Fake News

[O Really]

Isn't "making him look bad" the reason anybody ever gets fired by Trump?

[Vrede too]

There was a time when this sort of thing would get a lot of media coverage. Now it falls to the side, eclipsed by the many new scandals and antics of the orange buffoon.

SNL said the same thing about Dolt .45 essentially accusing Joe Scarborough of murder - it barely registers amidst all the other craziness.

[billy.pilgrim]

Isn't "making him look bad" the reason anybody ever gets fired by Trump?

Yes, but the media doesn't need to start repeating the lies as if they are true.

[O Really]

That bothers me, too. Some commentator can stand there with a straight face and report on some total bullshit in the same manner as actual fact.
"President Trump said today that he didn't say what he said yesterday" ... and somehow they think that makes sense and we should accept it as "news".

[Vrede too]

Liberals Don’t Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers, Study Finds (article)

Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US (study)

[Vrede too]

Facebook Removed 583 Million Fake Accounts, Enforcing Standards

Facebook Inc. said it took down 583 million fake profiles in the first three months of the year, usually within minutes of their creation.

The company also scrubbed 837 million pieces of spam and acted on 2.5 million instances of hate speech, it said on Tuesday in its first-ever report on how effectively it’s enforcing community standards....

That's a lot of people and their bots screwing around.

[Vrede too]

Wife of Supreme Court (Clarence Thomas) justice spreads fake news about the migrant caravan

...



To be fair, it’s not that hard to get duped on the internet. But before the post was pulled from Thomas’s page on Wednesday, she left it up for days, even as several commenters, including Mike Burkons, pointed out the clear falsehood.

“Ginni, do you even care that the pic you posted isn’t from the caravan and is from 2012?” he wrote. “I hope your husband actually thinks facts are important before he decides a case unlike his wife.” ...

[Vrede too]

Beware the Coming Crisis of “Deep Fake News”
New and chilling video technology blurs the line between truth and lies.

... Deep fakes (sometimes written as “deepfakes”), for the uninitiated, refer to using video editing technology to graft very real faces on other people’s bodies to make them appear to do or say anything the programmer wants....

Watch Jordan Peele use AI to make Barack Obama deliver a PSA about fake news (article)

Younger Americans are better than older Americans at telling factual news statements from opinions



... Younger Americans also are more “digitally savvy” than their elders, a characteristic that is also tied to greater success at classifying news statements. But even when accounting for levels of digital savviness and party affiliation, the differences by age persist: Younger adults are still better than their elders at deciphering factual from opinion news statements.

Beyond digital savviness, the original study found that two other factors have a strong relationship with being able to correctly classify factual and opinion statements: having higher political awareness and more trust in the information from the national news media. Despite the fact that younger adults tend to be less politically aware and trusting of the news media than their elders, they still performed better at this task....

I would like to see a further breakdown of which news media the older Americans are watching and how that associated with their correct answers.

[Leo Lyons]

Liberals Don’t Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers, Study Finds (article)

Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US (study)

Yep, them Brits and their studies. Gotta love the Internet. Great place for laughs.
Read that first linked story, then hop on any social media platform, Lib or Con.

[Vrede too]

Sarah Sanders Accused Of Sharing Doctored Infowars Video To Justify Acosta Ban

She knows that cons will fall for anything.

[Vrede too]

‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America

[GoCubsGo]

‘Nothing on this page is real’: How lies become truth in online America

What a great country we live in .

Good article.

[O Really]

I've known people to quote as truth something they read in "The New York Times" ...
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report

[Vrede too]

I've known people to quote as truth something they read in "The New York Times" ...
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report

Just the headlines are hilarious.

[Vrede too]

Liberals Don’t Share or Believe Fake News As Much As Right-Wingers, Study Finds (article)

Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US (study)

Confirmed:

Older people, conservatives more likely to share fake news: study (article)

Less than you think: Prevalence and predictors of fake news dissemination on Facebook (study)

Article comment:

I have a friend that has been brainwashed by fake news. I pray to God I do not suffer the same fate.

Think about it.

[Vrede too]

Social media fake news fans tension between India and Pakistan

Should be a war crime?

[Vrede too]

FAIL
Mueller Smear Pushed by Pro-Trump Activists Falls Apart at Press Conference
Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman struggled to explain even basic details of their allegations—like the spelling of the accuser’s name.

This is how (Trumpette) Jacob Wohl created a (fake) sexual harassment accusation against Robert Mueller

A Jacob Wohl fake news story about Rep. Ilhan Omar having married her brother has legs online among idiot cons despite Wohl having been exposed and even admitting his lies months ago.

Wohl said that the veracity of the information he spreads is not important, and that "All that matters is how far those claims travel, and how many people believe them." He further said that truth is an obsolete concept, stating that "It’s something that can’t be thought about in a linear, binary true-false, facts-non-facts – you can’t do that anymore [...] It’s just not the way it works." ...

I remember when a creep like this, right or left, would have been shunned.

This 21-year-old tweeted lies about Robert Mueller and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Now, he’s eyeing the 2020 election

... He flew to Minnesota last week to “investigate” the rumor that Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother, a mission for which he tried to fund-raise $25,000 from his online followers. Wohl’s trip to the heartland devolved into bizarre tweets in which he suggested that Minneapolis was so overrun by Somali jihadists that he had to wear a bulletproof vest and travel with a team of “security professionals.”

In the coming days, I will be traveling to Ilhan Omar's district with @Ali and Laura Loomer to gather evidence of the SHAM MARRIAGE to her brother

Evidence will be turned over to DHS

...

[O Really]

How I greatly improved my life:
History - back in the early 2000's, I had a commute into/back from work of about 30-45 minutes on a good day, over an hour on quite a few. For what I though was light entertainment, I started listening to yap radio - early version Hannity, etc., and "participated" by yelling at the radio. Fairly quickly, I got tired of it and discovered audio books. The difference in my overall life was immediate and remarkable. I was more relaxed, tolerated the traffic much easier, got home more cheery and less tired, and didn't start any conversations with Lady O by ranting about what some idiot said on the radio. So what I had thought was "entertainment" was actually very stressful and had a demonstrable negative effect on my well-being and (probably, if I had kept at it longer) on my health.

So last year sometime, I did a "Maria Kondo" on what I'm willing to read, listen to, or watch. I've always been a news/politics junkie, so I don't try to stick my head in my bubble and ignore it all, but curating what I do accept makes a big difference. Here's what I do/don't do:

1. I don't watch any clips of Trump saying or doing anything. I'll read, usually no deeper than headlines, about what he does or says, but not him in person. It's just impossible to watch without yelling back.
2. I don't watch any TV news during the "Trump Trump Trump" portion. It's not going to be anything I can't read about, and it drives me nutz when they "report" on something stupid like it makes a difference. (Trump said "Ivanka has created millions of jobs..." )
3. I don't watch anybody whose job is to just set forth an official propaganda line.
4. I run everything through a "how does this affect my life" filter. It may be selfish, but it's impossible to run to the barricades on every issue when you've got the Trumpsters in charge.
5. I treat most Trump-related "news" like Lady O and I do when they run those starving freezing dog pictures to raise money. Yes, we know there are starving freezing dogs, yes, we contribute to worthwhile causes on behalf of animals, but no, we don't have to watch them starve and freeze and no matter how much we contribute, there will always be starving freezing dogs.
6. I no longer pay much attention to individual outrageous stuff about Trump. I put it in the category of a major disaster of fire, flood, hurricane, whatever. The disaster created havoc and will require major overhaul. It doesn't do any good to wake up every day and say "the storm flooded a house!...the storm flooded a store! ... the fire burned a school..." as if they're new discoveries unrelated to the storm.
7. Sometimes unrelated to politics, but I rarely read any article that starts out "Somebody insulted somebody else" or includes "claps back" or "opens up" in the headline.

Sure, Lady O and I live in somewhat of a bubble, and we're improving that bubble by moving off the east coast to a Canada/Southern Cal life with some Colorado on the side. But realizing that coverage of politicians is all about stirring up conflict and "controversy," and realizing further that most of that is indeed "fake news" even if it's true and accurately reported, and further that politics isn't that important in your life does indeed make for some good living.

[GoCubsGo]

But what about the Kardashians?

[O Really]

But what about the Kardashians?

Well the Kardashian show is more real and contributes more value to society than the Trump show. But then, again, that would apply to Honey Boo Boo and Jerry Springer, too.