Without getting into the recent US presidential election itself, one of the interesting side stories was the prevalence of "fake news" sites shared on social media. These were usually set up for the economic benefit of the fake news creators (shared ad revenue), but became a major force in the election.

Some kids came up with a cool, quick fix as a browser plugin, and they've left it open!

It may not keep the most die-hard enthusiasts from forwarding on everything that crosses their feed, but it might give recipients pause.

-jk

A lot of 'real' news is not quality product. The caliber and bandwidth of professional journalism is under stress, with a primary vector being how it is monetized.

Many advertising supported news organizations are facing a grim reality, the pennies per view or click is declining. Facebook is eroding viewer traffic, attention and revenue from 'real' news organizations. Twitter is bypassing much of the editorial/curation function that injected some sanity into the news streams.

Only a few have managed to create or maintain significant subscriber subscription income and/or paid-for (paywall) content access. It is unclear whether there is a viable future for quality mainstream news organizations, beyond flooding their content with copious ads and posting endless mostly auto-generated 'stories' with little actual value to the reader, beyond click-bait driven attention grabbing.

In a world of unverified postings mostly absent critical review or reflection, the signal to noise ratios are extreme, especially when viewed through a bias-reinforcing smartphone Facebook app.

Regarding that FiB 'fake news checking' app/service, the underlying assumption is that the fake news appears early or first on FB. Twitter seems to be a common first source, and in volume, which 'reputable' news organizations now continuously monitor and quickly repost/rewrite in order to not seem 'late'. Actual checking and vetting takes time and human energy, which they don't have. If the fake FB posting is late compared to other sources, then the fake news can become 'verified'?

The expensive Bloomberg terminal news feed tends to be fast and accurate. Slow and accurate news is difficult to sell these days. So we get fast and inaccurate, in volume

If this were Facebook, I would "like" both of your posts. There's many angles to the problem, and those kids came up with a good tool, but we also have the problems that K447 laid out, and I don't know how we fix it.

There are still reporters doing good work out there. David Farenthold and Kurt Eichenwald come to mind, but their stuff didn't get any coverage because it wasn't "exciting."

The big news this weekend was the Hamilton/Pence story, not the $25mil settlement, because one is more buzzworthy.

The state of the media does not give me much hope for the next four years. We need good reporting to keep everyone honest, and so far the media has failed on all levels.

Incremental steps, and there are still some solid outlets.

The $25mm settlement was yuge!, though. I wouldn't be surprised to see a bunch of other folks who're aggrieved with Trump come out of the woodwork. Legal discovery could be quite embarrassing for him - or so it seems...

-jk

Ars Technia weighs in on Facebook with a lead story.

It's a real problem...

-jk

I don't think it's possible to measure the actual effect that the fake news sites and articles had on the election, but it makes one wonder.

I do find it hilarious that Zuckerberg thinks the problem is hard to solve, and then a group of students solves it in a weekend. Horse/Barn Door problem unfortunately. Ah, but for a time machine.

I saw that time machine skit on SNL. Fabulous!

But, yeah... Google also seems to be reluctant to shut down the fake news/adverti$ing machine.

-jk

I thought they were specifically doing that...

There was an SNL sketch? I hadn't seen it. I was genuinely lamenting.

So far I've just seen weak lip service. There're significant ad dollars at play...

I'd love to see them embrace a reasonable solution. Facebook and Twitter, too.

I have a couple teens, and this scares me:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/most-student...inds-1479752576

Hopeful this catches on:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact...ting-fake-news/

-jk

Damn. Come on, Google. Do the right thing. I guess it's kind of difficult because they're not breaking the law, so I suppose it would need to be a terms of service update.

That WSJ article is scary, but it seems like it's part in parcel with the general difficulty of teaching kids how to deal with the onslaught of information that we didn't grow up with.

Ugh, I wonder if there's any good news going around at the moment...

I'm sure somebody, somewhere, just saved 15% on their car insurance by switching companies.

Other Good News:
EM drive looks like it works. This is huge.
Hamilton didn't win another Driver's Championship.
Discovery of a massive ice deposit on Mars.
Bigelow's BEAM is holding up well after 6 months.
There might be a breakthrough in preventing Alzheimer's.

It is far, far too early to say that. Experimental error is still by far the most likely explanation.

Also, even if it does work as claimed, the thrust it provides does not allow all the lovely things that its inventor has claimed. Even if it is useful for long range space missions (if it actually does generate thrust), it is no use for flying cars or putting things into orbit as has been claimed (the mass needed for batteries or a nuclear generator far exceed the "drive"'s lifting abilities).

That is a definite might, the study was small and a quarter of participants had to drop out.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/09September/...Alzheimers.aspx

Not that any of that stopped the tabloids from using the words: "cure", "breakthrough", "halts mental decline", "game-changing" of course

To be fair, I was surprised NASA concurred with the report. The last experiment I heard about, the thrust measurement was in the wrong axis (vertical rather than horizontal, so gravity was the most likely source of the measurement). I want to say that was a few years ago, though.

The thrust created is so low, it is useful for nothing except long range space travel. However, it is like the Ion Thruster on steroids (not in thrust provided, but in fuel consumed, or not consumed).

If either the EM or the Hall-Effect work as advertised, long range (outside the solar system) in a somewhat 'reasonable' time could be possible (for very lenient definitions of reasonable). Having to wait just shy of 35 years for Voyager 1 to even leave the Solar System kind of puts a damper on the enthusiasm of interstellar travel.

Well, if tabloids didn't go for headlines like that, they would be out of business.

Last night's (27 NOV 2016) episode of 60 Minutes had a segment on it. It seemed enthusiastic, but tempered in the report. Certainly not tabloid quality reporting.

One thing that playing KSP taught me is that fuel consumption is *everything* in long range space travel. Once you've got something in orbit, the fuel-weight-to-delta-v ratio is literally the only thing determining whether your craft can reach any location at any desired speed, up to and including relativistic speeds.

You don't need a lot of thrust to do that. In KSP, you can build a ship that can work like Star Trek, i.e., forget about orbits and such, just point at a planet and press the throttle until you're there, with only reaction control thrusters as its main engines. The trick is that you have to turn on the infinite fuel cheat to do it, so that you can burn for long periods. Just keep burning, and the velocities keep piling on until you're going as fast as you want to go. (Though you still have to burn the opposite direction for the same amount of time to stop.)

That's why, if the EM drive works, it's a big deal: It would essentially solve the fuel problem if it were true.

I don't think the EM drive works as they think it does, though. Any time scientists say "this would overturn the laws of <insert name of discipline here> as we know it", it's time to get real skeptical and start to demand overwhelming evidence.

One has to wonder where the line of fake news stops and propaganda starts.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38168281

https://youtube.com/watch?v=OauLuWXD_RI

What makes you think there is a line?

As long as everybody gets paid, it won't stop.

Send one up to the ISS, kick it out and see where it goes.

I gotta put my buck on "Not damn far".

I am beyond the post editing time window, so shall extend the thought here.

What I meant was that fake news and propaganda are not distinctly different things, more like different descriptions of similar phenomena.

In my view, advertising is often pushing right up against whatever legal/socially acceptable boundaries separate it from the fake/propaganda definitions.

Many layers and tentacles of 'less truth' and 'more harm' to be wrestled with.

Overall agreed K447, I think my own search for the lines is more for deciding on ways to counter the issue. In my mind currently, it's a different response to the paid Russian trolls spreading propaganda compared to the response needed for people in the US creating or spreading fake news, and those two responses may be different then the solution for another aspect of the issue linked below. The content looks the same, but the approaches to counter them I believe needs to be different.

Additional news stories that are showing other aspects of the problem:

Samantha Bee's team interviews a fake news creator in the US

Another way Google's platform has helped spread fake news, and Google's initial response.

The above though is focusing on the sources and how it spreads. You then also have the part of the issue dealing with why fake news is able to have the impact it has. This story looks at how susceptible students are, including a nod to the advertising point you raised.

I was seeing info that it is pretty easy to pull in $120k a year from ad revenue from Google and Facebook's ad platforms leveraging fake news. So you have the engineers still in their innocence bubbles unknowingly coding their biases and inexperience into these platforms for 6 figure salaries, and people on the outside also collecting 6 figures taking advantage of the platforms. Barrier to entry to either of these two sides is pretty low for certain demographics.

How's the journalism side doing? Let's see, you've got that necessary schooling to build up some student debt. Then you have the likelihood of entering the workforce at maybe $30k a year. Put in some hard work, maybe advance to an editor after several years, and one likely still won't break six figures. Higher barrier to entry and an industry in big trouble because no one want's to pay for anything these days. Thus driving the demand for more and more ad supported products and creating platforms for people to make 6 figures from these ad networks...

Planet Money (a fantastic podcast) did a great story where they tracked down the source of a widely-shared fake news story. They guy was actually a liberal whose initial intentions were to spread fake news and then make conservatives look foolish when the stories were revealed as fakes. I guess he didn't know that the post-fact world had started.

Fake news seems born out of monetary gains. Propaganda is about the message and pushing your agenda. The end results can be similar, but I agree with Tom that you can't counter them the same way.


The guy in that podcast was making $10-30K per MONTH. And he says that while Google eventually did block him, he was getting courted by dozens of other ad networks.