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Trump threatens to 'close' down social media platforms

(techcrunch.com)
707 points patd | 7 comments | 27 May 20 12:21 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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itchyjunk ◴[27 May 20 13:42 UTC] No.23323027[source]▶
Hm, is fact checking solved problem? I remember someone here had their game flagged just because it referenced SARS-CoV-2. I hear almost daily horror stories of youtube algo's screwing up content creator. As a human, I still struggle a lot to read a paper and figure out what I just read. On top of that, things like the GPT2 from OpenAI might generate very human like comment.

Is there no way to consider social media as unreliable overall and not bother fact checking anything there? All this tech is relatively new but maybe we should think in longer time scale. Wikipedia is still not used as a source in school work because that's the direction educational institution moved. If we could give a status that nothing on social media is too be taken seriously, maybe it's a better approach.

Let me end this on a muddier concept. I thought masks was a good idea from the get go but there was an opposing view that existed at some point about this even from "authoritative" sources. In that case, do we just appeal to authority? Ask some oracle what "fact" is and shun every other point of view?

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palsir ◴[27 May 20 13:46 UTC] No.23323093[source]▶
Fact checking is far from a solved problem. The can of worms that Trump opened when he started the "fake news" conversation is still very much open.
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newacct583 ◴[27 May 20 13:49 UTC] No.23323144[source]▶
Trump didn't start that "conversation". "Fake News" was a term originally intended to reflect the false "news-like" advertisements that were being purchased on social media (primarily Facebook, and primarily targetting conservative users). Trump appropriated it as a way to label unflattering news coverage from mainstream sources.
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pyronik19 ◴[27 May 20 13:57 UTC] No.23323285[source]▶
Hardly just unflattering, MSM pushed the "Russia" narrative for 3 years and there was literally nothing there. Hard to call that anything other than fake news. In fact its looking more and more like the actions from the Obama admin were likely highly corrupt and there will likely people going to jail. Just recently the media has been reporting that Trump called the virus a "hoax", which was a complete lie.
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mytherin ◴[27 May 20 14:11 UTC] No.23323527[source]▶
I'm curious what you mean by "literally nothing there", considering dozens of people have been charged and found guilty/jailed with crimes relating to the investigation, many of which were part of the Trump administration or working closely together with them [1]. Paul Manafort, the chairman of Donald Trumps' 2016 campaign is currently serving a 7.5 year prison sentence relating to this investigation.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2018/dec/...

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llcoolv ◴[27 May 20 14:36 UTC] No.23323953[source]▶
> Paul Manafort, the chairman of Donald Trumps' 2016 campaign is currently serving a 7.5 year prison sentence relating to this investigation.

"He was convicted on five counts of tax fraud, one of the four counts of failing to disclose his foreign bank accounts, and two counts of bank fraud."

So, he was convicted of tax fraud and bureaucratic discrepencies. While factually related to the investigation, none of these charges has nothing to do with what the investigation was about.

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mytherin ◴[27 May 20 15:12 UTC] No.23324547[source]▶
Interesting, didn't know about that. Thanks for the info.

Then perhaps you can give me some more clarification:

* What about the Russian troll farms running fake pro-Trump social media accounts?

* What about the hacking of Clinton's email server and strategic release of those emails right before the election (even though the e-mails ended up containing nothing incriminating)?

* What about the many people lying/obstructing justice that were investigated? Why were so many people caught lying if there was nothing to hide?

Honestly curious, I'm not from the US so I don't have a horse in the race and I don't know that much about the investigation, but it seems to be quite obvious something fishy is going on there. Whether or not Trump's team was personally involved is another matter, but it seems obvious Russia meddled in the election extensively to assist Trump in winning. That alone seems quite alarming to me.

It also feels like you are defending it primarily because it happened to someone on your team, and you would not be defending it if the situation were reversed and, say, Clinton was assisted by China or something like this, even if she had no part to play in the assistance.

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1. llcoolv ◴[27 May 20 15:27 UTC] No.23324761[source]▶
* What about the Russian troll farms running fake pro-Trump social media accounts?

Until there is no hard evidence, those troll farms are conspiracy theories. Besides, these days the left press is so ridiculously biased that NYT, Guardian, etc could easily qualify as troll farms.

* What about the hacking of Clinton's email server and strategic release of those emails right before the election (even though the e-mails ended up containing nothing incriminating)?

You mean the "e-mail server" (lol) which was "hosted" at her bedroom? You do realise that here of all places there is probably the highest number of people to see how ridiculous this is.

* What about the many people lying/obstructing justice that were investigated? Why were so many people caught lying if there was nothing to hide?

There is always something to hide, the question is were they guilty of what they were accused or not. Also after this appeared:

'What is our goal?' one of the notes dated January 24 2017 - the day of the interview - read. 'Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?'

I would not give too much credibility to those investigators.

1. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8271953/Unsealed-me...

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2. mytherin ◴[27 May 20 15:52 UTC] No.23325112[source]▶
* Until there is no hard evidence, those troll farms are conspiracy theories.

As far as I see reading about the report, there were multiple indictments made against several Russian entities and nationals for online campaigns supporting Donald Trump [1]. They were (obviously) not prosecuted, but the evidence is there, otherwise there would be no indictments.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mueller-indicts-russians-...

* Besides, these days the left press is so ridiculously biased that NYT, Guardian, etc could easily qualify as troll farms.

This feels to me like you are not diversifying your news sources at all, and are only reading biased right-wing news and using that to feed your existing biases. The left wing media is not anymore biased than the right wing media, and there exists a scale of bias on both sides (there exists both ridiculously biased left wing media and ridiculously biased right wing media and everything in between).

I suggest you diversify where you get your news from to get a clearer picture of the world. Try to keep more of an open mind. Nothing good comes from blindly following one side or the other - both sides have plenty of good and plenty of criminals.

* You mean the "e-mail server" (lol) which was "hosted" at her bedroom? You do realise that here of all places there is probably the highest number of people to see how ridiculous this is.

Plenty of people have a private e-mail server at home for one reason or the other. This was blown up way out of proportion. Partisanship has heavily clouded your judgement here.

* There is always something to hide, the question is were they guilty of what they were accused or not. Also after this appeared:

* 'What is our goal?' one of the notes dated January 24 2017 - the day of the interview - read. 'Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?'

* I would not give too much credibility to those investigators.

This seems like a conspiracy theory to me. Weren't the investigators Republicans themselves?

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3. llcoolv ◴[27 May 20 16:23 UTC] No.23325624[source]▶
Thanks for taking the time to critique my psyche, reading habits and personality. It would have been somewhat better if you stuck to the topic in stead of lowly as hominem, but in some cases this is too much to expect :D :D
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4. llcoolv ◴[27 May 20 16:34 UTC] No.23325833[source]▶
On top of that if there was evidence behind all indictments, then we would not need judges, only prosecutors. It is up to the court to decide if "there is evidence" or not.
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5. ◴[27 May 20 17:10 UTC] No.23326440{3}[source]▶
6. mytherin ◴[27 May 20 19:42 UTC] No.23328867{3}[source]▶
I'm not trying to win any arguments - calling it an ad hominem makes no sense. Just trying to understand your perspective and make you realise your own biases. People too often blame the other side of their biases (in your case, "left wing is biased") without being aware of their own.
7. mytherin ◴[27 May 20 19:47 UTC] No.23328930{3}[source]▶
Incorrect. Evidence is evidence. Anyone can judge evidence for validity. You could look up the evidence right now and judge it yourself. It only carries legal implications if a court prosecutes, but that does not mean the evidence does not exist or that a crime did not occur if a court did not prosecute.