> I’m also a prolific screenshotter. The internet is an ephemeral place, so when I see something online for a story, I make sure to capture it immediately.
Why are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.
I’ve searched for web archival services before, but never found anything outside of some expensive legal services.
It would be great if there was a service like the waybackmachine but which could be use to archive on demand, and make those archives publicly available.
The internet archive is great for this, but they also respect robots.txt and don’t guarantee that they’ll archive pages you request.
I know blockchain is a dirty word around here, but this is absolutely an application that can use something like Bitcoin to store hashes of a site on a specific date, giving you the closest thing you can get to "proof" that the site existed on that date with that specific content.
Then you don't need "secure" storage of the actual archives, you can have as many copies as possible with as many people as possible and not worry about someone tampering with the archives.
archive.org actually has a form for "archive it now", right there on https://archive.org/web/. They also address using their data in court proceedings in the FAQ. So I think they do have that use case in mind.
Of course they'd be stupid to offer any guarantees without payment. That's what their service https://archive-it.org is for. Only for organisations, unfortunately.
In regard to respecting robots.txt: I would consider any organisation running a bot and not respecting robots.txt as somewhat shady. ignoring it could even have consequences for admissibility in court.
You're totally correct. But if you just want to document something for your own future review, screenshots work fine. The thing is, journalism sees itself as being above citations. Journalists are primarily relying on their reputations as journalists, not evidence; the word of a journalist is supposed to be evidence, valid as a citation elsewhere. Journalists don't even record all of their interviews, a lot of them just get jotted down on paper and pieced together later. When they do record interviews, they don't include ways for the public to independently review those recordings to make sure that the written word corresponds 1:1 with what was spoken. You're supposed to trust them, even though we have plenty of examples of journalists who lied or just got sloppy. The profession needs a serious makeover. Historians used to be viewed this way, too. I'm forgetting the details, but there was an historian in the late 1800s who was actually criticised for meticulously citing his sources rather than relying on his reputation as an historian and letting historians of the future decide the merit of his work based on that.
Journalism is also not peer-review. It should never be viewed as such. Anonymous sources, the tendency for people to shy away from being recorded and just the speed of the news preclude some of what you are talking about.
That said, I agree that journalists should be held to account. One of the victims of the decline of print media are local news outlets who are checking each other. I've noticed a trend in my own local paper to view themselves as above reproach, the singular check on all that is evil, but not likely to correct their own mistakes. Perhaps some of what you are talking about could check that.
Yeah, I totally understand and agree with your reservations. I do think there should be an outlet for Deep Throat situations (as in Mark Felt, not Linda Lovelace). But if a journalist is claiming that something was said by a named source, there should be evidence of that in the vast majority of situations. If a journalist claims something was posted on the surface web, there should be independent archives that back the claim up.
How exactly does blockchain help here? It would allow you to enter a read-only entry that you interviewed a subject and they said XXX, but how would it verify that this is a truthful entry?
That’s Not my point. You would be able to store history and news and later being unable to rewrite it. A creditable source eg if you trust waybackmachine or some journalist or organization then you have a record that it happend... that is a step up from a screenshot. I believe there is a saying that the winner of a war writes the history and I believe we have seen many wars which tried to destroy information and history of a people. Or recently people/ companies trying to erase their internet history. A example would be simple system would be to log eg url to New York Times article you request and blockchain does the logging so perhaps it’s wrong what the journalist wrote but it’s true that they did write it.. and eg trump getting control of all all media in us would still leave a trail for historians even if us were fucked today ;)
Besides that there is nothing that prevents us from in the future to store voice/video and digital/biometric signatures and whatever to document interviews or events. For some part it will still be based on trust of a source in others it will be based on evidence. In science based on ability to reproduce methods and data.
What level of "evidence" would you accept? You reference science publishing as the gold standard, but why not require the standards of the criminal justice system? Indeed, why does science get away with a lesser standard?
Each professions has the standard it deems optimal within the trade-offs of risks, costs, etc. Those obviously differ: holding journalism to the standards of a criminal trial would essentially make it impossible.
That's especially true if you require to personally inspect all the evidence. Because if you don't trust a journalist, why trust any other person?
Say the story is "Senator used campaign funds for vacation". The reporter sees bank statements to that effect.
Are (photos of) bank statements "evidence"? Because they aren't signed. And even if they were, the photo could easily be faked. You wouldn't even have a specimen to compare signatures. In a trial, they'd get someone from the bank as a witness. But you don't accept just the journalist's assurance that any quote is accurate. So... Should the guy from the bank stop by at your place?
In fact, I can't think of any evidence you can transmit over http that wouldn't just be attacked as "fake" by those motivated to believe that. Case in point: birth certificates.
Meanwhile, there is like no evidence of respected news organisations making up facts. The whole narrative of these supposed failures of "mainstream media" is essentially fiction[0].
Journalism also doesn't work like science publishing in that it relies less on synthesis of previously reported facts. Scientists also don't offer any "evidence" for the meat of their papers, i. e. the stuff that's new. Almost by definition, citations can only cover old information.
So there would be footnotes referencing election results to support the claim that "President Trump" is an accurate representation of the guy's name and title. Plus a lot of footnotes like "as told to me by XX". That wouldn't help anybody. In fact, the source is typically named in every article using interviews, and even for anonymous sources that fact is disclosed. Those references are just embedded in the text, not referenced via footnotes.
So, is this a debate about formatting?
0: The example you're thinking of happened 18 years ago. You should come up with a more recent one, or you're liable to just proof that these events are extremely rare.
18 years ago? Are you thinking of Jayson Blair? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fa... That broke 15 years ago, not 18. Also, it's a highly relevant example, from the same news outlet as TFA. That's exactly the sort of thing we need better citations for; it would have been way harder to fake all those interviews if he had to upload recordings of them. Harder still if we expected dash-cam footage of him driving around West Virginia. He described video footage that didn't exist -- even if we can justifiably question whether a video was faked or not, releasing the actual video would certainly make it harder to fake than a written description is. Of course absolute evidence is hard, if not impossible; Bertrand Russel spent over 300 pages trying to prove that 1+1=2, and ultimately concluded that he failed. We have to accept that our knowledge is probabilistic, but that doesn't mean we can't try to improve our probabilities of being right.
Edit: I removed the mobile part of the URL.
Other edit: s/spend/spent
Journalists are noticeably sensitive whenever you are critical of them, even when the stories seem flimsy, arrogant or more emotional than rational.
Obviously some stories would hard to 'cite your sources' due to the stakes or secrecy, but there are many categories of stories where journos can put a partial or full source dump. Interview stories could attach full and unedited interview recordings for example.
Here's a list of how journalism can do better as a profession:
- Not acting defensive about criticism of journalistic practice
- Attaching your raw sources
- Adding an edit log to all published stories. 'Attaching the git history' would be fairly interesting to see sometimes!
- Disclosing advertiser / sponsorship links and the political / religious opinions of writers as a 'writer profile'. Maybe a public journo friend list too so we could identify if certain cliques tend to have certain opinions. Also add their CV if possible to see what publications journos have written for.
- Attaching to stories everyone involved in it, such as other journalists, editors, managers, politicians, executives, external pr firms, and so on. Will let you see the influence of specific people in stories.
- Putting major retractions / corrections up front and center (above the fold) If you retract a story for example or have a major correction, put that retraction in the same spot where the story was most viewed. So if the story was in the bottom item in the culture section, then put the correction there. But if it was front page news, then put that correction right on the front page too.
Journalists rely on phone calls and interviews, and on their reputation that they didn't fake the phone calls and interviews. This isn't all that different for academics. If they interview someone themselves then they'll cite it as "personal communication".
On Wikipedia, you can't do that, but that's because everything we do is as anonymous editors with no reputation.
The whole thing runs on trust. It has to bottom out on people making observations in the real world, so betrayal is always possible. Trustless knowledge gathering is a fantasy for crypto-enthusiasts.
Everything can be easily faked. So what? Screenshots have the benefit of being easy to capture, store and share.
Websites are very unreliable in this regard. They can be edited on the fly, are hard to store and are even easier to fake. Any archive or caching site can be purged of captured content. It's much harder to suppress an image once it's been passed around.
I'm surprised that despite being able to concisely explain why Apple is preferable to Google due to the privacy implications of their respective business models, they're perfectly content with a Google Home in their kitchen!
Maybe I'm paranoid, but isn't it obvious how the whole Home Speaker story ends? "We're not spying on you, we're learning your behaviors to offer a better experience!"
I don't have any smart speakers in my house, but I can also see how a rational person might accept the trade-off. Aggregate data to support advertising isn't necessarily evil, nor is using that data to improve service. In fact, you could argue that's what a good business should be doing: evaluating customer needs and adjusting to meet them.
Rational people are also emotional, and apathy is the default emotion. Recognizing that many products are privacy invasive becomes the same as realizing that they are produced in ways that harm the environment, or hurt workers. A fact acknowledged but accepted in exchange for the benefits they offer.
If you're equating giving up personal data to harming the environment or workers, I'm afraid I don't agree. One of these actions is under your control, is a trade off we make simply to live in society, and even provides some benefits to users and society. To bank, to get mail, to shop online, to support services we like, to receive communications, etc, etc. Privacy is also something you can control, rather than something that is being perpetrated on other people or places that do not have agency in the matter. There is a place for privacy regulation and education, but it's not the same as environmental or human damage.
The point is that these are all examples of negative choices that consumers choose to take because it’s easier to accept short-term personal gain while causing long-term, depersonalized, harm.
My point is that if you assume giving up some privacy is going to cause long-term harm, then you are correct. But a rational person can weigh the cost/benefit of giving up privacy for some convenience and decide there's a net gain to it. People who use the internet or carry cell phones or even vote or do banking have given up personal information, and likely know they've given that information. If they found the trade off beneficial, it's not necessarily apathy, but a decision. It may be a bridge to far for you, but perhaps not for everyone.
I can't speak for the google home, but with the echo there's a lot of work that has gone into making it so it is difficult, on a hardware level, to record without showing some sign of doing so. When the mic is on the lights are on as well and the mute button is a physical hardware disconnect that stops voltage from the mics.
There is also some interesting circuitry around the mic itself- the keyword activation chip essentially has control over the mics- they buffer input until they hear the codeword ('alexa') and then activate the main circuitry and dump the buffer into it. The upside to this is that software can't turn the mic on by itself- the chip needs to help. This isn't completely perfect though as once the software has been given control it can keep that control forever (with the caveat that lights would be on).
It's possible to use technology to our advantage without having to sacrifice privacy, we just have to demand it (and, as we all should have learned from Therac-25, hardware limits are preferable over software).
>We're not spying on you, we're learning your behaviors to offer a better experience!
Okay I guess that makes sense, I like when stuff is designed well around what I actually want from it, this will help in that, cool!
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to report you to the police if our ML algorithm detects a child screaming for their life
Wow okay, that kinda seems like crossing a line, but I guess it makes sense and is going to be good to protect kids
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to lower your reputation on x/y/z service if we hear racial slurs
Uh, I get where that's coming from, but this is clearly spying. Well, a private company can do what they like I guess, and its understandable, who other than racists wouldn't want less racists online.
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to let your insurance company know if we hear you coughing
Woah okay what the fuck
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to block you from x/y/z service if your political views differ from our CEO and put out a warning to services provided by other companies.
Hey what the - I mean, wow what a great update. goes in seperate private room WHAT THE FUCK I NEED TO GET RID OF THIS
>We're spying on you, we're just going to arrest you if you will not comply. Don't worry about what law you're charged under, we just blackmailed the police and those who tried to protest got arrested, our company policy is your local law now.
What a great update, thanks awesome [super evil company name here] developers and all employees, what great work they do! internally oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god
Of course this goes way to the extreme, but that's my point, this is the kind of seed that makes that stuff possible. Doesn't mean its absolutely evil, but the potential is there.
@Amazon will soon give Alexa a 'rudimentary form of emotional awareness,' making her able to hear your whispers & frustrations. She will also be capable of listening for trouble such as breaking glass or a smoke alarm when you’re not home: “We’re going beyond recognizing words."
https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1042885315575332870
also reminds me of a parent tweeting about how her child thinks of Alexa as another person in the house, kids are growing up with every aspect of their life fully integrated with spyware-as-a-service
If you read carefully, he didn't actually say iPhones were preferable: "Apple’s less data-focused approach has allowed it to take the high road on privacy. That strategy has potentially insulated the company from regulations and public scorn, but it also could leave Apple with dumber products than its rivals."
Hey, a conspiracy theory. Great start for a new account!
What you are misunderstanding: Companies and products are part of what's often called "the real world". As such, journalists are allowed to mention them in articles, because nothing in the real world cannot be the subject of journalism.
And in the same way that they sometimes offer positive opinions on politicians, or 200 year old books, or tomorrow's weather, it can happen that a story reflects positively on a product or company.
Accusing the NYT of corruption may seem like just a platitude to you, and spreading it as nothing of consequence. Because you're one of the smart people that see through all the propaganda that the mainstream media is brainwashing us with.
To a journalist it's kinda like accusing a physician of murder. It also gnaws at a rather important foundation of democracy. That's why you should come with some sort of rational for your theory.
As a lesser point: it would be rather stupid if the NYT could be bought by a bunch of startups. Because every single one of the people involved with these transactions would have the power to ruin the Times. It's absurd to believe that they would regularly engage in such practices and manage to keep it secret in the current political climate. It's also absurd that they would risk their existence for whatever meagre sums a few mentions in an article could be worth.
> What you are misunderstanding: being patronizing does not make you convincing.
At least they had arguments...
Being patronizing while making good arguments should be just as convincing as good arguments alone. Unless you're letting emotions cloud your judgement.
If the NYT is being honest, why did they mention the pen and paper and drop the subject? I think something fishy is going on here. I don't think that journalist owns a pen or paper. I mean, I think he owns neither of those two objects, not even a single sheet, and not even one of those crummy pens you get for free that has some other business's name on it.
Edit: Hold on, I stand corrected. This man has a notepad he keeps in his back pocket. I don't know how I missed that photo, but this reporter is legit. He has a notepad. He probably also has a pen because I see notes written on the notepad.
I find it funny that the article opens with how pen and paper are some of his most reliable tools.
Then it goes on to talk about several apps and taking screenshots on an iPhone.
I want to know how the pen and paper were so notable. What is being done with the trusty pen and paper?! Please! Tell me! I did ctrl-f and found no further mention of pen and paper. I feel duped. I feel like the pen and paper were only mentioned in an effort to define this journalist's personal brand as cool and analog. Let's talk about that pen and paper. Why did you waste my time by mentioning those words for me to read and then dropping the subject entirely?
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 92.0 ms ] threadWhy are screenshots seen as the gold standard for documenting deleted content? They are easily faked.
It would be great if there was a service like the waybackmachine but which could be use to archive on demand, and make those archives publicly available.
The internet archive is great for this, but they also respect robots.txt and don’t guarantee that they’ll archive pages you request.
Then you don't need "secure" storage of the actual archives, you can have as many copies as possible with as many people as possible and not worry about someone tampering with the archives.
Of course they'd be stupid to offer any guarantees without payment. That's what their service https://archive-it.org is for. Only for organisations, unfortunately.
In regard to respecting robots.txt: I would consider any organisation running a bot and not respecting robots.txt as somewhat shady. ignoring it could even have consequences for admissibility in court.
https://web.archive.org/save/https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://archive.is/ https://webrecorder.io/
Probably some of the other sites supported by this extension have on-demand archiving too:
https://github.com/dessant/view-page-archive
For archiving on your own computer, this LWN article is pretty interesting:
https://lwn.net/Articles/766374/
That said, I agree that journalists should be held to account. One of the victims of the decline of print media are local news outlets who are checking each other. I've noticed a trend in my own local paper to view themselves as above reproach, the singular check on all that is evil, but not likely to correct their own mistakes. Perhaps some of what you are talking about could check that.
See https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims...
Besides that there is nothing that prevents us from in the future to store voice/video and digital/biometric signatures and whatever to document interviews or events. For some part it will still be based on trust of a source in others it will be based on evidence. In science based on ability to reproduce methods and data.
Each professions has the standard it deems optimal within the trade-offs of risks, costs, etc. Those obviously differ: holding journalism to the standards of a criminal trial would essentially make it impossible.
That's especially true if you require to personally inspect all the evidence. Because if you don't trust a journalist, why trust any other person?
Say the story is "Senator used campaign funds for vacation". The reporter sees bank statements to that effect.
Are (photos of) bank statements "evidence"? Because they aren't signed. And even if they were, the photo could easily be faked. You wouldn't even have a specimen to compare signatures. In a trial, they'd get someone from the bank as a witness. But you don't accept just the journalist's assurance that any quote is accurate. So... Should the guy from the bank stop by at your place?
In fact, I can't think of any evidence you can transmit over http that wouldn't just be attacked as "fake" by those motivated to believe that. Case in point: birth certificates.
Meanwhile, there is like no evidence of respected news organisations making up facts. The whole narrative of these supposed failures of "mainstream media" is essentially fiction[0].
Journalism also doesn't work like science publishing in that it relies less on synthesis of previously reported facts. Scientists also don't offer any "evidence" for the meat of their papers, i. e. the stuff that's new. Almost by definition, citations can only cover old information.
So there would be footnotes referencing election results to support the claim that "President Trump" is an accurate representation of the guy's name and title. Plus a lot of footnotes like "as told to me by XX". That wouldn't help anybody. In fact, the source is typically named in every article using interviews, and even for anonymous sources that fact is disclosed. Those references are just embedded in the text, not referenced via footnotes.
So, is this a debate about formatting?
0: The example you're thinking of happened 18 years ago. You should come up with a more recent one, or you're liable to just proof that these events are extremely rare.
Edit: I removed the mobile part of the URL. Other edit: s/spend/spent
Obviously some stories would hard to 'cite your sources' due to the stakes or secrecy, but there are many categories of stories where journos can put a partial or full source dump. Interview stories could attach full and unedited interview recordings for example.
Here's a list of how journalism can do better as a profession:
- Not acting defensive about criticism of journalistic practice
- Attaching your raw sources
- Adding an edit log to all published stories. 'Attaching the git history' would be fairly interesting to see sometimes!
- Disclosing advertiser / sponsorship links and the political / religious opinions of writers as a 'writer profile'. Maybe a public journo friend list too so we could identify if certain cliques tend to have certain opinions. Also add their CV if possible to see what publications journos have written for.
- Attaching to stories everyone involved in it, such as other journalists, editors, managers, politicians, executives, external pr firms, and so on. Will let you see the influence of specific people in stories.
- Putting major retractions / corrections up front and center (above the fold) If you retract a story for example or have a major correction, put that retraction in the same spot where the story was most viewed. So if the story was in the bottom item in the culture section, then put the correction there. But if it was front page news, then put that correction right on the front page too.
On Wikipedia, you can't do that, but that's because everything we do is as anonymous editors with no reputation.
The whole thing runs on trust. It has to bottom out on people making observations in the real world, so betrayal is always possible. Trustless knowledge gathering is a fantasy for crypto-enthusiasts.
Websites are very unreliable in this regard. They can be edited on the fly, are hard to store and are even easier to fake. Any archive or caching site can be purged of captured content. It's much harder to suppress an image once it's been passed around.
Maybe I'm paranoid, but isn't it obvious how the whole Home Speaker story ends? "We're not spying on you, we're learning your behaviors to offer a better experience!"
There is also some interesting circuitry around the mic itself- the keyword activation chip essentially has control over the mics- they buffer input until they hear the codeword ('alexa') and then activate the main circuitry and dump the buffer into it. The upside to this is that software can't turn the mic on by itself- the chip needs to help. This isn't completely perfect though as once the software has been given control it can keep that control forever (with the caveat that lights would be on).
It's possible to use technology to our advantage without having to sacrifice privacy, we just have to demand it (and, as we all should have learned from Therac-25, hardware limits are preferable over software).
>We're not spying on you, we're learning your behaviors to offer a better experience!
Okay I guess that makes sense, I like when stuff is designed well around what I actually want from it, this will help in that, cool!
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to report you to the police if our ML algorithm detects a child screaming for their life
Wow okay, that kinda seems like crossing a line, but I guess it makes sense and is going to be good to protect kids
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to lower your reputation on x/y/z service if we hear racial slurs
Uh, I get where that's coming from, but this is clearly spying. Well, a private company can do what they like I guess, and its understandable, who other than racists wouldn't want less racists online.
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to let your insurance company know if we hear you coughing
Woah okay what the fuck
>We're not spying on you, we're just going to block you from x/y/z service if your political views differ from our CEO and put out a warning to services provided by other companies.
Hey what the - I mean, wow what a great update. goes in seperate private room WHAT THE FUCK I NEED TO GET RID OF THIS
>We're spying on you, we're just going to arrest you if you will not comply. Don't worry about what law you're charged under, we just blackmailed the police and those who tried to protest got arrested, our company policy is your local law now.
What a great update, thanks awesome [super evil company name here] developers and all employees, what great work they do! internally oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god
Of course this goes way to the extreme, but that's my point, this is the kind of seed that makes that stuff possible. Doesn't mean its absolutely evil, but the potential is there.
also reminds me of a parent tweeting about how her child thinks of Alexa as another person in the house, kids are growing up with every aspect of their life fully integrated with spyware-as-a-service
"We have the brightest minds of today trying to figure out how to get people to click ads on the Internet" https://gizmodo.com/senators-urge-ftc-to-investigate-manipul...
What you are misunderstanding: Companies and products are part of what's often called "the real world". As such, journalists are allowed to mention them in articles, because nothing in the real world cannot be the subject of journalism.
And in the same way that they sometimes offer positive opinions on politicians, or 200 year old books, or tomorrow's weather, it can happen that a story reflects positively on a product or company.
Accusing the NYT of corruption may seem like just a platitude to you, and spreading it as nothing of consequence. Because you're one of the smart people that see through all the propaganda that the mainstream media is brainwashing us with.
To a journalist it's kinda like accusing a physician of murder. It also gnaws at a rather important foundation of democracy. That's why you should come with some sort of rational for your theory.
As a lesser point: it would be rather stupid if the NYT could be bought by a bunch of startups. Because every single one of the people involved with these transactions would have the power to ruin the Times. It's absurd to believe that they would regularly engage in such practices and manage to keep it secret in the current political climate. It's also absurd that they would risk their existence for whatever meagre sums a few mentions in an article could be worth.
What you are misunderstanding: being patronizing does not make you convincing.
At least they had arguments...
Being patronizing while making good arguments should be just as convincing as good arguments alone. Unless you're letting emotions cloud your judgement.
Edit: Hold on, I stand corrected. This man has a notepad he keeps in his back pocket. I don't know how I missed that photo, but this reporter is legit. He has a notepad. He probably also has a pen because I see notes written on the notepad.
All is right in the world.
Then it goes on to talk about several apps and taking screenshots on an iPhone.
I want to know how the pen and paper were so notable. What is being done with the trusty pen and paper?! Please! Tell me! I did ctrl-f and found no further mention of pen and paper. I feel duped. I feel like the pen and paper were only mentioned in an effort to define this journalist's personal brand as cool and analog. Let's talk about that pen and paper. Why did you waste my time by mentioning those words for me to read and then dropping the subject entirely?