Billionaires back new media firm to combat disinformation | Hacker News Reader

Billionaires back new media firm to combat disinformation

axios.com

40 points1cvmask61 comments

> The group will be led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM.

> [...]

> Although backed and launched by progressives, McGowan says the group could make investments in entities across the political spectrum so long as their editorial standards support fact-based information.

Seems like another partisan organization trying to gaslight people into thinking they are objective.

Until they actually show their partisanship, I'm skeptical that guilty-by-default assumption should be made.

Staff members must be sensitive that perfectly proper political activity by their spouses, family or companions may nevertheless create conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflict. When such a possibility arises, the staff member should advise his or her department head and the standards editor or the deputy editorial page editor. Depending on circumstances, the staff member may have to recuse himself or herself from certain coverage or even move to a job unrelated to the activities in question. - NY Times ethics handbook, https://www.nytimes.com/editorial-standards/ethical-journali...

Search for 'appearance', and you will find many other examples where journalists have to avoid not only conflicts of interest and bias, but even the appearance of them. Because an outside observer cannot distinguish between the two.

Is there really no-one as qualified (or more) they could have chosen, that does not have such a blatant appearance of bias, if they really wanted unbiased journalism?

That was a direct quote. "The group will be led by Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist who previously ran a progressive non-profit called ACRONYM."

This is a partisan organisation until it firmly proves itself otherwise. Maybe this is a radical change where billionaires start promoting objective truth instead of their own interests, but extreme scepticism (moving well into cynicism) is the sensible default.

I recognized her name and she's pretty dyed in the wool political operative. She worked at the largest democratic super PAC.

She ran the company shadow which was the cause of the Iowa election issues in 2020 and started ACRONYM to be an incubator for startups that can help the Democratic party.[0]

There's also a really good freakanomics interview with her where she goes into her motivations pretty deeply. It describes her like this.

"Venkatesh interviews the progressive political operative Tara McGowan about her digital successes with the Obama campaign, her noisy failure with the Iowa caucus app, and why the best way for Democrats to win more elections was to copy the Republicans."

And has quotes like this that I found pretty chilling when I heard it.

"MCGOWAN: I’ve always focused on not just the other side, but what tactics have been successful in building power, whether they are something I would morally agree with or not. And I still feel that Republicans and Democrats approach building power in very different ways. I have always had a very high threshold for risk. And I really felt more — not aligned with how Republicans did it — but basically understanding that if we were ever going to really compete and win, we needed to play the game as they were playing it and not just hope that we could win playing it the way we always had."

She also talks about how she started ACRONYM, which is a dark money org, bc she took inspiration from the Koch brothers and wanted to build a progressive equivalent.

Not really who is go with for a fact checking org.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym_(organization)

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/bonus-sudhir-mcgowan/

Hoffman and Soros backed. Two ultra progressive people. There is no chance in hell this will be anything other than extremely one sided.

“Backed and launched by progressives” seems like a show of partisanship by itself - if they’re conscious of the concern, why couldn’t they find a token conservative to join in?

How can you trust that people who have been activists till now will suddenly stop being activists ?

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice.

Anyway I am all for innocent until proven guilty for normal people. Organizations, corporations and people in power? Those I assume guilt for, since it is almost certainly correct.

Of the proposition that any doubt should never be applied to you and what you say, unless and until it has been definitively disproven: I, for one, am skeptical of its falsity.

First those zillionaires need to demarcate truth zones on the globe so their private truth zones do not overlap. They'll need to create truth borders which, when crossed, cause the local truth regime to be activated, alternatively they'll need to make it impossible to cross truth zone borders. I suspect the latter will be easier to implement than the former given the large experience gained in this field during earlier attempts to implement similar truth regimes.

I would not be too surprised if we setup a ministry of truth.

I think we should get a bigger role for academia in society. Now its role is diminishing.

If you only look at the crap that is sold in supermarkets, then it's no wonder people lose faith in government and science.

But science needs to step up its game as well. Verification/falsification should be a more respected part of science. This means more work and thus more investments in science.

Academia unfortunately did this to itself. Look at all the published scientific papers that don't replicate, the political nature of modern work in the humanities, and the highly political funding and publishing models in science. The "recent" (1970s to today) attacks on the credibility of academia are mostly people saying that the emperor has no clothes.

Academia need to raise the signal-to-noise ratio, drop the open disdain for certain types of people, and spend time both cleaning house (removing contributions and contributors of no value) and adjusting their promises to align with what they can actually deliver.

Which is to say, academia needs to purge the influence of money from its ranks and offer research jobs funded by the state that just pay salaries to people who teach or do research. No "metrics", no grants from private funding sources, absolutely no patents, etc.

Because short of doing all of that the influence of money remains and so its corrupting influence will remain.

Also, and probably more important in the current context, no politically motivated 'studies' shall be promoted or financed. This includes just about all the *-studies fields.

That is a byproduct of the money.

I’d argue we have too much of a role for academia in society. Take a look at the discourse on race lately. Historically, the racial justice movement was rooted in Christianity. (MLK was a preacher after all.) Today religion has been stripped from it completely, and it’s rooted in post-modern academic theories.

One would think that the standard Republican talking points and deflections about the deaths of George floyd, Ahmed Arbery etc. towards "post modern academic theories" being the root of the problem would have run its course by now. But, apparently, it is still alive and well.

Thankfully we have video recordings of both incidents, otherwise there would be no justice like in many other crimes. Meanwhile, Republicans can keep themselves busy sharing videos of a Walmart that got looted during the riots that followed.

These post modern academic theories are really ruining the country.

> standard Republican talking points and deflections ...

> Thankfully we have video recordings of both incidents ...

Thankfully we have outside observers, not enmeshed in the ridiculous "Democrat" vs "Republican" scheme who, based on available evidence - which is really hard to get at, having to dig through all the politically motivated story making out there - can form their own conclusions.

In this case those conclusions happen to coincide with what you label standard Republican talking points: the narrative around race in the divided states of America is driven by a mishmash of Critical Theory [1] related narratives which got their start in academia and moved out into society at large when graduates from those institutions got into positions which enabled them to a) start acting upon their ideas and b) make hiring decisions based on them.

Crony progressivism is just as bad as crony capitalism, both lead to the same outcome.

[1] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical-theory/

Yes of course, the root cause of the death of George floyd and ahmed Arbery is progressive academic critical race theory. I completely get that.

This does not add anything to the discussion which was about the academic origins of the narrative around race (and other aspects of identity) in the US.

You might also want to check on how many black policemen have been killed recently without a single outcry from those who set your country on fire in 2019 and wonder whether those riots were really in support of "black lives". Did their lives not matter? Here's one of them: Kareem Atkins [1], killed in an ambush in Houston with two other police offers (who also happened to be black) injured. They tried to intervene in an alleged robbery when they were ambushed.

Why is there no outrage from "the black community" in this case? The answer, of course, is as clear as daylight and shows that the outrage has nothing to do with "black lives": when black police officers are killed by "bipoc" men there is no political leverage to be had since it does not support the desired narrative.

Take those ideological blinders off and see clearly, for your own sake and for that of the people around you.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/17/us/houston-deputies-shot-...

I like that you compared the actions of black criminals to that of white police officers in response to my comment. Your equation is striking and lays bare your ideology.

Another logic fallacy, I compare the loss of life of one black man to that of another black man and notice it is those who look at this through an ideological lens who make difference between the two, not those who look at the value of a life without checking skin colour.

Again, take of those ideological blinders, your life will be better. You will learn to see, for real.

I don't think you understand what logical fallacy means if you are going to set the same standard for tax payer funded white law enforcement officers and black criminals.

The excesses of humanities academia are kind of why we are in this national pickle. A generation or two has slowly been indoctrinated by the ideas of corrupt French intellectuals from the 50's onward. We're just seeing now it all finally catch on.

Every country had a Propaganda Ministry during WW2. The concept is neither novel nor a sure sign of dystopia. Of course the concept is most closely associated with Orwell, but it is not unheard of for even democracies to arbitrate the truth.

What dystopian doomsayers get wrong is the axiom that things must always get worse. In reality the pendulum tends to swing. WW1 was a horrible period for free speech in the US, but this was relaxed over the following decades.

But for that we need a nato firewall so we cannot compare it to chinese and russian media outlets.

Democrats keep saying billionaires shouldn’t exist. Apparently that doesn’t apply to their billionaires.

The problem is not "media firms" that provide {mis,dis}information. The problem is that there is demand for the stuff in the first place.

It is not possible to stamp out people talking about (e.g.) Flat Earth if there are folks that believe it to be true.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_flat_Earth_beliefs

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth#Modern_flat-Earther...

IMHO it's necessary to take a step or two back and ask why people get into this stuff in the first place.

> In the end that is the core malfunction of the flat-earthers, and the modern populist rejection of expertise in general. It is a horrifically simplistic view of the world that ignores (partly out of ignorance, and partly out of motivated reasoning) to [sic] real complexities of our civilisation. It is ultimately lazy, childish, and self-indulgent, resulting in a profound level of ignorance drowning in motivated reasoning.

One experts view on why people get into it, from your first link.

I think stopping this is never the intent. It can't be realistic. But giving the majority of people "on the fence" of Earth curvature etc. different point of view, or at least showing where exactly they are being misled, seems achievable.

As I understand it, modern flat earth stuff borders on outright religious belief (with a dose of antisemitism and conspiracy theories - a lot of qanon is just flat earth rebranded), so convincing someone like that with physics is like trying to convince a religious person that god doesn’t exist because we flew to space and didn’t see him.

I think what definitely works is reducing exposure and minimizing the number of new susceptible people who become aware of this stuff.

People will read and believe what ever trickles in to their generated news feeds.

Of course there will always be demand for confirmation bias and an alt reality, but the fact there are teams of people manufacturing dis info with an agenda, actively competing for mind share, is way more concerning.

Bad actors taking advantage of weak minds

Alternative titles: Billionaires decide they are the arbiters of morality

How about Billionaires set up 'Ministry of Truth'

Ultra progressive Billionaires set up 'Ministry of Truth'.

That’s a stretch. There are already plenty of places to find news (many/most backed by billionaires, from FB and Twitter to Murdoch’s empire).

These guys just want to stick their oars in too.

And truth.

Oh look George Soros who led (indirectly) [1] the private MH17 investigation..now i am happy, everything is fine.

Maybe the Atlantic Bridge should be part too of that "media firm"..oh wait, i smell russian hackers ;)

[1] Search for Bellingcat, and who s one of the owners/financier of it.

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/bellingcat-die-rechercheure-si...

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

From Wikipedia:

The head of the Netherlands' National Crime Squad, said they officially concluded that the missile that shot down MH17 "is from the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade from Kursk in the Russian Federation".[47]

[47] https://web.archive.org/web/20181218102201/https://www.washi...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/investigat...

Oh look the article is not there anymore..not even on archive.org ;)

Sorry, we can’t find what you are looking for. Take a deep breath. Everything’s going to be okay.

Some Founders of Bellincat are:

-Cameron Colquhoun -ex-MI5

-Nur Bakr -ex-foreign ministry-UK

-Chris Bigger -ex National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

Sounds like a lovely and trustfully bunch:

https://archive.md/GV7jr#selection-386.0-386.1

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29002441

Um, aren't they already doing this, or are Zuckerberg, Murdoch and co now not billionaires?

Or are we now getting into the post-misinformation/disinformation war where truth is redefined again for us?

Long shot, but maybe people might start realising that just blinding accepting what powerful groups tell you is disinformation is naive.

Also, "fact-based information" then "progressive causes." Nothing political in there to generate bias, not at all...

But you don’t know who is a “powerful group.” This money trickles down and funds media organizations of various sizes, activist organizations, etc.

>Or are we now getting into the post-misinformation/disinformation war where truth is redefined again for us?

When has there been a period in history where this has not been true? The difference is only who is doing it...

. . . says press release posing as "news."

I hate getting political on HN and I am no longer a partisan citizen, but the story of the democratic party trying to deploy tech for its own purposes is too interesting to ignore. Its like they watched House of Cards and took it a little too literally, trying to loosely implement the plot-line with shockingly poor execution.

Tara McGowan was a part of the organization that ran Shadow Inc, the company that made the app that fucked the vote count for the 2020 Democratic Iowa primary. BTW ,the vote count was never resolved and the DNC basically gave the state to Pete Buttigieg, who happened to be Ms McGowen's favored candidate (hmmm...).

Some highlights from the wikipedia:

> The Iowa Democratic Party paid Shadow Inc. $63,183 to develop the IowaReporterApp.

> A bug in the code of the app caused the app to fail at the time of the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses. Gerardo Niemira, the CEO of Shadow Inc., which created the app, stated that technology used by Democrats in prior elections was a "shitshow" and "tangled morass"

> Shadow came under scrutiny for its lack of maturity and the means it used to distribute the IowaReporterApp to users. Shadow required iOS device users to use Apple's behind-the-scenes beta-testing infrastructure, TestFlight, while Android users had to use third-party app TestFairy to download the app. Furthermore, a reporter from Motherboard downloaded the app to two Android devices, but it only opened on one of them. The next day, the site published an APK of the app. It also solicited the opinions of various cybersecurity experts. Dan Guido, the head of Trail of Bits, described the app as "hastily thrown together."

> Not-for-profit ProPublica commissioned a security audit of the app. It was determined to be "insecure," so an external entity could have hacked it.

> Several security and app experts have criticized the amateurish nature of the app. App-development expert, Kasra Rahjerdi, said "the app was clearly done by someone following a tutorial. It’s similar to projects I do with my mentees who are learning how to code." A team of researchers at Stanford University, including former Facebook chief security officer Alex Stamos, said that while analyzing the app, they found potentially concerning code within it, including hard-coded API keys. The app was written in React Native, authenticated through Auth0, and sent data to Google Cloud Functions.

> The Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Kirsten Gillibrand presidential campaigns all made payments to the company.

Hard-coded API keys... Probably pushed to a public Github repo too.

src: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueLink_(company)

And that's just the backstory for Ms McGowan. Some highlights from her new venture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cao3DB1apNE

They're basically unintentionally feeding the narrative of fake news and media manipulation that the GOP accuses them of.

Finally, the US is getting its own, official Pravda, to the surprise of absolutely nobody.

EDIT aaand its off the front page, as usual

There was no private media in the USSR. And out of state media, Pravda was the main political newspaper. The voice of the state.

I wonder, how did you come to the conclusion that US is getting "official Pravda"?

Formally, the Communist Party of the USSR was a private organization with no ties to the government and Pravda had been its newspaper. I see a lot of parallels with the current situation in the USA where private businesses and persons control the government and govern the people by themselves. The government newspaper was this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izvestia if you are interested.

But the Pravda was at least controlled by a Government (with some kind of laws).

Curious if this is actually intended to combat disinformation or if this is intended to help spread their opinions on information. It's been my observation that the super rich are often some of the biggest culprits in spreading disinformation (Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, etc)

Yeah my thoughts exactly, how are they going to commit to telling the truth when it goes against their economic interests?

Spoiler alert : they won't

It's kind of ironic even to ask that, i think.

The press is to make the world not to document it, that's what good historians are for.

Donald Trump super-rich??? I thought he was mostly living off dangerously, wildly overextended debt.

I've yet to hear Soros spreading conspiracy theories how Soros does everything evil that is happening to my country. All that nonsense comes from random idiots on the internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com