How Big Is The Fake News Problem?

[MrBrightSi]

Don said:

A fake paper published in The Lancet claimed a causative link between the MMR vaccine and Autism. The papers got the story. It spread, despite it being bullst.

That particular piece of bullst led to a huge drop in the number of kids being immunised against measles. The percentage dropped below the level needed for "herd immunity" apparently.

That snippet courtesy of Radio 4 this evening and also here: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452

Fake news really is damaging.

That is an amazing example and would of never thought to coin in fake news. Underrated post

[loafer123]

MrBrightSi said:

That is an amazing example and would of never thought to coin in fake news. Underrated post

Why is it an underrated post? I think it is brilliant. Stop spreading fake news...

[anonymous-user]

Don said:

No, not lies. The current trick is a Clickbait headline. The headline is misleading and disingenuous at best, utter lies at worst. Enraged/Disgusted/Intrigued the user clicks on it only to find that the headline is bullst, and the story is actually quite different.
It's a commercial pressure to show as many ads as possible - even if it means "sexing up" the truth. The incompetent buffoons who write this stuff now though don't seem to have the talent of the old tabloid editors and when they "sex up" they just end up lying.

I find this irritating (at best) but despair when I see social media posts reiterating not the true story, but the "sexed up" lie that was the headline.

Social Media spreads the lie.

Then some racist tt thinks he's justified in stabbing some poor MP.

I can't connect the two directly. But the ahole who stabbed Jo Cox quoted Britain First, who spread vile and untrue messages via Facebook, their memes masquerading as things decent folk could agree with.

Do not share bullst.
Do not like bullst.
Never cut and paste bullst.

And check whether it's bullst before posting.

What the "quality" sources are doing is bad, but what the social media bullstters are doing is utterly reprehensible.

All IMO, of course, YMMV.

Yup.

[Countdown]

fttm said:

Fox news is akin to The Daily Sport . As was said in an earlier post all news reports are media driven/biased hence the UK love for Obama when in reality he did very little aside from his abysmal health care act and failure to reform gun control .Trump despite what you've read is a breath of fresh air in the land of the stupid , no PC bullst , he could be talking to a mate over coffee when he makes his speeches , and moreover he stands behind his commitments (rightly or wrongly). He might not be the Devil the BBC would have you believe . Justin fking Trudeau on the other ........................... na ,not starting on about that prick .

We're entering an alternative reality where gibbering feckwittery is the new Normal.

[Countdown]

Jonesy23 said:

Randy Winkman said:

The Bowling Green Massacre .......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Green_massac...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38857216

Someone had to be really bored to put that much effort into writing such a big article about such a tiny thing.

It was stupid but surely the only ones who noticed or cared are the ones getting upset, I doubt anyone else even listens to the people spouting this rubbish.

It's an example of how Trump and his acolytes spout "Fake News" pretty much all the time and it gets lapped up by their acolytes. Have a look at any of the factcheck websites and you'll see that Trump is the Grandmaster of "Fake news".

[4x4Tyke]

Don said:

A fake paper published in The Lancet claimed a causative link between the MMR vaccine and Autism. The papers got the story. It spread, despite it being bullst.

That particular piece of bullst led to a huge drop in the number of kids being immunised against measles. The percentage dropped below the level needed for "herd immunity" apparently.

That snippet courtesy of Radio 4 this evening and also here: http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452

Fake news really is damaging.

The issue here is the Lancet did not make such claim, they published the fraudulent paper that made that claim.

The big problem that science faces here is that most people seem to have no idea what a scientific paper really is. This thread proves that. A Paper says "this is what we did" and "this is what we found".

Papers only become scientific fact when they are reproduced, which cannot be done until published so they can be repeated. Just being published doesn't make a paper scientific fact. Scientific integrity demands the idea presented in papers are produced and presented honestly. The price for dishonesty is reputation loss, which happened here, that part of the system worked as expected.

The failure here is despite the fact the science was complete bogus actually fabricated, the mass-media presented it as scientific fact. It took time to emerge the paper was wrong, and longer still to be proven to be dishonest. It was the dishonesty that resulted in him being struck off, not being wrong. His mass-media flakes continue to present his unsubstantiated claims as scientific fact and use flakery to discredit science as a whole and the ignorant lap it up.

Edited by 4x4Tyke on Sunday 12th March 11:15

[rscott]

Man creates fake news site with extreme anti-Obama/Clinton stories and discovers there are no limits to what some Americans will believe.. .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/u...

[4x4Tyke]

Sir Tim Berners-Lee has issued what amounts to a call to action and that this is only one aspect of a bigger problem.

http://webfoundation.org/2017/03/web-turns-28-lett...

Reminds me of Eternal September

[RDMcG]

We have arrived at mass confirmation bias. The web will always confirm what you want to believe. Obama was born in Africa. Hillary Clinton ran a sex ring. There is no global warming. There is global warming. 9/11 was secretly a Bush operation. There was no moon landing. Vaccinations kill people.
People now tend to read only sources which confirm what they want to believe so we have a new tribalism of the ignorant. They also seem to develop ranged of insults and contempt for the media they do not believe.

We have lost balanced critical thinking.

[grumbledoak]

Wait, so Tim Berners-Lee supported Clinton too?

[anonymous-user]

rscott said:

Man creates fake news site with extreme anti-Obama/Clinton stories and discovers there are no limits to what some Americans will believe.. .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/u...

Good God.

I'd be not at all surprised to learn that those same gullible idiots will flatly disregard any genuine fact that is adverse to Trump.

Mentalists.

[Don]

When it comes to Trump I am not sure what's worse: the bullst he makes up or the bullst made up about him.

[Mr GrimNasty]

Greg66 said:

rscott said:

Man creates fake news site with extreme anti-Obama/Clinton stories and discovers there are no limits to what some Americans will believe.. .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/u...

Good God.

I'd be not at all surprised to learn that those same gullible idiots will flatly disregard any genuine fact that is adverse to Trump.

Mentalists.

As mental as believing that people believed and were not just playing along, just because the people that set up the fake bait say so - probably.

No need for fake stories anyway, the truth about Clinton/Obama is bad enough, the hacks showed how dirty they both are, that's why the MSM created a controversy over the hacking/Russians instead of examining the actual emails and the actual lack of integrity in their behaviour.

[dandarez]

Greg66 said:

rscott said:

Man creates fake news site with extreme anti-Obama/Clinton stories and discovers there are no limits to what some Americans will believe.. .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/u...

Good God.

I'd be not at all surprised to learn that those same gullible idiots will flatly disregard any genuine fact that is adverse to Trump.

Mentalists.

Says Bakeside, someone who relies on the Indie for 'news'!

Fake News is new is it?
Fake News is just new slang for propaganda. Been going on for donkey years. That's the intention of propaganda.

Bliar took us to war using fake news. Hermann Göring had a whale of a time using it.
It's nothing new.

Nothing changes.
Except sometimes terminology used.

The gullible are always there. They always have been. On both sides.

That's why propaganda fake news is used.

How long till 'Truth News'?


Oh yeah, Greg, which God is Good?

You omitted to say.

[Randy Winkman]

RDMcG said:

We have lost balanced critical thinking.

Exactly. Fake news gives people permission to believe anything they want to and the ammunition to disbelieve anything they don't like. I cant believe some people compare it to the bias we've always had.

[anonymous-user]

dildoez said:

I took the liberty of editing out the irrelevant rambling in your post, dildodan.

Stick to the Express. It provides all the fake news a dull witted angry pensioner like you can wish for.

[glazbagun]

RDMcG said:

We have arrived at mass confirmation bias. The web will always confirm what you want to believe. Obama was born in Africa. Hillary Clinton ran a sex ring. There is no global warming. There is global warming. 9/11 was secretly a Bush operation. There was no moon landing. Vaccinations kill people.
People now tend to read only sources which confirm what they want to believe so we have a new tribalism of the ignorant. They also seem to develop ranged of insults and contempt for the media they do not believe.

We have lost balanced critical thinking.

Hard to disagree with any of that. What's makes it worse is even with the best of intentions you now need to wade through a swamp of bullst to find a tuft of actual useful knowledge- there's just so much to read on anything. Ask google how to get a six-pack and you could spend a decade reading, what hope do you have of understanding Climate Change as a layman with a smartphone?

The internet & 24hr news has led to an explosion in demand for content which in turn has led to a million monkeys at typewriters writing any old nonsense to get some clicks. I never thought it would be this way 15 years ago, but the way things are going it'll be easier buying a book if you want to know anything about anything.

[RDMcG]

glazbagun said:

Hard to disagree with any of that. What's makes it worse is even with the best of intentions you now need to wade through a swamp of bullst to find a tuft of actual useful knowledge- there's just so much to read on anything. Ask google how to get a six-pack and you could spend a decade reading, what hope do you have of understanding Climate Change as a layman with a smartphone?

The internet & 24hr news has led to an explosion in demand for content which in turn has led to a million monkeys at typewriters writing any old nonsense to get some clicks. I never thought it would be this way 15 years ago, but the way things are going it'll be easier buying a book if you want to know anything about anything.

I try to avoid the real fringe stuff on either side bt to read some publications with which I disagree..which at least helps.

[jjlynn27]

Greg66 said:

Good God.

I'd be not at all surprised to learn that those same gullible idiots will flatly disregard any genuine fact that is adverse to Trump.

Mentalists.

https://www.ft.com/content/333fe6bc-c1ea-11e6-81c2...

I actually know one of the guys running few sites. His 'employees' there were getting over 10k euros a month. Cash. He was working as an analyst for DB but found a much more lucrative niche. In his words 'you wouldn't believe the appetite for anything Trump-related prior to elections'. He's not planning to come back to the UK.

[Mr Whippy]

RDMcG said:

glazbagun said:

Hard to disagree with any of that. What's makes it worse is even with the best of intentions you now need to wade through a swamp of bullst to find a tuft of actual useful knowledge- there's just so much to read on anything. Ask google how to get a six-pack and you could spend a decade reading, what hope do you have of understanding Climate Change as a layman with a smartphone?

The internet & 24hr news has led to an explosion in demand for content which in turn has led to a million monkeys at typewriters writing any old nonsense to get some clicks. I never thought it would be this way 15 years ago, but the way things are going it'll be easier buying a book if you want to know anything about anything.

I try to avoid the real fringe stuff on either side bt to read some publications with which I disagree..which at least helps.

News has always been biased.

Rebranding propaganda as fake news is just the latest propaganda itself, in making people accept that the powers that have classically had control over the media monolith can now be allowed to regain that power (painfully) by passing laws to only allow trusted people to have 'free speech' on the internet.


I just noted that PH had new T&Cs after logging in for the first time in quite a while.

First line was talking about not posting anything offensive to PH staff. Errrrr? What?

Next line, nothing contrarian? So I can't even play devils advocate to balance perspectives any more?




So even PH has now succumbed to being a "fake news" outlet.

Anyone who applies arbitrary bias to their material for any reason, is essentially using the prevailing allowed narrative as propaganda, which is basically what 'fake news' is. Propaganda.


The 'mainstream' internet is now a waste of time.


Chilling.