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Comment by chc | Hacker News Reader

There's a vast difference between a story that doesn't do the subject justice and a story that is completely false. Trying to put an unfairly negative spin on things is bad, for sure, but simply lying is worse. I don't think you've seen a lot of the fake news that has people concerned lately if you think they're equal.

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There's a motte & bailey argument going on here where when people talk about banning fake news, they want you to just think about the completely made up stuff, but as soon as you're not looking, they mean to apply the restrictions the stuff that they ideologically don't like.

I'm yet to see a definition of "fake news" that applies to Breitbart but doesn't apply to the New York Times without referring to ideology.

I'm also sort of curious how so many left-leaning people seem to be so excited to hand this power of labeling "fake news" and censoring it to governments or other powerful entities as we're what in is at least plausibly a large-scale swing to populist right-wing power gains in Western civilization. Maybe that will turn out not to be the case, but it's certainly a valid interpretation of the events of the last couple of years. Are you all sure this is the best time to be talking about powers to muzzle news sources? We're most likely minutes away from the Electoral College electing Trump as I write this, and while Merkel may still be in power in Germany it's not exactly like the winds are blowing her way and she's had to play some very defensive political games lately. Who's actually going to end up with the power to define "fake news"?

That may be so. I was just arguing against the false equivalence people are drawing between coverage that seems a bit biased and creating fake news out of whole cloth. It's similar to arguing against securities fraud laws because ads that show somebody getting excited for a bland hamburger are also deceptive.

My point is basically: No, some things are worse than other things.

Anyway, there may be bad actors advocating for fake news laws, but that doesn't change the fact that fake news is a harmful thing that needs to be dealt with somehow. I agree with a lot of what you say, but I'm also not in favor of throwing my hands up and saying, "Oh well, we're just screwed."

Fake news will be defined by the establishment or those with power.

I too find it strange the left is pushing this fake news narrative, so hard right as Trump is taking power.

Let's be clear: places like the BBC do _both_. Case and point:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002051.h...

discusses this article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4361563.stm

This is literally email spam. The whole point of the article is a lie designed to sell a ridiculously dumb product which absolutely does not work as described. This is arguably worse than fake news. Because it's spam!

Note: I'd appreciate a law that penalizes this kind of lying. I admit there is potential for abuse, and that we'd need a good legal standard for getting something obviously wrong as opposed to just getting something wrong. But this has a massive social cost, and I think it's not unreasonable to balance out those massive social costs.

Here's an idea: many news outlets sell access to their news. I should be able to sue them if they give me something that is not news. I also think there is an implied warranty for news sites, and so you should be able to sue even if you aren't paying. That's a legal theory that would work okay, probably.

Or better yet, if we remember back to the Libyan civil war, we have this BBC broadcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_-lzI8I0_0

With this BBC story to go with it:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/9414812.stm

Now, to summarize.

1. BBC claims there there are masses of people waving pre-Gaddafi flag in the middle of Tripoli, a red, green, and black tri-color.

2. BBC shows footage of people in India waving the Indian flag, a white, green, and gold tri-color. With a 'Live from Tripoli' caption on it. With the talking heads nodding their heads, and saying 'Yep, sure are a lot of Libyans protesting Gaddafi there.'

3. Coming soon - the debate in the House of Commons about how we need to bomb Gaddafi.

How on Earth is this not fake news? What kind of collapse of process and journalistic integrity has to take place, in order to allow that sequence of events to happen? If they let such an obviously verifiable lie slip through, how often do they air unverifiable ones?

Talking about taking pictures from India and just lying about them, this is a nice collection of reporting where people are saying they're catching pictures of Chinese injustice towards Tibetans but are actually seeing things not happening in China at all.

http://wenhousecrafts.com/2008/mar/westernmedia.htm

The insane part is, when challenged by the Chinese-run media about the lies, the western news outlets complained that, well, China doesn't let us see what's happening in Tibet, so really it's your fault.

Let that sink in: they knew accurate pictures were impossible, so they chose to lie instead. That sounds like...

fake news.

That's not bias, that's printing something false because it tells a story you like.

Or say your government claims X has WMD and that we need to go to war, now. And, the press prints it as factual news. Turns out there's wasn't any and the government just misled (could be willful or ignorance or negligence). Now, will the press be held accountable for fake news or the government or no one?

As I point out somewhere else in this thread, we'd want a standard that distinguishes between getting something obviously wrong and getting something wrong. We're all on the same page on that one.

While that is the intention, I am guessing it would lead to having legal involved in the editorial process. And, legalase-ish news to avoid prosecution traps, perhaps. Am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

I have an anonymous, unverified source, who will not cite their evidence because of national security that claims that Obama is a Reptilian who was born on Mars.

If CNN, the NYT, the Washington Post all uncritically parrot this, does that make them in on the lie, or no better then a tabloid?

Luckily, there are already legal standards for 'what a reasonable person would believe' in a given circumstance, so this part may not be a tricky legal puzzle at all.

Would a reasonable person believe that the CIA smuggles drugs into the United States, so that it can fund Contra rebels in Nicaragua?

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

Or, alternatively, half of the things on this list?

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

They would, upon being shown evidence of them. That's my point.

Depends on the evidence, people are not always rational. I remember being called crazy before the Snowden leaks, then afterwards everyone just knew it was happening all along.

People have different standards for evidence and coping mechanisms for uncomfortable truths.

Title in quotes. "makers say" "B2Up says" "in theory" Big skepticism section.

This article is pointless but it's not lying.

Sadly, this is also wrong. Many parts are outside of quotes or indirection and state false things. For instance:

"The gum works by slowly releasing compounds contained in an extract from a plant called Pueraria mirifica."

That's the whole paragraph. If you can explain how that's not the BBC lying, please, enlighten me.

That's all beside the point. The story isn't about the claims being made, the story is "chewing gum can 'enhance breasts'". They never indicate the claims could possibly be false (even in the section labeled skepticism, which for some reason you believe contains skepticism), so saying, since most of the language is in quotes or using sources, it's somehow _super real news_ is somewhat astonishing.

The gum does have those compounds. That part isn't a lie. You might be reading too much into "works by". That means it's the active ingredient, not a claim of effectiveness.

Not having a counterpoint is lazy journalism, but it's not lying to go "X claims Y". And this article does have a counterpoint. "has not been extensively studied and such products may be simply another food gimmick"

This is like stepping into bizarro-world. You're saying _there is an active ingredient_ yet denying that there was a claim that it did anything! There is no active ingredient! It's email spam! It doesn't work by any means at all. You could correctly say it contains X, Y or Z. But saying there is an active ingredient says there is an ingredient that does something! There isn't!

You are being painfully pedantic. I had originally written my comment in an elaborate and precise way, but it was roundabout and I thought "active ingredient" would be simpler to get the meaning across. Apparently not. I'll go back to the original:

The gum does what it does by releasing those compounds. "works by" means that the gum's mechanism is releasing those. This in itself is not promising any particular outcome.

I can show you a "skin rejuvenator" and then tell you that "It does nothing. It works by blinking lights at you." and I would not be contradicting myself. "works by" is only stating mechanism, not result.

Nowhere in that article does the BBC claim a result.

>trying to put an unfairly negative spin

That's very hard to define and the line between a fake story and a heavily agendaed opinion piece is blurred but it reads to me as the kind of lines the people who make the rules would use.

After all, one man's news is another man's fake news: the onion is absolutely fake but we all like it because we're in on the joke. But the Chinese have reported on the onion before[0] and Iran[1]

So my point is that this is obviously a very delicate ground but I see this being abused by the incumbent media

[0]http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/27/world/asia/north-korea-chi...

[1]http://edition.cnn.com/2012/09/28/world/iran-news-agency-dup...

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