posted by
janrinok
on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:17AM
from the truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth dept.
from the truth-and-nothing-but-the-truth dept.
Despite the best efforts of Mark Zuckerberg to downplay Facebook's role in the election of Donald Trump, the scrutiny of how fake news is spread on the platform has intensified.
Buzzfeed News is reporting that "more than dozens" of Facebook employees have created an unofficial task force dedicated to addressing the issue.
Buzzfeed quoted one member of that task force, who did not want to be named over fears for their job.
"[Mark Zuckerberg] knows, and those of us at the company know, that fake news ran wild on our platform during the entire campaign season," the source said.
The election shook out the way it did because there were ways around the narrative the media was pushing?
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Facebook's Fake News Crisis Deepens
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 75 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:40AM
If it appears on "social media", credibility is automatically suspect.
What we need is a browser plugin that does what this site does: http://realorsatire.com/ [realorsatire.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:04AM
> What we need is a browser plugin that does what this site does
It wouldn't make a bit of difference. The people must gullibly attracted to fake news, and there are plenty of soybeans in this group, don't care about facts. They've decided that all sources of news are equally untrustworthy which as a way to give themselves permission to believe even the most bonkers stories - as long as the story confirms their world-view. A plugin that tells them if its fake will just be ignored because whoever is programming the plugin is also untrustworthy. You see this in their denunciations of sites like snopes and politifact as being biased against their tribe. They like the post-factual world because it validates their rage orgasms.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:13AM
Except Snopes has long cajoled people not to trust them but do their own research (and in fact, people often trot out unconfirmed stories as proof when they are simply unconfirmed), and politifact is biased in approach-
Trump was the most fact-checked of all the 2016 candidates. Of the 650 fact checks PolitiFact conducted, 158 were on Trump -- good for 24 percent of the total. Hillary Clinton was fact-checked 120 times over that same period, approximately 18 percent of the total. As PolitiFact notes, the number of Trump fact checks is to be expected because "he made himself more available on television in the early part of his campaign than his Democratic or Republican rivals. Trump also participated in more debates (11 by our count) than either of the top Democratic contenders Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders."
So, yes, Trump has been fact-checked 38 more times than Clinton. And, yes, PolitiFact was the one deciding what statements to fact check.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/07/01/donald-trump-has-been-wrong-way-more-often-than-all-the-other-2016-candidates-combined/ [washingtonpost.com]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/12/27/in-2008-politifacts-2013-lie-of-the-year-that-you-could-keep-your-health-plan-under-obamacare-it-rated-true/#5c61f842316a [forbes.com]
And if you really want to discuss post-factual, there is no better place to start than with feminist claims of US campuses have rates of rape exceeding the Congo, which has been ongoing, has been debunked repeatedly, and refuses to die.
There are multitudes of different truths to be found in the media, from the misunderstood to the half-truth to outright lie. Even a fact checker can only really help with one of these instances, and the rest are in the arena of claim/counter-claim where there is certainly bias, but not the type you're speaking to.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:47AM
So, yes, Trump has been fact-checked 38 more times than Clinton. And, yes, PolitiFact was the one deciding what statements to fact check.
Oh please. Do not even pretend that Trump wasn't a flowing river of outlandish statements begging to be factchecked.
Yours is the false equivalency of journalistic objectivity at work. The two candidates did not say equal numbers of check-worthy things. What do you want them to do? Ignore crazy shit that Trump said because Clinton wasn't running the crazy train at full speed too?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:02AM
Yours is the false equivalency of journalistic objectivity at work. The two candidates did not say equal numbers of check-worthy things.
Was that simply because Trump is bat-shit insane, or that the media used kid gloves and often times failed to report wikileaks revelations about Clinton?
I mean if we are going to discuss journalistic objectivity...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:19PM
Google: "wikileaks clinton"
Result: 46 million hits.
I think it was covered a bit...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:23PM
OOh, let's get even more specific, using The Donald's favorite whipping boy the New York Times:
Google: "site:nytimes.com wikileaks clinton"
Result: 42,200 results.
The New York Times covered the story over fourty thousand times!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:55PM
Which is good and all, but can you do a comparison against some Trump keywords? How about sentiment analysis next? Nah, lets just look at keywords which to try to prove your point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:43PM
Strangely none of Trumps' lies included lying to congress, if we are talking false equivalency.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:06PM
Strangely none of Trumps' lies included lying to congress, if we are talking false equivalency.
Oh they will, don't you worry.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:24PM
Another variation of this phenomenon, when it came to political news: As anyone familiar with my posts here knows, I'm towards the raging left end of the political spectrum, and I'm fairly active on Facebook due to work for some organizations that require it. That means I encountered throughout the general election some friends of mine spinning pure nonsense that either made Clinton look good or Trump look bad, or both. The thing was, a lot of those memes and posts and articles were verifiably factually wrong about all sorts of things, and when I pointed it out the reaction was not "Oh, thank you, I'll fix my post" but rather "Shut up! You shouldn't say that, because it just helps Trump! Do you support Trump?" In other words, there are some people who stupidly share BS, but also quite a few people who share BS on purpose.
I have to assume that those towards the right-wing of the political spectrum encountered similar stuff for Trump. I saw some of it go by.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by deimtee on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:40AM
Yeah, but how bad are US politics when you actually have to ask if things like http://denverguardian.com/2016/11/05/fbi-agent-suspected-hillary-email-leaks-found-dead-apparent-murder-suicide/ [denverguardian.com] are real or satire?
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:35AM
> Yeah, but how bad are US politics when you actually have to ask
The only reason you have to ask is if you've already decided that all the fake news about the "clinton bodycount" is something you want to believe in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:55AM
And it's gone.
I swear print media will have a resurgence just because it is lest affected by the memory hole.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:40AM
(a) its still there
(b) the site is obviously a fake news site, come on already
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:11PM
Nope. 404.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!
(Score: 1) by J_Darnley on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:41PM
Thank god for archive services then [archive.is]. Preserving what's published no matter how real, fake, embarrassing, or inspirational it was.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:30AM
Ok, realorsatire might be possible to keep reliable. But if you need it you probably won't be the one using it.
Fact checkers on the other hand are mostly useless because they either start out as frauds pushing an agenda or quickly realize that if they don't push the Narrative they will be punished. But most are happy to serve. As the formal 'media' have beclowned themselves over the last couple of decades and lost credibility with most people they have tried 'rebranding' a few of their less infamous minions as 'fact checkers' with the results one would expect of such an effort.
(Score: 2) by J053 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:33PM
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:48AM
If FB employees are going rogue on company management with regards to the "fake news" issue.
Wait, who broke this story. Buzzfeed?
Um... wait a minute...
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:00AM
Fake things on the internet? We cant have that now can we.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:10AM
We can have fake things on the internet. We just don't have to support it. Most of these fake news stories are about conning partisans for clicks because the most cynical are the most gullible. And just like nobody forces you to advertise in your local newspaper, facebook isn't required to lend the con artists a hand either. Go start your own website, nobody's stopping you.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:20AM
If enough people repeat it, it gains credibility in the public perception, regardless of how baseless the speakers claims are.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:36AM
Conversely, show people video proof of their candidate's outright lies/flip-flop and they will deny it or get out of their way to justify it (or plain counter-attack).
The level of delusion during this campaign had all but a few of the foreigners I know absolutely aghast. I'm sure many Middle-East warring tribes are nowhere near as blind to their own reality.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:23AM
The graft, corruption, and two-faceness has always been there, back to the days of the founding fathers - it's how business was/is done at those levels.
What's different today is that there's enough transparency and reporting that it's starting to show through... we need to find a way to transition from the old ways to something that's more acceptable to everyone when the truth comes out, because the truth is: there are no viable candidates - they either lack the (true) character we desire, or the political power to do what we want, or basic ability to formulate position statements that will avoid chaotic disaster if implemented, or all of the above.
It would be gratifying to see a more transparent and accountable political structure emerge in my lifetime, but I doubt it will come that quickly, I only have 50 or so years left.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:40AM
No. I see what you are trying to do there and ain't buyin' it. Is it an axiom that any politician is probably a bit crooked when elected and will grow more so over time in office? Yes. But don't you even dare try the 'they all do it so let he who is without sin cast the first stone' bullshit after the whole new levels of corruption WikiLeaks revealed about the Clintons. Treason, Pay For Play / bribery on a scale yet unseen and if the Spirit Cooking and "pizza" rumors on Reddit are even 1% true we are dealing with Elemental Evil on a level that needs purging with fire.
Go read Most Damaging WikiLeaks [mostdamagingwikileaks.com] and revise and extend your remarks.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:08AM
> if the Spirit Cooking and "pizza" rumors on Reddit are even 1% true we are dealing with Elemental Evil on a level that needs purging with fire.
I forget, are you the christian freak or the libertarian freak?
I get you and jdavidb mixed up all the time. I guess its the j. And the crazy. It all blends together.
But I'm gonna guess you are the christian freak. Right?
Because only a total fundie would believe that "spirit cooking" bullshit. [snopes.com]
Like all conspiracy theorists, you are the biggest sheeple of them all, easily persuaded because you are already untethered from reality.
> Go read Most Damaging WikiLeak
Sorry, doesn't work without javascript. Not even enough to show the home page.
Can't really take them seriously if they can't get the basics down.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:23PM
We've gone from shady real-estate dealing lawyers, to the son of a former president who's clearly in bed with his home district's top money spinners, so much so as to embroil the country in a years long war, to a Chicago machine politician, now to choosing an Atlantic City casino owner who bankrupts his businesses as strategy and openly flaunts paying his taxes, because what we've learned about the shady lawyers after 20+ years in the spotlight was so unpalatable that the Casino boss looked better.
I'm not choosing sides - any side I might choose has too little political power to get anything meaningful done. 5 more decades and I'm out, it's my kids' problem then.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:14PM
> I'm not choosing sides (...) 5 more decades and I'm out, it's my kids' problem then.
Giving up when the clock is against you is wise. Who's ever accomplished anything in less than 50 years?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:02PM
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:24PM
You understand the realistic perspective and analysis of the GP? There wasn't even anything to really argue with!! Hmmm, jmo you are a special kind of special. The kind I especially don't want to be around.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:07AM
That' is because we are wired that way. Credibility by consensus, it works quite a lot, but its failures are quite spectacular.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:29AM
Credibility by evidence works even better.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:26PM
How credible is a source labeled "Anonymous Coward"?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @11:22PM
Dunno. Maybe that's why it's a good idea to do your own fact checking? Just an idea.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:55AM
Shh!
.
Very quiet!
We don't want this to get out.
. .
.
Donald has a vestigial tail. True! Twenty seven Miss Universes have seen it! And it wiggles when . . . some things we don't want to know.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:11AM
If enough people repeat it, it gains credibility in the public perception, regardless of how baseless the speakers claims are..
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:45AM
To really get credibility you have to paint your lie on the side of a bus and get everyone constantly talking about what a big lie it is. You can admit it's a lie and people will still believe it.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:49PM
£350M/week.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by el_oscuro on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:47AM
Because it's on teh Interwebs!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/11/11/facebook_zuckerberg_dead/ [theregister.co.uk]
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by goodie on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:48AM
more than dozens
At least 5 twenties or forty twelve!
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:49AM
Apparently twitter has gone nuts with the banhammer as well today. I'm hearing of accounts that haven't even posted in months being nuked. Of course I'm hearing about it over on gab.ai where they only ban you if what you post is so illegal they would be liable if they didn't. They also have explicit policies in place to prevent the entryism problem that is the usual fate of any large operation so your efforts to build a social media presence won't be subject to the whim of some random 20 something SJW with a little authority.
Looks like social media is in the process of self immolating. With just a bit of luck they can complete the process and we can get everyone moved to alt-tech platforms before the midterms at the speed they are suiciding. This election cycle just keeps on giving. #salty!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:11AM
Replying to myself to add a link to a near MSM news outlet with confirmation from Twitter that they have intentionally launched a purge.
Daily Caller: Twitter Initiates a mass purge of alt-right accounts following Trump victory [dailycaller.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by kurenai.tsubasa on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:14AM
I read all your posts in the voice of Colonel Q [wikia.com]. It has the odd effect-a legitimizin' what you're postin' about.
Well, except for the fact that you give a shit about MyTwitFace… or that anybody does. But I can tell when a man's just slingin' mud instead-a tryin' to make an actual intellectual point.
Ok, I've got blood from down south but I should stop trying to make my bad impressions even worse by trying to do them in text.
I don't see eye to eye with the alt-right, but any that haven't been b&ed are better just leaving the platform. I don't use it myself. Tried once and found it to be a confusing din of retweets and reblags and reshit. I couldn't tell what was coming from JPL or ESA vs. whoever else was reposting their shit or where the reposting got started. I mean like worse than /b/. Then they reorder time! Not even the Goblin King reorders time lightly! At least I could understand wtf was going on with /b/.
MyTwitFace abandoned any principles they might have had as common carriers and aggregators the first fucking second they decided to side with the SJWs and engage in… a top-down kind of moderation. (As opposed to the way we do things here where the only requirement of being a moderator is to be civil enough to get, what was it? 30 karma? 40 karma?)
And even then, nobody gets b&ed. You might go to -1 consistently like the flat Earth guy (not even my doing 99%… 95% maybe of the time!) but even being an idiot of that caliber doesn't get you b&ed.
Once again I must re-iterate my hatred of the SJWs. They are among the most insensitive towards the groups they pretend to care about I've ever met. They'll strip you of your trans status just for disagreeing with them. Hell, The Advocate stripped Peter Thiel of his gay status because he doesn't live the gay lifestyle! How many times have I said there's no such thing as a gay lifestyle! And here comes The Advocate proving me wrong. There IS a gay lifestyle! Holy shit! If you, in your opinion that you've arrived at through soul-searching meditation, you believe that Donald Trump is really going to make America great again (and yeah, somebody's gotta do it), then you're cured of homosexuality! Brilliant! I just need to endorse Donald Trump to be straight and cisgendered!
Ok, I should conclude this comment on account of having a few beers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:16AM
No one on the face of the earth wants to be affiliated with Peter Thiel. He's like Hitler in art school. Just because he hasn't committed any crimes against humanity yet doesn't mean he isn't already a monster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:25PM
What is "/b"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:42AM
GamergateHQ is looking for examples if you have any. [8ch.net]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @11:30PM
That is an incredibly low bar for any site you are getting your "news" from. This may explain why your maunderings so often come across as being only barely this side of sane. There is a big fat clue here. Do you see it?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @02:54AM
TrumpWon_FeministsBTFO_KeyboardJamSession2016.ogg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4BdHZfpffM [youtube.com]
Fuck all you pro-women's rights faggots. TRUMP WON. He sexually assaults women. Doesn't respect women. And had the hots for his young daughter. That's why I VOTED FOR TRUMP AND DEFEATED YOU PRO-WOMENS RIGHTS FAGGOTS. Remeber D__ter__omy 22, 28-29 in hebrew allows men to have young girls as brides even if they raped the young girl. The WORST THOUGHT UNDER FEMINISM. FUCK YOU. TRUMP WON. I HOPE HE DESTROYS YOUR FEMINIST CIVILIZATION.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:24AM
The thing that struck me about the story, and which led me to submit it, is the sheer, pure hubris of the assertion that "fake news" on Facebook cost Hillary the election. It's a primal scream from a media that is fucking pissed that there were people out there who refused to swallow their narrative. It's a colossal tantrum from an entitled infant who shrieks, "How DARE you ignore ME?!!!"
Hillary lost for a number of reasons. She is a corrupt insider and a criminal. She is intensely unlikeable. She lies the way most people breathe, and Wikileaks absolutely confirmed that, especially about really big things like the Trans-Pacific Partnership which she fully intended to revive once elected. She lost because she was the avatar of the Establishment, and Americans are sick to death of an Establishment which has been trying to destroy them for 40 years. She also lost, in part, because a lot of Americans are tired of immigrants coming in and taking their jobs, without any limit or pushback from elected officials. There are probably also people out there who voted against her because they genuinely hate women or because they hate brown people and think Trump hates brown people too.
But she did not lose because some fake news articles were circulated on Facebook. It's a totally ridiculous claim. I have been getting those kinds of things from my crazy relatives for decades as chain letters on paper or via email, and they don't make a damn bit of difference. They recruit no new adherents, and are only used for the purposes of tribal signalling.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:40AM
> But she did not lose because some fake news articles were circulated on Facebook.
Its funny how you just provided a litany of reasons for clinton losing, every single one of which was amped up from their actual levels by fake news. That's how fake news works, it reinforces what you already believe, just making it more intense.
Fake news wasn't the only factor in clinton's loss, but it definitely was a factor. Or maybe meta-factor would be more correct.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:45AM
This.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:01AM
Wrong. You could confirm those stories on any MSM site you wanted to search or directly from their own emails in WikiLeaks. Their bias was in reporting them once in the least noticeable way possible and then refusing to discuss "old news" again. The stuff on the alt media was far worse. Check Reddit comet ping pong pizzagate summary [reddit.com] if you want to see what is in the fever swamps. And the worst part is I wouldn't put money on it being false without some odds being laid to sweeten the deal. The Clintons are THAT bad.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:15AM
So by the tenets of jmorris logic the way to prove that the MSM is corrupt is by citing something he suspects of being fake news.
No wonder fake news is so popular. You can use it to prove anything you already believe. What's not to love?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:01PM
Reminds me of this:
https://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/nasa/072169sci-nasa-gwertzman.html [nytimes.com]
Have you ever heard of Luna 15?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:12AM
I mostly agree with you -- there are a lot of causes for the way the election went, and fake news is probably overemphasized. (Biased news, on the other hand, is probably higher on the list... but that's never going to be solved.)
However...
I have been getting those kinds of things from my crazy relatives for decades as chain letters on paper or via email, and they don't make a damn bit of difference. They recruit no new adherents, and are only used for the purposes of tribal signalling.
This is going overboard to claim that there's NO effect for fake news. If nothing else, it tends to reinforce "tribal" beliefs (as you put it), which makes it harder for someone to be convinced to doubt the "tribe." And it may also motivate "tribal" voters to be more likely to go out and vote if they believe the other side is positively evil or whatever (rather than just being apathetic and staying at home). It also may have an effect on an undecided voter who's already leaning toward that direction.
So, yeah, I agree that these sorts of articles are MOSTLY for people who already are likely to believe in them anyway. But they likely also do have SOME electoral effects. I mean, you call people who share this stuff "crazy," but we know for a fact that some of these fake news articles were "top stories" among the most shared in feeds on some days. Surely that must have some effect, even if it's merely reinforcing beliefs and motivating voters who already are slanted that way.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:58AM
Compare it to an ad campaign. If an ad campaign has a response rate of just 5% it would be considered incredibly successful. As facebook is first and foremost about advertising, it would be reasonable to say that months of highly viral fake news would motivate just 1% of the recipients to vote who would otherwise have been apathetic (or depressing 1% of borderline voters into not voting). That's just 1% of facebook users, not all registered voters. But Michigan is currently at a difference of just 12,000 votes, so facebook alone could have made the difference there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:58AM
While what you say sounds reasonable, like all the other rationalizations for Trump's win that have been popping up, I think it is somewhat overstated.
A large percentage of people who were eligible to vote didn't even bother. Of those who voted D, most probably would have voted D no matter what. Of those who voted R, most probably would have voted R no matter what. 60% of people polled didn't want either Trump or Clinton, yet 95% of voters voted for one of them. And in the end, last I heard the totals are within 2% of each other.
This is like a tug-of-war with 60,000,000 people on each side. One guy has a bad case of hiccups, and his side loses. The lesson to be learned here is not that hiccups are the most important issue facing the country, but rather that we picked a really stupid method of settling this dispute.
So yeah, maybe a small group of informed voters had a particular stance on a particular issue and effectively swung the election accordingly. Then again, maybe it was just hanging chads.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:54AM
This is like a tug-of-war with 60,000,000 people on each side.
That's a really good analogy: I wouldn't be at all surprised if the amount of people who get torn apart [xkcd.com] by the US' monumentally stupid decision runs into the hundreds of millions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @12:58PM
The sad part is that the overwhelming majority of those "protesting" the outcome across the country didn't go out and vote. More than two-thirds of those 30 and under can't even be bothered to vote. A lot of them, like many who post here, are just too cool to vote. You can't be the nihilistic "insightful" commentator of politics (throwing around "MSM" and "elites" and such) if you actually go and vote! It would have taken only a small number of those to take their pompous sticks out of their collective asses to have gone and cast a ballot in a half-dozen states for them to have flipped to Clinton, if they didn't want Trump to win. This was yet another razor's edge election.
When one party wins a squeaker, especially if the winner just barely takes, or even just barely loses, the popular vote, there are the tiresome cries of "we need to fix the electoral college system!" No, we need to fix the "go out and vote" system. To the 60 to 70 percent of you out there, get off your collective asses and actively participate in your government. If you can't take 30 minutes out of your day to cast a vote, then just STFU and let the grownups make the decisions for you (which is what most people want, because then they can bitch about it and claim that "I didn't vote for XXX").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:29PM
With as crappy as both MSPP candidates were, this
The sad part is that the overwhelming majority of those "protesting" the outcome across the country didn't go out and vote. More than two-thirds of those 30 and under can't even be bothered to vote. A lot of them, like many who post here, are just too cool to vote. You can't be the nihilistic "insightful" commentator of politics (throwing around "MSM" and "elites" and such) if you actually go and vote!
comes off as blaming the victim.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @12:13AM
Sorry, but if you didn't bother to cast a vote then, yes, you are the problem. Not liking either of the two major party candidates is not an excuse for sitting out the election. Even a sizeable minority casting votes for a third party candidate sends a powerful message to the two major parties: either clean up your act or be prepared to see others eat your lunch in front of you come next election!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:15PM
A large percentage of people who were eligible to vote didn't even bother.
This is true of every election, but it's fundamental to most outcomes too. A *lot* depends on voter turnout. You can convince all the people you want that your candidate is great and/or that the other candidate is evil, but unless those people actually come to the polls, it's worthless. In this election, people were surprised that Clinton lost many swing states (and some that were supposedly more "safe"), but a lot of that had to do with decreased turnout for the Dems compared to previous elections. Again, that's not meant to be the only cause or even the primary one -- but it's important to remember that elections are about how many people you can convince to SHOW UP, not just how many people agree with you. In an election where both major candidates were widely disliked even by those within their own parties, this is bound to be a significant factor.
So yeah, maybe a small group of informed voters had a particular stance on a particular issue and effectively swung the election accordingly.
I understand why we go through this, but I hate this sort of analysis a bit. It always seems to dismiss the contributions of the large majority of voters (who ARE significant, if only because not all of them are guaranteed to show up), while focusing on some small "critical" group of voters. Often this analysis seemed to be about assessing blame -- "If only candidate X had targeted Y voters more," etc. Worse yet are the narratives that like to try to blame 3rd-party voters and "spoilers."
Classic example: Florida in 2000. The margin of error was so large in the ways that votes were counted that just about anything could have swung that election. (Subsequent analyses of different vote-counting methods showed reasonable scenarios where either candidate -- Bush or Gore -- could have come up with more votes. Ironically, some of the standards Gore was arguing for would have elected Bush, and vice versa.) And even if you get beyond "hanging chads," you have the folks who wanted to blame Nader for everything as a "spoiler." I'm not a Nader fan (and don't live in Florida anyway), but this always struck me as an odd analysis. The number of registered Dems who voted for Bush was well over twice the number of all Nader voters combined (including all registered Dems, Reps, and independents). Gore could have swung the count in Florida by getting just a TINY percentage of those defecting Democrats, whereas he'd need a much larger percentage of the Nader Dems or independents. Or he could have just increased turnout very slightly among the Democratic base. And Nader was a presence in the 2000 race nationally and affected the way the major candidates behaved to some extent -- if you took him out and ran the election again, there's no guarantee that the Florida vote wouldn't have swung a different way entirely.
Bottom line is that elections are incredibly complex, and when it comes down to a few percentage points between candidates, there are generally all sorts of things that could have swung the count one way or the other. I think it often does more harm than good to focus on some tiny subset of "swing voters" and blame them or try to characterize them as the only reason for a win or loss. Often a slight uptick or loss in the turnout of the base for a party is enough to overwhelm such "swing voter" effects in a tight race, so whether Clinton or Gore or whoever "fires up" their base is critical... but it's a lot easier for parties to try to find other scapegoats among "independents" or 3rd-parties or whatever. It deflects attention from the fact that your party made a bad choice in nominating a less popular candidate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @01:26AM
A large percentage of people who were eligible to vote didn't even bother.
One thing that seems overlooked is the disenfranchisement campaign that a number of states engaged in. There were undoubtedly many people that wanted to vote, but couldn't afford to stand in line for multiple hours (due to a significant reduction in the number of polling locations in typically blue areas), or were deemed ineligible to vote for one reason or another.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:02AM
the long-awaited sequel to The Invention of Lying?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @01:41PM
that after umpteen years of listening to the patronizing and snideness on the left (and the right as well), that a sizable chunk of the country decided they've had enough? Has anyone factored that into their calculations as to why Hilary lost? That maybe a few months of questionable stores have a lesser effect than the past 8 years of the holy train-wreck that has become the progressives? I mean people would rather gamble on a reality tv star than deal with the left anymore. Is any of this getting through?
What people fail to get is that fake news is because people loath the left, not the other way around. Much fake news is very much partisan takes on The Onion, where the news may be fake, but the larger stories they speak to ring true.
But thank fucking god there's a savvy group to tell people how stupid they are for believing such stories, and how if we could only see the truth and the light like them, it would all be rainbows and buttercups right now.
With every passing moment seeing the left's reaction justifies Trump's election at every turn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:52PM
US got the president it deserves. Too bad the rest of the world has to deal with that asshole as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:17PM
At least the rest of you will get what you deserve.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:04PM
We've got tools on the left, tools in the right. Reading your bullshit gives me quite a real fright!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:19PM
Welcome to the internet where anything is possible and everything is true.
I saw a Yeti a few minutes ago. I think they're invading NYC. It'll be on the 6pm news. You saw it on the interwebs first!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:38PM
so now if propaganda doesn't come from big government/NWO controlled sources it's fake news? the "real news" is the fake news and everyone knows it. now they have whores like slavebook acting as gatekeepers and eradicators of fake news. Every slave in the book should be raising hell about their interference but being mindless zombies they are probably cheering their masters on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:20PM
The reason for this drama is that life for a lot of people living in american cities is very good. They feel empowered - the media talks about them, movies show them, and products are marketed to them, they get to meet different people who think they are great! And all they have to do is espouse liberal ideologies without spending an iota on critical thinking. In the free time they can get on Twitter and complain about how their life is just as bad if not worse than people not living in cities. And Twitter knows that these city-dwelling twenty-something SJWs are the ones who are gullible enough to buy random shit if it makes them feel different. So Twitter bans the people who make the actual cash-cows feel unwanted.
Facebook chose a more technical solution - it grouped everyone into a circle-jerk and then contained that group. So if you post liberal shit you only see liberal shit from your liberal friends and your other friends who post alt-right shit remain invisible unless you do enough 'likings' to make Facebook think they are relevant to you. And vice-versa. This is a problem for establishment because it not only makes it impossible to gauge the general public opinion, it empowers everyone equally by telling them they are not alone. And that is a problem for establishment! It is in the business of selling power, and if everyone feels empowered, then people can start to have independent thought! The horror!!!
Personally I think information should be like a river where people should be free to put all their garbage because I don't think information effects anyone or anything except humans. Freedom of speech, etc. But what do I know??
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:43PM
"The election shook out the way it did because there were ways around the narrative the media was pushing?"
No, it shook out the way it did because people are fed with politicians, etc., they way they are now. Plain and simple. Get over it and move on. No one should have been surprised, and stop buying into the "polls". I would say the majority of folks lie to those pollsters, just like me.
(Score: 2) by Techwolf on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:24PM
Every time I came across a facebook page, it only has links to news from other sites. Did facebook have reporters?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:13PM
Did facebook have reporters?
Yes they do.
Oh, wait, no what they have is advertising execs who take that "news" from elsewhere and put it under your nose as a "recommended" post in return for $$$.
So, no reporters. Only the direct equivalent of editorial staffers. Whorish ones.