The economy of fake news

[DrZoidberg]

here's a good NPR article. They tracked down fake news creators and asked them about the business model.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episode-739-finding-the-fake-news-king

Surprisingly fake news creators aren't ashamed of what the do. They just see it as writing for entertainment. And it pays well.

There's also a podcast. Hear it from the fake news king himself.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/02/504155809/episode-739-finding-the-fake-news-king

This guy created the fake news story about Hilary Clinton killing children in the cellar of a pizzeria.

Funny story is that this guy doesn't have an agenda other than just to go viral. He says. He'll write anything that does the job. He's written about people on all sides.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There was a report maybe 8 months ago and I think one of the fake news guys was alleging they were trying to show how fake news worked and were trying to help people learn how to debunk it. I always thought that was bullshit because he never seemed to show any indication of letting people know it was fake.

You can find 'fake news' everywhere. World News Daily used to be just found in the grocery store by the registers, now there is fake news in several places where people congregate online and people love to read it. It is sickening.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There was a report maybe 8 months ago and I think one of the fake news guys was alleging they were trying to show how fake news worked and were trying to help people learn how to debunk it. I always thought that was bullshit because he never seemed to show any indication of letting people know it was fake.

You can find 'fake news' everywhere. World News Daily used to be just found in the grocery store by the registers, now there is fake news in several places where people congregate online and people love to read it. It is sickening.

I don't agree it's sickening, or even bad. I see it more as training in scepticism. The Internet is still a fairly new phenomena and we haven't yet quite learnt how to use it.

Before it was hard to get attention because the media was expensive to distribute. So we associated money with truth. This is unfortunate for all manner of reasons. This means that journalism in the old paradigm was likely to be a mouthpiece for the rich elite. Which isn't necessarily all bad. But does shape society in a certain way.

But now you don't any longer need money to reach out. So all the rules have changed. Now we need to learn to find new ways to distinguish who the honest guys are. And in the old paradigm, was the fact that somebody was rich, really a guarantee that they were honest? Of course it wasn't

I still think we'll come out of this fake news world a little bit wiser. It's that or we get Armagedon. Either way I'm safe, becuse if it's Armageddon there'll be nobody around to point to me a laugh about me being wrong.

 

[Cobalt]

Safe from embarrassment isn't the same thing as safe in general.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There was a report maybe 8 months ago and I think one of the fake news guys was alleging they were trying to show how fake news worked and were trying to help people learn how to debunk it. I always thought that was bullshit because he never seemed to show any indication of letting people know it was fake.

You can find 'fake news' everywhere. World News Daily used to be just found in the grocery store by the registers, now there is fake news in several places where people congregate online and people love to read it. It is sickening.

I don't agree it's sickening, or even bad. I see it more as training in scepticism.

That is unbelievably naive. People are rarely ever skeptical. People suffer from source bias terribly at best, and extreme ignorance at worst. Look at vaccinations. Despite people not dying from disease, they still think vaccines are dangerous because someone on the Internet said so!

 

[braces_for_impact]

As much as it's been in our consciousness of late, we all pretty much realize fake news isn't anything new, by any stretch. Yet, it seems more pernicious somehow than it used to be. I think it's the consumers of fake news that has much to do with it. Frankly, the media wing of the republican party (FOX news), combined (especially so) with the AM radio media wing of said party, has really laid the groundwork for where we find ourselves. FOX stretched the truth quite a bit, but it also, and more importantly I think, taught the average red blooded Joe Podunk to distrust the main stream media. Then with this foundation in place, the AM radio pundits would spin increasingly bazaar and terrifying conspiracy type stories wrapped around the fear and hatred of a black man in high office and democrats in particular.

We now live in a world of more extremes than we used to, and a lot of this is due to our new social media capabilities. Social media is designed to do one thing overall. Keep people interacting with it - getting that screen time, as much as possible. This is in order to sell you more shit you don't need. The extremes are better at holding our attention than the middle ground. Try an experiment I heard about just last week. Go into incognito mode in your browser. Now go to YouTube and pick a subject. Let's say vaccinations, left or right wing politics, global warming, evolution, whatever you like. Load up a video and keep a look on the suggested videos for you on the side bar. It won't take long for the extreme points of view to show up. Click one once an awhile, and watch as before long your side bar is completely dominated by these extreme views on any of these subjects. Have fun going down our rabbit hole. This little experiment can easily be run on Facebook, Twitter, you name it. Is it any wonder we are becoming more and more polarized within our own bubbles?

 

[ronburgundy]

There was a report maybe 8 months ago and I think one of the fake news guys was alleging they were trying to show how fake news worked and were trying to help people learn how to debunk it. I always thought that was bullshit because he never seemed to show any indication of letting people know it was fake.

You can find 'fake news' everywhere. World News Daily used to be just found in the grocery store by the registers, now there is fake news in several places where people congregate online and people love to read it. It is sickening.

I don't agree it's sickening, or even bad. I see it more as training in scepticism. The Internet is still a fairly new phenomena and we haven't yet quite learnt how to use it.

Before it was hard to get attention because the media was expensive to distribute. So we associated money with truth. This is unfortunate for all manner of reasons. This means that journalism in the old paradigm was likely to be a mouthpiece for the rich elite. Which isn't necessarily all bad. But does shape society in a certain way.

But now you don't any longer need money to reach out. So all the rules have changed. Now we need to learn to find new ways to distinguish who the honest guys are. And in the old paradigm, was the fact that somebody was rich, really a guarantee that they were honest? Of course it wasn't

I still think we'll come out of this fake news world a little bit wiser. It's that or we get Armagedon. Either way I'm safe, becuse if it's Armageddon there'll be nobody around to point to me a laugh about me being wrong.

You are waaay too optimistic and setting the bar well beyond what most information consumers are capable of.

Trump's successful use of the "Fake News" meme to get millions of Americans to discount actual real facts about him tells you the direction this is and will continue to go, and that direction is into a pit of unreason where the objective validity of information has no impact on how influential that information is, IOW, a new kind of Dark Ages.

With most people getting their info from social media connections that are countless steps removed from the source of that info, source credibility becomes meaningless, thus freeing sources from having any concern with their long term reputation. That reputation of minimal credibility and integrity was what kept journalism within at least some sane distance from reality, so that "an honest mistake" would be a plausible enough excuse to preserve that credibility on which their profits partly depended. While wealthy corporate interests dominated for profit news, in free countries there was both public and other non-profit news sources that kept them in check because they could garner viewers and more support for themselves by making news of any dishonesty by other outlets, and vice versa.

All of those incentives to either be within a mere "mistake" of being honest or in exposing other's dishonesty is gone from the journalism profession. There are no sources to discredit, because social media users have no idea who originally put out the stories that their friends and followers send them.

Without being able to infer credibility from the source, the only way to know whether a story is bullshit is to already have enough accurate knowledge of the topic and enough reasoning ability to be able to infer that the story is not true. And we know that the vast majority of people lack one or both of those qualities on most issues. So, what people will do is simply use their a priori unreasoned assumptions and beliefs to decide that only stories that agree with those beliefs could be true.

The amoral anything-for-profit sensibility that defines current capitalism combined with the logistics of social media and cognitive tendencies of humans is more likely to lead to the de-literatizing of civilization than any increase in rational skepticism. (and yes, I just said "de-literatizing"

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Confirmation bias has always been a problem. The Internet has made confirmation bias so much stronger, and with the embedding of Facebook into everything, it has almost made it impossible for people to care enough to seek out the truth, which is generally available with a couple clicks of the mouse.

And Facebook and Twitter are devastating to conversations. Twitter is limited to short irrelevant banter / sniping and Facebook is limited to slightly longer irrelevant banter / sniping. No one is talking. At least on a web board, there is a medium to express ideas both ways. It may not happen very well, and that is human nature, but Facebook and Twitter make it too easy to both snipe away in either direction as usually "both sides" are represented, if not poorly represented, but also to feel as if you are part of a movement and jumping on the bandwagon which helps propel your mind into thinking you've accomplished something, when in fact, you don't have a bloody clue what you are talking about.

Fake news just makes all of this worse because it helps feed into confirmation bias. Then the "like" clicks add up, which reinforced an opinion which is based on bias and confirmed with an intentional lie.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Without being able to infer credibility from the source, the only way to know whether a story is bullshit is to already have enough accurate knowledge of the topic and enough reasoning ability to be able to infer that the story is not true. And we know that the vast majority of people lack one or both of those qualities on most issues. So, what people will do is simply use their a priori unreasoned assumptions and beliefs to decide that only stories that agree with those beliefs could be true.

Exactly. Why is one going to bother to care to double check something when they are perfectly happy when the "news" confirms their original opinion. People can be properly informed only if they want to be. And in general, the brain rewards confirmation bias a bit more than being properly informed. It also doesn't help when being informed means being considered an "elitist" and is considered something to be belittled over.

The amoral anything-for-profit sensibility that defines current capitalism combined with the logistics of social media and cognitive tendencies of humans is more likely to lead to the de-literatizing of civilization than any increase in rational skepticism. (and yes, I just said "de-literatizing"

Some think that if money can be made from something, the only moral option is to be allowed to make money from it, regardless what that something is.

 

[ronburgundy]

Exactly. Why is one going to bother to care to double check something when they are perfectly happy when the "news" confirms their original opinion. People can be properly informed only if they want to be. And in general, the brain rewards confirmation bias a bit more than being properly informed. It also doesn't help when being informed means being considered an "elitist" and is considered something to be belittled over.

Agreed, although I think it is also a bias to minimize mental effort in addition to confirming prior notions. News consumers jave never put in much effort, but the nature of the news business incentivized source credibility, so the news outlets themselves did the work to at least set a minimum bar of accuracy. Now they have no reason to do that work for the consumer, so it won't get done at all. We are still in the infancy of the "fake news" industry. As it explodes, it will take increasingly more effort for consumers to validate information, so they will be less and less likely to bother, independent of actual confirmation bias effects.

The amoral anything-for-profit sensibility that defines current capitalism combined with the logistics of social media and cognitive tendencies of humans is more likely to lead to the de-literatizing of civilization than any increase in rational skepticism. (and yes, I just said "de-literatizing"

Some think that if money can be made from something, the only moral option is to be allowed to make money from it, regardless what that something is.

The underlined part could complicate matters, if "allowed to" is interpreted as legally allowed to rather than it being viewed as ethically acceptable. I seem to be on this horse today, but whether they should be allowed to legally versus ethically need to be approached separately. Free speech is too important and intent of speech too hard to prove for the law to restrict all speech that is clearly unethical.
I agree with those "some" in that much of what they are saying should be legally allowed, but disagree with them that their is nothing unethical or immoral about their actions. It is critical to keep legal and moral issues distinct, because their conflation only helps immoral people to evade guilt and moral judgment if they can successfully argue they have a legal right to do it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't agree it's sickening, or even bad. I see it more as training in scepticism.

That is unbelievably naive. People are rarely ever skeptical. People suffer from source bias terribly at best, and extreme ignorance at worst. Look at vaccinations. Despite people not dying from disease, they still think vaccines are dangerous because someone on the Internet said so!

But what are we going to do about it? Why worry about a problem we can't solve? This is how the world is now

 

[Malintent]

I don't agree it's sickening, or even bad. I see it more as training in scepticism.

That is unbelievably naive. People are rarely ever skeptical. People suffer from source bias terribly at best, and extreme ignorance at worst. Look at vaccinations. Despite people not dying from disease, they still think vaccines are dangerous because someone on the Internet said so!

Yes, and there are so many other biases at work as well..

What if all of a sudden it became known (factually) that 1 out of every 100 million cigarettes contained an explosive that, once lit, would blow your head completely off? Would there be heads flying off all over the country every day? Of course not. Everyone would just stop smoking because the risk of having your head blown off is clear and demonstrable... and a gory mess for all to see.
Well, as it turns out, the rate that people are diagnosed with lung cancer is about the same... yet, people still smoke. You are just as likely to die if there really was a bomb in every 100 millionth cigarette.

Money... people do not make rational decisions, even with their money (maybe especially)... people will go to great lengths to save $5 on a $25 item. On a $1,000 item, rarely will you see anyone make a fuss over $5. In either case, it is STILL $5. When saving money, the percentage of the whole is irrelevant.. yet, people are incorrectly influenced in that way.

 

[bilby]

That is unbelievably naive. People are rarely ever skeptical. People suffer from source bias terribly at best, and extreme ignorance at worst. Look at vaccinations. Despite people not dying from disease, they still think vaccines are dangerous because someone on the Internet said so!

Yes, and there are so many other biases at work as well..

What if all of a sudden it became known (factually) that 1 out of every 100 million cigarettes contained an explosive that, once lit, would blow your head completely off? Would there be heads flying off all over the country every day? Of course not. Everyone would just stop smoking because the risk of having your head blown off is clear and demonstrable... and a gory mess for all to see.
Well, as it turns out, the rate that people are diagnosed with lung cancer is about the same... yet, people still smoke. You are just as likely to die if there really was a bomb in every 100 millionth cigarette.

Money... people do not make rational decisions, even with their money (maybe especially)... people will go to great lengths to save $5 on a $25 item. On a $1,000 item, rarely will you see anyone make a fuss over $5. In either case, it is STILL $5. When saving money, the percentage of the whole is irrelevant.. yet, people are incorrectly influenced in that way.

1 in 100 million?

I am sure that most smokers would happily accept those odds, and continue smoking.

Your 'of course not' is, I suspect, misplaced.

 

[Malintent]

Yes, and there are so many other biases at work as well..

What if all of a sudden it became known (factually) that 1 out of every 100 million cigarettes contained an explosive that, once lit, would blow your head completely off? Would there be heads flying off all over the country every day? Of course not. Everyone would just stop smoking because the risk of having your head blown off is clear and demonstrable... and a gory mess for all to see.
Well, as it turns out, the rate that people are diagnosed with lung cancer is about the same... yet, people still smoke. You are just as likely to die if there really was a bomb in every 100 millionth cigarette.

Money... people do not make rational decisions, even with their money (maybe especially)... people will go to great lengths to save $5 on a $25 item. On a $1,000 item, rarely will you see anyone make a fuss over $5. In either case, it is STILL $5. When saving money, the percentage of the whole is irrelevant.. yet, people are incorrectly influenced in that way.

1 in 100 million?

I am sure that most smokers would happily accept those odds, and continue smoking.

Your 'of course not' is, I suspect, misplaced.

really? If there were three explosive deaths every day in the US, people would go about the activity that clearly and directly got those heads blown off? I highly doubt it.

 

[Underseer]

I'm old enough to remember when everyone made fun of the supermarket tabloids. Who could possibly believe that crap about bat boy or the alien abductions?

But now all the supermarket tabloids are full of right wing conspiracy theories.

That should have been a big clue for conservatives.

 

[Malintent]

I'm old enough to remember when everyone made fun of the supermarket tabloids. Who could possibly believe that crap about bat boy or the alien abductions?

But now all the supermarket tabloids are full of right wing conspiracy theories.

That should have been a big clue for conservatives.

Those same people that bought the bat-boy periodicals? why would you think that?

 

[Underseer]

I'm old enough to remember when everyone made fun of the supermarket tabloids. Who could possibly believe that crap about bat boy or the alien abductions?

But now all the supermarket tabloids are full of right wing conspiracy theories.

That should have been a big clue for conservatives.

Those same people that bought the bat-boy periodicals? why would you think that?

There was no comic book character named bat boy.

Anyway, conservative media has the same journalistic "standards" as supermarket tabloids, yet conservatives and libertarians think everything else is "fake news."

 

[bilby]

1 in 100 million?

I am sure that most smokers would happily accept those odds, and continue smoking.

Your 'of course not' is, I suspect, misplaced.

really? If there were three explosive deaths every day in the US, people would go about the activity that clearly and directly got those heads blown off? I highly doubt it.

I am going to have to assume that you have never been a smoker.

No way would not smokers quit just because three strangers a day exploded. Hell, most wouldn't quit even if a friend or close relative exploded.

 

[DrZoidberg]

really? If there were three explosive deaths every day in the US, people would go about the activity that clearly and directly got those heads blown off? I highly doubt it.

I am going to have to assume that you have never been a smoker.

No way would not smokers quit just because three strangers a day exploded. Hell, most wouldn't quit even if a friend or close relative exploded.

Isn't working for getting Muslims to quit Islam either BA.... dum... TSCH

 

[LordKiran]

1 in 100 million?

I am sure that most smokers would happily accept those odds, and continue smoking.

Your 'of course not' is, I suspect, misplaced.

really? If there were three explosive deaths every day in the US, people would go about the activity that clearly and directly got those heads blown off? I highly doubt it.

Let me remind you that there are opioid fiends whom are injecting Krok into their veins as we type.

For the uninitiated, Krokodil is a drug infamous for the way it eats away at the body when you use it. The effect can be described as analogous to the worst spider bite imaginable.

NSFW...Probably
https://www.google.com/search?q=Kro...lrjUAhWBjz4KHatSDQkQ_AUICigB&biw=1577&bih=750