This problem isn't just websites and social media.
Not mentioned in the article but pink slime sites also send out printed newspapers that look like what traditional newspapers look like except a lot thinner.
It arrives in your mailbox and plenty of people have no idea it's a complete partisan advertisement disguised as news. Some assume it's just partisan news like most news is now.
They saturate mailboxes and are probably effective at reaching older voters who are much more likely to vote.
For those who remember, weren't these sites actually the origin of the term "Fake News" back in 2016, before you-know-who quickly co-opted the term to use it against actual journalists? Before that, that's what these hastily-erected, phony sites were called.
Except "fake news" didn't originally refer to the partisan bias of journalists, but to explicitly and purposely false and misleading information presented as legitimate news. Equating partisan bias to falsehood by way of a leftist media conspiracy was part of the Trump administration's redefinition of the term.
The article mentions NewsGuard rated these outlets. It is important to note that the former CIA director, Michael Hayden, is involved. Maybe NewsGuard is legitimate, but having a CIA director on the board is very weird.
> NewsGuard’s advisors provide advice and subject-matter expertise to NewsGuard. They play no role in the determinations of ratings or the Nutrition Label write ups of websites unless otherwise noted and have no role in the governance or management of the organization.
I'm not sure why I should trust that they always accurately describe when they listen to the CIA on issues. I don't trust the CIA and I don't trust a board that has a former CIA director as a member.
The CIA and truth don't usually go hand in hand unless the word not is between them. The CIA is known for manipulation, coups, killing, etc not for spreading truth.
The CIA destabilises (not only - it also props up some) foreign governments to further US interests. In the US it's the FBI's job to thwart the efforts of foreign governments (who support these outlets directly and indirectly) to manipulate US elections to their interests (which might or not align with the interests of Americans).
All the big ones play this game with everyone eles.
Trust me. I grew up in a US-made military dictatorship because the US didn't like the idea of a less US-aligned democratic government.
I take it as a sign the CIA believes some "news" outlets in the US are fronts for foreign threats and at least part of their command structure is outside FBI's jurisdiction.
Or just that someone decided to hire a seemingly competent intelligence officer for a fact-checking organisation.
what is difficult, IMO, is the know whether or not you're seeing news that have been carefully curated for you, with some partisan motive - or if it's just some recommendation algorithm that's serving you stuff it thinks you will like.
I've seen some news sites that will seemingly push (news) content on the front-page that is aligned with the stuff you read most about. So if such a site only pushes, say, immigration crisis news - is it because you have a history of clicking on such articles, or is it some partisan news website that is pushing negative stories regarding immigration?
We're spinning up a local newspaper site that covers the crime, decay and the hope filled people that are correcting the problems. The local incumbent paper refuses to cover any of it.
Perhaps it's considered right-wing not because of the topic, but the angle on which you cover the topic. In my experience, the most partisan people lack self-awareness about how partisan they are and your post sort of smells like that. Of course, I could be wrong.
In what way? You stated something generic without really explaining it. For example, maybe at the end of all your articles you have an advertisement for Trump? That's effectively what this pink slime does.
Where were are, there are no trump-aligned politicians that have any chance of getting in office.
Usually we're highlighting a liberal who what's to fix things for the working class. As opposed to a leftist that wants to control things for the activist class.
> highlighting a liberal who what's to fix things for the working class. As opposed to a leftist that wants to control things for the activist class.
That, without more information, sounds VERY partisan to me. Painting the left as wanting control when some of their most salient policies are things like universal healthcare and higher taxes for billionaires, or getting more funding for schools in disadvantaged communities, or even making sure police does not disproportionately dispenses violence against specific communities seems disingenuous.
This is, of course, ignoring other leftist policies more relevant to crime such as cashless bail, not prosecuting for "petty" crime, releasing multiple conviction violent criminals early, fighting against institutionalization for mentally ill homeless, and essentially ignoring nuisance crime. (Next comes the part where you say "these aren't leftist policies," as if I have conjured these up out of fiction.)
"Universal health care" is a phrase that basically means "everyone is on medicare" by now and to a right-wing listener is synonymous with losing control of your health care decisions.
"Institutionalization" is a weird synonym for "imprisonment" to any left-wing listener, since those are the only "institutions" we put homeless people in, mentally ill or not.
This is the kind of bullshit fight that makes me miss the fairness doctrine in media. People still disagreed, but they at least focused on making their case instead of misrepresenting the other side. Now not only does the fight go on, it's full of shitty rhetorical tricks designed to appeal to emotions instead of any kind of actual policymaking. It's exhausting and I had hoped Hacker News to be a sanctuary from this.
One of my bigger concerns with AI is its potential to spread misinformation, but does anyone know of folks using the models for detecting it? I'm not into the AI hype but I feel that's one area that has some potential benefit.
I find trusting AI to detect misinformation to present essentially the same problem as using AI to spread it - both cases require implicit trust in an untrustworthy system, and both remove the impetus to educate people and have them practice critical thinking and skepticism (as opposed to cynicism and contrarianism) themselves.
Although there was a paper posted here recently that suggested AI was effective at deprogramming conspiracy theory[0,1]. No idea about its credibility but claims like being able to reduce belief in conspiracy theory by "20%" seem iffy to me.
The most effective system I've seen so far, ironically (given who now runs the site) is the community notes on Twitter. But even that gets gamed by activists and bad faith actors. Still I think removing human beings from the loop isn't always helpful.
The article suggests that this is primarily a right-wing phenomenon and then throws a mention about a left-wing group without any indication of how much money is involved in each direction or whether the left-wing version is spewing the same kinds of lies the right-wing does all the time. It's this kind of both-sidesing of fascism that makea media in the US untrustworthy.
Not mentioned in the article but pink slime sites also send out printed newspapers that look like what traditional newspapers look like except a lot thinner.
It arrives in your mailbox and plenty of people have no idea it's a complete partisan advertisement disguised as news. Some assume it's just partisan news like most news is now.
They saturate mailboxes and are probably effective at reaching older voters who are much more likely to vote.