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> News management and opinion manipulation by itself is not necessary “evil”. Corporate communications and public relations departments often use certain propaganda techniques as a crisis management measure to prevent panic, additional financial and reputation damage, etc.

Ehhh.... I'll refer you to George Carlin's [edit: it's Bill Hick's] "If you're in marketing or advertising" bit.

> Fake news is the promotion and propagation of news articles via social media. These articles are promoted in such a way that they appear to be spread by other users, as opposed to being paid-for advertising. The news stories distributed are designed to influence or manipulate users’ opinions on a certain topic towards certain objectives.

Good definition. But by that method... NYTimes is fake news when it comes to GMOs and their consistent bias against it. I see journalists trying to push an ideology all the time.

We've lost trust in news institutions. Capital-F Fake news is especially egregious, but this definition of fake news, which is just about manipulating opinion, is _everywhere_.

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"If you're in marketing or advertising"

The government should apply a significant "sin tax" to advertising. Advertising imposes huge external costs on society that aren't borne by the advertiser; a sin tax would help to properly align the incentives.

And it really wouldn't hurt the advertisers very much -- if advertising became more expensive they'd do less of it, but so would their competitors, making the ads they do run much more effective.

It would hurt Google, Facebook and other billboard-selling agencies. Not necessarily a bad thing.

If there's an externality, then it isn't a sin tax. But make sure you are able to pinpoint the externality so you know how much to tax. There's nothing that irks me more than people wanting to pin taxes on anything that they may not like (even though they can't point to an external aggression).

Something like a billboard is pure externality. It exists solely to influence the behaviour of a third party not involved in the transaction.

A TV or web ad isn't pure externality -- viewers benefit by getting the content for free or reduced cost. I suspect the billboard effect dominates, though. I'm sure some smart economist could figure out a way to measure that.

> It exists solely to influence the behaviour of a third party not involved in the transaction.

And? So are speeches, and HN comments. As long as it isn't fraudulent, I don't see where the aggression/externality comes into play.

Similarly, just because someone put up a building you don't like to look at on property that wasn't yours does NOT entitle you to reparations (or the building owner to taxes for the corresponding 'externality'), because in a practical society, it is ridiculous to claim that you were harmed.

That would be a little silly, but an ugly building is nonetheless a negative externality not terribly different from existing rules.

Constantly playing loud music is a punishable negative externality on your neighbors. The same is true for bright lights. And the raison d'etre for HOAs is practically to protect property values from being affected by dirty and poorly maintained homes. All these originate on someone else's property.

Content is where I think the determination would be made -- if you painted an obscene mural on the side of your house I'm sure the courts would make you take it down, but even if your neighbor despised impressionism you would definitely get to keep it if it was Water Lilies.

The question is where on the spectrum to advertisements fall: they're not obscene, but they also not harmless. They have a measurable effect on people, maybe informative, maybe harmful.

> The question is where on the spectrum to advertisements fall: they're not obscene, but they also not harmless. They have a measurable effect on people, maybe informative, maybe harmful.

Exactly. And the only ways our society could agree an advertisement is harmful is if it 1. was fraudulent, as I said or 2. was obscene/offensive/hateful (see: fighting words category of exceptions to first amendment).

However, the OP seemed to think billboards are externalities in and of themselves just because he didn't want to be influenced by any information.

Agreed. Advertising in many cases also isn't a net gain for society. One of its goal is to manufacture demand where there is none. A famous example is the DeBeers diamond company, which created expectations for diamonds to be used as a sign of love in proposals. We could just as well get along as a society without any diamonds in jewelry whatsoever, and might even be better off for it. They didn't realize increase enjoyment in society so much as create a new negative situation (spouse upset/insecure with jewelry) that only money could fix.

There are benefits to advertising: it keeps consumers up to date on the current products on the market and can emphasize the positive traits of those products. But in practice it more often relies on psychological tricks and manipulation (look at any Budweiser commercial and tell me it isn't a subtle play to insecure masculinity) that don't necessarily benefit consumers.

Insane spikes of demand happen. Fashion did not become an industry because of Advertising. Fidget Spinners did not require advertising to be a huge hit. Manufactured demand doesn't happen nearly as much as demand bubbles up and advertising provides the lightning rod by which it's grounded.

Advertising can have a lot of really great effects on society, too. You think that conservation programs came out of nowhere? That people learned how to recycle because everyone was really interested? The entire "green" economy is hugely driven by advertising - Not as much the corporate style, but lifestyle advertising driven by conservation nonprofits (whose revenue, by the way, is almost entirely driven by advertising; Look up the rates that nonprofit fundraisers charge, and then realize that despite how insane they are, the nonprofits still find them profitable!)

Can fashion actually be separated from advertising at this point?

None the less it's pretty easy to see advertising and the subsequent consumption is a net loss to the environment.

>Advertising in many cases also isn't a net gain for society.

In many cases? Has it ever been?

I don't even consider the increase in consumption (and resulting lifestyle obsessions, environmental damage, and over-abundance of crap) a positive of advertising.

I consider movie trailers a net gain.

Not if they go too long, but a few good trailers can cue you into good films to watch.

Then there's advertising like, "This restaurant is at the next highway stop" which just gives you useful information."

There are many other examples.

Movie trailers are one of the reasons I don't go to the cinema anymore, they never seem relevant to me.

Certainly not an advertising apologist, but sometimes advertising attempts to provide information to alter consumer behavior in a way that is more optimal for the consumer and the advertisng vendor than it is pessimal for the original vendor. From a mpg(society) perspective, some urban commuter might do far better in a Prius than in, say, a Suburban. This might be the result of advertising and also a net gain for society. Also, sometimes really good things get underwritten NPR, Podcasts, etc (which might be like advertising).

>From a mpg(society) perspective, some urban commuter might do far better in a Prius than in, say, a Suburban. This might be the result of advertising and also a net gain for society.

Yes, but advertising is neutral to that. It will advertise a low-mpg smog-emitting monster just as well as a Prius.

And it will prioritise advertising cars (which make them more money) over public transit or bicycles and so on.

> look at any Budweiser commercial and tell me it isn't a subtle play to insecure masculinity

I'll happily tell you it isn't subtle.

> I see journalists trying to push an ideology all the time.

Nowadays propaganda is being pushed so hard to the public, and manipulation tactics are being so in demand, that there are even MOOCs teaching how to push propaganda tactics into journalism to blatantly manipulate the audience.

Take, for example, the edx course euphemistically called "journalism for social change"

https://www.edx.org/course/journalism-social-change-uc-berke...

This shit is a clear sign that the entire free world is being enthusiastically carted away from democracy and right into the middle of authoritarian dictatorships, and everyone in charge seems eager to either play along with this change or even use it to their advantage.

Holy shit this is nuts. This is clearly a course on how to create propaganda. The saddest part of this are the many out there who will emerge from a course like this thinking they are some sort of moral crusader doing good not realizing they are everything they claim to despise.

I think you just described graduates of journalism school. (Before you downvote, check the curriculum of your favorite J-school.)

Is there an ethical line between learning how to make a persuasive argument and manipulation/propaganda?

If you're reporting on something and you feel the need "to make a persuasive argument", you've already crossed the line between journalism and manipulation/propaganda.

A writer either report the facts and lets the audience arrive at their conclusions, or pushes his agenda in an attempt to stop the audience to arrive at their own conclusions.

I've had people get into hair spitting arguments with me over whether or not the clearly manipulative and distorted news reporting style in mainstream publications (NYTimes is a good example) ought to count as fake news. Personally I don't care for the term. I think the traditional term propaganda is on target and suitably broad that it applies to both social media manipulation (fabricated blog posts on your Facebook newsfeed) and traditional media manipulation (overwhelming biases at most news publications).

Propaganda is different to Fake News. The term itself is propaganda. If you say something is propaganda then you are saying it is like classic obvious propaganda, e.g. North Korean, Soviet or anything else 'communist'.

With the term Fake News there is a dismissal of the story without aligning it to the imagery that the word 'propaganda' brings to mind.

Consequently it is easier to use the words Fake News and not have the baggage of the more accurate 'propaganda' word.

Can you explain (or link to an explanation for) your conclusion that there exists "overwhelming biases at most news publications", or even at the NYT in particular?

I'm particularly interested in anything quasi-rigorous (i.e. not based on an individuals subjective feelings), but a well-reasoned personal perspective would be illuminating as well.

My perception is that the NYT (on the news side) is imperfect but is fundamentally oriented towards the truth.

here is the problem with the NYT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_controversies

you'll find that their bias is toward whatever is convenient for the US state department at the time. generally speaking, they can't be trusted because they're on a leash. that's not to say that any individual story is factually incorrect so much as the stories they're allowed to work on and publish are kept within a certain narrow range. they sit on stories when told to. they don't write certain stories because it'd make their masters mad. they don't pick up stories which might invalidate their formerly expressed views. they are neutered in a dozen different ways.

you'll also find that their op/eds are profoundly mediocre and "reasonable" reiterations of status quo thought that aren't particularly well contextualized or built to withstand critical responses. they never rock the boat. they never say anything perceptive. they never take a stand until long after there is a well established "safe" stand to take. and even then, it's a weak stand.

as far as "just the facts" goes, they're not even that information dense. frequently, the lack of context (not necessarily intentional) is so severe as to be very misleading.

you can do worse than the NYT by quite a bit. but it's still a rag.

if you want an example of a better media outlet, check out the intercept. it's gone downhill recently, but the difference is palpable: the intercept offers contextualized fact-checked facts that people don't want published.

I know nothing about the New York Times (i.e. I'm not a reader). But when someone tells me they are informed about world events, I ask them to name the largest armed conflict (by number of deaths) that occurred in their lifetime. Or just name the continent it occurred on.

I'm partial to Chomsky's analysis of the news media as an institution of propaganda. this video is a good summary of his position

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlyb1Bx9Ic

Chomsky talked about agenda setting.

I don't really buy that there's some massive botnet (Russian, naturally) spreading these stories. I mean we're really talking about the social media equivalent of chain emails. Someone reads something that an author knowingly or unknowingly thinks is true, they think it's true and share with their friends, and so on. This has been going on for as long as humans could share information with one another. Of course our intellectual superiors have confirmed that what's happening _now_ is actually a crisis of massive proportion for some reason or another that I can't quite put my finger on.

I think the Russia angle is more from a generation perspective - obviously it's not just Russians reading them, that defeats the point, but someone has to write it and get the ball rolling on sharing them

Absolutely, but for many those stories to gain traction in the first place, often there needs to be a marketing seed of some sort. That's where the "fake news" machinery comes in.

(Of course, some sizeable subset is a chain mail or story that spreads organically, or some fake news mill trying to make money.)

Russia invaded Crimea with unmarked soldiers, because it wasn't obvious who they were /s What's invading a forum in comparison?

You're right, there's some innocent stuff going on, but it's almost naive to believe that states wouldn't use very cheap and easily available methods to spread propaganda to various populations. I mean, it'd almost be stupid for them not to be strategic in that way.

We're talking about Putin, a guy who comes from the KGB and has sanctioned assassinations.

Not trying to defend Putin here, but Obama has sanctioned assassinations too, perhaps you can drop that tidbit next time to make a more persuasive argument.

If Obama was relevant to the discussion, sure. Drone strikes of enemy combatants is a little different than poisoning political opponents, though...

Putin is an autocrat through and through. Obama is just your average politician.

NYTimes is not fake news in that sense because there are still editorial standards the paper must adhere to. Taking the most cynical stance possible, NYT news articles are like Cylons-- they mix lies with the truth, where in this case individual truths are situated in a context than implies a larger lie.

Fake news proper are paid-for advertisements masquerading as news, with zero editorial standards. There's no way to verify whether particular statements are true or not.

That difference has consequences. For example, if you read a handful of newspapers you can glean the larger truth by understanding the national/corporate/journalistic biases of each paper. For a simple example, read both Barton Gellman and Glenn Greenwald's articles based on the Snowden leaks.

Comparing/contrasting various Facebook fake news posts is unlikely to reveal any more truth than what you started with.

The reality is the NYT and all mainstream "news" outlets are beholden to their advertisers. Notice how Mylan is always in the news getting negative press but you rarely hear about the Billions in fines/settlements paid by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline arising from product liability (the result of junk science, but that's a different topic). Merck and GSK account for 70% of ad revenues for news outlets.

Contrary to common beliefs, reporters are no longer journalists but spokespeople.

Failure to cover certain news topics and journalistic conflicts of interest are orthogonal to my point.

Even if you assume all news outlets are literally employing spokespeople for advertisers-- NYT, WaPo, Der Spiegel, etc.-- those spokespeople still have to do actual hard, daily work of producing actual news content within professional constraints. That work includes an adherence to journalistic standards of evidence (i.e., multiple sources), building and maintaining source contacts, being subject to an ombudsman, gaining notoriety through a track record, etc. They can't just spout gross inaccuracies all day or they'd be fired. Thus you can check multiple independent news articles against each other and use context clues to get some better sense of the truth. Having a weak and mostly commercial press makes that more of a burden than it ought to be, but it's possible.

Facebook-style "fake news" is literally stuff like "the word covfefe is an Antidiluvian term for 'in the end we win'". You can peruse 1,000s of such gems like that on Facebook all day, from different fake news publishers. And you would have learned absolutely nothing of substance after you are done.

If a critical mass of Americans believe mainstream news outlets are as substance-free as that, then we've got a very expense national civics lesson in store for us.

edit: typo and clarification

Well, I just posted in another thread an article about Russian propaganda which contains a big exaggeration that is trivially disproved by damn Wikipedia: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14555953

I have no idea what their sources were but they clearly trusted them a little bit too easily. I immediately went to fact-check this because it just didn't even seem possible to me to simply fabricate a historic province or move it to a "different geographic space" like that. Too many textbooks to amend, too many people who remember.

The first article I linked in that post also is fishy, though in this case at least they had their multiple sources: apparently these were a pair of elderly people and a bureaucrat, analyzing alleged hacking attempt. I don't really believe this story either.

I fail to see the relevance to my post, which is essentially:

Read news by different journalists, and judge their veracity over time.

You can't use that process with fake news. If a critical mass of people don't understand that distinction, it's bad news.

A gross inaccuracy from 2014 and shoddy reasoning in WaPo's "PowerPost" by the author of a book on progressive rock music in 2017 doesn't change that truth.

Edit: change "pundit" to "author"

I just reacted to your claim about standards of evidence, both of the examples I quoted are things I would really be ashamed to publish myself regardless of any political leanings. It seems that when there is an agenda to advance, all reason and skepticism go out the window.

But sure, Facebook fake news farms are worse.

> It seems that when there is an agenda to advance, all reason and skepticism go out the window.

Perhaps it seems that way to you, but that theory isn't fleshed out by the two pieces of evidence you provided (or any evidence I'm aware of).

I can't use your theory to explain or predict the veracity of stories on, say, the front page, op-ed page, and back page of a widely read newspaper. I can explain and predict that with a theory like Chomsky and Herman's "Manufacturing Consent" (even if I don't agree with every single case study and argument in their book).

However, I can explain and predict the veracity of Facebook fake news links by pointing out they aren't news because don't adhere to journalistic standards.

Yeah, right up until their editor shuts down their interview or tells them to rewrite.

The idea that the entire news world is a cabal set out to disinform you is narcissism wrapped in a tech narrative.

There are a plurality of actors, each with their own motivations and biases, and it's your responsibility to be aware of that and sort through them.

Parent's point is that "advertising companies being preferentially treated" and "a demonstrably false article" are not even in the same ballpark.

Assertions to the contrary lead down the path of "well, we should just ignore all news", which is suspicious in its own right (and one of the first steps in deconstructing a fact-based civil society).

Actually, they are one and the same. Paid shills doing the bidding of their customers, either way. And no, this fact does not only lead to the path you prescribe. You can't find the truth by averaging lies, half truths and omissions together. You have to actually think for yourself, be aware of your own assumptions (and always be willing to challenge them) and source information from outside of any news source.

You and I may believe the world is round, but until we get into orbit and observe it for ourselves, we are relying on something we have been told by others, and choosing, typically at a sub-conscious level, to accept that as the truth.

No, they are not one and the same. They're orders of magnitude different.

And to equate the two is to completely devalue the portion of truth that is contained in biased but fact-based journalism (as opposed to pure fabrication).

It's an information problem, and something that contains 25% information isn't the same as something that contains 0% information. It's possible to reliably extract signal out of the former, while no amount of transformations and averaging make that possible with the later.

And furthermore, as I said before, one of the primary theories on the effective use of the later is to use it to discredit the former, which is exactly what you're suggesting.

> You and I may believe the world is round, but...

Speak for yourself. I've flown to Tokyo and can calculate an approximate curvature of the Earth by the flight characteristics.

> You can't find the truth by averaging lies, half truths and omissions together.

Three things:

1. Even working from my initial cynical assumption, "using context clues" in no way implies "averaging lies". It means knowing the bounds within which certain spokespeople lie, when a conflict of interest is likely causing an omission, etc. Reporters do this kind of digging with government spokespeople every single day. Even if the insights are limited to information about internal infighting within the government, that is still of greater value than Facebook clickbait that gives a false history to a typo.

2. I'm confused-- are you constraining yourself to argue within the bounds of my thought experiment that all journalists are paid shills? Or are you implying that my thought experiment maps (more or less) perfectly onto reality? If it's the latter it is trivially disproven by the investigative journalism of people like David Barstow, Seymour Hersh, Jeremy Scahill, Jim Risen... well, Google them and you'll quickly get the refutation to "paid shills doing the bidding of their customers".

3. Your last two sentences are essentially a restatement of investigative journalism. I am a fan of investigative journalism.

The distinction is sourcing, or lack of.

We now insist researchers show their data, work, code, etc.

(Re)Apply the same standards to journalism, reporting, etc.

Unsourced? Then it's fiction, gossip, entertainment, whatever.

Problem solved.

If that were the standard, we'd never have gotten the news of NSA surveillance, Watergate, and who knows what else, as the sources were understandably shrouded in secrecy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_(journalism)#Anonymous_...

>Capital-F Fake news is especially egregious, but this definition of fake news, which is just about manipulating opinion, is _everywhere_.

This could be fixed by teaching and focusing on critical thinking. The fact that critical thinking is the least important skill taught in schools should be a hint to how important the ability to manipulate large sectors of the population is to those in a position to do so.

Teaching people to identify fake news is a fools errand. Not because people are stupid but because the heuristics and signals we teach to identify quality journalism can be easily emulated.

At some level there has to be trust, and capital-N news organizations have managed to convince people that they're undeserving of it. It's not all bad, but building a reputation takes time and discipline.

> Ehhh.... I'll refer you to George Carlin's "If you're in marketing or advertising"

Wrong comedian.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFCMhSzeGuA

this is the bit, I think.

No, he clearly meant Bill Hicks. Easy to confuse the two because they both have a segment that could apply but context indicates it isn't Carlin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvp97SMZc6M

that's the Hicks' bit. similar in tone and content.

Not really. Bill Hicks implores people in marketing and advertising to go kill themselves because they're satan's little helpers, Carlin tries to string together a very long list of oversold words to get people to recognize when they're fed bullshit.

There's a little bit of a difference :)

Big fan of both by the way. If you have the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImG1z1vHh9M

Carlin's "Last Words". Quite a few of them, actually.

Bill Hicks sucked, it's time to admit it

http://thequietus.com/articles/11439-why-i-hate-the-cult-of-...

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/bill-hicks-truly-sucked.45...

Bill Hicks, was an excellent humanist.

>By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing…kill yourself. It’s just a little thought; I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can. (Kill yourself.)

>Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really. There’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers. Okay – kill yourself. Seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good.

You're quoting the misogynist Bill Hicks? Remember when he "joked" that pop singer Debbie Gibson deserved to be raped (by the ghost of Jimmi Hendrix, no less) for the sin of singing pop songs? Har, dee, har, har.

http://thequietus.com/articles/11439-why-i-hate-the-cult-of-...

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/bill-hicks-truly-sucked.45...

And your assumptions about how advertising works are as ill informed as climate change denial. Sorry, but there's no data to support that belief.

Read Frank Trentman's Empire of Things: How humans became consumers and you'll begin to understand

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