Bad News

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

by jbegley • 5 years ago

223 225 5 years ago

harpers.org

pixxel• 5 years ago

Selling the story of disinformation

FYI

smitty1e• 5 years ago

Contra Tim Berners-Lee, the World Wide Web had no magic effect on the signal-to-noise ratio of human information.

Sorry, boss.

dredmorbius2• 5 years ago

Contra MANY early boosters of the Internet, WWW, and global connectivity generally. I'd especially pin accountability on Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold, and others of the Whole Earth / WELL crowd. They were among the loudest and most influential advocates, though not at all alone or controversial at the time.

Simply wrong.

Adam Curtis's Hypernormalisation and All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace are among the best explorations and critiques of that viewpoint I'm aware of.

specialist4• 5 years ago

Yes and:

Many like The Well netizens assumed a Platonic Philosopher Kings future. A select group (such as themselves) of educated, erudite, elites would converse amongst themselves, reach some kind of consensus, and then lead the way. Which were unlike the prior self-annointed thought leaders in broadcast and print medias, of course.

While totally ignoring the grim reality of usenet, forums, BBS networks, etc. As former compuserve moderator and hub for a modest BBS network, nothing about today's cesspool surprises me. Trolls, bots, flamewars, all of it.

My only surprise is that other people are surprised. The recurring amnesia, feinting spells, and pearl clutching.

One small bit of progress is we're no longer suffering the technotopian blather of those pollyannas.

Applejinx8• 5 years ago

Hypernormalization is phenomenal. It's passionate, but outlines some specifics about how things are done, that are pertinent to this discussion. Highly, highly recommended.

naasking• 5 years ago

It did for awhile, until commercialization really took off. Then the incentives became skewed.

Analemma_2• 5 years ago

There was no plausible pathway by which the Internet didn’t become commercialized as access become ubiquitous. Blaming “commercialization” for the Fall of Eden is like building a shoddy bridge that collapses, and then blaming that on gravity: if you didn’t take into account the inevitable, omnipresent force, that’s on you.

JadeNB4• 5 years ago

It did for awhile, until commercialization really took off. Then the incentives became skewed.

Yes—I remember the web as I experienced it in the '90s. It was a much different place from today's web. I'd hate to trade away all the amenities and conveniences of the modern web, but I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to choose the social environment of that internet over today's.

prvc3• 5 years ago

Based on what evidence? And is the "signal to noise ratio" (I guess something like the ratio of "impressions" containing all true vs. at least one false statement) really measuring anything useful? And need that necessarily be the case? Now information which used to be difficult, expensive, slow, etc. to obtain is accessible to all people with internet access within seconds should they ever try to find it.

jakelazaroff2• 5 years ago

In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good. Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours of work and turn on his television and know where he stood in relation to his wife, and his children, and his neighbors, and his town, and his country, and his world. And that was good.

Is this meant to be sarcasm? There are a ton of mid-century examples of journalism sowing baseless panic and hatred: the Red Scare, Vietnam War disinfo, etc. I understand the issues with the news today, but there was no idyllic Before Time when it was Good.

gorgoiler• 5 years ago

The following paragraph literally begins by talking about red baiting.

jakelazaroff2• 5 years ago

They're referring to fringe sources (in contrast to the mainstream sources that were Good).

nonameiguess• 5 years ago

The entire analogy to the Book of Genesis is meant to illustrate a fallacious belief in the goodness of before times. There was no Eden. That was just the perception of a certain reader with a very limited perspective that this writer is trying to describe.

_vertigo• 5 years ago

Clearly sarcasm if you read beyond the 5th paragraph.

alisonkisk• 5 years ago

It's clearly sarcasm at the first sentence, if you see the allusion to Genesis.

mc324• 5 years ago

This article parodies the mid-century American (which they are framing as a prototypical cosmopolitan white), however, they fail to acknowledge that this was typical of the medium everywhere.

It was typical in mid-century Cuba, France, Japan, Brazil, etc. It wasn’t a uniquely American quality.

It was the product of the times and the technology —just as today the problem with disinformation and information control is everywhere and not just in America.

throwaway8943453• 5 years ago

however, they fail to acknowledge that this was typical of the medium everywhere. It was typical in mid-century Cuba, France, Japan, Brazil, etc. It wasn’t a uniquely American quality.

They aren't arguing that this state of affairs was uniquely American...

datavirtue2• 5 years ago

I was remembering a time during the fairness doctrine when the news media seemed more fair and balanced but as I have watched various news broadcast s from the past I found that what I remembered was just the way they wanted me to see them. The news has always been very opinionated and they would use facial expressions and tone of voice to influence your opinion.

It is quite disturbing to watch the old news and see that things are not as I remember them.

dlivingston• 5 years ago

Insert obligatory reference to Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent here.

CamperBob2• 5 years ago

Exactly. What's disturbing is how many contemporary writers seem to believe that the "Fairness Doctrine" had anything to do with "Fairness," that it's even remotely compatible with the First Amendment, or that anything like it would be workable today.

Forcing Fox News to run strawman counterarguments to satisfy the letter of the law is not going to magically turn them into the Fair and Balanced(tm) news outlet they've always claimed to be. A better approach would be to establish and enforce a legal definition of "news" and apply deceptive trade practice law to any broadcaster who has to go to court to argue that no one takes their commentators seriously.

r00fus• 5 years ago

Even the seeds of modern "journalism" were yellow. Hearst didn't just build a crazy castle in California, he essentially drove the US involvement in the Spanish-American war - and that was not mid-century, but at the beginning of the 20th century.

kriskrunch• 5 years ago

Exactly my thought! Yellow journalism is another 20th century example. Disinformation is as ancient as writing.

Articles on some topics are more commonly colored by the reporter's personal beliefs, and those change with the times.

To fight this, I figured out how to block specific topics and sections from Google News, creating a simple prefilter with a browser plugin. Now, with most of the click bait distractions removed from my screen, I'm surprised to find that Google News actually has some interesting stuff in it.

UncleOxidant• 5 years ago

I'd move the time machine about 20 years later to the 70s. Yes, we still had 3 networks then. And all three (plus AP, UPI & Reuters) gave us a pretty middle-of-the-road view of the world. And, I would argue, we were a much more cohesive society because of this. By the 70s there was much more sensitivity for minorities then there was in the 50s and that was starting to show in journalism as well. Women's rights were making great strides - the ERA came very close to passing (something that likely couldn't happen now with so many state legislatures controlled by the right wing ). We were becoming very aware of environmental degradation and staring to do something about it.

Having grown up in the 70s I find that era much preferable to today's 24/7, highly partisan news cycle. News outlets now are highly politicized and ideologically specialized. There is no cohesive vision for how to live together at this point. Sure, there were outliers back then (as the article suggests) - I vaguely remember John Birchers, but nobody took them seriously - now it's like Bircher views are mainstreamed and we're supposed to accept them as a viable view with some kind of equal footing among all the other views.

marcinzm• 5 years ago

Here's a dirty secret: when the economy is growing people tend to be content and not too partisan. No need to be too concerned who is in power since it's unlikely they'll make your good life much worse. Maybe you won't benefit as much versus the other candidate but either one will result in a good life. The 70s are roughly when that stopped being the case in America.

The actual income adjusted for inflation hasn't increased since the 70s despite economic growth. Income disparity has increased as wealth was concentrated in a small percentage of the population. Technology has made many jobs obsolete and it's only getting worse. College and medical costs have skyrocketed.

throwaway8943453• 5 years ago

From the second paragraph:

For him, information was in its right—that is to say, unquestioned—place. And that was good, too.

They're saying that the pre-Internet media felt reliable to the average American because they were blissfully ignorant. Which is to say they agree with you.

Personally, while I agree that there were issues with the media before, I do get the impression that the issues were fewer and farther between. It was usually the media going to bat for the establishment on issues of major policy (e.g., a war effort), and today it's the media going to bat for an ideological agenda (or rather 2-3 ideological agendas) for every single little thing that can possibly be framed along that particular ideological axis. Of course, there were publications that skewed liberal or conservative before (and someone will certainly respond to this with a short list of such examples before dropping the microphone triumphantly), but they hewed closely to the standards of journalism or else they were widely discredited.

commandlinefan7• 5 years ago

People who are skeptical about the effectiveness of, say, the Covid vaccine are passionate about sharing what they've thought of, uncovered, or believe they've uncovered. People who believe that the vaccine is effective and worthwhile appear to be... less enthusiastic about backing up their claims. They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than address them in debate.

Why is it that, consistently, on specific issues that come up over and over again, the side labelled "disinformation" is so willing to spend so much time explaining rationally why they believe what they believe while the other side is always so uninterested in making their case?

Ardon• 5 years ago

I think how we got to this position is key - people did try and explain why vaccines are safe and you should take them.

And it didn’t work.

The thing that does lover vaccine hesitancy is banning people spreading misinformation.

It’s unfortunate, but it’s the discovered strategy for saving lives.

commandlinefan7• 5 years ago

people did try and explain why vaccines are safe

When? Where? I avoid vaccine debates and even so I can't help but come across all the conspiracy theories about the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines. The only counterpoint I've ever seen is "the science is too complicated for your feeble brain to comprehend, take the vaccine".

12elephant2• 5 years ago

On the contrary, banning people makes people seek out their narrative even more.

This idea that people aren't smart enough to make their own decisions and need you to spoon feed them the "right" information is the real problem here.

chasd003• 5 years ago

if you're going to ban information then you better be right 100% of the time. The bans on the lab leak thing blew all censorship credibility. That's the problem, if you're going to claim to be a "truth expert" then you better be right 100% of the time because the moment you're wrong you become part of the conspiracy.

gnarbarian• 5 years ago

It comes down to power. power doesn't need to explain itself. Why expend the energy? just turn off their mic, ban their Facebook, disappear their YouTube, kick them off patreon, put them on the credit card block list, remove positive takes on them from search results, refuse to route their domain, then mock them when they complain.

wyldfire• 5 years ago

They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than address them in debate.

The anti-vaccine crowd doesn't engage in a fair debate, because they don't understand the rules/parameters of a debate or in some cases because they're not interested in a fair debate.

commandlinefan7• 5 years ago

Climate change skeptics will talk your ear off about why climate change is a hoax - you literally can't get them to stop telling why you should make no change whatsoever to your life.

Climate change true believers, on the other hand, refuse to waste even one single word convincing the rest of us as to why we should all drive electric cars, stop using straws, and not run our air conditioners in the summers - things which, if they're serious, are necessary to ensure the survival of the species.

That observation alone makes the skeptics look more compelling.

datavirtue2• 5 years ago

The same reason scientists don't write books to debunk pseudoscience. They don't sell and a negative is nearly impossible to disprove.

Frankly, the correct information is mundane while the conspiracy claims are much more fun--ready made for the bored and unfulfilled, just add belief.

me_me_me• 5 years ago

address them in debate

Wow, i think this might be a standup routine.

Have you ever interacted with facebook crazy people? People shouting at you their 'research' with smug superiority is one way communication not a debate.

ertian• 5 years ago

I think the difference is faith in authority figures. People who trust those in authority will believe what they're told (quite correctly, in this case), but they won't understand the full argument--they're not authorities themselves. That is, after all, the whole point of having authority figures and experts: the world is far too complex to understand everything yourself.

People who don't believe the authority figures need a reason _why_, and will concoct something. They need to validate their skepticism, both to themselves and to others.

If a skeptic really wanted to understand the argument for the COVID vaccine (in this case), all the information is out there to be had. But to really understand it they'd have to become experts themselves--actual experts, with an understanding of epidemiology, statistics, immune responses, and so on. Years of study. A google search that points out a few problems in isolation doesn't cut it.

A certain degree of skepticism for authority is definitely healthy, but I'd say it borders on pathological in modern American society.

guerrilla3• 5 years ago

This doesn't match up with reality though. Most anarchists are in the science camp and thus wearing masks, getting vaccines and, fighting deforestation, fighting climate change, etc. I can't think of any group with less trust in authority.

chasd003• 5 years ago

The problem is anyone can be an "authority" if they're persuasive enough. Trust in authority is dangerous from any point of view. Evaluating authority is the hard part, my mother in law sees my brother in law as an authority on everything because he has a PHD from a prestigious school. I see him as an authority on fossilized turtle teeth but that's about it.

Consultant32452• 5 years ago

People believe we're storming the beaches at Normandy. There is no time for careful consideration. There is no time to question authority. Do what you're told or we're all going to die. This is not a completely unreasonable position for pandemics or other large scale emergencies. I think most people felt this way during the first round of "15 days to slow the spread". Since then the number of people who view the situation through this lens has waned.

beervirus4• 5 years ago

Why is it that, consistently, on specific issues that come up over and over again, the side labelled "disinformation" is so willing to spend so much time explaining rationally why they believe what they believe while the other side is always so uninterested in making their case?

We’re tired of wasting our breath on irrational morons.

commandlinefan7• 5 years ago

We’re tired of wasting our breath

If you ever had, you'd be more convincing. I never believed that the earth was flat, or that the moon landing was a hoax, or that 9/11 was an inside job, but I have seen fascinating, engaging, intriguing, careful takedowns of all the "evidence" that the true believers of those conspiracy theories believe. My kids actually did believe that the moon landing was a hoax at one point (thanks, YouTube!) until I pointed them to an article that debunks each of the conspiracy theory claims one by one in a way that appeals to rational intuition.

We're - what, 20? - comments into this thread and I'm being downvoted for suggesting that more people are willing to question Covid and climate change, being called an irrational moron, but nobody has yet linked to an analysis of their principal claims about, say, urban heat zones and mRNA vaccines.

NoSorryCannot3• 5 years ago

It is unreasonable to expect every spurious claim to be engaged with. They are endless and an awful lot of them are based on irrational fear and tribalism so they likely can't be persuaded no matter.

I am not pleased about the "both sides" rallying cry heard on every topic. It presumes that there are only two sides (recall that the objections will be endless) and it presumes they are both in earnest and have a reasoned predicate for their existence. This is not usually the case.

There is of course real, actual debate going on about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. These are based on research and data and there is no shouting. Then there's the "anti-vaxx" movement, rooted in party politics and paranoia. Screw that.

commandlinefan7• 5 years ago

It is unreasonable to expect every spurious claim to be engaged with

It is absolutely reasonable, and if you, personally, want me, personally, to get a Covid vaccine, wear a mask, and drive an electric car, you, personally, will have to engage each and every spurious claim that people are risking their livelihoods and overcoming censorship to share with me. If you don't care, leave us alone to wallow in our disinformation until we die of Covid.

Jtsummers6• 5 years ago

They'd rather just ban the people who disagree with them than address them in debate.

Personally, I'm not in favor of banning. On the topic of COVID and COVID vaccines, I've just avoided every "debate" and "discussion" from all sides and when someone at work wants to talk about it, I tell them to shove off (in more polite terms).

However, I once made the mistake of trying to engage in a serious discussion/debate with Young Earth Creationists. That experience is what convinced me that it's better to just ignore certain groups, and, for better or worse, the COVID anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have exhibited the same kind of behavior so I just ignore them as well.

With YEC what I found was that:

1. They were perfectly capable of making a cogent, reasoned argument.

2. They were almost always starting from demonstrably false, or at least very questionable, axioms.

3. They would never entertain a discussion about the axioms, only about the conclusions.

(3) is why no progress could be made. There was logic in the discussion, and I could follow their logic and understand how they reached their conclusions. Without the opportunity to work backward toward the axioms, though, we could never reach a satisfying conclusion to the discussion (even if it was just, "agree to disagree").

In the situation of COVID, the anti-vaxxer and anti-masker crowds are somehow even more emotionally charged than the Young Earth Creationists I used to know. Which further disinclined me to engage in the discussion, even if they have a point that's worth listening to. And the nature of social media discussions is that, well, they mostly aren't. I mean, we're engaging in a discussion here on HN and even on this forum it gets pretty dicey at times. The stricter moderation (compared to, say, Reddit) helps a bit, but we go off the rails all the time and fail at the objective of coming together to form a discussion board.

As to why the side labeled "disinformation" is so willing to spend the time, because of the belief that they are right and everyone else is wrong and needs to be set right, and the corresponding emotional charge that the belief brings with it. When the world is out to get you, you end up with a fight or flight response. Ever had someone tell you you were wrong and felt a small surge through your body? That's adrenaline, it's a natural response but then the choice is how to deal with it. Take a breath and calm down or lean into it and fight or flee from the situation. The visible part is the "lean into it and fight" group, there are probably plenty of people that fit into the other two categories who just don't show up as often.

IAmEveryone4• 5 years ago

The oldest lie of that sort is Holocaust denial.

Do you really believe it's a lack of arguments, research, testimony, movies, or museums that allow that anti-semitic trope to fester? How much more does it take to convince these people?

Applejinx8• 5 years ago

In some cases, they are paid to do so because their disinformation serves to cause death to an enemy population. Whether they're themselves aware that they're doing this, or not, isn't important to the outcome.

It is worth a lot of money to somebody, to have people explaining (rationally or hysterically) why the cure to the disease will actually turn you to a chimpanzee, implant you with microchips, kill you directly, or make you be a crawling surrender weasel doing meaningless things to appease the libs.

It's worth a LOT of money to keep this pandemic alive and mutating. It has direct benefit… to somebody.

1-62• 5 years ago

Disinformation aside, let's just consider for a second that people may be simply consuming information that they want to hear, rather than taking in information that the media thinks or wants them to hear.

blinkingled• 5 years ago

Isn't it all the same really - people want to hear narratives that confirm their bias. Internet/modern communications makes it easy for media and politicians to both pick up on that and reach out to the right group of people with the targeted misinformation.

People are too much in love with their beliefs - critical thinking problem.

specialist4• 5 years ago

My primary issue with public choice theory is omission of information asymmetry. How are consumers supposed to choose options which are not presented?

See also the power of the default option.

silisili• 5 years ago

I'm not so sure it's specifically that always, maybe initially.

Perhaps someone has a strong opinion about a thing. They -know- they are right, and every news source is wrong. Until they find one also right. So far, we agree, that's what they want to hear.

But they keep turning to this source, who is spreading wild theories and untruths in other facets. But they were so right about issue X, they must be right about this too!

I think this pretty much sums up why so many 'conservatives' ended up unvaccinated. I cannot imagine that they set out wanting to hear that vaccines are unsafe or will give you microchips. Something/someone they trusted led them down this awful path.

As much as I support free speech, the last few years have really shown me the dangers of it, as well. But how can you regulate? Any arbiter is going to have a bias.

ribs3• 5 years ago

I think it’s likely that ‘conservatives’ (and New Age enthusiasts, and others) wanted to hear anti-elitist messages, messages that discredited experts, which anti-vax messaging is congruent with.

TrispusAttucks2• 5 years ago

You're probably correct.

The problem I see is one "alternate reality" starts to censor another "alternate reality".

It's just a new form of warfare. The war for control of your mind and the shaping of beliefs about reality.

A world where truth isn't part of the information or power structure means that He which controls the narrative controls reality. Arguably more terrifying that some false options and beliefs in the world.

djanogo• 5 years ago

"Joseph Bernstein is a senior reporter at BuzzFeed News", would have saved few minutes had they put that info at the top.

prvc3• 5 years ago

The article author's role in the media, up to this point, was to perform the same function as what he terms "Big Disinfo", but in a pettier, vigilante fashion (i.e. pursuing "cancellations"). I suppose, in the view of the article, it boils down to the question of who owns that turf.

jscipione2• 5 years ago

"In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good." No they were not, these three organizations have always been in the business of top-down centralized information control where a few rich and powerful individuals use these organizations to control and subjugate the powerless masses.

Since the social media revolution we now have alternatives to these centralized control structures. The push back to their loss of centralized control of information is labelled as "disinformation" and it is a disingenuous attempt for the cabal to maintain their power over us.

Hundreds of millions of people have been killed by this cabal of ruling elites and their thirst for war and power. ABC, NBC, and CBS are the real sources of disinformation in this world from the Gulf of Tonkin incident to a Kentucky Gun Show misrepresented as Syrian warfare. By breaking their oligopoly on information we are for the first time in human history achieving real freedom and this is scaring the elites who seek to maintain their power over us by writing articles like this one.

Break your chains, block out corporate media, seek real truth, and you will find it. And when you do, come back and we will fight side-by-side together against our corporate overlords and we will win our freedom.

laurent92• 5 years ago

I am happy someone worded it for HN. Here in the trenches, we constantly mock the blatant “inaccuracy” (intended bias) of corporate information, but there is a disconnect in society with people who have never been confronted with the systematic bias of some topic in the media.

starfallg2• 5 years ago

When people argue that there shouldn't be a downvote option on HN, this is the type of comment that I'd point to as a counterpoint.

It's the same type of populist drivel that led people to believe that they are fighting for their freedoms by rejecting food standards, environmental regulation and vaccinations.

Everybody has an agenda. At least with large centralised organisations their position is relatively clear, compared to the murky dark money world of political influencers. Not taking sides, but this approach to the topic is absolutely toxic to civil discussion.

paganel2• 5 years ago

At least with large centralised organisations their position is relatively clear,

Unfortunately I don't see that as being the case, especially the "relatively clear" part. My first job in my early youth (~20 years ago) was to professionally read newspapers, I did that for about 3 years to get me through school, and even as a professional newspaper reader I couldn't get the "position" for most of the newspapers. Of course, the political rags were pretty obvious, but the mainstream newspapers seemed objective and with no clear bias.

That has changed dramatically in the last few years (I had taken a break from reading the newspapers/magazines shortly before that). Now I open the Economist and I can see that almost every article on the likes of China or Russia has to include something, anything, that can be seen as negative, like "why don't are they like us, Westerners? Why don't they are ruled by a democracy? Because of that they are beneath us".

That goes the other way, too. Major negative stuff happening in the US and in most of Europe is not presented under its true colours, there's always an undertone of "we will get through this, because we are a democracy and the the will of the people will finally prevail".

And the Economist is on the soft side, just reading the headlines of the NYTimes makes it clear as day how biased they are, while the WashPo is owned by a literal oligarch (btw, why isn't anyone in the West up in arms about that?). The only mainstream newspaper that still retains a modicum of neutrality (or which manages to hide its biases pretty well) is the Financial Times.

Again, it took me many years to realise all of this, I'm afraid lots of people are still blind to the biases I exemplified above.

xkeysc0re• 5 years ago

If you read past the first two paragraphs you'd realize this was an ironical statement. But I guess this is HN now, where everything's made up and the points don't matter.

md_• 5 years ago

Heh.

I subscribe to the New Yorker. Every week I open it on Monday and I probably read about half of it by Sunday. I live in Europe, so I'm keenly aware of when the weekly issue comes out. (Due to timezone differences, it's typically not available in the app until Monday afternoon, so I start reading over afternoon coffee, not morning coffee.)

Every few weeks, within minutes or hours of a good 20-page article coming out--an article that will take me the week to digest--I see it posted on HN.

And of course, all the top commenters have strong, strong opinions on it.

Guess they're all just faster readers than I am.

exo-pla-net7• 5 years ago

Please delete your bashing of the HN community at large, so I can upvote you without reservation.

jscipione2• 5 years ago

Foot in mouth. I think you’re right that the article is arguing against censorship in the name of combatting disinfo. I still can’t tell but I think so. Go ahead and downvote me to oblivion.

lovich• 5 years ago

By breaking their oligopoly on information we are for the first time in human history achieving real freedom...

Didn't realize that seeing my aunt telling hundreds of people that there are microchips in all modern medicine was part of us experiencing real freedom for the first time in human history

jasonlotito• 5 years ago

"Break your chains, block out corporate media, seek real truth, and you will find it."

Or you could try reading beyond the first sentence. Seriously, your first remark on the article makes it clear you didn't read any more. You made up your mind before you read the article.

In fact, your comment is an example of what you rail against. What motives do you have that run counter to truth? What are you selling?

ren_engineer• 5 years ago

Indeed, it’s possible that the Establishment needs the theater of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump and the loss of faith in the decaying institutions of the West

Pretty good conclusion, especially in light of the absolute disaster that is Afghanistan. Easier to blame social media for "disinfo" than acknowledge that decades of horrible leadership are what has caused lack of trust in institutions

a few days ago the military said Kabul would hold for 90 days, within hours the Taliban was sitting in the Presidential Palace. US leaders either flat out lied or were horribly wrong, not sure which is worse. Either way, why would you put much faith in these people after being horribly wrong on so many decisions?

kneel• 5 years ago

The mainstream media blasted the entire populace with a cold war, KGB thriller, pee tape conspiracy theory for 4 years straight. It wasn't just cable news, it was NYT/WSJ/WashPo piling onto the misinformation.

In the end it turns out there was much hoopla about nothing, a giant psyop by the establishment powers that now want to earn your trust back.

guerrilla3• 5 years ago

True but I think you might be getting downvoted because that fails to account for the time leading up to the election (and Brexit I guess) which is what a lot of the people commenting on this subject are interested in.

didibus4• 5 years ago

I think that actually points towards the issue of social media. Even without explicit collaboration from US actors, Russian actors are able to interfere in elections and other processes through reaching a large US populace on social media.

Prior media would have been a lot harder to coerce by foreign agents. New social media are way easier to take advantage of as a foreign power.

For example, I'm able to participate in this debate without even being American. I have new reach and influence over Americans I never had before. How many people commenting here aren't American? Half the comments could be from Russians all we know.

That Trump didn't ask for their help doesn't mean that he didn't play into their hand.

In a strange way though, you can't dissociate them anymore. He could very well have won all by himself, hacked email or not, fake accounts or not, etc. But they did hack and leak her emails, and they did create fake accounts, and had troll farms targeted at American voters.

I can see the hesitancy to acknowledge that, because it could discredit your own win, but it's also a very interesting new scenario that didn't exist before, which is that foreign powers didn't have direct means of communication with such a large portion of your citizenry as we do now.

If I were to speak for the past, it was actually the US media that were one of the few to be able to reach into other countries populace through movies, books, games, and all that. But it was very hard for non-US media to reach Americans, and that's no longer the case.

Applejinx8• 5 years ago

Half the comments could be from Russians all we know.

If they're any good at what they do… :)

This HN thread is basically ground zero for pushing the 'Russiagate' set of arguments: namely, everything from Trump to QAnon and the antivaxxers are all totally organic and Russia didn't do any of it, in spite of their known tactics for seeding disparate opinion groups with chaos and disinformation to produce a state known as 'the Zone' where nobody knows what, if anything, is true or who is real anymore.

I've got to hand it to them, it is one hell of a tactic. It's somewhat less effective if you know it's one of their tactics. Rather than producing despair, it's downgraded to more 'fog of war' tactics. If you don't know about the tactic, despair is a more likely reaction.

anticodon2• 5 years ago

1. Russian population is smaller than US (much smaller than population of all NATO countries).

2. Most people in Russia do not speak English or do it poorly. Russian accent is very hard to hide even in writing. E.g. we don't have articles in our language, the whole concept of article is so foreign to us, that I, for example, just put them randomly, because even after years I can't understand why and where to use them. So it's easy to spot Russian comments.

3. There wasn't a single proof that Russia meddled in US elections, not even indirect evidence. It's mostly a bombardment of US media: "Russians did it" (and 100500 pages of gibberish without a single piece of evidence). Though there were no proofs, most people read only headlines and start to assume there was actual evidence. There wasn't any.

Also, I don't understand why would Russia support Trump. Any US politic hates Russia the same, be it democrat or republican. US is a fascist state waging fascist wars over resources (Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria) that hates almost all the world because it considers itself a chosen nation and all the rest are savage nations. US inherently hates Russia. Always hated - read newspapers from 19th and early 20th century - the hatred was already there. Always will hate (just read comments under any news on Reddit /r/worldnews - many commenters say that Russia should be nuked, that Russians should be killed, etc).

Why would we care to elect Trump? Did he do anything good for Russia? No.

Actually, he appears to be a sane person unlike, e.g. Biden, so in our interest would be to elect a leader with dementia instead.

blauditore• 5 years ago

A BuzzFeed reporter talking about ethics of news reporting, this is so ironic it hurts. For an excerpt of his articles, see: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/author/josephbernstein

only_as_i_fall• 5 years ago

This is not very readable. It seems to mix irony and sarcasm into a long and meandering informative piece.

The effect seems to be that this is a real slog of a read unless you share a bunch of preconceptions and assumptions with the author.

Covzire• 5 years ago

It's also, perhaps ironically a "disinformation" piece in itself, like so much supposed introspection on the left, they are quick to point out and label right wing conspiracy theories and perceived attempts to deceive, but they completely ignore their own including the biggest ones, like Russian Collusion.

It also has a built-in presumption that Brexit and Trump's election were somehow break downs of the Democratic system, even if it takes the "disinfo" angle to task somewhat. Those are only breakdowns from one then-minority viewpoint, but the minority is constantly claiming they have an absolute monopoly on what is real and true when they dismiss populism out of hand. Hint: They don't.

marto1• 5 years ago

It might be just me, but the typeface they're using isn't very readable either.

kerblang• 5 years ago

It's kind of hard to find the article's point, so TLDR: People hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see, and so "disinformation/misinformation" is just giving them what they're asking for, not some dark sinister ingenious plan that masterfully brainwashes otherwise reasonable folks.

I noticed this back during the infamous Comet Ping-Pong incident, where a random foreigner concocted an Onion-esque joke article that was obviously ridiculous, but people hated Hillary so much they bought in anyhow. Even after the author admitted it was a complete fabrication people wouldn't give up on the idea, and of course one guy arrived at the restaurant with a rifle intending to kill some sex predators and even fired bullets in the ceiling, then gave himself up when he couldn't the sex predators and went to jail.

Anyhow it's not a perfectly convincing argument, but even a sociopath will readily tell you: Some people can be easily manipulated, and some can't. Attacking the information itself is really not getting at the root of the problem.

npilk2• 5 years ago

I’m saddened by the harsh reaction so far, which seems based mostly on the first couple of paragraphs of a thoughtful and well-written essay. The discussion of online persuasion being used by both advertisers and spreaders of disinformation, and the many incentives that exist for different parties to accept that “social media” is an all-powerful manipulation machine, is particularly interesting.

I like this in part because the conclusion is strangely optimistic - we have more power than we think, if only we can recognize it.

exo-pla-net7• 5 years ago

The first out of the gate on new submissions are the knee-jerk crazies who didn't read the article, and who want to push their agenda instead of thinking about and discussing things.

Comment quality improves over time. As your own comment reassuringly demonstrates.

ribs3• 5 years ago

Indeed. I’m reading now - wait, that’s obvious - and the comments look broadly positive to me.

prvc3• 5 years ago

I’m saddened by the harsh reaction so far, which seems based mostly on the first couple of paragraphs of a thoughtful and well-written essay. The discussion of online persuasion being used by both advertisers and spreaders of disinformation, and the many incentives that exist for different parties to accept that “social media” is an all-powerful manipulation machine, is particularly interesting.

I have read more of it that that, and I found it to be lacking in original thinking, and poorly written. As for the effectiveness of persuasion, this has been studied quantitatively for quite some time now, and it can't be hand-waved away.

npilk2• 5 years ago

Persuasion on social media is certainly effective. But I think it’s also worth reflecting on the number of people who would still believe false news stories/conspiracy theories/etc in a hypothetical world without social media, and what techniques we might use in that world to combat the issue.

As for original thinking, I may not be as well-read on these topics as others. Some of the ideas seemed obvious once I read them, but I didn’t think I’d seen them before. Example: “disinformation” becoming a catch-all word for “things I disagree with”.

mc324• 5 years ago

It would help if the author refrained from poor framing and abusing the trope of the blithe self-centered American presented as if we were the only ones culpable of such infraction.

Let’s have a 360 review, I’ll taint it by first talking about a bunch of bad stuff everyone has done, but I’ll pin it on you for this review, after I’ve said a bunch of bad stuff, I’ll redeem you a little by offering some hope, how does that sound?

specialist4• 5 years ago

the many incentives that exist for different parties

Someone(s) should update the Five Filters models from Manufacturing Consent to account for social medias. Compare the social network media ecosystem to the prior broadcast and print medias.

Here's my stab at it:

The Five Filters are Owners, Advertisers, Sources, Flak, and War.

Owners (social networks) took most of Advertisers' economic power for themselves, flipping that power relationship. With loss of status, Advertisers' power to control dialog and shape opinion largely disappeared.

To reduce costs, prior Owners debased Sources by replacing news with infotainment and drama/comedy with reality TV. The current Owners reduced costs even further by making the audience their own Sources. Trolling, conspiracy, karma, gossip, outrage IS the new content. Genius.

While social media Owners became the biggest economic winners, Flak became the cultural winners, displacing Advertisers. Social media eliminates provenance (authenticity) by laundering (disintermediation) content. Flak now enjoys impunity that Advertisers could only dream of.

For lack of a well defined enemy, War turned us against each other.

Two aspects of the rise of social media confuse me.

Why haven't Advertisers revolted? Owners and Flak continues to steal their lunch money, and they just take it.

The battle lines for the free speech haven't been updated for social media. New lines had to be drawn with the advent of broadcast media. (Duh.) No one anticipated the function and impact of algorithmic recommenders. Total game changer. So we should recognize and accept the new reality and update Section 230 accordingly.

Of course, Flak benefits most from this willful blindspot, and is best able to shape the dialog, to better defend their spoils.

Owners will oppose any change by default, because why not? The status quo is pretty terrific.

Manufacturing Consent's Five Filters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent#Propagan...

TrispusAttucks2• 5 years ago

So we should recognize and accept the new reality and update Section 230 accordingly.

The Owners have successfully convinced their subjects that this is a bad idea.

That said, we must tread lightly with the precarious Section 230 and any new modification.

Edit: Owner's are down voting you fast.

javajosh3• 5 years ago

Great beginning, because this captures perfectly the feelings of so many, especially older, Americans. Even dissent feels like it was easier back then, when it was hippies vs. squares, a simple yes or no on Vietnam, yes or no on the Civil Rights Act.

There are two glaring omissions from this article. First is any mention of Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent [1], which the author spends a lot of time loosely recapitulating. The other is a lack of sensitivity to the Boomers and the (non-geek) Gen Xers that were simply not exposed to online anything and so do not have immunity, and they generally don't have a good feel for dealing with modern information systems.

The upshot is that I think this is a transient, but because of better health outcomes for the elderly, it's gonna be a long and painful one, because easily manipulated Boomers are going to be voting for a long, long time.

The problem is largely Fox News. Fox has a strangle-hold on the older minds and gives cover and support to the online insanity, specifically because it's format isn't the news, it's a news walk-through (like a game walk-through), which makes you feel like you're good at consuming the news, feel like you have the right opinions, all while saving you the trouble of actually having to think.

The solution, I'm sorry to say, is not teaching critical thinking, or appealing to better emotions, but rather an equal-and-opposite channel: a news walk-through with the same emotional profile, but with opposite opinions to Fox.

With luck, such a channel would become equally popular and cancel out the Fox effect, and leave the actual political decision-making to the critical thinkers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

watwut3• 5 years ago

a news walk-through with the same emotional profile, but with opposite opinions to Fox.

You wont find truth in the middle of two lies. Issue with Fox is not merely that they have different opinions. It is staggering amount of lies. Opposite of it are lies in another direction.

And in addition, you can actually find lies in different direction then Fox. It is just that, more lies dont solve these issues.

javajosh3• 5 years ago

It's not about finding truth, it's about solving the practical problem that Fox controls older minds and their votes. If the key to older minds is naive emotional manipulation, then it makes sense to use the same techniques for the opposite positions. If you use different techniques, more rational ones, less manipulative ones, more honest ones, then it will fail because people just won't watch. There is clearly a demand for what Fox provides; my idea is to keep giving it to people, but neuter it's real political influence.

FWIW, this is not a happy thought. I want people to be better, to want to know and understand, to recognize when they're being manipulated, lied to - when they WANT to be lied to. But I think that's asking too much, and it's tried again and again and always fails.

It's the emotions, and it always has been. They want a bad guy, they want simple explanations, they want to feel like they have special, non-obvious insight, and they don't want to earn any of it. So give it to them.

1-62• 5 years ago

Fox has a strangle-hold on the older minds

When most people think of Fox News, they think boomers. You might be right considering that the commercials they repeat target that demographic. As a non-boomer, however, it is refreshing to escape away from the blame Trump on everything narrative. I have a profound respect for older Americans and enjoy asking about history from their perspective. It's always engaging and fun when things are discussed in hindsight.

The solution, I'm sorry to say, is not teaching critical thinking, or appealing to better emotions, but rather an equal-and-opposite channel: a news walk-through with the same emotional profile, but with opposite opinions to Fox.

Isn't that the point of CNN (or the point of Fox whichever way you look at it)? Cable news is exactly that, a commentary of today's news. Unfortunately all the news broadcasts have gone to cable especially during a time when there are cord-cutters everywhere. News isn't free over-the-air anymore. You have to belong to a certain segment to enjoy (or be susceptible to) that news.

javajosh3• 5 years ago

Some of the nicest, most generous, good-hearted people I know are Fox-addicted boomers. THE biggest assholes I know are liberals. My objection to Fox and it's audience is not personal. Fox is exactly like heroin: it's dangerous to the users, but it doesn't mean the users are bad people. In fact the users are in a lot of pain and are doing their best to manage it with the drug.

Fox represents an extraordinary disconnect from reality - and increasingly, just watching it, and buying into it, represents an act of proud American defiance, even if it's wrong. And yet the underlying goals are sound: they want a safe, healthy, wealthy country. Yes, they also prefer white people, and Christians, and resent being forced into accepting crazy diversity shit like new pronouns (one I agree with, actually - only transfolk should get to switch pronouns!). They see the way the left attacks men, and masculinity, the way #MeToo equates allegation with guilt, and object to it by going too far in the other direction. But the resistance to liberal excess is real and comes from a good place - and liberals themselves can't do it lest they be lumped in with rapists and abusers and ostracized.

But goddamn, those Fox lies, big and small, come fast and furious from Fox, 24/7, and it's terrible. Their agenda is clear for anyone to see, and there is nothing Fox won't say, no tortured argument or shameless innuendo they won't make, to forward that agenda. It's actually painful for me to watch, even if I think there are plenty of valid things to criticize modern American liberalism about.

exo-pla-net7• 5 years ago

I'm with you. CNN is trying to straddle the fence between being a legitimate news source, and being a Fox-equivalent for the not-very-smart masses. Only Fox is fully cynical about it, knowing precisely how credulous their audience is and spoon-feeding them fabricated infotainment in harmony with Murdoch's worldview.

I think we, as the intellectual "elites", need to accept the following ugly reality:

1) A huge portion of the human population is highly susceptible to propaganda.

2) Exposing them to nuanced reality doesn't help them. In fact, anything complicated turns them off. They want simple truths.

3) This subpopulation is never going to change, and they're always going to be with us.

Given this reality, the only realistic option to protect our interests, aside from totalitarianism, is to feed this subpopulation counter-propaganda. To provide an alternative, easy-to-digest narrative that's aligned with humanism / Enlightenment values, but that is extremely dumbed down: The Voltaire Factor for the Hopelessly Credulous. The irony here isn't lost on me, but I see no gentle alternative.

h2odragon3• 5 years ago

we, as the intellectual "elites",
the only realistic option to protect our interests,

If I'm on the same side of whatever line you're drawing; those words make me nervous.

If I'm on the other side... then I want to prepare for when you decide totalitarianism is the more efficient course, after all.

I'm never on anybody's side. That's why I advocate for the personal ownership of any and all weaponry known to mankind: I expect anyone else to want whatever protection we can get from folks that insist they know how we must think.

Jtsummers6• 5 years ago

2) Exposing them to nuanced reality doesn't help them. In fact, anything complicated turns them off. They want simple truths.

This entry in your list is rather hilarious with the rest of your comment. A lack of nuance throughout.

gambler• 5 years ago

Too many words, but the basic analysis is good.

A lot of what's being currently said about "disinformation" is completely incoherent and makes little sense if you just track it over time. As late as in 2014 social media was presented as a force for good. ("Wisdom of the crowds", etc.) Just couple years later it was rebranded as some kind of machine where evil people brainwash idiots into becoming evil people. Who are the idiots? Well, given that YouTube and Facebook have billions of users, it seems most humans on the planet are shoved into that category now. Everything they see and say needs to be carefully curated by professionals, lest the crowds go mad.

Meanwhile, what are the incentives to, say, post an intelligent and comprehensive YouTube comment? There were none in 2014 and there are none right now. The UI, the up-voting process, the very (lack of) structure in how comments are displayed and sorted all encourage verbal vomit, and that's exactly what YouTube gets. In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say.

I recommend everyone to read Marshall McLuhan's Understanding Media. Despite being written in 1964 it presents a much more useful analytical framework to really understand social media than anything I've seen published in the last few years.

mistermann9• 5 years ago

The UI, the up-voting process, the very (lack of) structure in how comments are displayed and sorted all encourage verbal vomit, and that's exactly what YouTube gets. In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say.

I think you might be literally the first person I've ever encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement or negative. Very often, people "know" that it is not the problem, yet oddly have a very strong aversion to sharing how it is they know that.

I think it would be kind of hilarious if this was in fact (but unknown) one of the root causes of our problems, but no one has the ability to even consider the idea.

jimbokun• 5 years ago

I think you might be literally the first person I've ever encountered who has touched on this, whereas, whenever I mention the possibility, any response I get is disagreement or negative.

So they give you a downvote, a quippy snarky Tweet in response to disagree with you that there is a lack of thoughtful, deep thinking about topics.

vngzs• 5 years ago

I'm pretty sure this is the joke in multiple John Oliver web segments [0]. It's pretty well-understood that the YouTube design is not conducive to long-form discussion.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knbw0gJHHBk

notanzaiiswear3• 5 years ago

I thought it was well known that the algorithms optimise for stress and anger, because it drives more engagement. I think it might even be involuntarily - the algorithms may have been set to train for enhanced engagement, and hate and anger happen to be the solution.

rectang• 5 years ago

What if what drives YouTube profits isn't necessarily substance, but engagement (to a first-order approximation)?

Perhaps the comments are already optimized, each as a sort of micro-clickbait? There seem to be a lot of users who are highly motivated to participate in the "U! No U!! NO U!!!!" back and forth.

foobarian• 5 years ago

In general, social media structure usually provides zero incentives to engage in real discussions and deep thinking. I don't see this being addressed, let alone changed, no matter what the executives say.

That makes me think of the Russian math culture. Imagine if there was some way to create incentives via some Social Media NG to encourage that kind of thoughtful discourse.

didibus4• 5 years ago

As late as in 2014 social media was presented as a force for good. ("Wisdom of the crowds", etc.) Just couple years later it was rebranded as some kind of machine where evil people brainwash idiots into becoming evil people. Who are the idiots? Well, given that YouTube and Facebook have billions of users, it seems most humans on the planet are shoved into that category now

I don't think that's true, because from what I remember there is less than 1% of viewers who leave comments.

So the "idiots" I guess would be small vocal minorities. The question is how far their influence goes?

But it's very possible that a ton of people don't engage in the comments and discussions on social media, because they don't find the design of it suitable for intelligent discourse, and maybe that leaves you with only idiotic comments.

tshaddox• 5 years ago

I've seen some informal analysis that claims that the ubiquity of smartphones and the successful transition of the massive social networks to mobile is what specifically led to many of the alleged negative societal effects (increased political polarization, for example, although there are many other examples). The thinking goes that it's the all-day thumb-scrolling addiction loop on a tiny device that leads to these negative outcomes even more so than what was supposedly already happening with the pre-smartphone rise of social media.

Your mention of 2014 might be compatible with this line of thinking. Facebook famously abandoned its mobile HTML5 stack and "went all in" on mobile in 2012. They also acquired Instagram in late 2011, and WhatsApp in 2013.

joe_the_user• 5 years ago

Of course you've seen such analysis, it's fairly ubiquitous.

But as the parent and the article argue, it's completely incoherent. Not that phones haven't given polarization and propaganda a bit of a push but because these things are just parts of long-term trends that need to be looked at. And a lot of the "social media opens people to evil" complaints came loudly from mainstream media who were understandably upset at loosing their semi-monopoly trend-setting (ie, propaganda).

Of course, a lot of the forces that effectively hacked social media were the extreme right, which I'd hardly a fan of. But this wasn't "a sudden rise in propaganda" but a relative democratization of propaganda. If you want a non-propagandistic way of disseminating information, you need to go much further back than 1990, probably look at a whole different method of communicating.

taurath• 5 years ago

One other way to think about it is that a massive content fork started happening around the time of the internet.

In the "beginning", as the article states, there was the big 3 networks, and a bunch of fringe radio programs, and movie theatres, and newspapers. Broadly highly consolidated. A bit more emphasis on local things.

Then there was cable. You were certainly going to get more perspectives, but your age group is probably going to still only watch a few channels. And still radio and newspapers, and movies.

Now there's youtube, twitch, cable, crunchyroll, radio, podcasts, social media. 10,000 channels of content. You as an individual mix and match based on your own preferences and interests. Its also available everywhere. As is conversing with friends.

It seems like pure logic that it is much harder to create a consensus in a winner take all political system.

toast0• 5 years ago

They also acquired Instagram in late 2011, and WhatsApp in 2013.

The Instagram deal was in 2012 and WhatsApp was in 2014. I don't remember when they abandoned HTML5 though, might have been 2012.

MichaelMoser123• 5 years ago

Since 2014 the subscribers of social network became more aware of the wholesale snooping and privacy violations that are hidden behind the "terms and condition" of their social networks. I wonder if the whole disinformation narrative isn't in part an attempt to deflect public attention from the issue of privacy violations, an attempt to present the social network services as protectors of the realm, of finding some indirect justification and relativization for the business practices of these companies.

I mean you might get a sense who is pushing the argument, if you think of who is to gain from it. The article lists Alex Stamos, formerly Facebook’s chief security officer as a member of the Aspen institute 'Commission on Information Disorder', among others.

The article also says that 'it's all theater', but is drawing some very different conclusion; the 'disinformation' argument is supposed to support the claim that targetted advertising is actually working: " Ironically, to the extent that this work creates undue alarm about disinformation, it supports Facebook’s sales pitch. What could be more appealing to an advertiser, after all, than a machine that can persuade anyone of anything? This understanding benefits Facebook, which spreads more bad information, which creates more alarm. Legacy outlets with usefully prestigious brands are taken on board as trusted partners, to determine when the levels of contamination in the information ecosystem (from which they have magically detached themselves) get too high. For the old media institutions, it’s a bid for relevance, a form of self-preservation. For the tech platforms, it’s a superficial strategy to avoid deeper questions. A trusted disinformation field is, in this sense, a very useful thing for Mark Zuckerberg."

Also the article mentions that for the political class 'disinformation' is a way to explain away their own failings "the Establishment needs the theater of social-media persuasion to build a political world that still makes sense, to explain Brexit and Trump...A common account of social media’s persuasive effects provides a convenient explanation for how so many people thought so wrongly at more or less the same time. More than that, it creates a world of persuasion that is legible and useful to capital—to advertisers, political consultants, media companies, and of course, to the tech platforms themselves. It is a model of cause and effect in which the information circulated by a few corporations has the total power to justify the beliefs and behaviors of the demos. In a way, this world is a kind of comfort"

Different people are drawing different conclusions from the same data, fascinating...

pcmoney8• 5 years ago

This article could have been 1/3rd as long and contained way more data. Overall, I agree that online ads and disinformation have been give a god like aura that is not deserved.

As a percentage of views on platforms like facebook the amount of outright misinformation is miniscule, 10s of millions vs the 100s of Billions. Now if you deign misinformation as “information I disagree with/dont like” then sure that number goes up.

There was no “black magic” at Cambridge Analytica, those guys were idiots with data they didn’t understand selling promises they couldn’t deliver.

FB and Google are not “grimly secretive” compared to other F500s or say Apple? They are pretty transparent and their employees are still notoriously loose lipped. Also there has always been “yellow journalism”.

I agree that the fight against disinformation is likely to be worse than the disinformation itself.

fortuna868• 5 years ago

I agree that the fight against disinformation is likely to be worse than the disinformation itself.

It what way?

pcmoney8• 5 years ago

Censorship is bad. Once we start allowing it it only increases.

Misinformation is subjective. There is nobody we can trust to be the arbiter of what is misinformation and what isn’t.

Also the first attempts have failed terribly.

goalieca• 5 years ago

The fastest way to shut down any debate or public discourse is to casually throw that word around for anything you dislike.

chmod6002• 5 years ago

"Just as, say, smoking causes cancer, consuming bad information must cause changes in belief or behavior that are bad, by some standard. Otherwise, why care what people read and watch?"

This is the most interesting point in the article. Why should we care? People believe all kinds of crazy stuff, and still do good things nearly all the time.

Strange beliefs rarely cause violence... certainly not often enough to worry about it. Sept 11 was probably the worst case of that, and we worried way too much.

Maybe day to day there are more minor things that add up, but there's not a lot of evidence that these minor things are any worse than before. As far as I can tell gay marriage is very widely accepted pretty much everywhere in the country. The SCOTUS decision declaring sexual orientation as protected under the Civil Rights Act was written by ... a Trump appointee.

So it really comes down to voting. That's what everyone is worried about: if you believe the "wrong" things you'll vote for the "wrong" person. It's all political.

And that makes the war on disinformation seem a lot less noble, and a lot more prone to abuse. After all, everyone already knows who the "right" candidate is, so disinformation is anything that might get the other one elected. That makes the algorithm easy.

GiorgioG• 5 years ago

This is the most interesting point in the article. Why should we care? People believe all kinds of crazy stuff, and still do good things nearly all the time.

Storming the Capital, loss of faith in our election system, believing vaccines & masks are a personal choice that doesn't affect others, a loss of common beliefs in America, etc - those seem like rather undesired changes in belief/behavior because of bad information.

chmod6002• 5 years ago

Your list includes only one real action: storming the capitol. The rest reinforce my point; you are worried about what other people think out of proportion to what people actually do.

IAmEveryone4• 5 years ago

Strange beliefs rarely cause violence...

Yeah, it's great to be in the majority. Ask some Asian folks how their 2020 went. Or Middle Eastern or, for that matter, Indians in the US, ca. 2002.

Ask some black defendant how confident they feel to get a fair trial, knowing half their jurors love to watch reruns of COPS.

Ask the (surviving) jews at that Philadelphia synagogue how benign they believe the stories about Soros eating babies are.

And, fundamentally, ask yourself how good a regulatory system, with some element that measures an outcome, and some element that is regulated, can work when the information flowing between them cannot be trusted. Such feedback-dependent regulatory systems may be your AC connected to a thermometer. Or your elections, which are usually supposed to, for example, react to stories of corruption.

There's much love of "free speech" here. If it doesn't matter if the speech is correct or not, that can only mean that speech doesn't make a difference either way. In that case, what's the value of free speech?

Or is "speech" some magic thing that can never hurt, but still be useful? In that case, we should just get GPT-3 to give us an endless stream of plausible texts, and the magic fill find the gems in it.

ArtDev• 5 years ago

If you read the whole article (and please do before you comment) you will see the main point of the article.

I agree that the problems with pithy hyperpartisan sound-bite media is nothing new. Social media is just another form of media, with all its problems, it just does it faster. It is also harder to track and easier to create.

I had to quit Facebook because I found myself policing my friends shared content that was factually wrong. Fake tiny-home giveaways, distorted facts that I agreed with politically but were factually just plain wrong and other junk. Unlike other forms of media, the difference was that I could police this disinformation, if I wanted to be "that guy".

I don't work for Facebook and didn't want to police their platform. So I just quit the stupid platform altogether along with their sister site, Instagram.

Side note: Its ironic that this guest writer on Harpers actually works for Buzzfeed; where journalistic integrity is a joke.

werber• 5 years ago

Buzzfeed news has some suprisingly good content. Like, Pulitzer Prize winning journalism now coexists with listcles and quizes.

drewcoo• 5 years ago

What a strange distortion of history, beginning with the golden age of media. Somehow this piece seems to posit that if the same news was broadcast to the public on all the networks, then that was clearly the one real truth [TM]. The reality is that was heavily scrutinized, controlled American propaganda. Not only was there no far right wing news there, but there was also none of the actual left (red baiting and all).

The difference is that in those days there was government control of many smaller media outlets. Now there is corporate capture of government and there are only half a dozen major media outlets. But that's a very different article.

IAmEveryone4• 5 years ago

I believe you missed the point, by quite a margin.

exo-pla-net7• 5 years ago

TLDR for the article: Disinformation has less impact than we think. Societal / institutional problems are the real culprits for our dysfunction. Disinformation is just a convenient scapegoat.

Counterpoint: QAnon, incel terrorism, Plandemic, other fully-internet-driven extremist ideologies.

You need look no further than religions, often invented by single charismatic individuals, to see how powerful isolated claims of Truth can be.

I think that societal / institutional problems has indeed created a powder keg. But disinformation itself, its presence, lights the fuse.

With disinformation's "answers", it provides targets for people's pent up rage. Whether it's police officers or liberal elites or billionaires or Muslims or Chads, people learn who the enemy is, as well as their evil deeds. If you defeat this enemy, your problems will go away.

The concrete result is wars, interpersonal violence, riots, hamstrung governments, and insurrections. All stirred up because of explicit falsehoods.

Ideally, we'd fix both the powder keg (societal and institutional problems) and the lighting of its fuse, disinformation.

didibus4• 5 years ago

Agreed, I think it's missing the chicken/egg issue.

Societal and institutional problems might be the real cause, but is disinformation the way out? Or is it how you get locked into even more glaring societal and institutional problems, which will then reinforce the disinformation once more, causing even more problems, etc.

For me, a lot of this is a downward spiral, and you can see a lot of countries that are just stuck in this state as well, all ideology, constant tyranny, they can never get out of. Try to break free and only make room for a stronger ideology to take over.

At some point the people need to have enough common sense together to stop this cycle, and get themselves out of those societal and institutional problems.

neonate• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/4WpXO

Jtsummers6• 5 years ago

Why, then, do buyers love digital advertising so much? In many cases, Hwang concludes, it’s simply because it looks good at a meeting, blown up on an analytics dashboard: “It makes for great theater.”

This is the case with a lot of corporate "information". We've become gluttons for information but most of it absolutely fails at the task of informing. It just gives a false sense of confidence that we know what's happening and why and in what direction things are moving.

I don't work anywhere near the ad industry, but this sort of behavior is hardly unique to them. It's part of a broader set of cultural behaviors.

_kst_• 5 years ago

I suggest that the title on HN should include the subtitle:

"Bad News, Selling the story of disinformation".

_huayra_• 5 years ago

Ironically, "Bad News" is exactly the type of clickbaity title that is endemic in the bad news that the article talks about, e.g. "Bad News! You won't believe what happened next!"

yung_steezy• 5 years ago

I work in digital advertising analytics and we do try to mitigate the repeat customer phenomenon the author mentions. Typically we only record the first web visit from a household during the campaign window for example.

WalterBright4• 5 years ago

The article's author repeatedly presumes that disinformation is only coming from the right. This discredits the article, given that the author is apparently unaware of all the disinformation coming from the left.

h2odragon3• 5 years ago

Speaking of other disinformation sources means you're part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, tho. Probably directly employed by the Koch foundation under the direction of Putin.

andyxor2• 5 years ago

it's buzzfeed clickbait, they know their audience

chrisweekly• 5 years ago

No, it's Harpers.org which, yes, leans left, but is hardly "buzzfeed clickbait."

Applejinx8• 5 years ago

Citation needed. They seemed pretty reality-based to me.

BuyMyBitcoins• 5 years ago

“Reality” is starting to become a very loaded term in and of itself. None of us sees actual reality, we only see perspectives of reality.

But partisans have happily decided to associate their worldview with the concept of reality.

spenczar54• 5 years ago

I can't see how you read this article that way. For example, how do you read this section?

A quick scan of the institutions that publish most frequently and influentially about disinformation: Harvard University, the New York Times, Stanford University, MIT, NBC, the Atlantic Council, the Council on Foreign Relations, etc. That the most prestigious liberal institutions of the pre-digital age are the most invested in fighting disinformation reveals a lot about what they stand to lose, or hope to regain. [...] However well-intentioned these professionals are, they don’t have special access to the fabric of reality.

To me, the author is being clear: the "big disinfo" institutions which are claiming that disinformation is a huge problem are overwhelmingly on the left, and they are scrounging for scraps of evidence. The author seems deeply skeptical in an interesting way.

WalterBright4• 5 years ago

I think you've misread the quote you provided. The quote says they're writing "about" disinformation, not writing disinformation.

cubano2• 5 years ago

So let me get this straight...

Facebook is the reason that Trump got elected?? This is possibly the most asinine thing I've heard in a very long time.

Trump got elected for several reasons, and Facebook had nothing to do with it.

1. H. Clinton was perhaps the worse presidential candidate in the history of the Republic. She rarely if ever campaigned in the all important Rust Belt states, she could not even articulate a reason, when asked, about why she wanted to be President.

2. She and her husband were sitting on a very suspect war chest of like $168mil US...remember, these were the same people who complained 15 years earlier when Bill left the Presidential digs that they were like totally broke with little or no savings.

So this couple had earned WELL over $160mil (not counting their quite significant expenses) in 15 years since Bill left office? Why? Why in the world were so many people just giving them millions of dollars?

To many a hard-working US voters who have struggled their entire lives to save a small amount for retirement, this smelled of "pay to play" on-the-come corruption...and she didn't even try to hide it!

For these reasons, and several more but I don't have the time to post them, H. Clinton did not get elected President in 2016,

Just to keep the record straight.

joezydeco• 5 years ago

On top of all of that, the Obama recovery from the 2008 meltdown started the K-shaped split. People came back from the recession, but not everyone got back to where they were. Many were just plain left behind.

It was very fertile ground for Trump to come along and address the anger of the lower middle class and promise them that they could get their share again.

notanzaiiswear3• 5 years ago

My takeaway from the article is that at last there is study showing Facebook had little effect on the election.

IAmEveryone4• 5 years ago

Yeah, well… It’d be child’s play to write a list like that about Trump. Using a foundation’s money to buy a second-rate portrait of himself comes to mind, and that was found illegal in an actual court. Or, if you are speculating about respective finances of the candidates, that HC’s tax returns for the last 20 years were public, while your squeaky-clean candidate is litigating to this day to keep them secret.

But the article isn’t about re-litigation of that election, or the next one. It starts from the premise that the result of the election was unprecedented, and that someone like Trump would not have had a chance in earlier times.

In a way, the article indeed doesn’t so much speak to you, but about you, wondering what cultural factors are needed to support the sort of emotional state that would lead people to glorify a half-bit wannabe gangster.

cubano2• 5 years ago

But the article isn’t about re-litigation of that election, or the next one. It starts from the premise that the result of the election was unprecedented, and that someone like Trump would not have had a chance in earlier times.

I'm supposed to blindly believe everything I read in highly pollical magazine like that one?

Millions of people loved Trump because of the way he spoke so directly to them, and not like a typical politician. There is nothing at all "unprecedented" in that election...inferior candidates have been losing elections since the beginning of the US.

That article was so full of FUD and wrong-headed nonsense I had to refute its assertions.

golemotron• 5 years ago

Talk about clickbait.. I thought Harpers was shutting down.

cassalian• 5 years ago

I'm doubtful of the harms of misinformation and the role it plays in persuading people's opinions (I believe people are fairly intelligent rather than undiscerning parrots of thought). However, if I were to accept the claim misinformation is rampant and that it is persuading large numbers of people, then I would think the solution would be to better educate people on how to "not believe everything you read" by checking sources, questioning what motives the author might have, checking who the author is, finding a related article from a different source, etc. IMO this would prevent the need for platforms to remove misinformation (something that can be easily abused to remove content that doesn't fit a certain political agenda or similar) since the public would capable of filtering out misinformation themselves.

The war on misinformation seems to be driven by the democrats today; however, it could easily be driven by the republicans in the future. Regardless of who is pushing the war, IMO a war on misinformation will always lead to polarization. After all, your opponents aren't rational, rather, they've been brainwashed. As such, there is no need to engage with your opponents views, conveniently leaving your own views completely unopposed (and thus obviously correct and good).

epgui2• 5 years ago

I think framing it as a war is problematic. We’re not waging war against pollution and CO2, we’re trying to limit and manage it. Disinformation and misinformation can be conceptualized similarly as information pollution. Our brains don’t have magic powers: garbage in, garbage out. Just like AI.

Applejinx8• 5 years ago

Objective reality does exist, even if it's hotly denied. And brazen denial is one thing we do repeatedly see in all this, which has drawn my attention to the specific things that get the most brazen denial, with the most emphasis (and, where possible, the most brigading and reinforcing by mysterious upvotes/downvotes/manipulations)

I get that it's desirable and appealing to frame it as random noise and organically produced info pollution from dumb people who just want attention. It would be nice to think this.

There's also an argument that this is indeed war waged through other means… interestingly, with a death toll very comparable to the old-fashioned, less deniable forms of open warfare. If there were no pandemic, someone would've had to invent one… or make do with bombings, vehicular assaults, and other sorts of terrorist action. But since there is a pandemic, the war becomes essentially a matter of maximizing the performance of the pandemic by any means necessary.

Could be worse, could be nukes. That would be more obvious, mind you.

natural219• 5 years ago

Garbage nonsense from a known partisan hack. Flagged.

saul_goodman• 5 years ago

The media is solely responsible for the lack of trust they now engender. Once the news media decided to push ideological agendas over reality in the 1980's the seeds of this crapscape were sewn. Everyone has at least a small pocket specialty knowledge they trust over what "the public" knows because they can prove their knowledge is of higher quality. Examples:

Are you a hacker of any stripe? Do you cringe when anything about technology or "hacking" comes up on the news? Do you know the phrases "the interwebs" and "the internet is not a big truck"? Politicians and the media are technological imbeciles. But we still trust them to get everything else right though...

Are you a gamer? Ever seen the media and politicians try to explain that video games turn kids into murderers? You know this is BS. But we can still trust them about other subjects...

Are you a nurse or doctor? Can you watch any TV show about ER doctors? Probably not, I mean how many heart attacks does the average ER really see in a given 24 hour period... But hey, media can probably be trusted for everything else...

Are you a gun owner? Ever seen the media and politicians say ANYTHING about guns that is even remotely accurate? But hey, they probably get everything else right...

Are you a liberal? Hey at least this news outlet says things that don't split my head with antagonistic ideology...

Are you a conservative? Hey at least this news outlet says things that don't split my head with antagonistic ideology...

Alex Jones was talking about Epstein as far back as 2008. Before Wikileaks became persona non grata with the US government it exposed a LOT of governmental and corporate corruption. Criminey this very week we're seeing the last throws of the Bush W. administration's endless war campaign they sold the American People in 2001. The media ate it up and threw it in our faces for MONTHS that we HAD to go after them WMD's in... not Afghanistan where the Taliban were, but Iraq! Wait, how'd we get involved in Iraq AGAIN?

The news media has made itself into a laughing stock and now they want to cry foul that so many people went elsewhere for their news. And in the massive exodus from them other ass clowns swept in. The only problem with Jones is none of his information is vetted. Most people know this going in, but yea of course you have plenty of people who just mainline it all. I'm not suggesting Jones et. al. are any better, but what we have right now is the ONLY possible way the situation could have evolved. If I were the CIA and I were at all concerned with the public health of the US, I'd start by whacking the idiots at the World Economic Forum. We have real problems to deal with and these ass clowns are out proselytizing the "New Normal" and their version of the new world order. For fucks sake, Mr. head off the WEF himself Klaus Schwab wrote a fucking book called "COVID-19: The Great Reset". If these idiots could knock off their noises about global domination maby people who were already afraid and unsure of whats going on in these crazy times would calm down and listen to more rational voices.

vmurthy• 5 years ago

Lest we forget , social networks are/were designed to exploit loopholes in our psychology [0]. Everything wrong with social networks can be derived from this :-(

[0]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sean-parker-facebook-takes-adva...

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

It seems to take away from the theme of the event by inviting the man formally known as Prince Harry. The modern monarch is a manifestation of British advertising (for economic and soft power purposes).

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

A family member I know was recently scammed out of 1 ETH by a very high production value scam video promoted by YouTube algorithms.

Bad News

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