
Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News - richardhod
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cognitive-ability-and-vulnerability-to-fake-news
======
giardini
I've got a friend who, over the years, has consistently forwarded e-mails to
me: many were funny and a majority were politically biased toward the
conservative end of the spectrum. Last election his forwarding of articles
that were factually incorrect increased severely to the point that I would
read the subject and a few sentences and then discard them.

I was surprised that he didn't check out his sources or information before
forwarding information: snopes.com and other sites are so readily available
and easy to use. I even suggested casually one day how he could check internet
rumors with snopes, and he listened, but only muted his forwarding awhile.

So I set up a rule routing his e-mail to a separate folder that I check
occasionally. I keep the good jokes and flush the fake news. Nonetheless I
find it useful for keeping a finger on him and others who are seriously misled
or subject to rumors. That way, I know something of what they think and I can
still talk to them w/o being shocked.

I don't want to refuse someone as a person b/c they're not particularly bright
or b/c they are unable to navigate the internet sufficiently to check what is
true/false. This way I know a little of what they're thinking on current
events and can approach them w/o offending them. And I get to hear the good
jokes, which I cannot resist!

~~~
justin66
There's a section that was recently added to Google News called "Fact Check"
that includes links to Politifact, Snopes, and fact checking at various
newspapers. It is a good idea, to provide refutations of false stories that
are going around, but it is also enormously depressing. Very rarely are any of
the stories the sort of thing that should have got _any traction at all,_
since they're just idiotic, and I have never seen anyone change their approach
to evaluating the news after being called out on spreading such false stories
on social media. The kind of people inclined to believe that stuff just don't
care, for the most part.

~~~
dominotw
I just went to one of those sites Politifact

First link was this

[http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2018/feb/...](http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-
meter/statements/2018/feb/08/donald-trump/donald-trump-wrongly-suggests-
british-dont-love-th/)

> thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going
> broke and not working.

Which is true. How did they conclude that he is suggesting "don't love their
health care system". You can love NHS and still march because its going broke,
marching doesn't imply "don't love".

~~~
justin66
In order to reflect the subtleties Politifact use a sliding scale instead of
purely true/false, and the article you linked is over 20 paragraphs in length.

------
nlh
This is not terribly surprising, but it’s nice to see some experimental
confirmation.

Here’s my question: Many will use this data to make themselves feel better
(“See, I told you they were all idiots.”) How can this data be used to
actually help the problem? Are there techniques that can be applied to help
folks who lack high cognitive abilities to see and understand that they’re
being manipulated?

~~~
Chathamization
> Are there techniques that can be applied to help folks who lack high
> cognitive abilities to see and understand that they’re being manipulated?

Or to help ourselves see that? I think it would be a mistake if everyone who
read this assumed it was simply a problem with the other side (“See, I told
you they were all idiots”). Nate Silver has made a good case that the media's
focus on the Comey letter non-story was one of the main factors for Clinton's
loss, and it's hard to not see a connection between their refusal to look at
their own reporting and their sudden focus on "fake news." Just this week I
ran into an NPR fact checker claiming "It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor
extended family members for visas"[1] (in context, talking about immigration
visas), when that seems to not be the case at all[2].

It's true that shoddy journalism is different from intentional manipulation,
but the line between the two is often blurred. You also have the same issue
with both - even when people are presented by the facts, they won't reconsider
their positions. I've run into this issue in the past - when you present the
original source and show how it contradicts a news report, it's not uncommon
to get the reply "that can't be true, or else the media would have said so."

[1] [https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-
the...](https://www.npr.org/2018/01/30/580378279/trumps-state-of-the-union-
address-annotated) [2] [https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-
citizens](https://www.uscis.gov/family/family-us-citizens)

~~~
boomboomsubban
>Just this week I ran into an NPR fact checker claiming "It’s true that an
immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas"[1] (in context,
talking about immigration visas), when that seems to not be the case at
all[2].

How do you figure? The USCIS page talks about the program mentioned by NPR,
where a limited number of visas are available for extended family of US
citizens.

~~~
dragonwriter
The problem here is that “immediate” and “extended” family in US immigration
do not mean that same thing as those terms mean in any other context, and both
are what would be considered immediate family of the sponsoring citizen or
permanent resident in other contexts (parents, spouse/fiance, children, and
siblings, and nothing further.)

“immediate family” in US immigration refers to a spouse or fiance of a US
citizen, certain minor children of US citizens, and parents of adult US
citizens.

“extended family” refers to children (including adult children) of US citizens
not considered “immediate family”, adult siblings of US citizens, and spouses
and children (including adult children) of permanent residents.

This creates and immense opportunity for lying by way of equivocation, where a
statement which is accurate only because the definition of a key term in the
context of the statement is different than what the audience understands it to
be is used to convey a message which depends on the audience interpreting the
statement according to a different definition of that term.

~~~
boomboomsubban
It creates an opportunity for lying by way of equivocation, but it is also
just an unavoidable part of language and communication. The statement NPR made
doesn't drastically change if "extended family" contains cousins or not, and
they link to more information right next to the statement. It's hard for me to
see malice in the action.

~~~
Chathamization
> The statement NPR made doesn't drastically change if "extended family"

I disagree. They're fact checking this statement that Trump made:

> Under the current, broken system, a single immigrant can bring in virtually
> unlimited numbers of distant relatives.

In response they write:

> It’s true that an immigrant can sponsor extended family members for visas —
> but only after he or she becomes a U.S. citizen.

The vast majority of people reading the statement and response to it would be
unaware that the only "extended family" they can sponsor are their siblings.
If anything, it seems to confirm the false statement that "a single immigrant
can bring in virtually unlimited numbers of distant relatives," simply adding
some caveats about the process being difficult and taking years.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Stopping the NPR response at that point is far more misleading than their use
of "extended family." If there's a strict cap on the number of visas on offer,
bringing in 100 siblings is basically the same as 100 siblings or cousins.

------
throwaway0255
In my opinion, fake news isn’t nearly as prevalent or as dangerous as news
that mostly tells the truth as a technicality or formality, but is presenting
a radically skewed and biased narrative.

That kind of dishonesty fools even people on the upper end of cognitive
ability.

Modern news cycles are edited together like reality TV shows. The bias is for
sensationalism, and for supporting and validating the worldview of the
journalists and financial backers involved.

The media’s gestalt can be a massive deliberate lie and con on the entire
population, and they can easily achieve that without ever telling a single
individual lie.

Which isn’t to say they don’t sometimes resort to flat-out lying, there’s a
good amount of that too. But mostly what the “credible” news sources do is
take a large selection of truths, and sum them up to a whole that’s
deliberately engineered to deceive everybody for the sake of sensational,
political and social bias.

~~~
empthought
I think recent events (thanks in no small part to susceptibility to "fake
news") have shown that the "radically skewed and biased narrative" of what
many call the Washington consensus is far preferable to letting the Breitbarts
of the world get away with their actual lies.

Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from being
better than other narratives.

~~~
malvosenior
> Just because a narrative is biased and skewed doesn't disqualify it from
> being better than other narratives.

It makes it far worse. Very few people take Breitbart seriously but many will
take CNN or NYT seriously. The mainstream media is far too powerful to ignore
when they push a narrative. Smaller outfits on the far left/right don't pose
the same existential threat to our society.

~~~
Barrin92
The consumption habits of people proof this statement wrong. Tabloid
newspapers have higher circulation than anything else. In some countries a
majority of people receive their news from facebook or other social media
feeds. Television channels like fox news draw more viewers than cspan.

The mainstream media is not that mainstream at all. The principle of 'the big
lie' still works very well.

~~~
malvosenior
When your audience is affluent and powerful, you don't need as many to have an
oversized impact. It's not like NYT has a small readership. They are massive
and their influence is far greater than that of The Enquirer.

~~~
Barrin92
In a democracy the affluent and powerful have as many votes as anybody else.
If the NYT only manages to reach a upper class clientele who already agree
with the NYT they are not very powerful at all. (as we have seen during the
last election, if the NYT et al were that powerful we would have seen a
different outcome)

Tabloids and fake news rags on the other hand have been reaching far into the
middle class, the non-voters and so forth, in other words they're generating
an audience among people who we would have considered to be immune to
demagoguery.

------
mistercow
> Asked to rate a fictitious person on a range of character traits, people who
> scored low on a test of cognitive ability continued to be influenced by
> damaging information about the person even after they were explicitly told
> the information was false.

I think this makes more sense if you consider instincts around forming
alliances, rather than raw cognitive ability. In the real world, a successful
belief adoption strategy is not merely one that leads you to _correct_
beliefs, but one that leads you to _successful_ beliefs. In many cases,
correct beliefs are the most successful. But social implications can easily
override that.

For example, it seems obviously incorrect to believe that Moses wrote the
Pentateuch, since it tells of his own death. But belief in non-Mosaic
authorship of the Pentateuch was not a _successful_ one in 16th century
Europe, since it was considered heretical.

In this case, hearing negative information about someone provides evidence for
at least four things:

1\. The negative information is true

2\. Other people believe the negative information is true

3\. That person's social standing is insufficient to prevent this negative
information from spreading

3\. Assuming the information is false, someone else has reason to spread it

Only the first one of those relates to the objective truth of the information,
or has much bearing on the person's character. The rest have much more to do
with social consequences of allying yourself with the person in question.

Of course, people don't usually evaluate all of those factors consciously and
then think "Well this person is probably good, but they're also a potential
pariah who I should avoid associating with". Instead, we have instincts that
lead us to better social strategies by shaping our beliefs.

That's obviously not the whole story, since these researchers did find that
cognitive ability correlated with attitude adjustment. But I think the social
side of this is a crucial piece, and may interact with cognitive ability in
ways which might be difficult to control for. For example, it seems plausible
that a person with intellectual social status would be more willing to adopt
contrarian views, which would make it easier for them to give less weight to
the social implications, and more weight to the objective question.

~~~
iamcasen
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. From my experience in life,
pursuing the truth relentlessly leads to one becoming a social pariah. It's
why I've always had a very difficult time labeling myself or my beliefs,
because none of them fit into a bucket.

I think a great example of your point is the politics surrounding guns. It's
one of the few things I've seen highly educated, left-leaning folks
spread/believe fake news about.

My favorite fake news topic about guns is the classic "silencer" debate. So
many prominent democrats have railed against "silencers" and how they can make
mass shootings more deadly. It's absolute bologna, but it is believed and
spread as truth none the less.

Most people don't know that just firing a gun once without ear protection will
cause permanent hearing loss. A suppressor will reduce the decibels to the
point of it being still incredibly loud, but not as damaging to the ears. It's
definitely not "silent"

~~~
DrScump
Generally, it's a case of media trying to conflate _flash suppressors_
(sparing the vision of the shooter) with _noise suppressors_ (with the implied
intent of providing cover for homicide). I think a lot of that is inspired by
bad 1970s TV and film depictions of screw-on "silencers" (including on
_revolvers_ ).

------
gr33nman
“We must stop glorifying intelligence and treating our society as a playground
for the smart minority. We should instead begin shaping our economy, our
schools, even our culture with an eye to the abilities and needs of the
majority, and to the full range of human capacity.”

[https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/485618/](https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/485618/)

~~~
analogic
Been thinking about this a lot lately. The fantasy the modern society had
somehow left the jungle has been crumbling for me as it's been becoming more
and more clear that the unskilled/disadvantaged are truly fucked and becoming
more so.

I don't like it, but it really is a fucking jungle out there. Nature can be
cruel and spreading fake news for personal gain is as viable a survival
strategy as any other form of parasitism.

Will continue to hold onto naive notions that human existence can have some
sort of meaning beyond survival of the best adapted until the sun burns out,
however, but it ain't easy. We weren't meant to live like this, dammit!

------
zyxzevn
The old word of "fake news" is propaganda. The western media is also full with
it, usually because they are sponsored by big companies or are linked with
political parties. Both sides use propaganda, and it is hard to trust the news
today with anything. Currently everyone uses fake news to mark some
information that they don't like.

The article starts with a wrong position. "Fake news" was not invented by
Trump, but it was introduced during the election by "PropOrNot". The website,
which is probably propaganda by itself, stated that many independent media
were Russian propaganda. This unfounded claim was used to help the democratic
candidate, after wikileaks published material about pay-to-play and media-
bias.

Afterwards the russian propaganda idea was fake news, because there has been
no evidence that the election has been strongly manipulated by Russian bots or
operatives. Instead researchers find people who have strong opinions and have
lots of time to post stuff.

The article has a good point: "If you are convinced that some claim is true,
ask yourself why. Is it because you have credible evidence that the claim is
true, or is it just because you’ve encountered the claim over and over?" In
this I see the media repeating the "Russian hacked the election" thing, for
which there is no real evidence. The reports from all agencies only based this
idea on rumours. The wikileak documents themselves seem to be downloaded on a
USB drive, and not via the internetz. But can we withstand this "fake news",
when there is so much support for it? And why is no-one talking about the pay-
to-play problem. It is likely a problem of the political system, not just a
candidate.

I agree with the solution against fake news. We should have credible evidence.
But these should not be "public service announcements". These are usually
linked to sponsors or political parties. Most people already disagree on what
sources can be trusted. For example I trust wikileaks a lot more than many
other people. They stand for freedom of information, unlike their opposition
who likes to destroy relevant information (like torture records or emails).

And freedom of information is exactly what is needed for this whole problem.
No information should be hidden in a democracy. And that is how we really
should solve the fake news /propaganda problem: All relevant information
should be available.

Just like every experiment should be repeatable in science.

~~~
keenerd
> The old word of "fake news" is propaganda.

No, they are different by a matter of degree. Propaganda is all about spin,
context, and stretching the truth. Stuff that actually happened but is
presented in a mis-represented and misleading fashion. Fake news is completely
fabricated and entirely fictional.

~~~
gwright
I think that is an overly charitable view of the scope and variety of
propaganda. The term "propaganda" is broad enough to include 100% accurate but
carefully selected information, information based on facts but presented with
spin or misleading framing, and 100% fictional information.

In my mind, unifying idea of "propaganda" is that it is designed to mislead
and cause the consumer to draw conclusions different than what might otherwise
be reached via an accurate and truthful understanding of the issue. There is a
notion of "intent" in propaganda that is absent or explained more by ignorance
and naiveté in "fake news".

The idea of "fake news" certainly overlaps with propaganda, but it also
includes genuinely sloppy reporting and inaccuracy introduced by ignorance of
the subject matter and a willingness to repeat and mimic true propaganda. The
sloppiness and inaccuracy often occurs due to confirmation bias in the
reporting process.

------
thisisit
> Half of the statements were in fact true, such as Australia is approximately
> equal in area to the continental United States, whereas the other half were
> false, such as Zachary Taylor was the first president to die in office (it
> was William Henry Harrison)

I don't know much of American history but isn't this a high bar for finding if
people believe "fake news". I mean most people wont know general knowledge
perfectly so expecting them to believe a particular lie is perfectly
reasonable.

What is concerning about fake news is people believing simpler lies like the
stuff Trump says. An example about walls and whatnot.

~~~
mseebach
There's also something to be said for the importance of a certain fact. It's
pretty harmless to be poorly informed about presidential history, unless
you're a teacher of the subject or about to take a test. Significantly less so
to be poorly informed about whether or not a presidential candidate is running
a child sex ring out of a pizzaria.

------
mberning
Isn’t this blaming the victim in a way? How is it their fault that they are
susceptible to “fake news”. They didn’t chose to be born dumb.

Additionally, does it even matter? Intelligent people have their own blind
spots and biases. The biggest being that because they are smart they must be
right.

I think the only rational thing to do is to take a skeptical view of any
information presented and not internalize it too much. It really irks me when
I read something from a “reputable” news source and the only source is
“officials familiar with the matter”. I know people are lapping that garbage
up, regardless of how smart they are.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Victim blaming requires actually blaming the victim, not just identifying and
studying them. If this were an article about genetic predisposition to a
particular disease, I don't think you'd call it victim blaming and point out
that people without this predisposition get other diseases too.

Victim blaming happens when you explain what they should have done to avoid
being victimized. You get a lot closer to that with your final paragraph than
the article ever does.

------
LeonigMig
Reminds of Plato's thought that Socrates was like a doctor being judged by a
jury of children. His conclusion was to turn against democracy to a vision of
a polity ruled by enlightened 'philosopher kings'. So what are the
implications for democracy in the Internet age?

~~~
abecedarius
Plato was the opposite of a disinterested source on the trial of Socrates. The
only other primary source is Xenophon, also his student. I wouldn't call Plato
a propagandist, exactly, since that would imply writing on behalf of some
organization or movement, but when I read him he seems a persuader in the
guise of a truth-seeker. He's sort of the ur-Stephen Jay Gould.

------
dphidt
I'd be curious to know whether there was any context given with Nathalie's
exoneration. For example, "it was invented by her jealous peer" rather than
just "it wasn't true." Might the revelation of deception induce extra
skepticism, inhibiting someone from believing the truth? Could a model
explaining fake news could help people to better integrate the truth?

------
Jeff_Brown
Two practical takeaways: (1) The smart thing to do is shake off your first
impression and reevaluate after receiving new information. (2) Pay special
attention to the first impression you give to stupid people.

~~~
coding123
What is a stupid person?

~~~
cookiecaper
For purposes of these discussions, it is always conflated with "right of
center". Academics accept this as a forgone conclusion, or, at best, use some
self-referential circular argument for why the conservative political
allegiance is the domain of the less-enlightened, e.g., fewer conservatives
went to institutions that are overwhelmingly liberal for career training
(university, especially when advanced degrees are considered), or fewer white-
collar workers are willing to express conservative views. Neither of these
things have much of anything to do with intelligence or stupidity.

Rest assured, there are _plenty_ of blistering idiots on both sides of aisle,
in equal proportions that match the idiocy of the general public (roughly
95/5). The amount of people who have the right combination of raw intellect,
disregard for social convention, etc., to make independent and objectively
defensible arguments that aren't simple regurgitations of the party line is
probably 5%. This is true for basically every group and subculture (possibly
except those that are so small they don't qualify as their own
group/subculture yet).

Even among groups that attract primarily intelligent people in the absolute
sense, like software or physics, most don't have the social courage to speak
up when they disagree or to align themselves with someone who is clearly in
the minority, nor do they have the interest to consider material in-depth and
fully understand it in a way that allows them to internalize its principles
and detect fakes or imposters. For the most part, they'll happily follow the
crowd, no matter how silly the basis.

------
staunch
Human brains are super hackable. Propaganda or "Fake News" is literally mind
control. The Nazi Party infamously exploited this vulnerability. Fox News was
created to be "Faux News" from its inception, and it's work just as planned.

What has really upturned the world though, is people's realization that
supposedly neutral institutions like CNN/BBC aren't much different from Fox
News. The creators of Fox News were never really wrong about that, even if
their reaction was to be even more biased and untruthful. The problem is that
it's left people grasping for trust. Jon Stewart filled that role for many,
but then he got burned out.

The solution to propaganda is to restrict your intake of information to high
quality sources. That means finding specific journalists, and never relying on
a media brand like Fox News, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, or even Reuters.
You simply cannot trust a brand, it's not a person.

Wikipedia points to another solution, which is crowdsourced consensus-based
information. Restricting your information diet to Wikipedia might actually be
reasonable. The process is fairly rigorous and not easily abused without
consequence.

------
mythrwy
I'm not in any way a supporter of "party" liberalism and would never vote for
most mainstream Democratic candidates. And, the world is changing and anointed
media outlets providing official agenda and biased spin as truth is apparently
over as far as being effective.

(Now that's out of the way): My father in law is a big conservative "fake
news" fan. He also watches championship wrestling. I'm not on facebook and
don't visit sites of the alt-right persuasion (or really any political
persuasion) and so hadn't been exposed to what was happening. And I didn't
think anyone really believed far fetched claims. Until we went up for a visit
a year or so back and he proceeded to sit with his laptop at dinner
proclaiming "Obama is going to jail! it's been proved. He is using someone
else's social security number and it's this guy XXX!'. Oh and there was a lot
more too! Things I would have believed a rational person of any political
persuasion would have questioned. Quite an eye opening experience.

Now, my father in law is not going to be acing medical entrance exams any time
soon but he isn't stupid. So I wondered about this phenomenon for a long time.
And here's what I concluded. People will willingly suspend rational belief if
the payload is something they want to believe or confirms the world of wishes
they have built. Smart people, dumb people, all kinds of people. I don't think
there is any possible way someone of even a modicum of intelligence could
believe championship wrestling is anything but a falsified show for instance.
But he watches it. And he pretends it's real. Because he wants to.

So for all the "smart people" thinking "Oh, I knew it! Only dumb people
believe in fake news! And that's how Trump got elected!", different
manifestation, same phenomenon. Trying to overcome this tendency is a step
towards predictive power but whatever makes a person happy I suppose.

------
pessimizer
"Fake News" is a political PR term; can't they just talk about returning to
baseline values after being given false information?

Also, this is another bad toy problem like the trolley problem; when you hear
false information about something from people that you consider trustworthy,
after hearing that information corrected it's not altogether rational to
return to a baseline judgment of that thing.

When you hear information from trustworthy sources, you know that something
attracted the trustworthy people to examine the subjects of that information,
something about what the trustworthy people know about those subjects made
them think that the information had a reasonable probability of being true,
and the trustworthy people thought that information was important enough for
you to consider that they communicated it to you. We want things in courts to
be considered in isolation, because the courts are meant to be a final
arbiter, and therefore the feedback effect of suspicion feeding suspicion
would tend to make the first statement of an authority figure on a person the
final judgment of the state on that person. Life is different; if you
disregard rumors, and the context of statements (even when ultimately
disregarding the _content_ of statements) you're missing a lot.

The problem here is who you trust, not what you trust, and the ability to
update trust, not as much the ability to update judgments on things unobserved
and unexperienced.

I'd submit that people with lower "cognitive skills" would tend to trust the
researchers more, and think that even if the researcher has withdrawn
statements about events, they must have had a good reason for thinking them in
the first place, and would have made a reasonable effort to avoid lying
intentionally. On the other hand, people with higher "cognitive skills" would
be more familiar with the format of experiments, and assume that the
researcher was lying about everything, and that "Nathalie" didn't exist.

tl;dr, basically, the researchers weren't wearing the right outfit to convince
one of the groups.

------
kaiwen1
I wonder how it relates to susceptibility to belief in religion?

------
daveFNbuck
I'm curious how exactly cognitive ability is defined here. Is there some
standard test used for this?

------
IntronExon
_Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us
are in great danger of contagion._ -Thornton Wilder

That’s always seemed a bit cynical to me, but it seems to be more of an
essentially realistic statement with every passing day.

~~~
jaclaz
JFYI, Ambrose Bierce; _Cynic, n: a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things
as they are, not as they ought to be._

------
caseysoftware
It seems the conclusion here is that: Lies work even after being disproven,
especially on people with lower cognitive ability.

The first follow up I have is: _How do they define 'lower' cognitive ability?_

Assuming they're using IQ score or similar tests that go into an IQ score,
what is the transition point? Are we talking about people who are below the
norm -1 SD (~85 IQ), around the average of 100, or +1 SD (~115)?

The number of people in/below those ranges are progressively bigger and have a
larger impact on things like the popular vote, market trends, etc.

The second follow up I have is: _Ok, so now what?_

Since this is "cognitive ability" and not "education" convincing people to go
to college isn't a solution.

Do you limit voting to people with _certain_ advanced degrees? Do they propose
an IQ (or equivalent) test for voting?

Is that the case they're making?

------
m_herrlich
Teaching meta-cognition abilities to the masses seems unlikely. How wrong
would it be to use the principles in this article for "good" i.e. anti-
propaganda propaganda?

------
gr33nman
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” -Socrates

------
testingTheCraic
what a load of rubbish. fake news & social engineering has always been around.
it's just there are more channels for it nowadays, and due to the freedom of
publish, those at top have to mix a lot of truth with a bit of nonsense, to
keep control

~~~
acdha
That’s like writing off the green revolution because farming has been around
forever. We have fewer barriers than before: a website is cheap to run
compared to a newspaper or broadcast station and there’s no border restriction
– no Moldovan teenager could send TV programs or newspapers to gullible
Americans. That’s a huge difference: if a newspaper printed libel they could
be sued and had physical assets to risk losing. Companies had reputations
which took years to build or change. Now it’s just a sea of shell companies
and disposable websites and if, hypothetically, a bunch of Republicans started
caring that Breitbart was lying so routinely the same stuff would just pop up
on a new domain a day later.

That’s the other key point you missed: distribution and discovery are totally
different now. If I set up a newspaper I still had to convince people to
subscribe or stock it, TV stations took years to setup, etc. That encouraged
moderation to maximize the number of customers. In contrast, now everyone is
competing on Facebook and Google News, both of which hate the idea of paying
for editorial review and will cheerfully display satire or propaganda on equal
footing with established mainstream news sources.

I’m not in love with the gatekeeper model – note that e.g. the 90s Balkan &
Rwandan genocides relied on taking over the state media first – but that
doesn’t mean that we can ignore the problems we’re seeing now, or that tech
companies aren’t being incredibly reckless in their desire to make a slightly
higher margin on ad revenue.

~~~
testingTheCraic
Didn't miss distribution & discovery. Distribution is different nowadays of
course (hence the social engineering program is very clever and will feed you
a lot of truth and grab you if you're seeking truth - i.e. all prominent
'alternative' sources). Discovery? Well, no not really. Discovery for the
masses is at the will of the centralised social engineering program (Google,
Facebook, etc)

When anything significant happens in western politics you can better you
bottom dollar it wasn't an un-staged occurrence. Trump was your man before
election day. Brexit was the ultimate divisive illusionary 'you have a choice,
you can make a difference' nonsense, despite the fact that having one less
centralised corrupt level of power is of course worthy of a vote.

Journalism is a dead as a dodo.

Have you been psyop-d into attributing tin-foil hats to anyone who raises
there head from the Orwellian / Huxley media sources and takes stock of
history, and seeks alternatives from the mainstream, rather than the brain-
rotting recycling 'news'. Does 'conspiracy theorist' make your alarm bells go
off and want to cease all association?

The thing to invest in is local. Turn away from centralisation for now, until
the whole thing is open sourced and you can track your politicians lives into
the intimate details, and you have a monetary system that's not debt-based.
Once that day comes maybe local won't be your only avenue for hope.

