Hacker News Reader

Comment by julvo | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking about this as well. it's not only the low barrier to entry, because large scale is still expensive. the problem is public visibility and scrutiny. if I spread false information in a newspaper, everyone can see it and expose the lies. on Facebook, each highly targeted ad will be seen by very few people and is therefore unlikely to be publicly exposed as misinformation.

View on HN

That said, it's not like people fact-check CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, Fox News etc (though Fox News probably gets fact-checked more than the rest). There have been many times just this year that all of the above have gotten stories wrong, or published disinformation because it fit a narrative.

This doesn't even get into the number of blog-style news orgs out there. And it's coming from all sides, and really hard sometimes to tell what is, and isn't actually truthful. I'm not sure I can expect FB/Twitter to be able to handle it on an even larger scale.

Everyone is in their bubbles and it's pretty toxic in a lot of ways. And I'm not sure I could even begin to suggest a way out...

I've been trying to convince people to take the week of Christmas off social media (5-9 days, depending on weekends) ... and no traction at all. I don't have a large follower base.

Every organization you listed has fact-checkers, even Fox News, if you can believe it. That doesn't mean they're infallible, but they will all publish retractions when they get the facts wrong. The notion that major news outlets do not fact-check is itself a disinformation campaign... I wonder who might benefit from such a narrative? ;) I'd add that facts are easy to come by! They are a super useful tool of disinformation, and presented in the right context will fit any narrative you like.

It also doesn't mean they always use their fact checkers... or that they do their jobs effectively.

I could never put my finger on what makes social advertising more scary than traditional media until I read your comment. Maybe the solution is that every ad needs to be published in a public form that people can review and comment on.

A public database for political ads sounds like a good idea to me

Reply on news.ycombinator.com