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    • morepete5 years ago

      Not to mention, their versions will never be left enough for the left or right enough for the right.

      People do need help knowing when they're clicking on something that is literally invented propaganda or a fictional story. It's a real problem. AI might be able to help with that. They might need help finding an across-the-aisle version that communicates in a way they regard as credible. This just strips out what's good and has it rewritten by an anonymous journalist. The Economist does a fine job of that already.

      • bill
        Top reader of all time
        5 years ago

        Morepete - spot on, per usual!

        In the history of reallyread.it, I can't remember a harsher publisher burn than the one you just slammed on The Economist. I don't hate The Economist, but, then again, I don't really read it either.

        My opinions are changing on this stuff literally every day; I'm coming around on propaganda and information warfare as (1) problems in the first place, and (2) problems that "urgently need to be solved." Here's what I'm thinking now:

        REALLYREAD.IT "FAKE NEWS" FEATURE IDEA People who finish really reading articles are invited to mark articles as "fake." (I like the idea of letting users interpret this relatively generic word - "fake" - in any way they want.) Since you can only use the "fake" button if you've really read an article, we'll get an insanely good data set* - Especially when you consider the current next best alternative: warehouses of people, overseas, poring over hundreds of articles per minute, trying to suss our what's real and/or harmful (from) maybe? what's fake but not harmless and fake (like comedy). What a nightmare!

        I'm thinking that the easiest way to show users would be to just display the number of "fake" votes a thing got. So instead of just # of reads & # of comments, an article would also get "# fakes." Like this: 12 reads, 2 fakes, 0 comments.

        *Issue: Is the community big enough yet to support this?

        • bill
          Top reader of all time
          5 years ago

          The # fakes things might be confusing. We could just give articles a "fake" badge if lots of people are flagging it "fake."

          • bill
            Top reader of all time
            5 years ago

            Note to self: still want to do this!

    • bill
      Top reader of all time
      5 years ago

      First of all, mad props to any/all entrepreneurs who are trying to improve the media & journalism industries. There's a ton of work to do. Having said that, this seems like an extraordinarily naive approach. Boiling the good stuff (opinion, thought, idea, insight, connections!) out of an article or story - to protect (?) readers from anything & everything partial - doesn't make anyone smarter or less biased. Suggesting that any humans or robots can be "arbiters of truth" is both laughable and scary.

      News literacy. Critical thinking. Exploring alternative viewpoints with an open mind. Storytelling. Reading. ^Those are the actual answers.