rarely completely false but misleading statements are common. Good fact checking needs to spend just as much time if not more time identifying potentially misleading statements than worrying if the statement itself is false.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Gender dysphoria is classified exactly the same as schizophrenia and anorexia. It is even thought to be a subclass of schizophrenia, as over 60% of people with GD also have been diagnosed with both.
Citation needed. Even this paper discussing links between GD and schizophrenia shows either a very slight or more likely no correlation.
Gender dysphoria is simply not known to be a subclass of schizophrenia, and you are talking out of your ass.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
"B-bu-but the Democrats didn't pay for the Steele Dossier!" said you, over and over.
Keep telling us who the fucking dupe is, dipshit.
And they were right to say that, because no evidence to the contrary came out until October of 2017. Fact checkers cannot see into the future. Spouting off conspiracy theories and being correct every once in a while is easy; basing your opinions and beliefs on verified facts is far more difficult.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Only the most simple facts can be simply true or false. Trying to force a question with a complex answer to be answered with true or false creates a misleading answer. It's one of a lawyer's favorite tricks when questioning witnesses. Makes me wonder why you think it's such a great idea...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
While it's true not everything is black and white, the problem with sites like politifact is, after reviewing the facts, the final judgment of their meter is still subjective.
I've seen evidence of bias in their final judgments before, but the coffin nail for their objective credibility was, for me, when they rated Michele Obama's statement "slaves built the White House", as a very positive "Mostly True". Their own research concluded that slaves were used to quarry the raw stone that was used to form the bricks of the building, which were further cut, refined, and placed by skilled masons. Slaves also did much of the white washing at the end. However, the rest of the labor were freemen, white and black, as well as European contractors: Architects designed the building. Masons carved and fitted the bricks (probably the bulk of the building aspect). Carpenters built much of the structure as well. Glass, marble, and tile workers did their thing. Skilled labor collectively did most of the building, yet her statement excludes them in totality.
Equating the quarrying of stone to "building the white house" is like claiming that Home Depot built your house, because that's where you got your building supplies from. Or claiming the people who painted your house built it. Her declaration was also slightly misleading in that the White House did not force anyone to directly work for free, the gov't paid for everything - the question is whether slave owners who got paid bothered to share it with the slaves or not. From what I can gather, some did, though I doubt their slaves had any say in whether they wanted to do the job or not!
In any case, the picture comes across as the country forcing slaves to build the White House, and without compensation, much like how we used to believe the pyramids were built. This is simply inaccurate and should have rated a Mostly False or maybe a Partly True at best.
So my judgment is, no, they do not do a good enough job when it comes to the bottom line, they let their bias affect their final score.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
And how will most people do that research? I know google it.
Let's ass/u/me the tech works. (Ok, hypothesize.)
I'm trying to understand how a user would be excited or interested in this. "You're about to step in it by posting something really stupid which will damage your personal reputation among everyone who knows you, covering you in a shroud of dishonor and making everyone whisper and giggle about you behind your back. Are you sure you want to make a fool of yourself?" Is it like that, but more charitably phrased?
I would think that most of the people who share the kind of bullshit that this would detect, know it's bullshit, and bullshitting is part of their enjoyment. You do it wittingly.
And in the unlikely event of sharing bullshit unwittingly, if they're told it's bullshit, they'd get mad at the software and tell it "no Goggle, yuor fake news!!!1"
Can anyone explain to me the point of view of a person who would actually want this? If it's actually someone conscientious who is really trying to avoid errors, I'd think they'd already make decisions themselves prior to figuratively putting their name on the bottom. By the time the plugin or whatever warns htem, they've already made up their minds.
Am I wrong? Raise your hand if you think, as a user, that this is a neat idea (and totally putting aside concerns about the system's accuracy, Google's intent, etc).
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
We can't allow these pseudo-intellectual goons in Palo Alto to control the flow of information.
Knowledge is power. If they control the narrative, they can reshape civilization.
Ask yourself: do you trust people like Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt to reshape civilization?
Think of their poor unwashed (and unshowered) masses, yearning to distort truth free, consigned to the file 13 of history!
For if truth is objective then they too shall pass away in a puff of logic.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Most things are simply True or False.
Attempting to nuance it or explain how it's "misleading" is called spin.
It is also called editorializing.
"Yeah, but..." is not fact checking. It's spinning.
No, plenty of statements are misleading. It's easy to make a statement that is by itself factual true, but leaves out other facts that are also important to understanding the situation. "Person X was killed in a car accident" is a true statement, but it can be misleading if you don't also state that Person X was drunk or that an overpass collapsed in the middle of heavy traffic.
It is a one of their favorite "tricks" because the purpose is to burn through all the rhetoric and spin and get to the essential fact.
The answer to "Did you kill him?" is a yes or no answer. The circumstances surrounding the murder are separate considerations.
So it's not a, "trick", but a tool to arrive at the underlying facts stripped bare of spin.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Right, and pretty much any truly-interesting political statement is going to be about what strategy is best. And what strategy is best, depends on what your goals and values are. They're totally subjective.
Imagine a political statement like "the federal reserve should raise [or lower, take your pick] the interest rate by 0.25%." You can't tell someone else whether or not that's true or false for them. At best you can tell them whether or not it's a good idea for achieving what you want.
"We should enact a law to use force to prevent abortions after n weeks because a human that many weeks old is a person who has rights." Riight, because we're all on the same page about what aspect of personhood is the benchmark (and where rights come from).. here in a world where a significant number of people are racist, an intelligent, even well-meaning person can make a rational decision to start a military action, etc.
Or even zoom in on that last part. "We should launch airstrikes again country X because .." yeah, right. There are so many pros and cons that all completely depend on what you want and what you think is important.
Life is way too complicated, and values too diverse, for an AI (or even a human or a god) to make generalities about the truth/falsehood of political statements.
Politics is all about how-to-deal with our lack of consensus! Whenever you have an objective truth, you're probably not speaking particularly politically.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
There should never be gatekeepers that control information to such an extent. Intentionally false or not. The foundation of democracy is that people can be their own gatekeepers of information and they can act in their own self interest.
I am not saying it is perfect but the moment we cede to any kind of informational gatekeeper we cede power to that entity. We have to trust that people can view all kinds of information and decide on their own what is best for them. If we cannot do that then this experiment has run its course.
You cede to OP that "liberal billionaires" are the gatekeepers to information giving them power over society.
Putting aside the concerns about Google acting as the gatekeeper for this, the far right has already shown us that they don't care. People who commonly consume this crap will see the warning, scream "Fake news!" and/or "Liberal conspiracy!" and visit the link anyway. I've even heard right wingers label Snopes as fake news for disproving the fake news that they want to hear.
Most things are simply True or False.
Subsidies are bad.
Is that statement true, false, or does it require more thought than a simple binary response can offer?
There's a lot more grey area in the world than you seem aware of.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Even the statement:
Most things are simply True or False
is misleading, did you do a survey of all the statements made and or is it just your opinion. I assume the latter. And even if you found out 51% are either true or false making your statement true, that doesn't mean that a significant portion of statements are not misleading.
Even the most basic statement, like "I am sitting right" now is not 100% accurate, I don't have any way of proving that I am actually sitting not just imagining it. Anyway that is just philosophical impractical nonsense and misleading, What we are talking about is statements in the media that are trying to convince you of their opinion, in my opinion a higher proportion of those statements have misleading elements, as opposed to statements like "this is a dog" or 1 + 1 = 2.
If the guy who did the killing did so because the person who was killed was aiming a gun at the killer, then it's kind of important to have that information, don't you think? Otherwise you might think the man was a murderer rather than acting in self-defense. You're arguing that all of that information should be hidden.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sites like Snopes and Politifact do an admirable job of identifying false information
Bullshit. They politicize the hell out of it. Something is either true or false. They are both filled with "True, but" conditionals.
Snopes.com and Politifact both have categories of "mixed" (snopes) or "half true" (politifact), yes. And they explain what parts are true and what parts are false. You know what? Sometimes politicians (or other people) say things that are part true and partly not true. That's not "politicizing it"-- that is recognizing the real world
Many things are not simply true or false. Many times they are misleading. Both of these sites do a good job in identifying misleading information and label them as such.
Exactly. And, more important, they cite sources so you can go look at the information and decide for yourself. That's what I really want: links to data. And that's what the fake news is always missing.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yes, but the rating should be presented as an opinion, not as a fact. An estimate of "believed" probability of correctness would also be useful.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
While it's true not everything is black and white, the problem with sites like politifact is, after reviewing the facts, the final judgment of their meter is still subjective.
I don't care about the "final judgement of their meter". I care about the fact that they cite sources that I can check myself.
I've seen evidence of bias in their final judgments before, but the coffin nail for their objective credibility was, for me, when they rated Michele Obama's statement "slaves built the White House", as a very positive "Mostly True". Their own research concluded that slaves were used to quarry the raw stone that was used to form the bricks of the building, which were further cut, refined, and placed by skilled masons. Slaves also did much of the white washing at the end. However, the rest of the labor were freemen, white and black, as well as European contractors: Architects designed the building. Masons carved and fitted the bricks (probably the bulk of the building aspect). Carpenters built much of the structure as well. Glass, marble, and tile workers did their thing. Skilled labor collectively did most of the building, yet her statement excludes them in totality.
OK. And, how do you happen to know that? Oh: you know it because you read the article! (which says exactly what you just said-- you are quoting them.)
So, you're really telling me you yourself personally use politifact as an unbiased source of facts. That's ironic. You don't want other people to use it, but you use it yourself.
Equating the quarrying of stone to "building the white house" is like claiming that Home Depot built your house, because that's where you got your building supplies from. Or claiming the people who painted your house built it. Her declaration was also slightly misleading in that the White House did not force anyone to directly work for free, the gov't paid for everything - the question is whether slave owners who got paid bothered to share it with the slaves or not. From what I can gather, some did, though I doubt their slaves had any say in whether they wanted to do the job or not!
and your source for this is.... Politifact.
In any case, the picture comes across as the country forcing slaves to build the White House, and without compensation, much like how we used to believe the pyramids were built. This is simply inaccurate and should have rated a Mostly False or maybe a Partly True at best.
So my judgment is, no, they do not do a good enough job when it comes to the bottom line, they let their bias affect their final score.
Interestingly, they have an article discussing the objections to their rating of "true" for that story.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That's cute that you insinuate that only one side of the political spectrum plays loose with facts when in reality it's a widespread problem across the entire political spectrum. Look at the argument on gun control for instance. People still cite the "Fact" that guns kill x number of people while ignoring that y number of people killed are suicides and that the suicide rate in the US isn't higher than other countries and that y is a very high percentage of x. They'll then take this misleading "fact" and build entire worldviews on it and come up with "solutions" to problems that don't exist while ignoring other actual problems staring them in the face.
Things like 1+1=2 can be true or false. Is that rock gray? Not so much, especially if near the black or white end of reflectence,
Sorry, but while there are strong subjective elements, there are also strong objective elements. To say that a particular strategy is best is subjective, to say that it is likely to have certain particular specified effects is objective. It may well be wrong, but it's objective.
You can judge how reliable something is by the way that it accurately predicts objective facts and by which facts it fails to predict without considering whether or not you agree with their subjective evaluations.
E.g., I find that Snopes often doesn't consider alternative explanations...or at least doesn't publish anything about them. This results in their usually being correct, but occasionally ignoring plausible, or sometimes in my mind probable, explanations. As a result I tend to thing of them as conservative, in the sense of conventional. They'll *usually* be right.
I have less ability to directly evaluate Politifact, but what they *say* seems to mean that they have approximately about the same attitude...but, of course, with less experimental testing, and, presumably, more literature research.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
It's easy to make a statement that is by itself factual true
THAT is the purpose of Fact checking.
Everything after is an editorial.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"Subsidies are bad" has no objective determination. It is a value statement, not a factual statement.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Snopes about was Trump or his campaign wiretapped before the election. They pretty much list it as false.
they do not. If you actuallty read the article you're citing, you'd note that it discusses the claim and the evidence for it, but does not rate it either true nor false.
https://www.snopes.com/2017/03/04/trump-accuses-obama-of-tapping-phones/
The closest thing to such a conclusion is the statement "the President’s tweets offered no documentation or evidence for the charges he was leveling at his predecessor in the White House." Saying that "the president didn't offer documentation or evidence" is not the same as saying it's false.
FISA warrant gotten on Carter Page Oct 21. Allows wiretapping of Page, his contacts, and their contacts, which includes all of Trump campaign. I know the day, who it was on, who signed off on it, and the judge that approved it. Snopes couldn't seem to figure that out, but they are great fact checkers?
So, you're complaining that they didn't include information released in the Nunes memo that wasn't released until eleven months after they wrote the article? Really, they can't. This was about as fair as it could be: they rated it neither true nor false, but pointed out that there wasn't any documentation, which was true at the time
Snopes is completely wrong on one of the most political articles with completely proven facts to back up how it is false.
It didn't rate the statement either true or false. It was, in fact, excruciatingly accurate as to what was available at the time,
I just picked that one because I assumed they would be incorrect, and was not surprised. I haven't seen an accurate truthful Snopes in about 5 years now.
You haven't yet cited an untruthful one.
Let's do the experiment; I'm curious. Try picking one at random: https://www.snopes.com/random/ and tell me whether it's true or false.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Facts are facts. If you are sitting, then you are sitting.
I actually should have said that EVERYTHING is true or false...and perhaps it applies to specific statements that can be objectively measured to a binary solution.
If it cannot be, then it is not a factual statement and cannot be claimed to be right or wrong and instead, merely argued as a point of view.
"(some person) lied about (some thing)" is either true, or false assuming that thing they lied about can be evaluated to a binary condition.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Those are all Value judgements. There is no objective measurement that can be made to evaluate their truthfulness.
And you can shove your Snark up your ass.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That is irrelevant to the question.
I am arguing that the facts must be established, starting with the central fact...a killing occurred.
The defense attorney can argue the circumstances and clarify the situation.
Likewise, these "fact checking" sites should render a yes or no and in a separate section, editorialize on what they think mitigating circumstances are.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
When you are fact checking you may have to report more than just a TRUE|FALSE due to not being able to actually lock down the facts.
Think of it this way If %thing% was a fish you have ...
1 Fresh off the Boat from a Blessed Lake fished by a Jesuit Priest
2 Sold by the Local Fish Monger
3 Sold by a Walmart in the same County
8 week old maybe properly frozen
9 weeks old
10 Fertilizer
some of the things running about FB and such are at stage 10
Right, and pretty much any truly-interesting political statement is going to be about what strategy is best. And what strategy is best, depends on what your goals and values are. They're totally subjective.
Imagine a political statement like "the federal reserve should raise [or lower, take your pick] the interest rate by 0.25%." You can't tell someone else whether or not that's true or false for them. At best you can tell them whether or not it's a good idea for achieving what you want.
To be fair: neither snopes nor politifact fact checks opinions. None of the examples you made up are the kinds of things either one runs an article factchecking. They fact check only the things expressed as facts.
There is a saying "you are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts." I agree with that.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I disagree. I *do* believe they do an admirable job. That it's far from prefect is also true.
OTOH, I also tend to believe that evaluations like "true" or "false" are almost always oversimplifications. Boolean logic is a fine computational simplification, and in a large number of areas it works better than most alternatives...partially because of limitations on time and energy...but it's almost always an oversimplification if you look closely enough. You can't even say exactly where any particular electron is. There aren't any continuous edges, etc.
That said, true and false are generally useful simplifications. But any system can be gamed, and English might almost have been designed to be gamed.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They know it is fake, but they like it so they let it slide. People who know it is fake stay silent.
The other day I came across an old gentleman in a party spouting some nonsense "all the laws of thermodynamics are in in Bhagwat Gita". Some kind of stretched argument based on very generous interpretation of metallic (i.e. malleable and ductile) sentences equating entropy with chaos with degeneration. Almost everyone around knew it was non sense. But, why make a fool out of that guy publicly? Harmless, its not that he is advocating bombing or beheading. Politely nod and move on to the next topic, on the pros and cons buying condos as investment properties..
But I could see in other circles similar arguments advocating superiority of our in group moves on to denigrating out groups and then slide towards blaming the out group and then someone saying, "some one should do something" and then on to "you should do something" to "do something violent"...
What keeps fake news going is the silence of the people who know it is fake, people who have the credibility and credentials of being in the in-group. There is nothing google can do about it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I don't care about the "final judgement of their meter". I care about the fact that they cite sources that I can check myself.
Well good for you. Atta boy. But most people look at that meter as the final word. They use it in their arguments and to form their opinion.
I'd be interested in your data supporting your statement as to how "most people" read fact check sites.
But, if you modified your statement to say "the information and citations in the body of the article are useful fact-checking, but the final judgement of their meter is subjective," I wouldn't disagree.
OK. And, how do you happen to know that? Oh: you know it because you read the article! (which says exactly what you just said-- you are quoting them.) So, you're really telling me you yourself personally use politifact as an unbiased source of facts. That's ironic. You don't want other people to use it, but you use it yourself.
...
Originally yes, I did read what they had to say.
The important part is not that you read what they had to say, but that you then quoted the information you got from them. You are saying they are not a reliable source... but turns out you in fact do use them as a reliable source.
...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That is irrelevant to the question.
I am arguing that the facts must be established, starting with the central fact...a killing occurred.
I understand what you're getting at, but you're proving his point. A death occurred. A gun caused that death. *Those* are central facts. "Killing" (in verb form) is not a legal term. Murder is. If the defendant shot an unarmed person on the street, it is a murder. If the defendant was a police officer, and the 'victim' was an active shooter in a high school, it is not murder.
Likely. Only slightly less desirable would be people that work for Google. No, thanks. The douches there sure think highly of themselves. You know what works every time? Stop getting your news from Google, Twitter, or Facebook.
I have been noticing that Google is becoming extremely social Justice aware lately, and they are actively censoring search results no matter what your settings are. This is probably in large reaction to them becoming a feminist run organization.
I usually use DDG for searching. But there are a few times I switch over to google. I noticed that there were getting to be marked differences between the two.
So looking at the differences, I came up with a hypothesis that perhaps a person with sex negative feminism ideaolgy might have decided that there were some things that people should not be allowed to look at under any circumstances.
So I came up with a test. A test word would be used that might be something that is not abnormal, meaning something not uncommon. But also something that would not fit the present day narrative of sex negative feminists.
Okay - the rest of this experiment is of an adult nature.
The test was to use the same browser - Chrome, and perform identical search terms on both Google and DDG. In each case, Safesearch was turned off - no filtering of the results would be used. The term would be searched, and the results would be viewed by image.
The term I settled on was "Jilling", which is a slang term for female masturbation.
So I entered the term, hit search in each browser, then switched over to images. The differences were striking.
Google had something like 5 individual results, and DDG had many pages of results. There were also interesting matters outside of the scope of the investigation, in that a large number of the images came from Tumblr, which is a site largely populated by women.
So like all experiments, new questions are raised. But I am convinced that Google is actively turning sex negative feminist in ideology, and is very actively blocking anything that does not fit their narrative.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Please, Google. Stop it.
If we want to get into the weeds, it's a homicide.
Homicide can be justified or unjustified. But, "Did you homicide him" just doesn't really roll off the tongue, eh?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I think your opening statement is False. Prove it's True.
Negative. Fusion GPS was contacted by a GOP member for Opp research. The Steele Dossier was separate. The media / DNC are pushing that narrative, but itâ(TM)s flat out wrong. The GOP didnâ(TM)t ask for the Steele Dossier, they asked for separate Opposition Research. The DNC / HRC campaign started the Steele Dossier.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The Steele Dossier was never funded by Republicans. The Washington Free Beacon funded general research into all the Republican candidates, funding which stopped when Trump clenched the nomination.
The fake Steele Dossier was funded by Hillary Clinton and the DNC through the Perkins Coie law firm.
A huge swath of the populace have been convinced by [mainstream, corporate-funded media] that facts are opinions...
FTFY
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
The accuracy of human's ability to detect fake news can be correllated with cognitive ability. Typically we look at the quality of the writing, formality of the language, citations, past knowledge of author or outlet, past knowledge of named sources and other qualities old fashioned real journalists and editors are well aware of.
So instead of google rank purely by citation, create a Bayesian lie detector. Set the output to True and throw a math or physics textbook at a ML training network. Give it some weather and other verifiable predictions from the past which are verifiable.
Then set it to False and send it excepts from the Enquirer, Star, Onion.
Finally, send it text from trumptwitterarchive and whitehouse.gov and stand out of the way!
Captain Kirk: Everything Harry tells you is a lie. Remember that. Everything Harry tells you is a lie.
Harry Mudd: Listen to this carefully, Norman. I am lying.
Norman the android: You say you are lying, but if everything you say is a lie then you are telling the truth, but you cannot tell the truth because everything you say is a lie. You lie. You tell the truth. But you cannot for. Illogical! Illogical! Please explain. (Smoke comes out of Norman's head.)
Precisely my point - most issues are value statements that have no objective determination, whereas the post I was responding to claims the opposite to be true.
"Most things" are complex situations that do not have valid binary response.
That said, I don't disagree that the majority of media outlets worry more about spin than facts.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Tell that to the De Medici of Florence
This is whats known as a false equivalence, if you can't tell the difference you've drunk the koolaid.
On only one side of the political spectrum have the news agencies effectively been PR for a political party.
"Yeah, but..." is not fact checking. It's spinning.
Perhaps Snopes shouldn't bother with "yeah, but". They should call it what it is: a lie. If a person is not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth then they are being dishonest.
Yes, thanks to Wikileaks for informing us of that.
Arguments about leftists remind me of this:
There is no left (Score:5, Interesting), Feb 13, 2016
by rsilvergun (571051)
The owner class is hard, hard right. Like Robber baron grade hard right. The workers are left on social issues, but a lot are still hard right on the economy.
That's sort of the problem. There are lots of folks who are left wing socially (pro-gun control, pro-gay rights, pro-choice, etc) but get real right wing real fast when they think they're taxes are going up. Our Media is left wing on social issues but hard right on economics. Free Trade, Trickle Down economics and Austerity are practically gospel in American media.
Part of the problem is folks look at just about every expense that isn't food as taxes. I've caught lots of folks doing it. Insurance? Tax. Phone Bill? Tax. etc, etc. The other problem is that after the Iraqi War Americans aren't seeing good returns on their taxes. Literally Trillions of wealth was just handed to a lucky few in exchange for nothing. We've let large scale corruption slide for so long that folks have lost confidence in the gov't. They've also forgotten what America was like before the Feds stepped in and started preventing super fund sites from happening (Flint Michigan Water Supply anyone?).
The other problem is Bill Clinton. He moved the country hard right so he could forge an alliance to get into the prez office. Again, left on social issues hard right on the economy. Trump brought up Tariffs but made it a point not to use the "T" word. What's funny is watching all the folks out there who know something is wrong but can't figure out what to do about it pushing Trump and Sanders up in the polls. It's gonna be funnier when Rubio or Bush gets the election despite popular vote [note this was written early 2016] thanks to hard right stuff like Citizens United.
Oh, and the colleges have been moving hard right too. Where do you think those $10,000/semester tuition bills came from?
mfwright@batnet.com
Washington Times had an article online before Trump became president. It was about his chosen guy for homeland security saying "we are are keeping all options open" when asked about deporting Muslims. The video accompanying the article showed "We are keeping all options open, but we will not deport Muslims."
The MFM outright lie whenever they can. Even when there is video. Even they fake the news.
Any who will determine is it is trustworthy, let me guess... AI...
Obviously it will be the Ministry of Truth.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I think most of the ACs today are just ass speaking.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Nothing to say to rebut my points? ... spoken like a true AC...
Why don't you just say "oh yeah?" or "sez you!" It would be every bit as meaningful and useful as what you posted.
Obi-Wan Kenobi would like to have a word with you.
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.
Run the same search on Bing or Yahoo. Not much variation.
You have to be smarter than the machine you're working with.
If I either put six bullets into his head or someone else did, then "Did you kill him?" is true or false. If I gave a skydiver a little push to get him out of the plane, and he dies as a result of the jump, it's a lot iffier. If I gave him iffy food supplement pills and he died of undetermined causes, it's a lot iffier. If I yelled at him and he died of a heart attack, it's a lot iffier.
There's a short murder mystery Raymond Smullyan once wrote. A, B, and C are making treks through the desert on their camels, and have stopped at an oasis for the night. Both B and C want to kill A. B puts poison in A's waterbags. C knows that A will drink up in the morning, and not drink from his waterbags until he's far out in the desert, so C puts small holes in A's waterbags so the water will leak out. In the morning, A fills his waterbags, drinks until bursting, gets on his camel, and leaves. He gets far into the desert, finds his waterbags are empty, and dies of thirst trying to get back. Who killed him?
B put poison in A's waterbags, but A never drank it. C contrived to prevent A from drinking the poison, inadvertantly, and in fact A would have died from poison if C had left his waterbags alone.
Who killed A?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yes, everything that can be objectively measured to a binary solution is true or false. That's a tautology.
Not all statements about facts can be objectively determined. Suppose you and I are out walking at night, and a car drives by and disappears in the distance. Neither you nor I catch the make or license number. We may honestly differ about what color the car was, and not have a way to objectively determine it. (Some car paints look different depending on the lighting conditions.)
"This man died of a heart attack" may not be clearly true or false. Perhaps the heart attack would not have killed him and he had other conditions.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In the famous case of the Colorado bakers ("Sweet cakes"?), I was unimpressed by the Snopes.com article. They did, however, link to the legal decision which provided a lot more information. If you want a quick read on things, Snopes and Politifact are reasonable sources. If you want to know in detail, you can read the entire article. If you want to get deeper into it, they provide sources.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
So you like the gradations Snopes uses? Good.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re your sig: Soo true.. once I found out who that was my political "correctness" (what I had of it, anyways) fell away.. It is those whom one may NOT publicly even mention in a bad light or suffer censorship.. I can no longer leave comments on YouTube, even using a VPN! .. well, I can LEAVE them but nobody but me ever sees them... Apparently I stepped on the wrong toes once..and I am very polite , actually.
And this goes to the heart of the current thread.. where only the "news" that the PTB or the current political policy deem "worthy" ever sees the light of day.
How is this any different than the old cold war "Pravda", or North Korea? If someone could honestly tell me , if this is still "freedom of the press"? OK I know who owns all the major media outlets, major news channels, major movie studios. Same group promoting all sorts of licentiousmness and kiddie pxrn and the r5est of these nasties, while decrying it in their news outlets. The group we dare not criticize...
And not just today. ACs were never known for truth and integrity, but they seem to be worse lately.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Hillary had classified data on her email server. We know that. We don't know that the server was illegal. We do know it would be illegal now, because the law changed after she left the State Department. The server may have been used to do illegal things, but that doesn't make it illegal in itself. I can deliberately hit someone with my car, and the car remains legal.
The FBI reported on the server and classified information. The FBI said, correctly, that it wasn't worth prosecuting. (Anyone disagreeing with that "correctly" is invited to tell me of one case where someone inadvertently mishandled classified information and was criminally prosecuted. So far, nobody has.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You're citing the left for taking facts out of context (and I can argue that the number of suicides is relevant), not for making up facts. The classification of scary-looking semi-automatic weapons as assault weapons is stupid, but it's not actually counterfactual. Fake news isn't taking facts out of context, it's about ignoring what is true and what is false.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Re your sig: Soo true.. once I found out who that was my political "correctness" (what I had of it, anyways) fell away.. It is those whom one may NOT publicly even mention in a bad light or suffer censorship.. I can no longer leave comments on YouTube, even using a VPN! .. well, I can LEAVE them but nobody but me ever sees them... Apparently I stepped on the wrong toes once..and I am very polite , actually.
It's such a pity, when a normal opinion is considered something too evil to be shown. Its also shortsighted.
I've always been for having everyone have their say as long as they are not promoting violence against an individual or group. One of the strange places to get some life info for me was a Robert's Rules of Order book. In the preface, the author noted that the only way a democratic society can work correctly is if the minority can "have their say". Even if on a losing position, they must have their say. He noted that bad outcomes were a tendency when the minority, especially a large minority - is not permitted to have their say. Unfortunately, way too many people think that squelching other people's opinions eliminates the opinion. It does not.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.