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FiveThirtyEight is covering the efficacy of fact-checking and other methods to combat the spread of misinformation and disinformation. Fact-checking, after the fact, is better than nothing, it turns out. There are some common factors in the times when it has been done successfully:
Political scientists Ethan Porter and Thomas J. Wood conducted an exhaustive battery of surveys on fact-checking, across more than 10,000 participants and 13 studies that covered a range of political, economic and scientific topics. They found that 60 percent of respondents gave accurate answers when presented with a correction, while just 32 percent of respondents who were not given a correction expressed accurate beliefs. That’s pretty solid proof that fact-checking can work.
But Porter and Wood have found, alongside many other fact-checking researchers, some methods of fact-checking are more effective than others. Broadly speaking, the most effective fact checks have this in common:
- They are from highly credible sources (with extra credit for those that are also surprising, like Republicans contradicting other Republicans or Democrats contradicting other Democrats).
- They offer a new frame for thinking about the issue (that is, they don’t simply dismiss a claim as “wrong” or “unsubstantiated”).
- They don’t directly challenge one’s worldview and identity.
- They happen early, before a false narrative gains traction.
It is as much about psychology as actually rebutting the disinformation because factors like partisanship and worldview have strong effects, and it is hard to reach people inside their social control media echo chambers from an accurate source they will accept.
[Though often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain, one is reminded of the adage: “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes”. --Ed.]
Previously:
(2020) Nearly Half of Twitter Accounts Pushing to Reopen America May be Bots
(2019) Russians Engaging in Ongoing 'Information Warfare,' FBI Director Says
(2019) How Fake News Spreads Like a Real Virus
(2019) More and More Countries are Mounting Disinformation Campaigns Online
(2019) At Defcon, Teaching Disinformation Campaigns Is Child's Play
(2018) Why You Stink at Fact-Checking
(2017) Americans Are “Under Siege” From Disinformation
(2015) Education Plus Ideology Exaggerates Rejection of Reality
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:18AM (27 children)
Twitter Twitter Trump. Not interesting. Boring.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:22AM (26 children)
Yeah, post some more interesting stories about that virus that used to keep us inside, before people discovered that anger about social injustice was an effective cure and started gathering in large crowds again.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:28AM (25 children)
Shhhhh... you'll tip off the SJWs before they all get infected and die.
(Score: 5, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Friday June 05 2020, @12:43AM (24 children)
If you're keen on killing Americans, why don't you just take the advice of that Senator who advocated sending in the army to murder New Yorkers?
It would be much quicker than waiting for a virus to kill the people who disagree with you.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:53AM (2 children)
CrookedHillary advocated that? I thought she preferred to kill her enemies one by one,.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @05:31PM
Oh, I know it's so very hard for Republicans to actually keep up with the times but she hasn't been a Senator for over a decade. I appreciate your willingness to accept that women could actually be Senators, though. Must be so hard for you, what with how Nancy Pelosi has had more balls than Trump could ever aspire to. So good job! Here's a cookie and now run along and play while the grownups talk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @07:09PM
You're a disingenuous prick. Clinton left the Senate twelve years ago. Stop living in the past.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html [nytimes.com]
Further discussion of Tom "kill Americans with the US military" Cotton:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/opinion/tom-cotton-op-ed-new-york-times.html [nytimes.com]
https://mobile.twitter.com/TomCottonAR/status/1267459561675468800 [twitter.com]
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/seth-meyers-ny-times-tom-cotton [vanityfair.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @01:13AM (20 children)
If it is, pray tell how you managed to make the tiny bundles of proteins and RNA understand and react to complex social interactions.
If it isn't, then aren't those protests guaranteed to kill more than all the police violence in a decade, combined?
If they aren't, then isn't the lockdown unnecessary and unreasonable?
If they aren't but it isn't, then aren't the logic circuits in your brain totally shorted out, from keeping contradictory beliefs?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Friday June 05 2020, @01:26AM (19 children)
Have 100,000 Americans died from Covid-19?
Could that possibly have been avoided?
Do American police murder black people at an alarming rate?
Has that same group been asking for the murders to stop? By doing things like kneeling at football games.
Have they been listened to?
Have they fuck.
Do you care? Of course you don't, as long as your team get to own the libs.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @01:38AM (3 children)
Probably not.
They could have broken into someone's house and got shot by the owner instead.
Cops go after anyone they feel won't cause them repercussions.
The same group? The cops? They're not going to open their mouths to talk themselves out of a job.
Depends if they haven't been deplatformed yet.
Now you're losing your syntax. Possibly because you are a foreigner trying to stoke up the flames in US politics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @01:49AM
They're all out to get you.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @02:13AM
It's obvious that you're a foreigner - how do you not know the common vernacular English used in America?
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday June 05 2020, @02:28AM
Meh.
Disingenuous, deliberately missing the point. Poor effort at trolling.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 05 2020, @01:49AM (2 children)
Yes, yes they do. That needs fixing.
While we're at it, also note that U.S. police also murder white people and latinos at alarming rates, not as bad as black people but still "up there."
In my experience, it's mostly about harassment of the poor - and that's almost enough to explain the whole thing.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Friday June 05 2020, @02:26AM (1 child)
I'm sure harassment of the poor has something to do with it, but there are plenty of places in America where driving while black is a crime.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 05 2020, @01:05PM
Absolutely, source: Dad used to live in Louisiana.
I used to live in Miami, driving while poor got me "profiled" and pulled at least three times there - we're talking about: detained for 30+ minutes with no reason or reasonable explanation, followed up with over-the top intimidation and baseless charges by the cop. Come to think of it, every time a cop has pulled bald-lies out of their ass to lay some bullshit citation or intimidation on me they were driving solo.
I suppose the race card is what we're playing this round, but don't fool yourself - blacks make up 14% of the US population, the poorest 20% (and growing as we speak) are just as disenfranchised and harassed. Most of what you are seeing as "Black and White" today will resurface as "Poor and Rich" if we ever manage to get rid of the racial discrimination. Again: my model is Miami - a city where race isn't as much of a thing (sure, it's a thing, but not like backwoods Louisiana), but scads of money vs little money most definitely is. There, racial profiling is mostly just another way to estimate wealth from a distance.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @04:58AM (9 children)
You think that Minneapolis Police Department killing an innocent person who called them to report a crime is a race issue? It is not.
You think that Minneapolis Police Department killing a suspect in custody is a race issue? It is not.
Two incidents, 3 years apart, same fucking police department, nothing changed, just lot of incompetence and impunity.
"Do American police murder black people at an alarming rate?" Loaded statement. Not all killings are incidents of Murder. And amount of killing may be acceptable to some people, while amount of murde rmay be not.
Do American police kill more White people than Black people? Yes. Are there more White criminals than Black criminals? Yes. Does playing race game with statistcs help or hurt different demographics? Yes. Are there more Black criminals than White criminals per capita? Oh boy. Must be that waycism again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @07:17PM (8 children)
You're ignoring the fact that there are ~4.5 times more white people in the US than there are blacks.
If bias against blacks didn't exist, you'd expect that 4.5 times more whites would be killed by cops than blacks.
However, that isn't the case:
Since 2015, ~4,600 people in the US have been killed by cops. Of those 4,600, ~2,450 have been white and ~1,300 have been black.
Without bias against blacks, you'd expect that with ~2,450 whites killed, there would be ~550 blacks killed. Except the actual number is more than two times greater.
How do you explain such a disparity?
You're either ignorant of the facts or being disingenuous. Have a nice day!
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
https://www.statista.com/chart/21857/people-killed-in-police-shootings-in-the-us/ [statista.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @09:05PM (7 children)
>How do you explain such a disparity?
Now control for robbery and violent crime. You make logical leap from "whites are 4.5 times the black population" therefore "there should be 4.5 more white deaths to cops". All things being equal maybe that is valid but all things are not equal including rates of violent crime, robbery, and resisting arrest. Those things will put you in more confrontational encounters with the police.
"Killed by cops" is not the statistic that matters since that includes justified actions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @09:11PM (6 children)
[Citation needed]
I provided the sources for my argument. You provided *zip*. Only innuendo not supported by data.
Ipso Facto, you may well be talking out of your ass. Good show!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @09:14PM (5 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_States#Crime_statistics [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @09:45PM (4 children)
From the article you linked:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @10:05PM (3 children)
Did not say crime was caused by race. There is a disparity that is measured differently by race that should be accounted for when trying to understand potentially violent confrontations with the police.
There is a disparity in crime rates. Just like there is a disparity with "killed by cops". In the initial analysis the assumption "If bias against blacks didn't exist, you'd expect that 4.5 times more whites would be killed by cops." That doesn't control for violent crime rates that could impact "killed by cop" rates. I would argue that could explain the disparity you see in "killed by cops" more so than racism and simplistic population analysis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @12:22AM (1 child)
I'd say it was even more complicated than that.
I'd argue that while skin color definitely plays a role, socioeconomic status plays an even bigger role.
As to the original premise, it would be really interesting to see some research on ratios of different skin color (I won't use the term "race," as that implies that there is more than one species of sentient hominid on this planet -- and there is just the one -- Homo Sapiens) are implicated in police violence, broken down by reason for police interaction (shooting up a playground, robbing a liquor store, speeding, etc.) and injury profile.
Unfortunately, at least in the US, we don't have good statistics about police violence. Although I'd argue that many people are injured/killed by police when there is no need to do so. As was the case with George Floyd and many, many others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @12:53AM
Mostly agree. I don't like the simplistic extrapolation on populations to explain complex social issues that are more adequately explained with additional factors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @02:05PM
The problem with relying on statistics is that the statistics are biased because the policing is biased. Do you have any evidence that doesn't come from statistics collected from agencies that selectively enforce the law that black people at the same socioeconomic level are more likely to be violent than whites?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:10PM (1 child)
No they don't [twitter.com] won't hold my breath for twitter fact checkers to do their job here. How many black people were shot by black people in Chicago last weekend?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @03:55AM
How many idiots does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None, because you plus and all the rest still can't get it done.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Captival on Friday June 05 2020, @12:35AM (14 children)
538, the company that said, without question, Trump had no path to 270 and literally had a 0% chance of winning the primary he won a week later, wants to tell us all about disinformation.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:41AM (6 children)
Speaking of misinformation https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/ [fivethirtyeight.com]
538 predicted Trump would get 44.9% of the popular vote and 235 electoral votes. Their overall prediction of Trump winning was 28.6%.
Yup, LiTeRalLy 0% there.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:44AM
You're trying to argue facts with a trumptard. You're waisting your time.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Friday June 05 2020, @01:08AM (4 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 05 2020, @01:36AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday June 05 2020, @01:59AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @02:48AM
You are totally correct, I skipped right over the primary qualifier. Upon further research it looks like Trump was predicted to to win just about every primary, many in the 90%+ range. The lowest I saw was in Iowa at 46%, but CA, NY, Utah, and a handful of others were all over 90%. A few others between 50-80%.
So while I messed up a portion of my response the conclusion still remains and actually calls more bullshit on the primary claim of 0%. Go me, down with Trumpers and their lying bullshit!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 05 2020, @05:30PM
How dare he address the FIRST claim made in the argument!
(Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 05 2020, @01:17AM (1 child)
Trump Is Just A Normal Polling Error Behind Clinton (538 on Nov 4, 2016) [fivethirtyeight.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @02:16PM
Said Nate Silver, 4 days before the election, hedging the disastrous bet he had gone all in on.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 05 2020, @02:54AM (3 children)
They gave a much higher percentage for Trump winning than NYT and other orgs, and Nate Silver was savaged by his peers for it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/can-you-still-trust-nate-silver/605521/ [theatlantic.com]
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nate-silver-election-forecast_n_581e1c33e4b0d9ce6fbc6f7f [huffpost.com]
If you predict someone has a 29% chance of winning, that's not giving them a 0%, it's almost 1-in-3. It's substantial, unlike a 2% or 5% prediction. And if you look at the results, 304-227 electoral votes (faithless electors notwithstanding), that's not exactly a blowout like Reagan vs. Mondale.
Now some are claiming that these high forecasts for Clinton made Democrats overconfident [slate.com], so they didn't bother to turn out to vote. That was probably true for some people. Even if that effect doesn't swing the Presidency, it could affect the downballot races. One extra Senate seat can make your Presidency a lot more comfortable.
2020 is fun, ain't it? Just 5 months to go.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @06:27AM (2 children)
What happened with Hillary was much more simple and also the reason 538 was smeared. Obama's unprecedented turnout was in large part driven by very poor folks. Many of these guys have no normal means of contact. I grew up urban poor, and my apartment complex had several (often broken..) phone booths in the middle of it that were used by many (including myself) when we needed to make a call. No incoming calls - you might be dealing drugs after all! Fun times.
So how do you accurately sample and predict based on a group you can't get into contact with? You fudge it. More specifically, you go through the efforts of getting a small sample of these people and then you scale those responses upwards to whatever you expect the group turnout to be. It's a lot more of an art than it is a science. And that is exactly why predictions for the election were so completely wrong. It's also why people were attacking Nate. He was, implicitly, expecting much lower relative turnout and/or support from various groups than other pollsters were.
---
Second thing. A 28% chance is still horribly wrong. The thing about elections is that they are, mostly, not random. What I mean here is that a 28% chance suggests that if you ran 2016 100 times that you'd expect to see Clinton win 72 times. That's extremely improbable. There are two reasons. The first is that most people know who (and if) they're going to vote well before they do. There is indeed a fairly good chunk of people who are undecided - it was 5% in 2016. And that 5% is of course far more than enough to decide an election but in practice they don't have much of an impact They tend to distribute pretty equally between the three parties: democratic, republican, stay at home.
The second reason is an even bigger one. The above applies to an at large election, but that's not how we vote of course. In a presidential election every single state votes which basically translates to tons of micro-elections which helps to further reduce variance. In 2016 the election was not close particularly close. Trump won by 77 electoral votes, even accounting for faithless electors. You have to roll back the clock 32 years to Bush-Dukakis to see a republican winning a presidential election by that large a margin. Trump won by a large enough margin to have lost Florida and still won the election.
The result here indicate that the modeling was simply wrong. The pollsters were, in my opinion intentionally, overstating expectations for 'Obama centric' demographics while also simultaneously taking 0 account of obvious and predictable sample biases on the other side of the aisle. The media was literally running 'Trump is Hitler stuff' along with numerous reports of violence and other acts of hostility and aggression towards Trump supporters. When somebody gets a phone call asking for their political views, Trump supporters were obviously going to be disproportionately likely to hang up.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 05 2020, @10:48AM
Reasonable post. But let me throw this out here: Poll results can take days or weeks to reflect the mood caused by current events. And Hillary was dealing with the Comey investigation just days before Election Day. Comey was the MVP of the Trump campaign. He threw and withdrew an October Surprise, sparking a lot of bad press for Hillary right in the final moments of the campaign. Clinton apparently blames Sanders for her loss, but Comey may be the one person on the planet most responsible for the outcome.
On the electoral vote margin, it was still just a handful of states that swung the election, with very close vote counts in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. A shift of less than 1% of votes between Clinton, Trump, and "eh, I can't be bothered" would have changed the outcome.
If you are right about modeling, maybe polling is just done for good, and forecasters need to use more cerebral Big Data methods to correctly predict the outcome. Like measuring the mood of people on social media without asking them anything, or paying to insert stuff into their feeds to see how they react to it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @07:28PM
That has a good bit of truth to it.
The vast majority of media outlets (including 538) predicted a Clinton victory.
Which proved to be inaccurate.
However, if you go back and look at *actual polling results*, almost all of them were accurate, within the margins of error of those polls. This includes the three states (WI, MI, PA) that sealed Trump's victory.
IIRC, on election day 2016, fivethirtyeight.com gave Clinton a 65%-35% (or ~2 to 1) chance to win the election.
That turned out to be incorrect.
Regardless, as I mentioned, almost all the state polls ended up matching the actual outcome *within the margin of error*. That many folks took the results of those polls and made inaccurate predictions about the overall outcome doesn't invalidate the polls themselves.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @06:19AM
So, how much do they pay in the Fake Newz bizm =)
I'll take my captival skewered by truth and roasted over a good propane grill thank ya very much.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:37AM (32 children)
When Trump makes posts suggestive of his supporters assaulting political enemies the next week we get a story of just that happening. We are watching the physical violence portion of fascism getting started where extreme violence against peaceful protesters is normalized.
Sad thing is so many here on SN are just fine with that as we've seen with the conflating of rioters and protesters. They don't care about innocence, they want violent retribution against their political opposition, and they use the flimsiest rationale to justify it.
Peaceful protesters != rioters
Peaceful protesters physically assaulted by law enforcement == Constitutional violations
https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism [britannica.com]
Extreme militaristic nationalism? CHECK
Contempt for electoral democracy? CHECK
and political and cultural liberalism? DOUBLE CHECK
A belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites? CHECK
This is very simple stuff and it is sad to see so many US citizens supporting it.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:49AM (5 children)
Oh, but they'll never admit that they do. They'll claim that it's the people on the other side that are the fascists.
Just watch the replies to your post.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @12:59AM (4 children)
Sure, the guy in the Whitehouse is simply wrong, but since he is there, what to do is not simple.
For example, there's not much simple about the commander in chief forcing a military officer to sacrifice his career to do the right thing when confronted with an order contradictory to the constitution he is there to protect.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Friday June 05 2020, @01:24AM
It depends on the person. A friend of mine sacrificed his - very successful - military career when given an illegal order [wikipedia.org]. Very, very few others did so.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @07:30PM (2 children)
Actually, it is quite simple. Get up off your fat, lazy ass and vote for someone else in November.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @08:09PM (1 child)
Howie Hawkins 2020
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @08:13PM
Whoever.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday June 05 2020, @01:18AM (19 children)
Admittedly there's a long history of that going back to at least the early middle ages [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday June 05 2020, @01:26AM (18 children)
Yep, which is why it's disingenuous to do such a thing and then claim you were "just joking". Also why any politician worthy of respect refrains from calls to violence against their political opposition. They know such calls will almost certainly be answered.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 05 2020, @01:27PM (17 children)
You mean like this [tmz.com], guys?
How about an elected member of Congress calling on her supporters [realclearpolitics.com] to harass members of Trump's cabinet?:
There is a lot of willful escalation of violence that immediately came from the Democratic Party and its Woke, and has not let up since.
The people in this sub-thread who are nodding at how bad Trump is should pause and do a little self-reflection on what their confreres have been saying and doing.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 05 2020, @02:24PM (1 child)
Ah yes, because telling THE PEOPLE CAUSING THE PROBLEM that they're not welcome is just like shooting at peaceful protestors calling for liberty and justice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @04:03AM
P666 has left the reservation and joined the imperialist murderers. I'm not sure what to make of these assholes, they are either completely clueless boomers who believe every lie the conservative media peddles or they are agent provocateurs who have been building personas in order to push "grassroots" style propaganda.
I don't know, I'm just glad the vast majority of the US has moved past the point of even considering their bullshit. At best they are affecting those who are already leaning their way, and at worst they are trying to inspire actual violence to destabilize the US.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday June 05 2020, @02:31PM (4 children)
As for the over-the top stuff like your link - did anything in my post make you think I was only talking about Trump and his cronies as politicians not worthy of respect?
However, the fact that the current situation was a pretty obvious high-probability outcome from before he was elected is the reason a whole lot of people have been protesting him so vehemently since before he came to office. This is what he does, it's what he did the entire time he was on the campaign trail, and he's only been ratcheting up the rhetoric ever since.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday June 06 2020, @11:41AM (3 children)
Yes, those links were over the top, but they were made that way by those who said or did them. I did not embellish at all. That kind of language began immediately in Trump's term. Before Trump took office, Obama was working to undermine his administration with the Russiagate investigation. All that was said and done because they didn't like Trump.
Trump warned rioters against rioting, that is, responding to actual violence, and suddenly he's the one "inciting violence." It's preposterous. It's absurd. It offends common sense.
You're insinuating that it was some plan of his to bring things to this pass. Are you blaming him for the coronavirus? Are you blaming him for the lockdowns instituted by Democratic mayors and governors in New York, California, and Michigan? Are you blaming him for the sudden, massive unemployment and economic implosion that caused? Are you blaming him for what some cops in Minneapolis did, a Democratic town in a Democratic state?
I know all this is talking to the wind, because what remains of the Democrats in America has descended into gibbering madness. They have gone five times more insane than Republicans went when Obama was president, and that's saying something.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Saturday June 06 2020, @05:27PM (2 children)
The man's been goading violence since his election rallies. It rouses his base - but damages the country.
I'm insinuating no plan - just projecting from existing trend lines. We can all see how he chooses to rouse his base, how he reacts to challenges, what interests he prioritizes. When the man at the helm consistently steers in a certain general direction, you're going to end up certain kinds of places. The particulars almost don't matter.
As for COVID and the reactions - his lack of strong leadership on the issue does impose some responsibility - but basically, once it got well and truly loose in the world we were pretty much economically screwed regardless of what happened - we need only look at the 1918 flu and earlier pandemics to see that. They're all economically devastating because people don't want to get seriously ill and maybe die, regardless of whether there's an official shutdown. The only real question becomes whether you want to shut down officially, or wait until enough people have died that you shut down unofficially. In fact, in 1918 it was mostly those places that shut down soonest and stayed shut down the longest that where in the strongest economic position afterwards, and recovered the fastest.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:31PM (1 child)
That's your interpretation. Another interpretation is that he tapped into the anger of middle class voters who have felt the American Dream slipping away from them for 40 years. He tapped into that especially acute anger of those voters in the Rust Belt. And he must have struck a chord with them because he won those states.
And we've seen exactly what his opponents in the Establishment have been doing to rouse their base. They began before Trump took office, when Obama ordered the investigation of Trump's team for Russian interference. That is literal sedition, by the way, to interfere with the lawful democratic transition of power. And they have not let up since. They arrested his personal lawyer to try to dig up dirt on him. They used entrapment on Michael Flynn to destroy him as the incoming National Security Advisor, for fuck's sake. Then they tried to impeach him over Ukraine.
What do those trend lines tell you?
The jury is still out on that. The WHO started off praising China's brutal lockdown, wherein they welded people inside their apartments such that they starved to death. Now the WHO says Sweden's approach is the model, which was no lockdown at all. Meanwhile in the US, Trump banned flights from Wuhan early on, so because they think he's a racist figures like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged everybody to go out and mingle in Chinese New Year festivities around the city.
And so far, the lockdowns in America have directly or indirectly produced widespread riots and looting, which are generating a second round of urban flight that will dwarf what happened in the 50's and 60's. After all, why would anyone continue to own a home or operate a business in a city whose mayor and city council are trying to de-fund police such that nobody will protect them? Why would you continue to pay the highest taxes in the country for that? The schools are all closed, but those employees all want to continue to get paid tens of billions of dollars every year to do nothing, and meanwhile the tax burden falls on fewer and fewer parents' shoulders.
Watch those trend lines. We are living in the middle of history of what could well be the sharpest, deepest implosion of wealth and weal for American cities that has ever occurred, worse, even than post-1929.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:58PM
Yes, he tapped into existing anger - and directed it at the powerless rather than the people that created the problem with a half century of rapidly increasing wealth inequality that has reached levels not seen since the days of the Robber Barons. An easy way to score political points at the expense of destabilizing the country.
If you can't see how incriminating this administration's behavior has been, since before the election, and all through the laughable "investigations" that he blocked at every turn, nothing I say here will change your mind, so I won't bother.
>And so far, the lockdowns in America have directly or indirectly produced widespread riots and looting,
If you think the protests are because of the lockdowns, you're a blind fool. The protests are decades overdue, and Trump's normalization of racism and authoritarianism has just poured fuel on the fire.
You also seem to be buying in to the Republican talking point that defunding the police means disbanding them - rather than the actual point of removing the funding for militarization that has turned them into authoritarian thugs over the course of the calamitous "war on drugs", and shifting that money into things that actually reduce crime by tackling poverty and mental health. Whether you have any sympathy for black people at all, I would hope you'd object to the routine (though much less rarely publicized) assault and murder of white people. Black people are on the front lines of that abuse, but the authoritarian abuse that starts with the weak inevitably spreads to everyone else. This is the first time in my lifetime that people are seriously talking about reversing a trend that's been destroying the trustworthiness of cops for many decades. Hell, you remember when their motto was "To Protect and Serve?" It wasn't especially true then, but all
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @09:14PM
Is that Trump cock tasty or what, Phoenix?
Gobble Gobble!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @09:17PM (8 children)
There's a world of difference between "You push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!" and "When the looting starts, the shooting starts."
One is encouraging people to exercise their First Amendment rights. The other is encouraging folks to shoot other people.
I understand why you can't tell how this is different, as it's hard to get enough oxygen to the brain with Trump's cock so firmly down your throat. But that doesn't make it right.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday June 06 2020, @10:12AM (7 children)
I'm still waiting for you to explain away Kathy Griffin holding Trump's bloody head as somehow not inciting violence. But it must be hard for you to get enough oxygen to the brain with Joe Biden's cock so firmly down your throat. I mean, hey, if a crass metaphor is the level you want to converse at, then surely you don't mind having it reflected back at you, amirite?
Reasonable people know that if there is general looting, and it is not stopped by law enforcement, then it rapidly escalates to arson, assault, and murder. And so it has. But, no, I get it, you are all about the feelz and not about facts or the evidence of your lying eyes.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday June 06 2020, @05:39PM (1 child)
She sort of was. But Kathy Griffin is a comedian, not the president of the most powerful country in the world, or even a two-bit politician. She has no authority except over a small cadre of fans who give it to her. Trump does. With great power comes great responsibility.
She was also not calling for violence against the downtrodden, but against one of the most powerful and best-defended people in the world. You might get a few nutters who decide to take a stab at it, but they'll almost certainly fail. Contrast that with riling up bullies to kick down at those least able to defend themselves.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 09 2020, @12:39PM
On the other hand, you have "looting leads to shooting" which is a vague, non-specific statement that can be interpreted to mean, "if you break the law, the cops will crack down."
That's versus a specific threat of violence.
The first the press hyperventilates about, the second, crickets. Funny how that works.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @08:05PM (2 children)
I don't need to explain what she says or does. If you want an explanation about that ask her. Besides, who cares what some has-been comedian has to say? I certainly don't.
The metaphor, of course, implies strong support and mindless servility. Neither applies to me WRT Biden.
I don't believe I've ever tried to minimize the impact of *anything* Biden has said or done. Nor have I written anything here that endorses him. In fact, he was never in my top three D candidates for the Presidential nomination.
I have never in my life voted for Joe Biden. And when the primary comes up in a couple weeks, I will most likely vote for Bernie Sanders. If he's not still on the ballot, I'll vote for Amy Klobuchar. If *she's* not still on the ballot, I'll vote for Elizabeth Warren.
Come November, that will be a different story. But that has more to do with who he's running against. In fact, I'd vote for a syphilitic goat before I vote for your hero.
How, exactly, do you define "general looting"?
And based on *that* definition, where is this "general looting" *currently* happening?
Do tell.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 09 2020, @01:04PM (1 child)
And yet you feel perfectly qualified to interpret what is the mind of Trump, whom you have never met.
Ah, but you're certain your metaphor applies to me. You don't know me. You don't know what I think. You suppose. You're young, jejeune, foolish, or a blinkered partisan, based on how and what you are writing, but we would need to actually know you to establish that, in fact, you are all four.
So you're ABB (Anybody But Biden), but sadly in his latest crowd of challengers that is no recommendation, but rather a further indictment of your judgement. I voted for Bernie in the last, rigged, primary against Hillary, but today he is a sad creature. Once upon a time I would have bled for Elizabeth Warren, but she chose not to run last time against Bernie and Hillary; and this time she is also different, pitiful creature, a victim of Clintonian demonic possession. Amy Klobuchar is who? If she's got your vote then you are desperate.
He is not my hero, he is my molotov cocktail. That is, he is not an avatar, but a weapon. I threw him against the Establishment that has been rigging every game against all of us for decades, and he has not yet burned nearly long enough. He must be re-elected for no other purpose but to underscore a rejection of their hegemony. After him, another like him, too.
But this line, and this sentiment of yours, has rather settled the question of who you are, which is the spiritual successor of those who crowed that Walter Mondale would wipe Ronald Reagan out.
Sigh. There's a book called a "dictionary" that can avail you.
There has been looting across the country, most often in tandem with legitimate protests against George Floyd's death and police brutality. New York, LA, Chicago, Minneapolis, etc. The legacy media has glossed over much of it, but even they reported looting of Macy's and stores along Fifth Avenue in New York. You can look up the incidents, but you won't because you only care about the feelz.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @03:39PM
Where has any of that happened since *days* before I posted the comment you just replied to?
Exactly. It's you going with the feelz, not me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2020, @05:10PM (1 child)
Whatabout?
Whatabout!
What a bout? You got knocked the fuck out!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday June 09 2020, @12:42PM
Well, you're welcome to try. No nebbish am I.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Entropy on Friday June 05 2020, @03:45AM (2 children)
The peaceful protestors here are burning buildings to the ground and violently attacking people. It's nice the news talks about peaceful protests but I think that's just a nice slogan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @05:39AM
There are more peaceful protests than riots, and some protesters are actually catching and turning in the rioters.
Sorry to piss all over your hate fest, but some people doing illegal stuff is not a valid reason for police to assault innocent people. Or did you not read the 1st amendment?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 05 2020, @05:34PM
Are you sure?
Rightwingers arrested on the way to commit arson at protests [soylentnews.org]
How many lefties have been arrested with Molotov Cocktails?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday June 05 2020, @04:29AM (2 children)
A fasces is a bundle of relatively weak sticks tied together. The bundle is much stronger than any individual stick. The original theory of facism was working together to be stronger, a very valid option for a country faced with an external problem or enemy.
This then devolved into intolerance of dissidents, and then to outright authoritarianism.
Fascism no longer means working together, it now means forced obedience to authority. The annoying thing about this changing definition is that you can correctly call almost any politician a fascist. They all call for 'the people' to work together (original fascism) and most of them would love dictatorial authority (modern fascism) even if they won't admit it.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @06:22AM (1 child)
Such generalities are trumped by actual actions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @10:08AM
The point was that fascist has lost any meaning it once had. It is now just a political insult. You can call any politician you don't like a fascist. It means about as much as calling them an asshole.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @01:01AM (20 children)
Twitter does the minimum necessary to maximize the retention of its merchan... errr, that is... its users. Which makes absolutely perfect business sense from the point of view for a for-profit organization - e.g. fact checking is hurting their bottom line, but currently they need to take it as "cost of doing business", lest they risk "merchandise spoilage". The white supremacists they booted (to Gab) represented a lot lower loss in usership than what it could happen if they kept them.
I can't expect them to act in any way less then mirroring the ethics/morals/prevalent ideology of the time: were US civilians to slip in a deep fascist mind-set, I'd be not at all surprised from them to mirror that too.
What Twitter is doing with the "get the facts" tag is the equivalent of the "disclaimer of legal liability" just with the "prevalent morals" instead of the "law".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @01:22AM (5 children)
Twitter's "usership" does not pay for the privilege, now does it?
They are the product; different entities are the paying customers.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @02:32AM (4 children)
Just from curiosity, what in the "merchandise" term was so hard to understand?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 05 2020, @03:57AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @04:37AM (2 children)
and to correctly extrapolate "merchan..." to "merchandise", not to any of; Words nearby merchant: "merchandising, merchandize, merchant, merchant bank, merchant flag, merchant guild, merchant marine, merchant navy"
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @04:40AM
Because the 'lest they risk "merchandise spoilage".' fell into the TL;DR, in the rush to point the bloody obvious 'users are the product'. I see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 06 2020, @08:41AM
In other words, woosh.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday June 05 2020, @01:51AM (4 children)
then services like Twitter would become heavily regulated and/or state controlled - not good for profits or fun to work for.
The whole thing about labeling Trump's tweet as potentially misleading is: they called him out - that's 99% of the action here, whatever they backed it up with doesn't matter, fact is: they called him out.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @02:37AM
I'm not saying "calling lies out" is bad, I'm saying "don't expect Twitter to do more than that".
In the context of TFA, don't expect Twitter to apply all the measures that make "some methods of fact-checking... more effective than others" if that would increase their costs without increasing the consumer retention.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 06 2020, @08:50AM (2 children)
Not sure why you don't think that's good for profits. And "fun" is in the eye of the beholder.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 06 2020, @12:26PM (1 child)
Not good for free-market derived profits - being a state controlled agency, taxpayer funded as it were, in the US and Europe at least, doesn't lead to lots of high salaries for the employees, and even defense contractors aren't unicorn level stellar performers on the stock markets.
Now, some people do find working as a functionary in a bureaucracy "fun," just apply for Social Security benefits and you'll meet some, but I believe most people (normal people if you will) are more in line with Franz Kafka on that point.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 06 2020, @04:49PM
There's other sorts of profits. And they tend to be bigger when the government is the party hooking you up.
Exactly. Some people also like to be nosy, bullies, or finks. Those all have a place in a fascist business which is about controlling communication.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @02:41AM (8 children)
I dunno, if I'm a social media platform, the cheapest way to indemnify myself is just to label every single post/tweet/comment as "This is just an opinion, not verified fact and may likely be factual inaccurate, blah blah blah" until the sheeple gets it. Maybe a big splash page as they login/launch the app as well.
As it stands nit picking particular users to fact check, even known serial offenders like Trump, is leaking some form of preference/prejudice into it making it political platform
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @02:49AM
You wouldn't bother to rebute someone who is listened by noone. Does this make you biased?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @03:02AM (6 children)
They don't need to give a fuck about legal indemnification.
They do need to give a fuck about the amount of users they can actively "milk" of their profile data. So they'll need to apply the cheapest way to retain the most of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday June 05 2020, @04:04AM (5 children)
But now apply it. Who owns 'Straya mate?
You know who. Winnie the poo.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @04:37AM (4 children)
Not yet, no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by Arik on Friday June 05 2020, @04:47AM (3 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @05:33AM (2 children)
Between tomorrow and never, who can say? Corona pandemic showed that globalism is not without risks, I think we'll see a period of a bit of push towards "national capability building" (not only in Australia).
Australia doesn't have appeal to Chinese other than iron ore and coking coal (and maybe the "free range/organic/luxury foods for Chinese market"); if they will find them cheaper in Africa, there's almost no rationale to throw their weight here (granted, it can happen for them to go on the irrational path).
They tried something else [dailymail.co.uk], for the time being it may or may not work well enough [inqld.com.au].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday June 05 2020, @05:41AM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday June 05 2020, @07:41AM
As source of income?
Sure. As the major source of research progress or ownership of institutions? I doubt it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @01:38AM (4 children)
That's rich.
The "mainstream" media like NBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post tell whopper lies all the time. They also don't bother fact checking simple things before running a story. The only criteria seem to be: "Will this hurt Trump?" They just make stuff up or engage in very "selective" reporting that bolsters their agenda. The writer wants to slam Trump on some topic and inserts a quote by some random nobody who agrees with his opinion. That's not bolstering your point with a fact. Anybody can do that lazy stunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @02:02AM (2 children)
Yes, other news sources that write more for a grown-up audience are necessary to understand just how bad Trump really is.
Entertainment and lobby background noise news sources don't offer a very good window into current events.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @04:16AM (1 child)
Reputable news sources largely doesn't exist in the USA. Tabloids and comedy shows are the closest they seem to get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @10:28AM
Hurray for the internet!
(Score: 2) by Pav on Friday June 05 2020, @02:14AM
Joe Rogans guests, political commentators Krystal and Sagaar (both previously MSNBC and Whitehouse Press Corp insiders) were just recently saying exactly that. They cross the left/right divide too.