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With each news cycle, the false-information system grows more efficient.
Even on an internet bursting at the seams with conspiracy theories and hyperpartisanship, Saturday marked a new chapter in our post-truth, “choose your own reality” crisis story.
It began early Saturday morning, when news broke that the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein had apparently hanged himself in a Manhattan jail. Mr. Epstein’s death, coming just one day after court documents from one of his alleged victims were unsealed, sparked immediate suspicion from journalists, politicians and the usual online fringes.
Within minutes, Trump appointees, Fox Business hosts and Twitter pundits revived a decades old conspiracy theory, linking the Clinton family to supposedly suspicious deaths. #ClintonBodyCount and #ClintonCrimeFamily trended on Twitter. Around the same time, an opposite hashtag — #TrumpBodyCount — emerged, focused on President Trump’s decades-old ties to Mr. Epstein. Each hashtag was accompanied by GIFs and memes picturing Mr. Epstein with the Clintons or with Mr. Trump to serve as a viral accusation of foul play.
The dueling hashtags and their attendant toxicity are a grim testament to our deeply poisoned information ecosystem — one that’s built for speed and designed to reward the most incendiary impulses of its worst actors. It has ushered in a parallel reality unrooted in fact and helped to push conspiratorial thinking into the cultural mainstream. And with each news cycle, the system grows more efficient, entrenching its opposing camps. The poison spreads.
It's time to end "trending" on Twitter
By now you've probably read enough about the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, his death in a Manhattan jail, and the attendant conspiracy theories that consumed social networks over the weekend. President Trump led the charge, retweeting a conspiracy theory that sought to implicate former President Bill Clinton.
While there is much blame to go around, Charlie Warzel finds that Twitter bears a special responsibility for what one researcher termed "the Disinformation World Cup." Warzel writes:
At the heart of the online fiasco is Twitter, which has come to largely program the political conversation and much of the press. Twitter is magnetic during huge breaking stories; news junkies flock to it for up-to-the-second information. But early on, there's often a vast discrepancy between the attention that is directed at the platform and the available information about the developing story. That gap is filled by speculation and, via its worst users, rumormongering and conspiracy theories.
On Saturday, Twitter's trending algorithms hoovered up the worst of this detritus, curating, ranking and then placing it in the trending module on the right side of its website. Despite being a highly arbitrary and mostly "worthless metric," trending topics on Twitter are often interpreted as a vague signal of the importance of a given subject.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @10:31AM (12 children)
When everyone gets a megaphone that can be heard around the world the bullshit flies fast and far. Everyone can listen for, and repeat, things that feed their confirmation biases. It doesn't help that those who give zero scrutiny to anything that they want to be true spread it without thinking twice. And let us not forget the tweeter-in-chief practices the same level of self control as he does concern about truthfulness: zero.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @01:42PM (11 children)
Back in the day, most people were edumacated enough to ignore such misinformation. Real news journalists took their job seriously. But today we have 'journos', whatever that is. Today clicks, ad sales, and the press owner's ideology trump journalism (no pun intended).
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:40PM (10 children)
the press owner's ideology trump journalism
It has always been that way. I'm sure you are familiar with Hearst and Pulitzer... And we can go back much further.
"Conspiracy theories" aren't the problem. It is the loss of control that upsets big business and their puppet governments.
Now, as far as Epstein is concerned, please. Everybody knew how it would go down the moment he was arrested. The people involved are just too important. They are *killing people on 5th Avenue* in broad daylight, and nobody gives a shit. The pedophile chieftains of the world are breathing a big sigh of relief, and will win reelection
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @02:50PM (9 children)
It's always been the case that the news may be slanted according to the whims of the owner.
But today it has gone to new insane levels. Outright misinformation. Facts that aren't. Conspiracy theories. Pizzagate. The Deep State.
It's not qualitatively the same.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:00PM
Nah. Think stories like dark Cuban custom agents searching the person of white American women before the Spanish American war or the incubator story before the first Iraq American war.
In the past, the media could lie as they wished. With alternate and direct from the source flows of information accessible to the normal person, the media have lost that monopoly.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday August 14 2019, @03:49PM (6 children)
Outright misinformation.
Yes, just like the old days, only now it is more overt.
The whole story is about vilifying and shutting down unlicensed user input on mass media, and reverting control back to the *three networks* approved by the FCC with a permit to broadcast.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:23PM (5 children)
Can the three approved networks be used in the same way as the three sea shells?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @05:33PM (3 children)
Haha suuuuure DannyB, pretend like you DO know how to use the three sea shells. We see that missing sock when you come back from the bathroom?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday August 14 2019, @06:02PM (2 children)
Unlike three she sells, sox can conveniently capture other bodily emissions.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @07:55PM (1 child)
Did Jeffrey Epstein have painting of Bill Clinton wearing a blue DRESS and red heels and lounging in the Oval Office inside his Manhattan mansion? Visitor reveals bizarre image inside pedophile's $56m lair
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7353967/Did-Jeffrey-Epstein-portrait-Bill-Clinton-blue-dress-red-heels-NYC-mansion.html [dailymail.co.uk]
the pic: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/08/14/15/17274920-7353967-image-a-64_1565793528041.jpg [dailymail.co.uk]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 14 2019, @08:28PM
Did the dress have a stain?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday August 15 2019, @05:14PM
Along the shoreline? Sure...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by J_Darnley on Wednesday August 14 2019, @09:49PM
> facts that aren't
> conspiracy theories
> pizzagate
What's not to believe about a pedophile ring operating in upper echelons of society? This is a story that mentions one of them just killed themselves (maybe). What are you going to tell us next? That Hollywood isn't filled with sex perverts?