Probably not, certainly not completely, but we can at least try and educate people with regards to what is going on.
HRC says Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian agent working to sabotage the DNC
- Thread starter UCFKnight85
- Start date
Probably not, certainly not completely, but we can at least try and educate people with regards to what is going on.
That's the really tough thing about this business: These false memes (etc.) specifically target individuals who are the most susceptible to its message.
I think most of us understand that, whether it's 'a free prize' or 'a sensational story about THOSE OTHER GUYS', if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. But there are those people (that we all know) who live for this kind of sh*t and will happily do their part to forward this fake crap on to everybody they know.
Unfortunately your first sentence probably isn't true. I wish it was. If the average politically minded person understood this, not a single false meme would survive more than 5 minutes without fact check on FB. Unfortunately, at least in my feed, very few people point these things out. Mostly the result in an echo chamber of more people getting misinformed. Just had one today that showed a picture of woman who looked a lot like Ilian Omar with a gun. Text said it was a picture of her at a terrorist training camp in Somalia. In 30 seconds I found a fact check on the picture. It's an AP photo take before she was born. Just another day on FB.
Do I want the government to clamp down on speech? Absolutely not. Do I want an educated and informed public that can self-regulate, combined with regulation of social media companies at least on the paid-advertising side? Yes. Do I want POTUS to make a big deal out of this and use the Bully Pulpit to protect us from disinformation? Yes. More than anythign, I want a concerted national effort. If we can a national ad campaign to fight drugs, we can do the same to fight disinformation. With Trump's twitter reach, imagine the impact he alone could have in stamping out disinformation if he wanted to.
Going to the moon was hard. Developing a nuclear bomb was hard. Beating the Nazis was hard. I think we can pull this off if we wanted to, and being hard certainly isn't a reason to hand over the hearts and minds of the ignorant to Putin.
I'd sure like to be an optimist and believe you are right. But my skeptical side says that it's not going to work (at least not in our current political climate) because you're assuming people don't want disinformation. That's not the case.
As long as the information supports their political views, they don't give a sh*t whether it's real or not.
Totally reasonable response. I appreciate the fact that you are pretty objective.
That being said, if the govt is tasked with clamping down on misinformation, what do we do about things like ABC news showing footage of a weaponry display in Kentucky and passing it off as video of the conflict in syria? How do you hold them to account? It's easy to point at Russian bots and say just shut them down because they are passing misinformation but can you do the same with a major news organization? And where do you draw the line between the 2? What if Rachel maddow or Glenn beck do investigative research that at first seems illegitimate but later turns out to be true? To an even further extent, what do you do about a jussie smollet situation where people like FC were insisting that there was an attack that was racially, sexually, and politically motivated? FC isn't a Russian bot but he propagated disinformation.
You call them out on their mistakes. ABC has already acknowledged it was a mistake, and most news outlets will do the same when called out (or even when not called out). News agencies aren't perfect, they will make mistakes, but most legitimate news outlets are going to correct their errors. Memes have no editorial standards and no one is going to retract or correct their errors.
This might be a stupid question but who is FC?
Last edited:
These are quotes from a person that suffers from tds. also known as fc
He's largely disappeared on account of being embarrassed over and over and over here due to his delusions getting in the way of sanity.
Look, the 1st Amendment is always going to present challenges that Putin doesn't have. He can stifle dissent internally by controlling and censoring information. We can't do that. So when Russian talking points are laundered through US voices, there's little we can (or should) do to directly stop it. Beck and Maddow can both be overtly biased in their opinion making, yet still capable of breaking a significant story based on fact, if they maintain a level of intellectual honesty in their reporting (which other reporters will fact check and scrutinize).
However, distrusting the mainstream press, as general practice, is like distrusting "mainstream medicine." Should it be free from criticism? Should you take everything your told as fact? Should you not seek a second opinion? Of course not. Mistakes are made. Biases exist. However, that doesn't mean you resort to "alternative medicine" to replace mainstream medicine across the board. Guess what? All those biases and flaws inherent in humanity are still present in the alternative, just with far less accountability.
Presidents never like the press, but it's the best we have. Authoritarian 101 is to discredit the free press. Don't fall for it.
Far more Democrats give me grief about voting Libertarian than Republicans ever have. And Libertarians have been, historically, sucking away 3x as many votes from Republicans than Democrats ... until 2016.
Note to Hillary: As many Democrats voted Johnson as Republicans because your history of civil liberties and rights really THAT bad! It had NOTHING to do with the Russians.
Note to Hillary: As many Democrats voted Johnson as Republicans because your history of civil liberties and rights really THAT bad! It had NOTHING to do with the Russians.
doesn't make Hillary look near as bad if this NYT screwup is true. Russian Bots are giving Gabbard a lot of support online
Yeah. It falls right in line with Hillary’s decades-long blaming of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy to try to wipe away every negative commentary towards her. But, sure, go ahead and act like it’s not as bad because you’re blaming Americans who did nothing rather than Russian boogeymen.
I think everyone wants Hillary to go away and enjoy retirement but she was misquoted
Misquoted but the context is correct. She referred to Gabbard as a russian asset.
The weird thing about this is that if Gabbard ran as a 3rd party candidate she would hurt Trump more than the Democrat nominee. The dem base is focused on things that gabbard doesn't necessarily have strong stances on. Gabbard wants out of the middle east: trump position. She is against 3rd trimester abortion: trump position. She's railing against the media/political complex: trump position. If anything, she's Ross Perot as opposed to Jill Stein.
Latest posts
-
-
-
-
-
OT: ESPN opts out of MLB Contract option for 2026-2028
- Latest: Knight_Light