
The Poison on Facebook and Twitter Is Still Spreading - dsr12
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/opinion/facebook-twitter-journalism-misinformation.html
======
tsunamifury
I'm sorry, I am an ex-journalist now for several years, and this is laughable.
The NYT, WSJ, Fox News, and each of the major news outlets have regularly and
clearly been caught writing submarine stores, special interest news slants,
and general just being played by PR like a fiddle -- all while claiming some
sort of "only true access to news." Viral misinformation has been a part of
published news since Edward Burnays used to incite invasions for hire using
manufactured sources and rumors

They don't validate sources, rarely investigate, heck they barely even copy
edit these days. They re-report entirely false stories published in
questionable sources, using their name to validate it. Obviously everyone
knows how deeply inaccurate any story becomes once technology is involved, now
imagine that level of inaccuracy spread across all the topics they cover.

Its painfully self-interested for them to be claiming to be such a clear
source of truth.

~~~
kodablah
> have regularly and clearly been caught writing submarine stores, special
> interest news slants, and general just being played by PR like a fiddle

Including the one we're commenting on. There's a narrative being driven here,
and it's sad so many even in our industry can't recognize it. We can argue
levels of harms by these open content platforms (I often reside on the most-
people-aren't-stupid, sticks-and-stones, please-no-gov-interference side), but
there's no arguing what harms interests want you to think are occurring.

~~~
dang
> Including the one we're commenting on. There's a narrative being driven here

Not sure what narrative you mean, but it's not something any of us who work on
HN is aware of.

~~~
kodablah
Sorry, proverbial "here" meaning the consistent mass-media anti-web-tech
narrative of late, much of which is sans substance. Unrelated to HN in
particular.

~~~
dang
Ah, sorry for misreading you.

------
pjc50
> The public knows about each of these incitements because of reporting by
> news organizations. Social media misinformation is becoming a newsroom beat
> in and of itself, as journalists find themselves acting as unpaid content
> moderators for these platforms

Externalise the negatives, privatise the profits.

Alternatively, newspapers are in the business of telling ""truth"", and are
getting increasingly out-produced by myth. Myth is cheaper to produce and
often _sounds_ more true to the uninformed listener. But it's dangerous to
build a society that makes its decisions entirely on myth. Ultimately it will
end up with a lethal myth like the blood libel, or anti-vaxxerism, and people
start getting killed in large numbers.

(Someone will now point out that newspapers themselves have an unreliable
track record of truth, and they're not wrong - this is _also_ a serious
problem.)

~~~
colordrops
The problem is not different. Large newspapers in the US are consciously
propagating narrow, misleading, and sometimes outright untrue narratives. The
only different between this and "social media misinformation" is that it is
backed by big money and power, and they have think tanks to shore up the
narratives against scrutiny. It's information warfare. And it's asymmetric.
The small time social media narrative peddlers are either freedom fighters or
terrorists depending on who's side they are on.

~~~
colordrops
It's funny how comments criticizing major newspapers are downvoted. How about
addressing any perceived issues with my comment through a response rather than
trying bury it.

edit: And this comment gets two downvotes 5 minutes within posting it, despite
the story already being off of the front page. There are obviously gatekeepers
actively monitoring comments and trying control the narrative here on HN as
well.

------
tempz
To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, "Fake News is the Last Refuge of the Scoundrel".

The "fake news" meme itself is the last desperate attempt to preserve the fake
news monopoly which giant publishers enjoyed for so long. There is really
nothing left when this one wears out.

Before "fake news" we had massive injections of noise to drown out
information, but that didn't work quite well, not in the long run.

The current trend of turning giant social platforms to Disney-like dystopias
is not working well either. People are flocking back to ... web sites!

So what can we expect after "fake news" ? Probably Disneyfication of DNS, and
that's where it ends.

Because audiences will shift to the lowest commeon denominator - IP
addressing, as they did in the beginning (Napster, Gnutella) and still do
(Bittorent, Tor).

------
mrdoops
We've scaled our networking of information without scaling the quality
accreditation of information.

------
liftbigweights
Takes poison to notice poison I guess.

Isn't this the nytimes and friends complaining that they don't get to
monopolize poison like they used to?

A company that hires someone like sarah jeong has no business complaining
about poison.

The sooner the nytimes goes out of business, the better the country will be.
The nytimes has poisoned so many minds and caused the nation to be so terribly
divided that it will take years to recover from the mess they created. God
knows how long it will take us to recover from the endless wars they
propagandized for.

I wish zuckerburg, dorsey, brin/page would grow a pair and fight back against
the media posse attacking them. Or deplatform the nytimes to lower the poison
on their platforms.

~~~
mcphage
> caused the nation to be so terribly divided that it will take years to
> recover from the mess they created

The nation is divided, but NYT isn’t to blame. There are two sets of people,
with very strongly held yet divergent ideas of what this country stands for,
and what direction it should go in. The New York Times has nothing to do with
that.

------
justtopost
Childing them for spreadig disinfo is missing the point.

When you incentivise 'engagement' above all else, this is the inevitable
result. The core business model is broken (in relation to being a social
good), not their stance on poor information.

~~~
ngngngng
Virtually all business models could make more money by throwing in some
immorality. I don't think that means that nearly all business models are
broken, just that morality and social good have to be higher priorities.

------
decasteve
Facebook and Twitter are not public services. They are there to make money off
of people clicking images and text that other people pay them to show. It does
not require truth but is easier to get people to click through if you play on
their fears.

If it is a poison, which I think it is, stop using it. It’s akin to an abusive
relationship. At some point you (journalists) have to just help get the abused
out of it. You’ve tried to get the abuser to stop but it hasn’t worked. The
abuse has not only continued but it seems to have increased dramatically. Stop
empowering the abuse and GTFO. Boycott if you have to. The Internet is not
Facebook nor Twitter.

------
ryanmarsh
Just so I'm clear here, we're saying we want Facebook and Twitter to be the
arbiters of truth right? Does that pass the smell test?

~~~
orf
Do we want the current status quo, where misinformation runs rampant, filling
eyeballs of people who don't know better with utterly fake news?

Just look at this[1] if you want proof that this is not sustainable. I wonder
who benefited from and supported this...

1\. [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-
onli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/11/technology/fake-news-online-
disinformation.html?module=inline)

~~~
krapp
> Do we want the current status quo, where misinformation runs rampant,
> filling eyeballs of people who don't know better with utterly fake news?

Do we want freedom of speech, and an even playing field for freedom of
expression between common people and media conglomerates? Because that's what
those look like, for better or worse.

~~~
pjc50
Common people and media conglomerates are going to have an increasingly hard
time getting heard over corporate astroturfing and foreign intelligence
services.

