[throwaway115]

"How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you.

Too many people get very angry that people share things they disagree with, and then start talking about clamping down on communication. No, sorry, but your ideas lost. People are allowed to think and share things that make you angry. If your views aren't mainstream, there's a reason for that. "Fake news" is only a tiny part of the equation. If you pick up that censorship weapon, that we all implicitly agree to not use, you will not be the last to wield it.

[jasonjayr]

There is a stark difference between "fake news" and "difference of opinion that I don't agree with".

"fake news" typically amounts to false rumors, amplifying unprovable/unsubstantiated claims. That's what needs to stop, and what is greatly damaging discourse.

I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts.

[belorn]

Opinions supported by provable facts is what distinguish a scientific dissertation compared to a political statement. Politicians do not generally support their opinions with provable facts, and while they can consult with scientists to form opinions or support a political statement, this seems more of the exception than the rule.

In social science, defining provable facts is also a major problem since very few publications can be replicated. In fact, most provable facts in social science is estimated to be provable false, a fact found by meta studies a while back. A common finding is that the further one goes from pure math, the worse the provable facts become with social science sitting furthers away in the spectrum.

Thus I often see a different and more strict definition of "fake news". Fake news is only when an opinion has been been made with the intention of misleading for political gain, with strong emphasis on the intention aspect. It thus becomes very close to the definition of propaganda, but with additional restrictions. Intentions are also very hard to prove, especially with provable facts.

[prophesi]

Do you happen to know where the meta study on this is from? I know of one paper that puts the blame on biomedical research[0], but it makes intuitive sense for the same to apply to social science.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Most_Published_Research_Fi...

[belorn]

The initial key word I would start with if someone is interested in studying this concept would be "replication crisis". Wikipedia has a good starting off point with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

I would not point to a specific study. Primarily because I would have to dig through a rather long list to find the one that I found "best", but also because in terms of fact finding, its better if people did this independently. "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" is a good one however.

[prophesi]

Thanks! I missed that in the wiki article. Replication crisis put me on the right path.

[leereeves]

> A common finding is that the further one goes from pure math, the worse the provable facts become with social science sitting furthers away in the spectrum.

I think this is true, but it's not because of the distance from pure math. It's a choice made by researchers and journals regarding the standard of evidence required.

Physics demands very strong evidence for publication, a p-value of 5-sigma or more, less than a 1 in a million chance of getting a publishable result from a random experiment.

Social science is typically satisfied with a p-value of 0.05, a 1 in 20 chance of getting a publishable result from a random experiment. That means a whole lot of results are published that are nothing more than the scientific equivalent of dice rolling snake-eyes.

In fact, rolling snake-eyes is less likely (1/36) than getting a publishable result from any given social science experiment (1/20).

Fortunately, this also means it's an easy problem to solve, if the will existed. Simply requiring a much higher standard of proof would filter out a lot of the false social science results.

[Retric]

Fake news consist of blatantly false facts and conspiracy theories. The NEWS bit is there because these stories are suggesting something specific happened or was revealed. If it says ‘Ukraine invaded Russia,’ that’s fake news. More often it’s conspiracy crap like “Deep state behind X!”

It’s not so ambitious because it’s dificult to completely avoid facts. Political discourse regularly refers to actual facts ‘Russia invaded Ukraine’ is the kind of thing you can fact check and it passes.

Politics also uses facts in misleading ways. The kind of things where Fact Check goes: “Trump wrongly said the judge wouldn’t allow an “advice of counsel” defense. Before the trial, Trump’s attorneys chose not to seek such a defense, and Merchan held them to that decision.” aren’t what most people refer to as Fake News. From a certain point of view ‘Darth Vader killed your father’ and Social Security may tax income but it’s not income tax because we have a tax called Income Tax yadda yadda.

[belorn]

If we look at the claim that "ukrain invaded russia", we can lable that as war propaganda with a pretty clear intent, especially if we can source the claim to Russian military or government. The facts such as which specific solder fired the first bullet, at what gps location, using what gun, are all facts too but not important for determining false news. War propaganda is enough to be determined by intent. Actually facts are more a hindrence than helpful, since they add noise to something that should be simple.

In addition, most of us a were not there so the determining factor rest on trust. Do we trust russia, or the multiple sources that said russia invaded Ukrain. We do not need the independent quality of a math proof to determine a case like that.

Outlawing war propaganda is way older than censorship of fake news, and have pro and cons are different than those around fake news.

[Retric]

Propaganda need not be false. “Remember Pearl Harbor!” was often used in the following months and years to drum up military support.

So some though not all Fake News is Propaganda, but a great deal of Propaganda isn’t Fake News either.

[largbae]

Was the idea that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan fake news? Is the idea that the vaccines may have side effects worth understanding fake news?

That is what was defined as fake news and actively censored in our very recent past.

The problem with censoring fake news is that ultimately someone has to decide what is real and what is fake, and once censored, it becomes very difficult to discuss and revise that decision.

[Retric]

Making specific claims without evidence is Fake News because you’re saying you have evidence that X is true when you don’t.

“COVID-19 COULD have leaked from a lab” is perfectly fine. Saying “COVID-19 leaked from a lab” requires evidence or it’s not news even though you claim it is thus the label “Fake” news.

[largbae]

I agree with your premise here, but both of these topics were censored to the point of removing accounts that discussed them under the assumption that they were fake news. This is the problem with censoring anything.

[tanseydavid]

>> “COVID-19 COULD have leaked from a lab” is perfectly fine.

IIRC -- in 2020 any mention of such an idea was met with accusations of racism.

[account42]

What about saying “COVID-19 did not leak from a lab”?

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

> Was the idea that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan fake news?

What facts was the assertion based on? I've always thought that while possible there wasn't supporting evidence.

[largbae]

That is a separate topic but recent congressional hearings would be a great way to research. The point that I am making is that both of these topics were censored as fake news, and neither is probably false.

[arcanemachiner]

INVESTIGATING THE ORIGINS OF COVID–19

Wednesday, March 8, 2023

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

Excerpt:

"Some say the virus came from nature that, according to recent papers discussed in New York Times, the science is dispositive. Some say it’s too unique, too primed for human transmission, that there’s too much circumstantial evidence that points to COVID–19 coming from a lab. As well, in three years, there’s been no track found to prove that COVID–19 evolved naturally from an animal or a mammal or a tick to become highly infectious to humans. The truth is we don’t know the origins of COVID–19 yet for sure. We don’t have a smoking gun.

First, the science behind COVID–19: the genome of COVID–19 is inconsistent with expectations, and is unique for its group of viruses. COVID–19 has both a binding domain optimized for human cells, and a furin cleavage site, or a small part of the virus that makes it so infectious. That has never been seen before in a SARS-related virus. In other words, COVID–19 has unique characteristics that made it very infectious to humans. These have never been seen before in any other viruses of its type.

Most viral outbreaks are slow and small. CDC data shows SARS infected approximately 8,000 people worldwide, and eight in the U.S. Similar with MERS, which infected approximately 2,000 people worldwide. But COVID–19 was primed for human transmission. It has infected more than 750 million people worldwide. Dr. Redfield, one of our witnesses here today and a virologist, has even said that he believes COVID–19 had a detour from nature to be educated how to infect humans.

Second, the known research occurring in China: We know the Wuhan Institute of Virology was conducting gain-of-function research on novel bat coronaviruses by creating chimeric viruses, combining two viruses together to test infectivity and infecting mice with these viruses, work that former COVID–19 task force coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx confirmed was, in fact, gain-of-function, contrary to statements by Dr. Fauci. We have learned that the Wuhan Institute has poor biosafety and was conducting this research at only Biosafety Level 2, described as the ‘‘Wild West’’ by Dr. Jeremy Farrar, a virologist from the U.K., now Chief Scientist for the WHO.

We have learned through a leaked DARPA grant application that with U.S. taxpayer backing, the Wuhan Institute proposed inserting furin cleavage sites into novel coronaviruses, the same unique genetic aspect of COVID–19. And we know, according to a State Department fact sheet, the multiple researchers at the Wuhan Institute were sick with COVID–19-like symptoms in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese officially announced the outbreak.

Third, concerning the actions of NIH and EcoHealth Alliance, records show that the National Institutes of Health while the U.S. was under a moratorium on gain-of-function research, exempted EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute from this very ban. Records show that the National Institutes of Health allowed EcoHealth to conduct risky research on novel coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute without going through the potential pandemic pathogen department level review board.

Records show that EcoHealth violated Federal grant policy, and failed to file its five-year progress report for more than two years.

Records show that EcoHealth violated the terms of its grant and failed to report an experiment that resulted in gain-of-function of a coronavirus at the Wuhan Institute.

Fourth, for some reason that we do not yet know, leaders in the scientific community took action to attempt to convince the world that they should not take the lab leak theory seriously. Dr. Francis Collins stated he was more concerned with harm to ‘‘international harmony’’ than he was with investigating the lab leak. Dr. Fauci said the lab leak theory was a ‘‘shiny object that will go away in time.’’

The president of EcoHealth, Dr. Peter Daszak orchestrated a letter in The Lancet that called the lab leak a ‘‘conspiracy theory,’’ a statement that directly benefited Dr. Daszak himself. And four scientists, after a conference call with Dr. Fauci, completely reversed their position. Dr. Kristian Andersen said he found ‘‘the genome inconsistent with evolutionary theory.’’ And Dr. Robert Garry said he ‘‘really can’t think of a possible natural scenario.’’ But a few days later, published a paper saying the exact opposite, a paper based on the new emails we released claim to be prompted by Dr. Fauci himself.

Fifth, the intelligence: FBI Director, Christopher Wray, confirmed publicly that the FBI assessed COVID–19 most likely originated from a lab incident in Wuhan. The Wall Street Journal reported the Department of Energy now also believes a lab leak is the most likely origin. These aren’t run-of-the-mill agencies. The FBI used experts in biological threats and is reportedly supported by the National Bioforensic Analysis Center and the Department of Energy used its own Z Division, experts in investigating biological threats. These are some of the facts as we know them, but there’s so much more to do."

- Hon. Brad R. Wenstrup (chairman of the subcommittee)

https://www.congress.gov/118/meeting/house/115426/documents/...

https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/investigating-the-origin...

---

Here's an info dump on the subject from Swiss Policy Research, a website described by Wikipedia as "a website that has been criticized for spreading conspiracy theories":

https://swprs.org/on-the-origin-of-sars-coronavirus-2/

I'm not presenting this as anything other than a source of information, whether true or not. The site clearly has an agenda, but information is information. The statements there should serve as a jumping-off point for further investigation.

On that note, it looks like Google's algorithm is still boosting official sources on the subject, and is conceivably deboosting sources it deems to be unreliable (I'm not sure if it's controversial to state that online censorship was rampant during the pandemic), so the search for information may be deceptively difficult. You may have better luck with alternative search engines.

[rurban]

> If it says ‘Ukraine invaded Russia,’ that’s fake news.

Except that it did happen on a minor scale by right-wing militia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Belgorod_Oblast_incursion...

[nradov]

Most "facts" aren't provable in the mathematical sense. We're pretty sure that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer based on extensive research but it's never been 100% proven. So, is it a "fact" that smoking causes cancer? That depends on the level of evidence required and who does the evaluation.

Fake news and false rumors are as old as humanity. They are not a problem that needs to be solved, and we certainly don't need governments or media executives acting as arbiters of truth.

That said, the Twitter/X Community Notes feature seems to be working well. It has been refreshing to see (mostly) false claims by prominent public figures debunked.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/biden-clai...

[ordu]

> Most "facts" aren't provable in the mathematical sense.

Mathematics is not applicable to reality by itself. Math can be a tool among others to deal with truths and lies, but it is useless by itself.

> Fake news and false rumors are as old as humanity. They are not a problem that needs to be solved

Why do you think so?

Firstly there is a non sequitur: from "X is old and was not a problem" doesn't follow that "X is not a problem now". Burning coal was not a problem, but it is a big problem now.

Secondly, why do you think that they are not a problem to solve? There are agents that weaponize rumors and fake news. I see no obvious ways to reason, that they will fail inevitably, that we need just wait and watch how they will fail. But if you see a way to prove it (in any meaning of a proof, not necessarily in mathematical one), I'd like to hear it.

> we certainly don't need governments or media executives acting as arbiters of truth.

Are you proposing a radical change on how a democracy works? Any democracy has courts that act as arbiters of truths. Democracy cannot exist without these arbiters. Democracy has parliaments, congresses and suchlike to decide on what is a best way to tackle the current problems. These authorities are also acting as arbiters of truth in some sense.

I believe you want to say, that we cannot trust governments to run uncontrolled, and yes, we cannot. But the problem of limiting powers of governments is an old problem, it has solutions in some specific cases. So now we need to figure out how to control fake news without giving governments too many powers. It will not be easy, but we cannot say it is impossible before we tried.

[JKCalhoun]

> So, is it a "fact" that smoking causes cancer?

I could be wrong, but I think we're discussing when someone posts something like, "Smoking does not cause cancer."

That's very different.

[throw0101c]

> Most "facts" aren't provable in the mathematical sense.

How about a child sex ring happening in the basement of a pizza joint that has no basement?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

[mc32]

“He ducked in to a 7-11 and came out three minutes later with a beer.”

No, your honor, actually, I ducked in to a Quick Mart and came back out two minutes later with a perry. So that is absolutely false.

Are members of Congress clients of prostitute (sorry escorts)? Most likely. Have any engaged in statutory rape? Likely given what we know about the Epsteins. Does that translate into that conspiracy? No. But the worst is now DC points out the ridiculousness of that conspiracy to boohoo the likelihood that some members of Congress and their staff engage in below board activities.

[logifail]

> I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts

Looking back at the output of certain major media outlets during the pandemic, I'd suggest it might an idea to hold everyone to the same standards, regardless of whether the opinion is seen as "opposing" or "mainstream"...

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

[gustavus]

Yes false rumours and unsubstantiated claims such as

- COVID came from the Wuhan virology lab

-The NIH was funding gain of function research in Wuhan.

- There are rich pedophile businessmen that are pimping out underage girls to be able to blackmail them.

I could go on and on, because those are all horrible unsubstantiated rumours and I am glad we hunted down people who shared them persecuted and hounded them and limited their freedom to share things like that.

[spydr]

A lot of the “fake news” in circulation about Covid turned out to be true. Oh how some of this info was shut down, from twitter and Facebook removing them , to news outlets reporting on them. How do you decide what is fake news and what is something that we just got wrong and a small group of people are pointing out?

[somenameforme]

On a meta level this would seem to leave discussion of any sort of revolutionary concept mostly censored. So for instance go back in time to when the idea that the Earth was the center of the universe was near universally believed. If one studies the stars this is precisely what one would tend to believe, and you can even create highly accurate predictions for things like where the stars will be, based on this assumption.

Claims that the Earth actually revolved around the Sun, including by people like Galileo, tended to have extensive initial flaws (for instance Galileo also incorrectly assumed circular orbits, which causes lots of problems) and were completely unproveable given the technology of the time. So you have somebody saying something hat many would have considered plainly offensive and/or pseudo-scientific, that had negligible public support, that had proveable flaws, that contradicted centuries of expert knowledge, and was also spread by somebody who was in general somewhat anti-social - he initially had extensive support from the powerful Church of the era, but lost it largely through publishing what, for the time, were quite vile insults directed at them for not immediately jumping on board with him. His former relationship is the reason he was able to spend out the remainder of his years in the relative comfort of house arrest.

Obviously any sort of 'new vision' of speech policing that would effectively censor Galileo is a terrible idea. And this isn't just an issue of the past, the person who discovered handwashing/germs faced similar issues among countless other examples that are outside the scope of this post.

[quacked]

This is a crucial point that many in the thread are missing.

A "fact" as a unit of information is itself subject to the whims of people and cultural attitudes. Is it a "fact" that a whale is a mammal? No, it's a fact that the majority of modern biologists classify a group of animals collectively referred to as whales as a member of a group of animals they call mammals. Is it a fact that "X murdered Y"? No, but it is a fact that a group of people working together to investigate agreed to formally write down that X is a murderer and retaliate accordingly. (You can't even say for sure that they all believed that X murdered Y because each may have a different understanding of what "murder" is, or that they had doubts but when along with the vote, etc.)

When people say "I only believe in statements that are supported by facts" they rarely think about the nuances of the "supporting facts". 600 years ago it was a fact that Christ died for our sins, etc.

[dcow]

Well it’s incredibly likely that someone who most people referred to as Christ did indeed die <for our sins>. I think you mean to challenge the reliability or interpretation of the other stuff that allegedly happened afterward.

[quacked]

It can't be considered a fact, because it's unverifiable. The "fact" is that certain parties (museums, Vatican, etc.) claim to possess genuine historical documents that describe events that occurred in the past that Christ existed and was killed by the Romans.

I believe it's probably true, but it's important to realize that I'm taking the word of these historians and archivists on faith; I've never seen these documents, and I could not verify their authenticity were I allowed access to them.

It's only through careful examinations of what we as individuals can personally verify can we start to identify what kind of informational waters we swim in, and start to protect ourselves from "fake news".

[marcosdumay]

The most likely is that that one person the Bible is about never existed.

There would be documentation if he existed.

[somenameforme]

This is such an extremely interesting comment, given the context of this conversation, because it sums up so much with so little. There is indeed overwhelming documentation (and other evidence) of Jesus' existence [1], and essentially no doubt of such. The Bible in general corresponds quite well with historic evidence on most topics*. Where it diverges from history is obviously in the divine.

But does this mean one shouldn't be able to publicly express doubt of Jesus' existence? I would say no. Because while there is both overwhelming evidence and consensus, there was also overwhelming evidence and consensus for the Earth being the center of the universe. And the greatest leaps in society's state of knowledge tends to come from the times when these 'things everybody knows' end up simply being wrong.

It's okay to say, or even believe, things that are most likely wrong. The whole point about Freedom is having the Freedom to make choices, even when those choices or views may not be what somebody else would consider appropriate. When such choices become sufficiently detrimental, like theft or murder, we prohibit them by law. But prohibiting having the 'wrong view' just seems very myopic. If you change your view after reading those articles, that's cool. If you don't (or even more likely don't even check them out), that's also cool.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of...

----

* = Interestingly this exact observation led Thomas Jefferson, who created his own sort of sect-of-1 Christianity, to compose his own Bible, the Jefferson Bible [2]. He took all the likely factual context and writings in the bible, and removed all the supernatural aspects of it - essentially turning it into a historical text with moral lessons. Quite a shame no copies remain.

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible

[throwaway115]

>I would be delighted to read about opposing opinions, provided they are presented + supported by provable facts.

Opinion

  a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.

[epgui]

Opinions don't need to be supported by facts or based on facts.

They do need to be compatible with factual reality, otherwise they're called delusions.

[DavidPiper]

Unfortunately, phantasms[1] and mass delusions are also very much possible. Increasingly, opinions don't need to be compatible with factual reality to be believed.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchy101/comments/pyfhzb/please_e... (Sorry for the Reddit link, it's the most succinct explanation I could find)

[epgui]

That’s true… and it’s perfectly compatible with what I wrote.

[tanseydavid]

Delusional people do not speak in terms of opinion they present their perception as facts.

[leereeves]

> There is a stark difference between "fake news" and "difference of opinion that I don't agree with".

There is. But there's plenty of room in the definition of "fake news" to be biased and to exclude falsehoods that you support.

Even this paper excludes falsehoods propagated by the left, like the Steele Dossier or the claim that Hunter Biden's laptop was fake.

And as expected, some people here are downvoting this, thus proving my fundamental point. Any discussion of "fake news" is inherently political, though perhaps not always consciously.

Edit: and despite all the evidence otherwise, some people still believe in the fake news.

"Data from a laptop that the lawyer for a Delaware computer repair shop owner says was left by Hunter Biden in 2019 – and which the shop owner later provided to the FBI under subpoena – shows no evidence of tampering or fabrication, according to an independent review commissioned by CBS News."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-laptop-data-analys...

[astrange]

The laptop found in the computer store of a blind guy containing a copy of Hunter Biden's iCloud was fake, yes.

The prosecutor in the case against him did recently claim it was real without providing new evidence of that. In the same document, he claimed a picture of sawdust on a table saw was a picture of Hunter Biden doing cocaine.

(Other stories about "Ashley Biden's diary" were also faked, though by different people, and faked in different ways.)

[tanseydavid]

>> claimed a picture of sawdust on a table saw was a picture of Hunter Biden doing cocaine.

They also keep trying to say that Hunter's glass flute (or maybe its a piccolo?) is a crack-pipe!

Why would he photograph himself with a crack-pipe in his mouth? He wouldn't -- he's obviously practicing his music lessons.

[thsksbd]

" "fake news" typically amounts to false rumors, amplifying unprovable/unsubstantiated claims. "

Like the Steele dossier or the rumor of a pee-pee tape [1].

Look, Id love to silence Rachel Maddow as much as the next guy, but there is no objective function to reliably do that without also silencing inconvenient truths (Mai Lei massacre, fake WMD, Biden's corruption, etc).

[1] That's when I knew power was out to get Trump by any means. Journos seriously reporting that a hotelier is unaware that top hotels are riddled with bugs? Bullshit.

[toss1]

Or, if you want better examples, how about the massively promoted "2000 mules" movie?

It was literally all lies, just proven in court, and the producer just apologized to one of the subjects for those lies and pulled it from distribution.

When one of the primary architects of right-wing strategy advocates a key tactic of "flooding the zone with bullshit", that side has no complaint. Particularly when that tactic is derived specifically from Russian dezinformatsiya techniques, where the goal is not to get people to believe the lies (the few who do are a bonus), but to exhaust reason and get people to give up and say "we can't tell what is true". At that point, they are most manipulable.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2024/05/31/g-s1-2298/publisher-of-2000-m...

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/31/media/salem-will-stop-distrib...

[thsksbd]

My list were the lies that the news agencies we are supposed to trust peddled. My examples were lies peddled by the respectable likes of the BBC, The Economist and NPR.

So, unless you want "The Epoch Times" to be included with the truth censors, your donkey movie is not at all like my examples.

Btw, these lies I listed cost millions of lives in the third world. But Im old fashioned like that. I still think Black/Brown lives matter.

[Ray20]

>Particularly when that tactic is derived specifically from Russian dezinformatsiya techniques

I think it is incorrect to call such tactics "Russian dezinformatsiya techniques". It's rather "leftist techniques". Putin just uses it because he was a member of communist party and KGB and was taught it this way.

[toss1]

Nonsense. First, "Russian dezinformatsiya techniques" is more specific, and specifically related to the current events. Second, no one owns them, they're not copyrighted or anything. Third, "leftist" is far more vague. Fourth, Russia has used these techniques for centuries; so if you must go with some kind of large group, if anything it'd be 'Royalist Techniques', predating the Russian revolution.

[lenkite]

We have already seen in the last few years that "fake news" and "misinformation" of today has a reasonably high probability of becoming "verified news" and "factual information" of tomorrow. Of-course the "fact-checkers" and "misinformation experts" rarely correct themselves or apologize for their censorship.

[flyingcircus3]

This take is akin to finding a broken clock that just happens to show the correct time at the moment you found it, and then refusing to accept that the clock is broken, even hours later. Then as the days go on, you accumulate more evidence that the clock is actually working, because you keep checking on the two minutes per day that the broken clock is "accurate", while discounting the other 1438 minutes per day when the clock is wrong.

[lenkite]

Well, if the "fact-checkers" are the broken clock, then I would agree with you.

[mc32]

Unfortunately with Covid we saw what people are willing to do from both pro and anti PsOV. They were both wrong. Even the CDC and the like put out bad information. Internally they had dissent but dismissed it and went so far as to misspell things so FOIAs would not find things[1]

No one can be trusted, unfortunately, including trusted sources, or platforms or governments. All of the above will abuse their trust when things prove difficult, trust be damned.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/health/nih-officials-foia...

[sdoering]

We need to clearly differentiate between "best known facts currently available" and "already disproven bullshit".

The first one has an expiration date in the (unknown) future. The second one has one that’s already in the past.

Thirdly there’s the category of "still useful but not true" like Newtonian physics.

[belorn]

"already disproven bullshit" is what meta studies are for. In regards to the covid pandemic there are now plenty of those, and unsurprisingly few people liked what they showed. No one likes it when facts do not conform to cultural views.

[llamaimperative]

No, again, getting things wrong is not the same as lying, and they do not warrant the same degradation in trust.

[xanthor]

What if they're lying about getting things wrong versus lying?

[llamaimperative]

That’s bad but not an interpretation one should jump to in a context where it was very easy to get things wrong and rather little incentive to lie.

You think CDC et al didn’t know they had limited public credibility with which they could guide public behavior? These people live and breathe questions of institutional credibility all day every day. They obviously know their careers are put at risk even by being wrong never mind by lying.

[wsc981]

The whole "horse dewormer" bullshit propagated by MSM was clearly a lie (in so far that this medicine has been used for decades by humans). So, you can't even trust MSM to not be a 'supersharer' of misinformation.

Same is true for Hunter Biden's laptop story.

Many more examples could be found.

[mc32]

Heck you even have Chris Cuomo coming out against many of the things he said and agreeing with some things he disagreed with regarding COVID.

[baryphonic]

If people were avoiding FOIA by having candid discussions on private servers and deliberately misspelling words all while telling the public a contradictory story, that is strong evidence of lying.

If the private communications matched the public ones and there were no efforts to obfuscate, then the best conclusion would be they just called it wrong.

[llamaimperative]

I agree hiding from FOIA looks bad, degrades trust in general, and the responsible parties should be punished, but it is definitely not dispositive of lying.

I didn't see any emails where they were showing agreement with a different set of facts than what they were communicating to the public? Open to seeing sources behind that claim though.

[tbrownaw]

It doesn't prove (but, uh, is rather strongly suggestive) that their earlier statements were lies or contradicted by the records they're hiding, but it is itself a lie.

[dahart]

The CDC did put out some info on masks that they pretty quickly retracted and admitted was a mistake. They did that because they were trying to make sure enough masks were available for health care workers, which did in fact run out. You have to acknowledge that they admitted the mistake and take that into account when comparing it to something like the Trump campaign to claim the election was stolen, which everyone knows is entirely and intentionally false but they will never admit.

The idea that you can’t trust anyone is part of the ongoing disinformation campaign. Acting like the truth of information is only binary and ignoring the intent, degree of truth, and degree of damage, is a way for politicians who are spreading misinformation intentionally to rationalize doing so by blaming and attacking everyone else just because they try to do the right thing and get it slightly wrong.

We don’t need to trust politicians, we just need to trust each other a little bit. The campaign to sow distrust and polarize voters is working. Don’t let it work on you. Yes, some people are sometimes bad. Don’t forget that people are sometimes good, and most of the country aren’t politicians. Most of the country is decent people trying to get by, and we all pretty much want the same things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_attack#Undermin...

[baryphonic]

> Internally they had dissent but dismissed it and went so far as to misspell things so FOIAs would not find things.

I hadn't heard this yet. Unbelievable. And yet all of the sites I found it on from a quick search have at some point in the past been branded "fake news." In fact, one source, the New York Post, was falsely branded "Russian disinformation" on the eve of the 2020 election and suspended from Meta and Twitter, only for its story to be verified subsequently when it had minimal consequence.

[astrange]

The Hunter Biden's laptop thing continues to be an intelligence op and not "real". It has not been "verified".

Of course it does contain some real content, since it was constructed from a hack of his iCloud account, but that doesn't validate anything else on it and some of the earliest claims about it seemed to involve eg planted child porn. You only find it credible because those were successfully suppressed so hard you don't even remember them.

[rufus_foreman]

From Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...:

"In November 2022, CBS News published the results of a forensic analysis they commissioned of a copy of the laptop data Mac Isaac initially handed to federal investigators in 2019. The analysis, conducted by Computer Forensics Services, found data, including over 120,000 emails, "consistent with normal, everyday use of a computer", found "no evidence that the user data had been modified, fabricated or tampered with", and found no new files created on the laptop after April 2019, when Mac Isaac received the laptop. The chief technology officer of Computer Forensics Services added: "I have no doubt in my mind that this data was created by Hunter Biden, and that it came from a computer under Mr. Biden's control". Also on November 21, CBS News published the first photograph of the damaged Macbook Pro, which had been provided to them by Hunter Biden's legal team.

According to reports on January 16, 2024, new filings by the U.S. Department of Justice's special counsel, headed by David C. Weiss, appear to be the first public confirmation of the laptop's authenticity by the DOJ. The filings refer to the laptop connected to Hunter Biden stating, “the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store.”"

Is that fake news?

[astrange]

Yes; notably a special counsel saying something is not "confirmation by the DOJ". A special counsel is a political entity not controlled by the DOJ and not everything they say is an official position or even true.

For instance, they said in the same case that a picture of a table saw with sawdust on it was cocaine Hunter Biden was using.

The defense in the case has said some of the material is not authentic (eg https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.827...) but it's pretty irrelevant to the case so they are probably not actually going to work this out.

[toss1]

How is this argument different from "Whichever side shouts loudest and longest wins."?

Volume is not equal to facts or truth.

Yes, censorship is dangerous.

But the article is NOT an argument for censorship.

Everyone knows the sagacious Mark Twain quote: "A lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on".

Social media puts that effect on rocket fuel. When some cohorts are using that to consistently and disproportionally amplify lies, it is very reasonable to add a small amount of friction, or require someone to prioritize what they repost. This does zero to stop posting lies, it only forces them to select the highest quality — to them — set to repost.

It is no different from the restriction on this Hacker News site; if you post too much here, you get a message like "Please slow down, you're posting too fast.", and you cannot repost for several hours. I have not seen anyone crying "CENSORSHIP!!" over that restriction. I also doubt there exists anyone who would think that the discussion on Twitter is better than HN.

So, why are you crying "CENSORSHIP!!" about a similar proposal for other social media (and be sure to address how a restriction on volume has zero restriction on any specific content)?

[tbrownaw]

> But the article is NOT an argument for censorship.

Really? It sure looks to me like it's advocating putting limits on people's ability to say things.

[toss1]

It is putting zero constraints on what can be said

It only suggests constraining the rate of broadcasting

You can go to the town square and shout all you want, you'll still be limited by how much you can enunciate in 24 hours. That is not censorship.

Similarly constraining an automated system to act like physical reality is not censorship.

If I constrain WHAT you say in your allotted time, THAT is censorship.

[biophysboy]

I don’t disagree, but my worry is that this approach will be as effective as diet/exercise has been for obesity

[DavidPiper]

"The solution can't be personal responsibility. But also the solution is personal responsibility."

It's something I keep coming back to, and I'm really not sure how to resolve it.

[probably_wrong]

My opinion on that dilemma: some problems are so widespread that it makes more sense to deal with them collectively, aiming to cut them down at the root. We usually appoint people to deal with with them because it's more effective than everyone having to act in concert. Those people are called "politicians".

Do those people do a good job? Kinda - they tend to get everything uniformly wrong and sometimes they really screw something up, but in general they land more often than not in reasonable compromises. And while your Senator may be a corrupt idiot, the people in their staff may be okay and steer them generally in a sane direction.

[sobkas]

> "How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you.

When you teach people to recognise fake news they will be able to recognise your fake news. What you want is to cut people from enemy fake news (or truth, they are enemy, it doesn't matter) so they will believe everything you say while enemy can't influence them.

[throwaway115]

I don't want that, but I see your point. I would rather our population have a healthy immune system where bad ideas just don't survive, than to have us live as Bubble Boy, cut off from the rest of the world forever.

[atmavatar]

Alas, I fear even if we had a perfect utopia where it was easy to give everyone the choice between fake news that reinforces their beliefs and unopinionated, factual news, it won't turn out any different than placing a bunch of hungry children in a room where there's a table of sweets and a table of nutritious vegetables.

Hell, even if it was adults given some training for self-control, the vast majority of them will dip into the sweets table from time to time.

People are really good at rationalization, such that even if they know up-front which choice was fake news and which was not, I bet you'd similarly observe a significant fraction (if not majority or super majority) of people choosing the fake news to feel better.

Sadly, I'm unaware of any real solutions to the fake news problem that don't make things even worse.

[thriftwy]

The Internet was created with the implicit idea that everybody brings their stuff (including news) to the table and then the best one wins. Back then the US/Free World ones were clearly the best.

If you want nobody in your country to read any news procured by China/Russia, this kind of defeats the original idea. You've now built something else entirely - like a glorified teletext or minitel.

[rightbyte]

Ye I think this is the underlying problem.

The Man® want us to only read his fake news to be able to get away with whatever they wanna push.

One fundamental precondition for a functional democracy is the right to be wrong, since that is judged arbitrary anyways.

The problem with manipulation stems from algorithmic ad feeds anyways. E.g. chronological 'my friends only' feeds did not have that problem.

[dgellow]

The majority doesn’t care, you can give the best tools to identify, they won’t trust them or ignore them

[throwaway115]

You're being hyperbolic. Community Notes on X are an example of these tools, and they are not ignored or distrusted from what I've seen. If your tools are poor, make better tools. But also, as a first principle, accept that some people won't believe what you want them to believe, no matter what. That doesn't mean you get to start trying to control them, because you got frustrated.

[croes]

Would you trust community Notes on Truth Social?

They aren't a tool to identify fake news just an additional information layer which you either trust or xou don't.

>If your tools are poor, make better tools

If you are a bad painter buy better brushes.

You solution doesn't give the people the tools you still have just a source which claims to show what's true.

The real tool is the user himself using his brain. But that's hard to achive.

[anileated]

If you trust community notes on Twitter, I have news for you (https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/news/5080048). Community notes are used as just another channel to spread misinformation, but this time under convenient guise of truth, and that is why it is a flawed design.

[croes]

I know, but I needed an example where the tool as such is ca. 100% useless to show it's not a real tool but just a additional layer of some authority you need to trust.

[anileated]

Ah, perhaps I thought I was objecting to you though we were mostly in agreement.

[kylebenzle]

Exactly, Twitter tends to be liberal and so their community responses also tend to be liberal.

[TheOtherHobbes]

They're still the wrong tools. "This is categorically untrue" will still be distrusted and ignored by the people it's meant to reach, because they're not looking for truth.

Most social media interactions about status plays, "buy my stuff" grifting, and - most of all - tribal identity politics and affirmations of belonging and identification.

With fake news there's also a fair amount of narcissistic contrarianism.

All of this passed through an online culture optimised for engagement through dopamine hits, rage, fear, and grudge farming, quick-hit entertainment, and other addictive mechanisms.

The real motivation in all of this is emotional self-soothing, not a desire for accurate facts.

So gluing "This isn't true" on any of that won't make a difference, because the problem is structural.

Fake News is a cultural and emotional exploit. It reflects cultural values, and it needs cultural and psychological defences.

Some options include better accountability for mainstream journalism; finding healthier income models that don't rely on addictions and ad tech; teaching media literacy in schools; and generally tidying up online media toxicity at all levels.

[brentm]

I don't think the poster is being too hyperbolic. A very large share of the most vocal on both sides of the political aisle prioritize narrative over truth. Literal truth is less important to these people than something that is maybe not 100% true but captures 100% of what they feel. Tools can help these stories spread less wide but they will not be able to prevent the most ardent from continuing to use these stories as cornerstones of their beliefs. This is probably a small fraction of the country overall but a large share of the active on political X/Twitter.

[api]

We’re not talking about differing views but about flat lies.

It’s basically a DDOS attack. It takes seconds especially with AI to generate bullshit but hours to debunk it.

I certainly haven’t thought of a way to address that imbalance.

[shzhdbi09gv8ioi]

One way to address this kind of attack is by vetting the source. If you put some effort into it, you could possibly conclude that for example nytimes.com does not auto generate nonsense stories with AI, so you could then assume their text is written by humans.

Of course this falls apart in this day and age, where many seem to rely on whatever flows thru their social media feeds / reels.

It is certainly a user problem, where we need to counter by educating ourselves to deal with this the new reality of bad actors being common place, educate ourselves and our peers, and permanently solve the social chain of trust-issue in our digital lives with new technical solutions.

[thsksbd]

Like the Steele Dossier?

Or that Hunter's laptop outlining his old man's corruption was fake?

What do you think are lies that should be censored and how quick are you to identify them?

[techostritch]

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. Are you trying to make the point that the Steele dossier was fake? Certainly not censored but it would have been great if it was desensationalized.

[2four2]

Strange agenda here. This conversation isn't about those things, and isn't about censorship.

[Nursie]

Nobody cares about Hunter Biden’s laptop. It’s the biggest nothing-burger ever. If it actually detailed any corruption, then it would have pursued in court by now. It’s always been a complete waste of time.

[justonenote]

Regardless of the specific case of the laptop, it is beyond naive to think that every incidence of corruption that is known about is pursued in court.

Even non-political figures who are known to be corrupt will not be prosecuted or pursued because of the difficulty of securing a conviction or simply priorities and limited resources.

When it comes to people to with powerful political connections, you are talking a different level of 'difficulty pursing this case'.

[Nursie]

And if I was making such a claim that would be a very valid argument.

[api]

If I were Hunter I would have demanded that the laptop be imaged and a torrent posted to the Internet. Label it NSFW if there was a porn collection.

No mystery no story.

It’s like when Bezos responded to a tabloid threatening to post his dick pic and out him for sending one by owning up to it and threatening to post it himself. Based.

[astrange]

One of the earliest mentions of it was on fake news sites owned by Guo Wengui claiming it had child porn on it, presumably because they'd planted some on it - the suppression was so effective that the people claiming it's real don't remember this either.

IIRC the articles had very poor ideas of what Americans would find scandalous because they spent much of their time talking about how big Hunter Biden's penis was.

[malfist]

I don't disagree that people should learn to better recognize fake news, but when you're solution is to have the whole population change their behavior, your solution will not work.

Removal of a few super spreaders is infinitely more feasible than having everyone else change their behavior

[john-radio]

> If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you.

Setting aside the inflammatory tone of your take on this - I think your argument would be strengthened by an example or two of where you're suggesting the line should be drawn - this just is not how running social media sites currently works at all. Companies can and do censor user content all the time, for better or worse. What "tough cookies"? More like tough cookies for people that don't like living in a country where a third of the population believes we're ruled by baby blood drinking reptile people.

[tw04]

> People are allowed to think and share things that make you angry. If your views aren't mainstream, there's a reason for that.

China has entered the chat. Obviously HN is a western focused site, but it always fascinates me when people just assume Western ideas of freedom are just a solved problem.

Those freedoms, historically speaking, are very much not just a thing we should all expect will continue in perpetuity. So statements like “your ideas lost” sound a bit childish from a global perspective. Do I hope freedom of speech continues to prevail? Absolutely. Is it just the inevitable conclusion you suggest? Not at all.

[llamaimperative]

And it’s absolutely possible that changes in technology have dramatically shifted the dynamics of the marketplace of ideas (of course this is the entire purpose of advancing technology).

It is feasible that a Wild West marketplace of ideas had a tendency to select truth given the communication media from the printing press to social media, and now with social media that dynamic is weaker, nonexistent, or inverted.

[AlienRobot]

I think the correct thing to do would be to stop sharing news.

I just don't see how a site about the latest drama, crime, war, or tragedy happening at the moment anywhere on the planet or on the Internet can be good for anyone's mental health.

If you asked me, I'd say more social media should strive to be like Pinterest, where people don't share their wordy opinions nobody will be better off reading, they just share pictures of things that interest them (or in many cases pictures of products they're selling).

Like, if you're a gamer, which is the better site: one that keeps telling you about the latest drama among Twitch streamers, or one that just had 30 screenshots and short video clips of various games displayed on screen at the same time?

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

> Too many people get very angry that people share things they disagree with

No? We are angry that the firehouse of falsehood is making civil discourse between Americans impossible.

Sneaky of you to slip that in there, new throwaway acct.

[RecycledEle]

> "How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?"

Very true.

I feel so sorry for the people who can not use the Scientific Method to determine the credibility of news sources.

Here is what I do: I find a news story from the source that is about events close to me. Then I go over and check. I hope you try this.

I test politicians the same way. I try to find video of them discussion something from my area, and then check it. If they lied about my local area, they probably lie about everything.

[RecycledEle]

If you want to stop fake news, it only takes 1 law.

You can still publish whatever you want, but if the word "news" appears in the page then you must provide links to all original sources.

You claim a source told you that POTUS will have a press conference today? I want a video of the conversation you had with that source and full documentation of who spoke with who, where, when, and under what circumstances.

Oh, it's an anonymous source and you put it on a web page that says it's news? That's 6 months in confinement for whoever did that. Someone will serve 6 months if it means hunting down every last stockholder.

Problem solved.

[techostritch]

The narrative a lot of people seem to adopt is that the fake news debate is about limiting the types of messaging and propaganda available to two sides of a political system. And so attacking fake news is only about attacking the tools available to the other side.

I think what’s wrong about this narrative is the idea that fake news is good for the people spreading it. Like I don’t think that obsessing about the Russia investigation was great for liberals and I think there’s a ton of examples of Republican infighting that is the result of people believing things that aren’t true, and just like factually so. There’s a difference between spreading all sorts of malicious opinions about LGBT; and I’m not happy about that but whatever and the recent story of a woman who got elected to the school board to get the LGBT curricula out of schools, read the whole curricula, realized that there was no LGBT curricula in schools, told her supporters how happy she was to realize that and then was viciously attacked for it. Or the guy who actually attacked a pizza restaurant, or the Romney campaign being surprised they lost in 2012, because they believed a conservative propaganda site performing intentionally biased polling to show a not favorable result.

Like looking at the current American political situation, I think you could make a strong argument that fake news is worse for Republicans than it is for Democrats.

[bluepizza]

We provide everyone with way too many hard to use tools, just because we don't want to stop the problem at the source.

A normal adult needs to use to many tools and chase so many different types of education by themselves, off the top of my mind: financial, real estate, health, technology, purchasing habits, utilities providers, news and misinformation, nutrition, commonly applied scams.

Maybe we should just make taking advantage of people illegal, and prosecute those that do it.

[sokoloff]

> Maybe we should just make taking advantage of people illegal

How do you define this in law?

Many of us tap-tap on keyboards and charge people thousands of dollars per week for that. Are we taking advantage of them? We then watch as the staff who works hard to clean our office buildings make 1/10th of what we make. Are we taking advantage of them? If someone comes to my house on a weekend and charges me double the normal price to unclog my toilet or get my heat working again, am I being taken advantage of? If there’s a shortage of generators in an area and I drive in a truckload of them from hundreds of miles away and make them available at a profit to myself, am I taking advantage?

Different people will have legitimately differing opinions on questions above. “Make it illegal to take advantage of people via laws” is much easier to say than to do.

[TeMPOraL]

My litmus test is what advertisers, marketers and salesmen can do, as the limit of that is where it turns into illegal scams. Yes, I claim this is a continuum, the legal line dividing shrewd business from fraud is arbitrary, and IMO placed way too far towards the "fraud" end, i.e. allowing too much.

[mindslight]

It's wrong to frame this topic as being about wanting "the censorship weapon" or not, when we're mostly talking about centralized tech companies boosting this tripe to "drive engagement" - the role of the censor is already being actively played by these companies! When Aunt Mildred had to click 'forward', choose the list of people she was going to bombard with her spam, left the subject line containing FwReFwFwFw, and then the sheer majority didn't even reply, those were all natural limiting factors. Now Faceboot takes mere reading as a positive act of "engagement", shows it to people it predicts will be receptive, and then concentrates activity between them creating an illusion of social proof.

This ties right into your desire for tools, because tech companies don't actually want people using independent tools to access their systems. They're already giving us the tools they want us to use - poor ones designed around slowing us down, confusing our unadorned human brains, and creating a slow drip of partial accomplishment rather than letting us complete a task and move on. Attempts to even augment their tools with things like Adblock are met with a lot of grumbling and sometimes even outright blocking. Full blown third party clients (eg yt-dlp) are continually seen as a fringe thing, and churn between names/maintainers/hosts due to legal shakedowns. The nonsense of prior-restrained-based "API keys" runs roughshod over developers' thought processes. A sustainable ecosystem of independent third party clients in the mainstream app stores is essentially impossible - a wink, nod, and specious reference to trademark, DMCA, or CFAA is all it takes to get the other tech gatekeepers to collude.

Unfortunately, this all points to the only way we're fixing any of this is some kind of regulation. The centralized tech companies have set up their positions at a Schelling point of individual agency, and have heartily grown into the power vacuum. Like atoms in a gas, it's impossible for us to all just individually move in the same direction at the same time, and so the only way to get a lever big enough to move them is collective action via the government, as imperfect as that is.

Personally I'm in favor of antitrust enforcement that breaks up this bundling between hosting and client software (and hardware devices as well). They should be considered separate products, when developed at the same company be completely independent business units, with backroom communication (eg unpublished APIs) prohibited. I'd say this would get us 80% of the way there to having the choice of tools that don't themselves encourage the spreading of disinformation. Then additional functionality of automated filtering etc could grow organically on top of that, in a user-representing way. But for any of that to happen, the client ecosystems have to be freed first.

[yosito]

You can identify fake news to people, and unless someone from their "tribe" identifies it, they will just say that the party identifying it is fake.

[throwaway115]

So then you need to come to terms with people rejecting what you want them to believe. Some people won't believe you no matter what. Does that mean you get to reach for another tool, like force, or censorship? No, it means you need to accept that you don't control people.

[justonenote]

> it means you need to accept that you don't control people.

This is absolutely the correct take, but also an idea that is unconscionable to the majority of people in government and other institutions involved in setting policies today.

[yosito]

There are tools you can use when you want people to see your perspective, things like empathy and persuasion. You don't just have to fatalistically accept that people think differently than you, you can absolutely attempt to change their mind, in ethical ways.

[throw0101c]

> No, it means you need to accept that you don't control people.

Not wrong, but when others' mis- and ill-formed view of the world starts effecting others then some kind of action needs to happen:

* https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

* https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/history.html

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-measles-outbreak-vacci...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccines_and_autism

* https://www.google.com/search?q=vaccine+autism

[drekk]

It's not about belief or control. If you're harming the social organism by spreading verifiable falsehoods (vaccines cause autism) then you should be rooted out and treated like the cancer you're choosing to be. I can't yell fire in a theater. I'm somehow alive despite that censorship. People need to grow up.

[justonenote]

Do we really have to go over the history of ideas that were once considered falsehoods but are now accepted as truth?

Your argument rests on the presumption that we have some kind of Oracle that can divine true information from false.

> rooted out and treated like the cancer you're choosing to be

It's cool that you think humans have changed in nature significantly from the time of the Inquisitions, but when you speak like this about people it's pretty clear we haven't.

[throwaway115]

Where can I read about the constitutional rights of "the social organism"?

[throw0101c]

> No, sorry, but your ideas lost.

And what about people who reject reality itself?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs