
How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth - stanleydrew
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/technology/how-the-internet-is-loosening-our-grip-on-the-truth.html
======
boona
"For years, technologists and other utopians have argued that online news
would be a boon to democracy. That has not been the case."

It clearly has. Had it not been for Wikileaks, and various online news
organizations we would never have known the sheer amount of corruption afoot
in this election, as well as the extent of the death grip political elites
have on the entire system. I suppose old media has just become too entrenched
and cozy with those in power to speak truth to power.

"a recent BuzzFeed analysis of top political pages on Facebook showed that
right-wing sites published false or misleading information 38 percent of the
time, and lefty sites did so 20 percent of the time."

In a recent analysis by the ultra-leftist junk news site Buzzfeed, they've
found that right wing sites are worst than left wing sites. Wow, that's some
great journalism right there. That kind of reporting is why we should ignore
new media and stick with the old.

~~~
existencebox
I was with you until the end.

"Stick with the old?" Would you really cite CNN, Fox, NBC and pals as unbiased
reporting? From where I'm standing the playing field and the game is almost
unchanged, the players are just often different.

(You even seem to somewhat contradict yourself, acknowledging that the old
news is very establishment-cozy, which to me would beg the sort of skewing you
cite for new-news)

~~~
ryanx435
fyi: he was being sarcastic

~~~
existencebox
I will leave my comment unedited to show the shame of my admission that I had
entirely no clue. I normally find myself chuckling at when other people miss
sarcasm but I really didn't catch the tone this time, hope someone else gets
to chuckle at me :P

------
wamsachel
"the internet is distorting our collective grasp on the truth. "

And corporate owned newspapers never did any distorting right NYT? Perhaps if
the media had a shred of integrity, people wouldn't be going off to the onion
to get their news.

~~~
the_cat_kittles
that is a lazy false equivalence that shows that you probably didnt read the
article. the central thesis seems to be that given the wider array of news
sources, our biases towards reinforcing what we already believed are further
enabled. maybe you could address that instead of saying that "corporate owned
newspapers" are distorting. of course every news source has a bias. the point
is that there are more now, so its easier to build a more complete echo
chamber.

~~~
wamsachel
No...the author of the article was the lazy one, and it's not just this author
because as you may have noticed there's a rising cry for companies to help
police cyber bullying, truthiness etc. Notice how no one inside the
establishment is assigning culpability to themselves, the self serving
conglomerates for the public's distrust. Instead shifting the blame and
calling for actions...actions which undoubtably will ramp up propaganda and
censorship for the benefit of elites. For every Alex Jones that gets censored,
will there be a Chomsky that also gets banned from public discourse?

How am I supposed to sympathize with this author when we just had a
presidential campaign openly discusses their social media astro turfing whilst
leaks reveal dizzying amounts of media collusion, but is there any official
cry to end that practice? Of course not. So go ahead and pretend that it's all
because the internet allows people to go get their conspiracies from so many
different sources, and pretend that the public's distrust in MSM is unfounded
and undeserved.

~~~
justaguyonline
Man, your reply is just exactly one of the reasons I almost never post online
like this and just lurk.

Not only did you ignore the point of the post you replied to ("lets talk about
the article and criticize those ideas in context"), you segued to exactly the
kind of narratives that the author of the article was talking about and used
them to declaim anyone who disagrees with you.

It would be one thing if you bothered to critique the author on any of his
actual points, but you decided to ramp it up by somehow claiming if he got his
way, we would be censoring Noam Chomsky. ctrl-f, censorship isn't even
mentioned in the article.

The crux of your argument seems to be something along the lines that that the
ideas in this article are being put forwards "for the benefit of the elites",
which is the kind of thinking that I (and I think the author of the article
would agree with me) that makes as much sense as saying "you are being
punished for your hubris by Zeus". As in, you ascribe actions to beings that
are fundamentally invisible to others, that secretly control the world around
and that you can divine the existence of, but are unable to explain to others
in any but in the most vaguest of terms.

The point that upsets me about this kind of behavior, is that in viewing it,
often people are turned off and are less likely to take part in conversations
where they see others treated that same way. The shrinking minority of people
who post vs just lurk, already a tiny approximate 10%, in the end becomes the
even smaller fraction of people who can put up with and dish out the exact
same vitriol. Or, simply agree with vitriol directed elsewhere.

~~~
jlgaddis
Welcome to HN!

Like you, I lurked for a long time (a couple of years) before a comment got me
emotionally charged up enough to finally create an account. I'm certainly glad
I did, though.

Yeah, every once in a while somebody "pees in the pool" but (as I'm sure you
already know) normally the conversation and dialogue here is better than what
you'll get at most other venues on the Internet.

Now that you've got an account, just stay logged in, continue contributing,
and help even out the signal-to-noise ratio a little bit more.

------
jamez1
Pretty poor article, the whole thing is filled with far-fetched anecdotes and
I don't feel I learnt anything by reading what he wrote.

His whole premise is built on the amount of conspiracy theories we know of,
rather than actual conspiracies, to show the internet is distorting the truth!

But maybe, ironically, he's proving that traditional media is what's broken,
if trash like this is given a mouthpiece.

------
SticksAndBreaks
Truth has stopped beeing the tamed animal that the news-manufacturer knew it
to be. You told it what to be, and it jumped through the hoop and became half-
reality by the masses believing.

What your hear is the whining for power decentralized away. And those calling
for censorship, demand to reinstate it, so they can have it. Those not
debunking fake news, but declaring unproofable conspirarcys at work, want to
shirk the work or have something to win, when the truth is not found out.

------
orly_bookz
I do believe that Metal Gear Solid 2 predicted this back in, what, 2001?

"At this point, Raiden is contacted by AIs of the Colonel and Rosemary,
introducing themselves as representatives of the Patriots, who reveal that the
true purpose of the simulation was to see how they could simulate and control
human behavior in order to prevent society from dumbing down due to trivial
information drowning valuable knowledge and inconvenient truths."

------
jakeogh
[http://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/VUdcIou.jpg)

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-
WEAER49I.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CIMxvS-WEAER49I.png)

[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CINJUoqUwAEkSip.jpg)

~~~
clydethefrog
Some context for the two photos of what seems to be a editorial office doing
questionable things?

~~~
jakeogh
[http://gawker.com/here-are-some-top-n-y-times-editors-and-
st...](http://gawker.com/here-are-some-top-n-y-times-editors-and-staff-
joking-a-1713336525)

------
kahrkunne
Pretty sure you're the one doing that, NYT, over the Internet.

------
cafard
Because there was never such a thing as talk radio? Because the Chandlers
didn't run the LA Times or Robert McCormick the Chicago Tribune?

