How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study(nytimes.com) |
How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study(nytimes.com) |
It's why professional historians try to stick with original sources, for example.
Censorship of news is always sold as keeping people from being misinformed.
All this piece is pointing out is that the difference between 'fake news' and 'real news' is the act of verification prior to publication. The thing journalists do, which makes what they publish worth paying attention to.
It's made me skeptical ever since.
Its part of what I think makes conspiracy theories so attractive, they give the impression that no matter what else is going on, someone is in control and things happen for a reason. I think the alternative that nobody is in control at all is even more scary for some people (maybe all people).
I don't think it is entirely that fake news fits into your own viewpoint already, I have some "friends" on facebook that sometimes share fake-right news that aren't even really right wing, they are just kind of gullible (I hate to say that but they also fell for the fake wireless-charger video going around. Luckily that one was a little easier to debunk). The fake news would be so simple and digestible, without any nuance or subtlety that it might subconsciously be immediately favored over a more nuanced story. I don't dispute any of the other analyses going around but I think the simplicity of fake news can't be ignored and we need to remind our friends and family that the world is complex and very few stories are so straightforward.
But that's not true either, those two are not the only possibilities. The fact is that what happens in the world is usually due to the collective action of many different people and groups, with converging and diverging opinions. It's something like vector math, the resultant vector determines direction of decision making. The mass narrative which has been sold is that no one is in control, and things just happen. Which is also not true. Implicit conspiracy is common, when those interests converge.
The headline might as well as be mass propaganda techniques no longer working. HALP! Or maybe mass propaganda techniques have been democratized. HALP!
i read the opposite: the propaganda technology known as "clickbait" has become so widely disseminated that truth or factual information can't compete because it doesn't translate as smoothly.
the truth and the facts are always a bit less streamlined, and are always presented in a slightly more complex way-- slightly more cognitively expensive. the human mind takes the easy path whenever it can.
Thats exactly what I mean, it seems like most conspiracies stem from the idea that some person or a group of persons is able to manipulate world events. In the fake news world, it is insinuations that circumstances have a very simple cause->effect relationship. Rather than having to comprehend the huge number influences on events, it is boiled down to a simple "they did it." narrative, which is appealing because its not challenging.
Also I think calling it vector math is misleading because the number of datapoints and the complexity of the system makes any discrete analysis impossible, short of inventing psychohistory[1] for real.
Why were they not so active about this phenomenon during elections? I doubt they were unaware of it since even I saw many tweets that were obviously fake
It's like there's some board somewhere that comes up with the next big thing we are going to try and sell to the American people on and they publish it in the NYT and then the whole mainstream dutifully jumps on board and it gets pushed and pushed by all the networks until they give up or they move onto something else.
Searching news archives, one could build a nice directed timeline of the genesis and bloom through the media of these regular campaigns.
For example, are you critical of the floor being solid when you get out of bed? You probably wouldn't spend extra milliseconds contemplating they hardness of the floor. Now let's say you get up and the floor is wet. You might take a moment thinking about what happened, looking up at the ceiling, whether the dog peed, did someone spill water, etc.
That is an extreme example, but many people find it very difficult to critically analyze everything they come in contact with. It helps immensely that things like political opinions are controversial, so we are at least aware of other possibilities, but it is still very difficult to accept something that contradicts what is established in our minds, even when that which is established is wrong. So it isn't just that we need to be critical, it is we must be somewhat critical[0] of even things we believe when there is at least some doubt to their validity.
[0] I actually wouldn't call this being critical, but rather, being open-minded to being incorrect.
Plenty of dumb people everywhere. Fake news, state news, no news, they'll eat it up.
I've basically given up on trying to show anyone any sort of truth. A third of my life is over and we're not even to the point where 10/10 people could tell you which way is up without consulting some blog or CNN.
I just gotta carve the best life I can, regardless of any mob rule.
Not to mention doing a sweeping generalisation on 300+ million people.
Censorship isn't a workable answer. The answer is for mainstream media to attempt to regain credibility by providing non-biased reporting and leaving off the propaganda.
This isn't an ideological statement either so please don't misconstrue. If you prefer, think of it as a strategy.
BTW.. I'm personally am sick of the "fake news" whining. I suspect I'm not alone in this. If it was a problem it was a problem a year ago.
I generally don't agree with Zuckerburg but in this case I do. Fake news didn't win the election. So please just stop it. Threatening forms of censorship isn't going to win more respect. Try behaving respectfully.
_Last article about fake news I intend to ever read or comment on_
Mainstream media lost its grip on propaganda and now they're trying to push for censorship of opposing views (this past election is the proof of that). Read this interview with the founder of Snopes for the background of this [0].
Never mind the fact that "real news" organizations have been caught lying so many times and have collaborated, behind the closed doors, with Hillary's campaign, for example. [1]
And they're also grouping WikiLeaks under the "fake news" category as well. I guess that's the punishment for exposing how corrupt the mainstream media really is.
[0] https://backchannel.com/according-to-snopes-fake-news-is-not...
[1] http://www.wnd.com/2016/11/meet-leftist-prof-who-wrote-hit-l...
There's a number of ways that state narration becomes viral. The contacts that officials have with the media (the DNC leaks about media contacts pales in comparison to how the industry and government function together on a larger scale) coordinate messages, themes and ideas across distribution outlets - enabling large bodies of the American public to receive the same information (however fake it is or is not) in roughly the same time span.
This messaging is able to set the boundaries for the ideological debate. For instance, the Snowden Documents were reported across media outlets under the terminology "Bulk Collection" rather than Mass Surveillance, and they all made the same arguments provided to them by the state for what was going on, what was and was not legal and what data was and was not collected. Almost all of this was fake information that went viral immediately. American citizens had discussions about whether or not Merkle and Obama were upset with one another - rather than discuss the actual contents of the leaks, which the media broadly did no technical reporting on.
"Should we set up safe zones in Syria, or should we put boots on the ground?" is a safe ideological spectrum to coordinate for the American public, but it's difficult to see private-public partnership on messaging the American people to include, for example, criticism of American regime change, the US led coalitions' support of al Qaeda/Nusra/Fatah/Sham and the Islamic State Group. Both context and opinion are narrowly scoped to present particular fake perspectives that ultimately leave the American public uninformed and anxious.
Virality in general, of course, is studied by the Department of Defense, and it's Strategic Communication in Social Media (SMISC) research effort has sought to create the operating conditions and strategies to control virality of information in populations (strategic communication or "stratcom" is a DoD term for propaganda, replacing the older terminology psyops).
I think we're going to see evolving threats and technologies to detect, thwart and control virality more and more in the future - and people volunteering to be part of those networks of controlled information because its default, cheaper, has a better user experience, or just plain has all the other people.
I wish political discussions were more evidence based, but I don't know how to do it.
"While there’s no such thing as absolute certainty, I now believe that the busses that I photographed on Wednesday, November 9, were for the Tableau Conference 2016 and had no relation to the ongoing protests against President Elect Trump."
In other words, he is saying in that first sentence that he doesn't rule out that his original interpretation will eventually be proven correct. There's no such thing as an absolute certainty, after all! It remains possible that the 2016 Tableau conference and its 13000+ attendees were all an elaborate ruse to cover up an astroturf protest. We can't rule anything out prematurely! But he _currently_ believes that this might not be the case, in agreement with the overwhelming evidence. Currently.
"I don’t know that Donald Trump was talking about me (posted 24 hours after my post), but he’s among many with doubts"
Many people doubt this fact, in the face of overwhelming evidence, because people like Eric Tucker, Donald Trump and his campaign apparatus have spent the last year priming the public to believe crazy things that aren't true.
"Let’s not be afraid to say things when we aren’t completely sure"
Well actually yeah, let's just be afraid to do that.
"I value our ability to discuss with each other in a civil and respectful tone regardless of where our views may stand."
Except for that part where he gets up on Twitter and makes stuff up about people with whom he disagrees, and posts those made-up things as facts, he is totally 100% down with respect. Very respectful. None more respectful.
For reference the original tweet was "Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the busses they came in. #fakeprotests #trump2016 #austin pic.twitter.com/VxhP7t6OUI"
Does anyone remember the Foundation Trilogy by Asimov? There's a point in the story where the calculations of the future developed by Hari Seldon are derailed by the arrival of the Mule, a black swan event that could not be predicted easily. It's hard to understand paradigm shifts when they are happening but it feels as if the US has hit a similar point where an unforeseeable event overthrows the stable equilibrium of the past 225 years. What happens next is hard to guess but the range of outcomes seems pretty broad. I don't think you can rule out the breakup of the United States.
The NY Times is asking the wrong question; they implicitly acknowledge that it lacks predictive power: The accuracy of information does not predict if it will spread and be believed.
* Ideology predicts it. If information matches their ideology, they spread it and believe it. If not, they don't. I believe this is now taken to its extreme: Ideological compliance, not factual accuracy, determines 99% of 'truth'. No matter how factually unsound, they will believe ideologically 'true' information. And no matter how factually sound, they will deny and attack ideologically 'false' material. Consider climate change, as an easy example - factually undeniable but ideologically unsound. It's a full-fledged ideological movement, which seems an anachronism in this educated age, happening right under our noses..
I've been reading about Medieval philosoph, and I recognized the pattern. It's a per-Enlightenment approach, placing ideology (back then it was mainly religious dogma rather than political) ahead of reason as the test for truth. Note also the attacks on sources of factual credibility, such as serious journalists, intellectuals, academia, scientists, education in general, etc. Those sources provide factual accuracy, but ideological 'falsehoods'. Again, it's in some ways similar to what was experienced in the Enlightenment. Finally, note that leaders of this political group prove themselves not by knowledge, leadership, good decisions, etc., but by saying things that are both crazy by normal standards but acceptable by the ideology's standards - their and their followers priority is that they prove their commitment to the ideology.
....
Finally a couple caveats: 1) In a way it might seem obvious because everyone tends to believe things that meet their preconceived notions, but this is far more extreme - usually accuracy does have a large influence on people, including probably most people reading this. 2) Yes, some people behave similarly on other parts of the political spectrum, but the reality is that in 2016 there is relatively very large and very powerful movement on the right - IMHO it just elected a President and has corrupted major U.S. institutions such as the FBI.
Yes, there are lying tweets out there and social media is designed in a way that makes spreading this stuff easy. As long as you have an audience that really wants to hear something, they will share your messages. But, really, this is neither new, nor surprising. And it's not exclusive to Trump supporters. It's not even exclusive to social media. Mainstream media also occasionally reposts each other's stories without fact-checking. (Remember Tim Hunt?)
Why is this suddenly a subject of almost daily articles? Did some editor wake up from a 10-year coma or something? (I'm being facetious, of course. It's obvious why.)
I remember several year ago mainstream media was singing high praise to social media during Arab Spring.
---
Another thing worth considering is that the whole story started with a single Tweet from non-celebrity. It seems it wasn't even an intentional lie, just someone jumping to conclusions. Is that news? I don't think so, unless you want to count every blog post and every comment as such.
Does a re-post on Reddit or Facebook somehow make it news? I don't think so either.
At what point does a post from an individual become news? This question is important, because some people are already jumping on the bandwagon and demanding social networks to "combat" this, whatever "this" is.
The issue is that a lot of such stories are false, but some of them are true. No one in the pipeline is a journalist or an editor with incentives to do fact-checking. And everyone can always link to the original post, say "Joe Shmoe posted such and such on Twitter" and thus completely relegate responsibility for the content. (Modern mainstream media pulls these kinds of stunts all the time: http://pressthink.org/2014/05/democrats-argue-republicans-co...)
Ahhh... I see now, got your tin-foil hats on? Make sure you stock up because four years is a long time. Assholes.
Yellow Cake? Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
edit: already banned by facebook, that was fast.
1) Trump had a significant chance of winning because of a disgruntled American public voting against establishment candidates (the same reason Obama himself was elected in 2008).
2) There was "fake news" before the election.
Indeed, I know a number of additional things.
3) Right now there is a crisis in faith and credibility in the US domestic news. The reason for this is that the official narrative across the media industry - much of it literally state propaganda - has been consistently proving hallow and unreliable. People are continually confused, and their attentions are jerked around as the media needs the public to be outraged/motivated/mobilized at each subsequent juncture.
4) There is huge amounts of fake news and misinformation INSIDE the industry. If you want to focus on Trump rather than national security and propaganda, take the ubiquity of the "search terms spike for how to move to Canada after Trump won primaries" with absolutely no coverage giving the context that Canada had on that day finally passed a long-in-revision piece of legislature revising US-to-Canada patriation and such search terms would have spiked regardless of the candidate in the US primaries. (Trump is not and never was a candidate for president that I would endorse.)
5) The "fake news" surge is a grasp by establish monopolistic forms of misinformation distribution to maintain their domination and credibility as sole sources.
That said, a lot of blame does need to be apportioned to western intelligence agencies. The idea that hostile foreign actors could (if they wanted) manipulate large segments of electorates seems to have escaped them entirely. This is especially damning since they saw how those tools were effectively deployed in the Arab Spring and elsewhere to foment revolutions (if they weren't behind those movements themselves). It is an epic fail, and joins a long list of intelligence failures.
What exactly is being pushed on the American people?
what about that time the NYT pushed the iraq war
or that time they pushed hillary clinton
or that time they pushed (insert whatever their paid PR "article" of the second is pushing for)
The left and the right have those as well (although calling Hillary and Trump supporters "left" and "right" is inaccurate, but that's for another discussion).
The "right" had "the protests are started by Soros" and so they saw buses everywhere for a whole week or so. There was another such thing for a "get paid $3.5k to attend an anti-Trump protest" that ended up as a fake CL screen capture.
The left first started with "let's hack the electoral college". There was a lot of discussion about that - "what if we convince/force them to vote the other way. Maybe invoke some hidden article from the Constitution..." or some thing like that. That went on for a while. It died down.
Then "fake news" started, almost overnight. And it's been fake news since then.
Just yesterday here there was some discussion about an oil field in Texas, and it seems they overestimated the cost or used a different metric or some such thing. But people here were calling it "Fake News". I thought it was initially supposed to lizard people controlling the government?
Then this story as another example. A major fuck up, everyone got worked about stuff without verifying. The source doesn't seem to have done it on purpose and has since deleted it (but it was too late) of course. Everyone in the chain begin idiots and overreacting. But NYT, CNN, CBS, FOX, NBC have been doing this stuff for years! Especially regurgitating anything coming out of the State Department or other government institutions. They are billion dollar corporation, if anyone can verify stuff it should be them. Would they consider themselves "Fake News"...
The problem is they are realizing they are losing the ability to manufacture consent like they could before. That must be terrifying, so they have to respond or do something about it. "Fake News" is their response.
To be fair, is a useful PR technique - a label that can be quickly thrown on anything. This makes sense also in the context of how popular Identity Politics became, where flinging labels like "fascist", "racist", "sexist" is done all too easily. Also with Twitter becoming an acceptable political discourse medium, try to argue a complex point in 140 characters. You can't! Instead throw a short label in there and you're done. Wipe hands on pants and refresh to see the results.
Even though you provided some "reputable" sources, it's hard to take anyone that uses the word "leftist" seriously. Especially when:
[0] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...
[1] http://www.wnd.com/2012/08/the-strange-strange-story-of-gay-...
This is hardly Orwellian, although I do enjoy an overwrought appeal to his name now and again.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/10/trump-protests-intensif...
Here's some quality facts from that article.
""" But observers online are claiming that, in some cases, protesters were bused to the scenes - a telltale sign of coordination.
“Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem,” one local in the Texas capitol tweeted Wednesday, along with photos offered as evidence.
[...]
Rumors have also been circulating that the new batch of anti-Trump protesters has been bankrolled by individuals like billionaire liberal activist George Soros and groups like Moveon.org.
“WTF, @georgesoros busing in & paying #protestors to destroy cities is domestic #terrorism. #fakeProtests #BlueLivesMatter have tough days,” read one tweet in response to the viral picture of buses in Austin. """
Fox News runs pieces using these fantasy tweets as their primary source. They also run these stories on their TV network that your mom watches all day.
Richard Dawkins on memes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRggkkAIC5A
For instance this meme sunk Howard Dean's campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwkNnMrsx7Q
Dan Quayle and the potato incident: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wdqbi66oNuI
> The "fake news" surge is a grasp by establish monopolistic forms of misinformation distribution to maintain their domination and credibility as sole sources.
This is exactly it. The following google trends graph makes this obvious: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=fake%20news
When I saw the bus thing I questioned how the guy knew the buses were full of protestors, and then stopped caring because it was just some guy on twitter. The MSM want you to blindly accept their narrative and lose the ability to tell fact from fiction.
They were also forwards about their editorial support for HRC, having declared her their candidate well before she became the presumptive DNC nominee. You might not like the fact that pro-HRC opinion pieces made their way to the top, but there's no ethical dilemma there either.
The point is, you can't argue why people should trust you rather than the opposition. You have to provide reasons for them to do so.
It would be like building an app that wasn't getting positive reception and then trying to argue or shame people into liking it rather than giving people what they want. It plain doesn't work.
People want to know what is going on. Tell them to the best of your ability. Don't couch it in spin, don't support sides, don't appear biased. That is how you establish a reputation of trust. It's not a matter of what is legal or ethical in this case at all.
It's about trust and human nature. Not nitpicking details to try to "prove" you are right. You will never win what you are trying to win like this. Ever.
But since you asked here is a sample:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/13/us/politics/donald-trump-w...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/politics/donald-trump-w...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/us/alt-right-salutes-donal... (the implication being of course that Trump is tied to racism).
Now lets oppose the outrage above with the treatment of Hillary's behavior.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/27/us/politics/wh...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/us/politics/hillary-clinto...
Look guys... it's not an ideological thing here. But you can't behave like this and have people who support a different ideology take you seriously. That's a simple fact.
When this happens people will get their information from elsewhere.
Last I have to say about this. Think about it or not. But I don't intend to argue.
You could argue that it's indicative of bias for the NYT to break such a story at all, but it's in the public interest to know the financial solvency of their leaders. At the risk of conflating news and opinion, there was no shortage of opinion pieces calling on HRC to release her speeches - also in the public interest.
It's difficult to ask the NYT to "establish a reputation of trust" when it already has one, deserved or not. Such a request, to the editors and ethicists of any media outlet, is just a nice way to ask for more favorable (or perhaps less damning) coverage of your candidate of choice.
i also remember how it was widely thought to be a bad idea at the time by millions of people, yet, somehow they managed to pick the wrong position.
... along with millions of other people.
I'm not sure what you mean by "trust and human nature". These seem to be self-evident (read: mostly rhetorical), and not directly in conflict with what I've said.
I'm also not sure what details I've nitpicked. I pointed out a case that I thought you might consider a hit piece, and explained why dulling it down to just that has a chilling effect on journalism as a whole and operates against the public interest.
The articles you linked portray Trump in a negative light. Is the conclusion supposed to be that HRC must be portrayed in an equally negative light? It's odd to have to say this, seeing how I'm not a particular fan of hers, but the media cannot treat circumstances as equals when they are definitively not equal. There is no modern analog to what either candidate has in their closets, but to equivocate between them via this fact alone is, bluntly, bewildering.
I appreciate your thoughts on the matter, and I hope you revisit this conversation (or perhaps the thoughts behind it) at a later point without immediately defaulting to a defense against "ideology".
With that in mind, let's go to the NYT front page:
Donald Trump’s Swamp Gets Murkier
A disturbing number of lobbyists and special interest players
are joining the transition team.
The interaction does not appear to violate federal laws or
ethics rules, three lawyers said, but it did create the appearance
that Mr. Trump and his partners are using his status as a way to
profit.
Cabinet Selection Turns Into Spectacle That’s Made for TV
"Donald Trump’s Swamp Gets Murkier" is an opinion piece.
"Cabinet Selection Turns Into Spectacle That’s Made for TV" is a silly title and a cheap shot, but cabinet pageantry is nothing new. The article itself has a message in the form of facts focused on (e.g., the fact that all of Trump's picks seem to be old white men), but doesn't seem to express an opinion in the way that the editorial board's piece does.
Does it have a bias? Yes. Is it abnormal, or even unusually biased? No.