Of course the problem is how are Google and Facebook supposed to determine what 'trustworthy, reliable news' is. If you read the Government report behind this article you'll find that the Government's only suggestion seems to be literally 'you know it when you see it.' Seems very open to abuse and 'knowing' that news you don't like is untrustworthy 'when you see it'.
I think society in general is nearly at the point of basically declaring bankruptcy on trustworthiness of journalism and are treating everything as having an agenda. But then how can you fund news with an agenda from public funds?
The BBC is without a doubt more trustworthy than the average story that goes viral on Facebook. Since the former is a product established by that government (with some indirection to remove it at least from day-to-day political influence), it seems not to be quite as impossible to judge the quality of a publishing operation as you make it out to be.
Yes, people will invariably point to some instances of the BBC receiving flak for errors in judgement (edit: see below for examples). But if we collectively can no longer agree that there is a difference between the BBC and, say, infowars, then we have lost anyway, and all that’s left is to gleefully watch civilization circling the drain.
> it seems not to be quite as impossible to judge the quality of a publishing operation as you make it out to be
I agree the BBC is more trustworthy than other sources. But if we're talking legislation how do we write a rule for that? Do we literally legislate 'the BBC, the Telegraph, ... are trustworthy'? Or do we write a qualitative test? But then what is the test? As I said the best idea at the moment seems to be literally 'you know it when you see it'. Which doesn't work.
One tree is not a forest. A million trees is a forest. Nobody can tell you which single tree delineates the difference. That doesn’t stop us from calling a tree a tree and a forest a forest.
The tech community has this idea that it’s impossible to make laws affecting such concepts that cannot easily be expressed as an algorithm giving boolean answers. But in reality, that’s exactly what jurisprudence does for a living. Otherwise there would be no need for lawyers and judges and juries.
The “I know it when I see it” quote is, obviously, one coined by a judge, and a supreme one at that. It became famous for both being somewhat true, and for leaving us wanting for something better. And even though the definition of pornography has somewhat advanced since then, and become somewhat less relevant, there still is a gray area: some gangbang on pornhub is probably porn. A bag of Doritos is not porn. In between are the image of Kim Phuc, Michelangelo’s David, and many a work of art. But the existence of that gray area does not negate the possibility to definitively say that the bag of Doritos is not porn, as far as the law is concerned.
The problem with laws that allow for "I'll know it when I see it" is that
- The need to be vague/broad enough to allow anything that could be <thing> to be classified as <thing> under the law
- The government actors are well know for acting in bad faith, ruining the lives of people that did nothing wrong because the law allowed for it.
A teenage couple tried as adults for child pornography because they sent each other naked pictures of themselves. That is clearly not what the law intended, but the state went after them for it anyways.
Vague/overly-broad laws can be abused. Any law that can be abused will be abused.
The solution generally is "we form a department that employs qualified people and scores entities on quality X", then the law says "entities with less than 50% X as determined by the department for X scores shall not appear on the first page of results". As a programmer you should know that all problems can be solved with enough levels of indirection :) .
My personal opinion is that the BBC's political coverage was thoroughly kneecapped after the Hutton Inquiry ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry ) at which point they decided to surrender to the government line rather than fight suspected falsehoods.
I'm generally a big supporter of the BBC but I really noticed how biased they were in the run up to the Scottish independence referendum - they really are quite conservative (note the small c) about some areas and that came across very strongly in a lot of reporting.
I'm also generally a big supporter of the BBC, but I think their left bias is extremely apparent on their radio content. It must be down to internal culture in different offices, because the bias is different in different parts of the Corporation. Might be a diversity problem in hiring?
Can't we aim for 'not appearing biased to anyone' rather than 'appearing biased to everyone'?
I think the simultaneous accusations of both left and right bias are because separate parts of the Corporation are biased in this way. If you sum those biases then yes maybe it sums to zero, but I'd rather the individual parts were not biased at all.
I don't think politics can be made to work like that.
Politics is about rhetoric, persuasion, spin and - if you can get away with it - outright lies, smears, and distortions.
Claiming that reporting is biased, when in fact it's merely objective but unfavourable, is an absolutely standard weapon in the arsenal of spin.
The only way to attempt to enforce a lack of bias would be to have independent editorial oversight - much like the journalistic equivalent of an independent judiciary.
The Board of Trustees used to attempt that, but the financial reality is that the BBC gets most of its funding from the government, and so is always vulnerable to financial pressures.
IMO lack of access to "clean" unspun fact-based reporting is probably the number one political problem of the moment. Knowingly lying to the public or attempting to influence opinion for personal/political gain should be as much of a crime as dumping asbestos in a school yard.
But currently the political system relies on dishonesty to operate. It's essentially built on denying facts and replacing them with expedient lies, emotional manipulations, and fake "explanations" of why things are the way they are.
So you can't solve one problem without solving the other. And that's a huge, huge challenge.
This could also mean that their coverage is getting less accurate overall. It's not a one-dimensional space (left/right), more like a multidimentional (left/right,accurate/inaccurate,...) space. It serves nobody to be in the "centrist/inaccurate" spot on that graph.
BBC4 documentaries and things like Arena remain amazing, so they can do quality if they want to and it's not overwhelmingly a cost matter. It's more like populism vs Reithianism, and if the BBC isn't Reithian it will end up not existing.
Not the BBC, but you've reminded me about my least favorite bit of "fake" "news" from the Indyref: the government's Buzzfeed propaganda account. https://www.buzzfeed.com/youdecide2014
Most of the points linked in the buzzfeed myths article are linked to gov.uk sources. Do you feel that these sources are themselves propaganda? I'm not sure which of the points can be confirmed or debunked now except maybe for the oil revenue one.
As for the second article, how to spend your extra £1,000, yes, that one is atrocious.
Do make ad publishing more difficult- eg. Maybe large scale targeted individual ads to manipulate people (with targeted precision) should be illegal? Or ads that combine more then 1 selection criteria or whatever- the status quo is not defendable.
There's been customized mass mailings for a long time. Google and FB weren't the first to collect lots of information about consumers and sell it to advertisers.
Political advertising on the internet in the UK should at least be made to follow the print advertising rules (imprint+cost accounting), and ideally the TV advertising rules (banned except for PPB)
And yet no comment on the reliability or trustworthiness of existing UK news content?
Seems like this is a half-baked, populist attempt to looking like they're doing _something_, when in reality the UK has demonstrated that it has insufficient political spine to stand up to big media.
I guess it's just easier to lash-out at tech companies than it is to address the elephant in the room.
OP didn’t say ‘break all contact’ any more than the government of the 5th largest world economy said ‘break all contact’ with the world’s second-or-third-largest-depending-on-how-you-count-it economy until and unless they give them a really good deal.
Also, Facebook and Google have regular severe problems with the government of China, whose economy about six times the size of the UK.
Sure, it would still be a drastic and childishly over-the-top response at this stage, but given the UK government essentially lobotomised itself a few years ago, it might happen anyway in more polite language.
The problem is that people like Trump have made an effort to reappropriate the word, so it's lost all meaning. Fake news, in it's original meaning, wasn't simply inaccurate news or biased news. The newsroom didn't make an oopsie. It's was blatantly false stuff.
Fantastic tales with no corroboration. Many of the people producing it knew exactly what they were doing. We're talking about stuff like the first lady being trans, or dispensaries taking food stamps. There's also grey area people, like Alex Jones, where it's not clear how much of his stuff he truly believes.
We don't live in a great time for the press. We just elected someone famous for pushing fake news (Obama's birth certificate). Unfortunately, Trump has been quite adept at changing the meaning of these things. Now people seem to think fake news is just "bad news".
This made me chuckle, just a few years ago we were up in arms against Chinas great firewall, I know this is not on the same scale but its still a restriction on what people can report on and now who is to say whether there will be political bias in shutting down certain posts?
Not so much a trend as something that has always been there, for those of us old enough to remember when an MP was legally barred from having his voice heard on television. The security state has a heavy hand, and was only really restrained by ECHR in the late 90s.
The strongly authoritarian streak has always been there in UK culture - at least we've stopped the mass arrests, imprisonment without trial and torture of UK citizens that we had in the 1970s.
Define "we", because AFAICT Europe has always leaned towards restricting freedom of speech when necessary for the (claimed) overall benefit of society. See for example the right to be forgotten law.
Yup. The proposed cures are significantly worse than the problems. Once you bring in the government you have violence involved. There's no need for the use of force here.
Not in the absurd libertarian sense that the parent is using "violence" to mean "law enforcement", but ... shall we say that while it's not a common feature of everyday life and politics the British state is not above deploying violence against the public to suppress certain kinds of politics? Orgreave/Bloody Sunday/kettling etc etc?
(Anyone remember the weird incident where MI5 insisted on the secure destruction of a Guardian laptop?)
There was a big push to regulate the UK media's endemic lack of ethics after the phone hacking scandal, but apart from collapsing "News of the World" no real change was achieved.
(On the other hand, the Hutton Inquiry censured the BBC for reporting that turned out to be accurate, so ...)
Anyone who thought Daily Mail was a reputable outlet for journalism instead of a tabloid rag hasn't got their "fake news" barometer screwed on straight anyway.
Might as well point out that the newscasters from the Marvel cinematic universe are also fake news.
Now also applies to the BBC, whose reputation for journalistic distance has been absolutely trashed over the last few years.
So - much as I have limited respect for Facebook etc, the idea that the Internet should be regulated while the sewer press is allowed to run riot is just a little bit of a reach.
Increasingly I think the answer is to regulate the public relations & advertising industry. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like in a free society, but it's the root cause of seemingly all of our problems and I can't seem to come up with any benefits it really has on society.
What we need to do is eliminate the incentive to build these influence networks - and the primary incentive is that politicians, companies etc... want to pay to push some kind of agenda.
When Medical got regulated in the U.S. the prices skyrocketed, and customer care stagnated. The regulators were incentivized to create a monopoly by the entrenched medical professionals.
Now people are asking for more regulations. Is that the solution?
to think that we are one of the last generation to live under a somehow "free" WWW is something that we will all feel nostalgic about soon enough. we just wouldn't be able to express our regret later on as we will all be tracked and sued for expressing opinions that medias and governments deem as conspiracy or fake news.
Regarding what is and isn't fake news, could they not lean on existing organisations.
For example: Legitimate news are members of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, or have a licence to broadcast from Ofcom, or something similar. Media on social platforms will be subject to the same standards as those broadcast on television, or written in print. If videos online are 'fake news' then ofcom deal with that the same as they would on television, or ISPO the same as they would in print.
For foreign news, they could rely on similar organisations in host countries, or an affiliation with a member.
In that regulation, Facebook & Google would agree to revoke the account of the outlet in line with the regulatory organisations guidelines.
Any news outlet that is not a member of the independent organisation, or a licencee of Ofcom is considered fake news.
In my internal "how reliable is this source", that's pretty much the first check I do in my head.
But if Fake News institutions like Infowars-types were required to be members, the IPSO would have to revoke their membership or face ridicule and undermine the trustworthiness of the rest of the members. And if Infowars wanted to be published on Facebook and Google, they'd have to abide by the IPSO rules.
I cannot see any good in a creation of this kind of institution. How would you manage to keep it independent? Please no central certification for independent journalists. Seriously, this is one of the worst ideas I heard.
There is no need for a creation of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, it already exists and over 1500 print and 1100 online outlets in the UK press are members (notable exceptions are The Independent and The Guardian). Independent journalists usually publish in one of those newspapers, although the NUJ could be used as a suitable alternative?
Many articles from otherwise reputable sources are not credible, or accurate or are simply false. Journalists no longer do any fact checking. Sensationalism is more important than reputation.
So on to the idea that Google and Facebook should be regulated, I think it's an absolutely horrible idea. We are talking of censorship conducted by the government, the worst kind there is. And thinking of our own government, I can't think of people that are more corrupt or incompetent.
Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever.
> We are talking of censorship conducted by the government, the worst kind there is.
Why the censorship is done by a corporation is so much better than the one done by an elected government? I think that censorship is the wrong thing not who does it.
> So on to the idea that Google and Facebook should be regulated, I think it's an absolutely horrible idea.
For what it seems the USA election was deeply impacted by a foreign hostile government using Facebook ads. There are countries where sectarian violence is on the rise thanks to how Facebook prioritises stories for engagement.
Facebook or Google need to be regulated because they are radicalizing people in search of more engagement to sell more ads. That is not a good situation, and there is no incentive for them to stop doing it. As it is the best way to get more money.
Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision? For me, the answer is no. It is unethical and it will impact negatively the people affected.
> Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic.
This supposes that the fault is in the individuals not in the system. And that it is easier to change all the population than to regulate a handful of companies. I am all for better education, but to solve the problem with the big tech companies regulation is needed.
> Why the censorship is done by a corporation is so much better than the one done by an elected government? I think that censorship is the wrong thing not who does it.
Because a company can censor whatever they want, and you don't have to use Facebook if you don't want to. With the government, there is an inherent threat of violence if you don't comply. Very simple.
Yes, currently they can. The argument is that this is not desirable given how much sway these companies have over politics. For example, I have read that Donald Trump was elected as a result of Twitter; I wonder if he can win re-election when all of his support inevitably gets banned? It will be interesting to watch.
If the public square has become the internet, it behooves the government to regulate it for political speech in the same way they do sex,race,religion, .etc.
> "Why the censorship is done by a corporation is so much better than the one done by an elected government? I think that censorship is the wrong thing not who does it."
Speaking as a child of communism, the difference is that in case the government is doing the censorship you're no longer free to build your own platform, you're no longer free to have your own voice.
In one case it's a matter of freedom, in another it's just a matter of cost. The difference is night and day.
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> "For what it seems the USA election was deeply impacted by a foreign hostile government using Facebook ads. There are countries where sectarian violence is on the rise thanks to how Facebook prioritises stories for engagement."
Introducing censorship won't help fix these issues and there's absolutely no evidence that regulation helps in increasing the quality of news. Worse, government mandated censorship is pretty much irreversible without a revolution.
This notion that people need protection from external influence has been the explanation for the censorship happening behind the Iron Curtain. It's the logic used by dictators and oligarchies.
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> "Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision? For me, the answer is no. It is unethical and it will impact negatively the people affected."
You still have the freedom to delete your Facebook account and note that I totally agree about privacy protections. I love the GDPR, but don't push censorship on me just because you are unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
Also don't lump privacy together with fake news, in order to appeal to emotions, because they are not the same thing. Why don't you throw a "think of the children" in there too.
Regulation isn't censorship. The FCC has been regulating broadcast news for decades in the US. The bullet points in the article are so far from "censorship" that anyone jumping to that claim is hard to take seriously.
Also "child of communism" is a combination appeal to emotion with an appeal to authority thrown in for good measure. It's an attempt to paper over a breathless strawman argument - so, triple threat, I guess.
> Introducing censorship won't help fix these issues
Regulation does not equate censorship. There are other things that can be done. What do you think about this one "The report also said social media companies should agree to "code of conduct" to govern their commercial agreements with publishers."?
It looks like a good idea that the tech giants should be held accountable for how they run their advertisement business that affects the behaviour of all the population.
"Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision?" is a valid question. It is not censorship. What do you think about it?
“That affects the behavior of all the population” seems a bit hyperbolic no? I can’t imagine everyone being equally affected by media operations since not everybody believes everything they are told by any number of news outlets. Accountable in what way? Who they sell their ads to? Seems like a big disadvantage to place on one portion of the advertising industry. And you think Congress is going to be up to the job of actually regulating here other than just bringing people in to grandstand and provide platforms for elections. I’m interested in how this would look, I just don’t see how government is going to be effective here for the people and not just for it’s own ends. Should these companies be allowed to run psychological experiments? I would postulate all advertising is an attempt at psychological manipulation and therefore an experiment by a group on the populace at large to see if that manipulation is effective. So.. no advertising then becuase some people are willing accept what they are told because it supports what they already believe or don’t have the tools/info/want to find opposing view points? When is the onus placed on the consumer to consume with some level of skepticism? I have a hard time believing the consumer is blameless here. Information is power and is expensive. Believing that any article is telling you any whole truth is entirely misguided — everyone wants to sell you something whether it’s a product or a way of thinking that supports someone else’s agenda.
The point of advertising is to change people's behaviours and opinions. The entire purpose of the content is to modify behaviour. Cynics and trolls may think it doesn't have a 'significant' impact but it works which is why it is a multi-billion dollar industry.
This document doesn’t really speak to the impact that the operations had in US elections outcomes, just what intelligence tools were used. Plus calling someone a troll or Vladimir just because they ask a legitimate question and don’t subscribe to an accepted group-think is about as childish as it gets. Please stop bringing down the conversation.
No, it is troll-like behaviour. It is not a legitimate question if the intent of the comment is to deny the claims of the effectiveness of Russian interference, which is nonsense.
It is impossible to know the full extent that Russian interference had on the election, but dismissing its impact because there is no proof of its 'effectiveness' is laughable. We know political ads work. It is why every single modern political campaign runs them. A google search gives you a rough idea of the reach this political campaign had. Put those simple principles together and you get why all western intelligence communities are in agreement that russia interfered and affected the US presidential election. Given how susceptible people are to advertising it shouldn't come as a surprise.
When someone posits a statement that is just insanely ignorant (and demonstrably wrong) like "I would even be satisfied with any ad from any country having the ability to significantly sway any election." then the intent to derail the conversation is clear. Any knowledge of political history (and advertising) would tell you that such a statement is clearly ridiculous. Being obstinate and a pedant doesn't make automatically make you a critical thinker. In this case, it blinds you from seeing the obvious.
Some sources for you even though you are probably too busy commenting something contrarian to google this shit yourself.
I agree completely. My original comment was in regard to the commenter's opinion on the "minuscule" effect of well documented foreign influence. There can be significant and effective foreign influence in addition to other more local reasons the election had the result we are living with. They are not mutually exclusive
If well documented manipulation of social media by foreign governments had a "minuscule" effect on the election, what are the "far more probable explanations" you speak of?
That people voted for the candidate they wanted to win based on their own analysis, thoughts and free will.
If advertising can win elections, then Hillary would have won since she far outspent Trump on media. Let's not forget she had a much larger army of astro turfers (Correct The Record) pushing her message on the internet and it was all for moot. It turns out people aren't as easy to sway as advertisers would have you believe.
All of what you write can be true without contradicting or minimizing the effectiveness of well documented foreign influence. These issues are not at all mutually exclusive. I was responding to the claim that foreign influence was "minuscule" in comparison to local issues. You cannot quantify the effect of foreign influence until all the facts are known.
Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever.
Agreed, this is long overdue and the only sustainable solution that isn’t just tyranny in waiting. The problem is that teaching critical thinking to kids makes them less prone to bing manipulated, and governments want people they can push and pull, as do advertisers, and so do a lot of parents even if they don’t realize it. When little Billy comes home and starts questioning his devout parents about inconsistencies in their religion, that’s enough for Billy’s parents to be against it. It’s not a hard thing to imagine either, just look at anti-evolution campaigning.
I would guess that a majority of parents want kids that believe what they’re told by the parents regardless of merit. So it’s pushback from all sides, because so many people are strongly invested in manipulating each other. Critical thinking is like a broad spectrum antibiotic, insofar as you don’t really pick and choose what it acts against. From your and my perspective that’s the feature, but to a lot of people it’s the bug.
On the other hand, when your best solution is 'educate everyone', you're pretty hosed. You're looking at like ten or twenty year horizon on the payoff (if it works at all), at which point we'll have an entirely different set of problems, perhaps exacerbated by our inability to deal with the problem at hand...
(Also, come back when the teachers are paid appropriately.)
Competitive pay for teachers is a must, regardless of how we choose to approach the critical thinking aspect of things. You also don’t need to educate everyone, just a sufficient majority. As for the lag time, yeah of course it would take time, it took time to but the system in the first place. I would argue that whatever problems were facing by that time, a solid education and grounding in critical thinking skills would help. By contrast a pig-ignorant electorate that can be led by any group of random voices is always problematic.
The US is terrible at educating independent thinking, there are heavily religious curriculum being enforced in a few southern states and the government has backed off of viewing education as a funding priority. We need to change that because it's seriously impacting our ability to have a working democracy but... it has nothing to do with regulating Google & Facebook, both are news organizations and should be treated as such.
> Sensationalism is more important than reputation
I would blame Google and Facebook for this though. G crafted the online marketing landscape to favor using their ads (since most brands use adwords the most), and Facebook's post model favors clickbait headlines so that users click them and continue to use FB.
Thankfully these news publications have figured out they can start charging a monthly fee, like it was before the internet, but I fear this will push out small players that don't get as many subscribers as the new york times.
I have massive issues with UK politics but knowing a few civil servants, they're not (widely) corrupt, and they're not incompetent.
In any department, they will normally be the force for good policy based on evidence, it's politicians who push random expedient ideas. Take grammar schools, the entire department of education knows they don't work and are being forced to push it. Or Brexit, the whole civil service pretty much opposes it, and especially the treasury/trade people in detailed knowledge that it's going to be an economic tire fire.
Finally, regulation != censorship, there's such a thing as a middle ground.
If regulation controls what content they're allowed to publish, and enforces this with financial and/or criminal penalties, then it's the same thing as censorship.
The idea of "regulating" google and facebook isn't to provide accurate news or facts. It's to make sure the elites get to control propaganda. So when the elites want to start an illegal war somewhere, the people are bombarded with pro-war propaganda only.
No government is interested in educating their own people on fact checking and logic because a truly educated population is hard to control. All governments want their population fat, dumb and brainwashed.
Also, we are constantly told the lie that news companies hold power to account. But what's interesting is that every major news company was created by the government, banker, politician, etc. So power created these news companies to keep themselves to account? If Trump created "Trump news", would anyone believe he created it to keep himself in check?
Name any "credible" major news company. They were all founded by either a government, banker, politician, etc. Power created these companies to constrain power? I find that hard to believe and it's historically false.
I do think it's important to teach these types of critical analysis skills in grade school, however, this bill is quite limited in scope:
> On or before July 1, 2019, the department shall make available to school districts on its Internet Web site a list of resources and instructional materials on media literacy, including media literacy professional development programs for teachers.
You mean a state sponsored indoctrination of which state approved media sources to trust?
It's funny how if alabama ran a state media indoctrination campaign, some people would be screaming propaganda. But california does it, some people think it is a good thing.
These kids should be thought logic and history of media. Not "how to analyze media". Teaching them logic and history helps them to analyze everything ( religion, media, science, literature, etc ). Not just "media".
What would be your opinion of china or russia running a media "literacy" campaign on their own children?
> Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever.
I was taught this back in the 90s, UK GSCE History so a mandatory class at least for the first 3 years. I can't quite remember if it came later or earlier, but early would make sense.
Consider the source, bias, first hand account / second / here say etc., find and compare multiple sources.
Maybe this isn't common and I was lucky? Maybe it doesn't happen these days. My history teacher was brilliant, one of the few I remember fondly.
Google and Facebook are news organizations, people get their news from them. Whether you agree or disagree with how the UK regulates news organizations is orthogonal to the point that the same rules should apply to them as apply to other news orgs.
If the companies don't like this they can either spin off their news related products into a separate company or stop actively trying to control the news narrative.
(American) High school (13-14 years old) is far too late to start teaching logic if you want them to actually use it. I'd start teaching the basics of logic right along with the basics of math.
EDIT: I don't know what I'm talking about with age ranges. I was 13 years old when I went to high school in 1989; my daughter turned 13 today and is in 7th grade.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 138 ms ] threadI think society in general is nearly at the point of basically declaring bankruptcy on trustworthiness of journalism and are treating everything as having an agenda. But then how can you fund news with an agenda from public funds?
Yes, people will invariably point to some instances of the BBC receiving flak for errors in judgement (edit: see below for examples). But if we collectively can no longer agree that there is a difference between the BBC and, say, infowars, then we have lost anyway, and all that’s left is to gleefully watch civilization circling the drain.
I agree the BBC is more trustworthy than other sources. But if we're talking legislation how do we write a rule for that? Do we literally legislate 'the BBC, the Telegraph, ... are trustworthy'? Or do we write a qualitative test? But then what is the test? As I said the best idea at the moment seems to be literally 'you know it when you see it'. Which doesn't work.
The tech community has this idea that it’s impossible to make laws affecting such concepts that cannot easily be expressed as an algorithm giving boolean answers. But in reality, that’s exactly what jurisprudence does for a living. Otherwise there would be no need for lawyers and judges and juries.
The “I know it when I see it” quote is, obviously, one coined by a judge, and a supreme one at that. It became famous for both being somewhat true, and for leaving us wanting for something better. And even though the definition of pornography has somewhat advanced since then, and become somewhat less relevant, there still is a gray area: some gangbang on pornhub is probably porn. A bag of Doritos is not porn. In between are the image of Kim Phuc, Michelangelo’s David, and many a work of art. But the existence of that gray area does not negate the possibility to definitively say that the bag of Doritos is not porn, as far as the law is concerned.
A teenage couple tried as adults for child pornography because they sent each other naked pictures of themselves. That is clearly not what the law intended, but the state went after them for it anyways.
Vague/overly-broad laws can be abused. Any law that can be abused will be abused.
My personal opinion is that the BBC's political coverage was thoroughly kneecapped after the Hutton Inquiry ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton_Inquiry ) at which point they decided to surrender to the government line rather than fight suspected falsehoods.
I guess it is doing something right!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_BBC#21st_cent...
I think the simultaneous accusations of both left and right bias are because separate parts of the Corporation are biased in this way. If you sum those biases then yes maybe it sums to zero, but I'd rather the individual parts were not biased at all.
Politics is about rhetoric, persuasion, spin and - if you can get away with it - outright lies, smears, and distortions.
Claiming that reporting is biased, when in fact it's merely objective but unfavourable, is an absolutely standard weapon in the arsenal of spin.
The only way to attempt to enforce a lack of bias would be to have independent editorial oversight - much like the journalistic equivalent of an independent judiciary.
The Board of Trustees used to attempt that, but the financial reality is that the BBC gets most of its funding from the government, and so is always vulnerable to financial pressures.
IMO lack of access to "clean" unspun fact-based reporting is probably the number one political problem of the moment. Knowingly lying to the public or attempting to influence opinion for personal/political gain should be as much of a crime as dumping asbestos in a school yard.
But currently the political system relies on dishonesty to operate. It's essentially built on denying facts and replacing them with expedient lies, emotional manipulations, and fake "explanations" of why things are the way they are.
So you can't solve one problem without solving the other. And that's a huge, huge challenge.
BBC4 documentaries and things like Arena remain amazing, so they can do quality if they want to and it's not overwhelmingly a cost matter. It's more like populism vs Reithianism, and if the BBC isn't Reithian it will end up not existing.
It's Tory through and through, and apparently unapologetically so.
See also:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb/tim-holmes/is-question...
That's just one example from a list that is becoming worryingly long now.
Apparently there were "no costs" associated with this, which is even harder to understand. https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-ques...
Would probably make a good test case for anyone's "fake news" detectors.
As for the second article, how to spend your extra £1,000, yes, that one is atrocious.
>the government
There is no 'the government'.
The government is an entity of elected and unelected people. They have their own bias, their own friends, their own wants.
I have stopped using Facebook because it sucks, but if the government sucks, I am forced to use them.
Seems like this is a half-baked, populist attempt to looking like they're doing _something_, when in reality the UK has demonstrated that it has insufficient political spine to stand up to big media.
I guess it's just easier to lash-out at tech companies than it is to address the elephant in the room.
Also, Facebook and Google have regular severe problems with the government of China, whose economy about six times the size of the UK.
Sure, it would still be a drastic and childishly over-the-top response at this stage, but given the UK government essentially lobotomised itself a few years ago, it might happen anyway in more polite language.
CNBC's version is an example of what some people call "Fake News"
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Fantastic tales with no corroboration. Many of the people producing it knew exactly what they were doing. We're talking about stuff like the first lady being trans, or dispensaries taking food stamps. There's also grey area people, like Alex Jones, where it's not clear how much of his stuff he truly believes.
We don't live in a great time for the press. We just elected someone famous for pushing fake news (Obama's birth certificate). Unfortunately, Trump has been quite adept at changing the meaning of these things. Now people seem to think fake news is just "bad news".
(Anyone remember the weird incident where MI5 insisted on the secure destruction of a Guardian laptop?)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/08/wikipedia... / http://www.adnews.com.au/news/microsoft-flags-daily-mail-uk-...
There was a big push to regulate the UK media's endemic lack of ethics after the phone hacking scandal, but apart from collapsing "News of the World" no real change was achieved.
(On the other hand, the Hutton Inquiry censured the BBC for reporting that turned out to be accurate, so ...)
Might as well point out that the newscasters from the Marvel cinematic universe are also fake news.
So - much as I have limited respect for Facebook etc, the idea that the Internet should be regulated while the sewer press is allowed to run riot is just a little bit of a reach.
What we need to do is eliminate the incentive to build these influence networks - and the primary incentive is that politicians, companies etc... want to pay to push some kind of agenda.
When Medical got regulated in the U.S. the prices skyrocketed, and customer care stagnated. The regulators were incentivized to create a monopoly by the entrenched medical professionals.
Now people are asking for more regulations. Is that the solution?
For example: Legitimate news are members of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, or have a licence to broadcast from Ofcom, or something similar. Media on social platforms will be subject to the same standards as those broadcast on television, or written in print. If videos online are 'fake news' then ofcom deal with that the same as they would on television, or ISPO the same as they would in print.
For foreign news, they could rely on similar organisations in host countries, or an affiliation with a member.
In that regulation, Facebook & Google would agree to revoke the account of the outlet in line with the regulatory organisations guidelines.
Any news outlet that is not a member of the independent organisation, or a licencee of Ofcom is considered fake news.
In my internal "how reliable is this source", that's pretty much the first check I do in my head.
http://healthfeedback.org/the-most-popular-health-articles-o...
Many articles from otherwise reputable sources are not credible, or accurate or are simply false. Journalists no longer do any fact checking. Sensationalism is more important than reputation.
So on to the idea that Google and Facebook should be regulated, I think it's an absolutely horrible idea. We are talking of censorship conducted by the government, the worst kind there is. And thinking of our own government, I can't think of people that are more corrupt or incompetent.
Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic. Push for some lessons in high-school or whatever.
Why the censorship is done by a corporation is so much better than the one done by an elected government? I think that censorship is the wrong thing not who does it.
> So on to the idea that Google and Facebook should be regulated, I think it's an absolutely horrible idea.
For what it seems the USA election was deeply impacted by a foreign hostile government using Facebook ads. There are countries where sectarian violence is on the rise thanks to how Facebook prioritises stories for engagement.
Facebook or Google need to be regulated because they are radicalizing people in search of more engagement to sell more ads. That is not a good situation, and there is no incentive for them to stop doing it. As it is the best way to get more money.
Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision? For me, the answer is no. It is unethical and it will impact negatively the people affected.
> Just fucking educate people on fact checking and elementary logic.
This supposes that the fault is in the individuals not in the system. And that it is easier to change all the population than to regulate a handful of companies. I am all for better education, but to solve the problem with the big tech companies regulation is needed.
Because a company can censor whatever they want, and you don't have to use Facebook if you don't want to. With the government, there is an inherent threat of violence if you don't comply. Very simple.
If the public square has become the internet, it behooves the government to regulate it for political speech in the same way they do sex,race,religion, .etc.
That must be a nice fantasy land you're living in.
Speaking as a child of communism, the difference is that in case the government is doing the censorship you're no longer free to build your own platform, you're no longer free to have your own voice.
In one case it's a matter of freedom, in another it's just a matter of cost. The difference is night and day.
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> "For what it seems the USA election was deeply impacted by a foreign hostile government using Facebook ads. There are countries where sectarian violence is on the rise thanks to how Facebook prioritises stories for engagement."
Introducing censorship won't help fix these issues and there's absolutely no evidence that regulation helps in increasing the quality of news. Worse, government mandated censorship is pretty much irreversible without a revolution.
This notion that people need protection from external influence has been the explanation for the censorship happening behind the Iron Curtain. It's the logic used by dictators and oligarchies.
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> "Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision? For me, the answer is no. It is unethical and it will impact negatively the people affected."
You still have the freedom to delete your Facebook account and note that I totally agree about privacy protections. I love the GDPR, but don't push censorship on me just because you are unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
Also don't lump privacy together with fake news, in order to appeal to emotions, because they are not the same thing. Why don't you throw a "think of the children" in there too.
Also "child of communism" is a combination appeal to emotion with an appeal to authority thrown in for good measure. It's an attempt to paper over a breathless strawman argument - so, triple threat, I guess.
Regulation does not equate censorship. There are other things that can be done. What do you think about this one "The report also said social media companies should agree to "code of conduct" to govern their commercial agreements with publishers."?
It looks like a good idea that the tech giants should be held accountable for how they run their advertisement business that affects the behaviour of all the population.
"Should these companies be allowed to run what accounts as psychological experiments on big portions of the population without any supervision?" is a valid question. It is not censorship. What do you think about it?
I would still request evidence about the scope of this, because basic evidence suggests strongly that the influence was minuscule.
So I would heavily question "deeply impacted". Perhaps this whole story was just fake news?
I would even be satisfied with any ad from any country having the ability to significantly sway any election.
There are far more probable explanations for the result of the election.
The point of advertising is to change people's behaviours and opinions. The entire purpose of the content is to modify behaviour. Cynics and trolls may think it doesn't have a 'significant' impact but it works which is why it is a multi-billion dollar industry.
Anyways, here is your evidence of the impact that Russian meddling had on the US elections, you troll https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
It is impossible to know the full extent that Russian interference had on the election, but dismissing its impact because there is no proof of its 'effectiveness' is laughable. We know political ads work. It is why every single modern political campaign runs them. A google search gives you a rough idea of the reach this political campaign had. Put those simple principles together and you get why all western intelligence communities are in agreement that russia interfered and affected the US presidential election. Given how susceptible people are to advertising it shouldn't come as a surprise.
When someone posits a statement that is just insanely ignorant (and demonstrably wrong) like "I would even be satisfied with any ad from any country having the ability to significantly sway any election." then the intent to derail the conversation is clear. Any knowledge of political history (and advertising) would tell you that such a statement is clearly ridiculous. Being obstinate and a pedant doesn't make automatically make you a critical thinker. In this case, it blinds you from seeing the obvious.
Some sources for you even though you are probably too busy commenting something contrarian to google this shit yourself.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/without-the-russians...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/30/technology/facebook-googl...
If advertising can win elections, then Hillary would have won since she far outspent Trump on media. Let's not forget she had a much larger army of astro turfers (Correct The Record) pushing her message on the internet and it was all for moot. It turns out people aren't as easy to sway as advertisers would have you believe.
Hillary didn't take any non-screened questions from the press for a period of several months during the heat of the campaign.
HRC campaign was overconfident in swing states and chose not to campaign there.
Agreed, this is long overdue and the only sustainable solution that isn’t just tyranny in waiting. The problem is that teaching critical thinking to kids makes them less prone to bing manipulated, and governments want people they can push and pull, as do advertisers, and so do a lot of parents even if they don’t realize it. When little Billy comes home and starts questioning his devout parents about inconsistencies in their religion, that’s enough for Billy’s parents to be against it. It’s not a hard thing to imagine either, just look at anti-evolution campaigning.
I would guess that a majority of parents want kids that believe what they’re told by the parents regardless of merit. So it’s pushback from all sides, because so many people are strongly invested in manipulating each other. Critical thinking is like a broad spectrum antibiotic, insofar as you don’t really pick and choose what it acts against. From your and my perspective that’s the feature, but to a lot of people it’s the bug.
(Also, come back when the teachers are paid appropriately.)
I would blame Google and Facebook for this though. G crafted the online marketing landscape to favor using their ads (since most brands use adwords the most), and Facebook's post model favors clickbait headlines so that users click them and continue to use FB.
Thankfully these news publications have figured out they can start charging a monthly fee, like it was before the internet, but I fear this will push out small players that don't get as many subscribers as the new york times.
I have massive issues with UK politics but knowing a few civil servants, they're not (widely) corrupt, and they're not incompetent.
In any department, they will normally be the force for good policy based on evidence, it's politicians who push random expedient ideas. Take grammar schools, the entire department of education knows they don't work and are being forced to push it. Or Brexit, the whole civil service pretty much opposes it, and especially the treasury/trade people in detailed knowledge that it's going to be an economic tire fire.
Finally, regulation != censorship, there's such a thing as a middle ground.
No government is interested in educating their own people on fact checking and logic because a truly educated population is hard to control. All governments want their population fat, dumb and brainwashed.
Also, we are constantly told the lie that news companies hold power to account. But what's interesting is that every major news company was created by the government, banker, politician, etc. So power created these news companies to keep themselves to account? If Trump created "Trump news", would anyone believe he created it to keep himself in check?
Name any "credible" major news company. They were all founded by either a government, banker, politician, etc. Power created these companies to constrain power? I find that hard to believe and it's historically false.
“By giving students the proper tools to analyze the media they consume, we can empower them to make informed decisions...”
https://sd03.senate.ca.gov/news/20180917-governor-brown-sign...
> On or before July 1, 2019, the department shall make available to school districts on its Internet Web site a list of resources and instructional materials on media literacy, including media literacy professional development programs for teachers.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
It's funny how if alabama ran a state media indoctrination campaign, some people would be screaming propaganda. But california does it, some people think it is a good thing.
These kids should be thought logic and history of media. Not "how to analyze media". Teaching them logic and history helps them to analyze everything ( religion, media, science, literature, etc ). Not just "media".
What would be your opinion of china or russia running a media "literacy" campaign on their own children?
I was taught this back in the 90s, UK GSCE History so a mandatory class at least for the first 3 years. I can't quite remember if it came later or earlier, but early would make sense.
Consider the source, bias, first hand account / second / here say etc., find and compare multiple sources.
Maybe this isn't common and I was lucky? Maybe it doesn't happen these days. My history teacher was brilliant, one of the few I remember fondly.
If the companies don't like this they can either spin off their news related products into a separate company or stop actively trying to control the news narrative.
This is simple.
EDIT: I don't know what I'm talking about with age ranges. I was 13 years old when I went to high school in 1989; my daughter turned 13 today and is in 7th grade.