The article starts off stating that Hillary Clinton was the choice of nearly every newspaper editorial review board, and that despite those endorsements it didn't matter. Does anyone else find this incredibly tone deaf, particularly after last night's results?
To be clear, I did not vote for Trump, but my rejection of his candidacy was certainly not based on the stance of the LA Times editorial board. To be honest, with the amount of biased and sloppy journalism I read from even the venerated newspapers like the LA and NY Times, I'm not sure why the author assumes anyone should listen to the suggestions of their respective editorial boards.
Because newspaper endorsement used to have more weight. I am not sure it has ever been measured scientifically but it was at least perceived as having some weight.
Now today, we realize that it has no effect on the average voter.
This is a shocking realization if your are a journalist working for a newspaper. It is a "Emperor's New Clothes" moment. For the rest of us, I would say this has less an impact.
I don't think it is tone deaf. It is a very valid point. People that working politics and research it as their job heavily recommended one candidate over the other. It is getting easier to ignore the opinion of an expert and instead find a source that agrees with how you feel. People are looking for reasons to discredit sources that they don't agree with. Sloppiness and bias will always happen, but at some point you have to realize that a source like The Wall Street Journal is better than Brietbart and that blog posts and opinion pieces should not be given the same weight as investigative journalism.
The tone is that a racist demagogue who made up lies off the top of his head at every speech was found acceptable by (almost) a plurality of voters.
The tone is that voters have been proven to be manipulable through fear to blame people of other races and nationalities for whatever economic conditions are unfavorable to them. The tone is that the truth and nuance of these issues are now irrelevant in elections.
The tone is that serial bullying and abuse of women is not a disqualifier for what should be the most-respected office in the nation.
Newspaper editorial staffs are not to be shamed for being disgusted by it. But yeah, there's no more denying the extent to which that tone exists now.
I still think that the media had a massive influence on the election - the fact that they all were pushing a particular choice (and attacking any discussion of the negatives of that candidate in an aggressive, illiberal way) tripped the public's Pravda breaker (they went into the uncanny valley of journalism?), and killed all of her support at the margins.
As for Trump, he won with fewer votes than McCain or Romney. The suspicion caused by the spirited media advocacy (the media being one of the only groups with a lower approval rating than Congress or Clinton/Trump) made people who suspected that they had been suckered by Obama into voting for the oligarchy were absolutely sure that they were being suckered into voting for Clinton.
The US media used to be better at this. It was the advantage that we had over the USSR.
You seem to be focusing on papers that usually endorse Democrats. Of course it is not surprising that their endorsements did not sway many voters.
I think that the important point, though, is that there are also a lot of newspapers that usually endorse Republicans, and far more of those went for Clinton this time than Trump.
Wikipedia has a nice sortable table here [1], showing endorsement, circulation, and who the paper endorsed in 2012. Sort it by 2012 endorsement, and scroll down to the Romney endorsements
The one thing I appreciate from editorial boards are recommendations for the down ballot elections. I don't know who these people are and their goals are usually difficult to describe in a blurb. At least I can get a third-party blurb about why I should vote for them. Online doesn't seem to really have a solution for this, as everyone wants to write about the main event, not the local races.
I guess that's because in the UK "It's The Sun Wot Won It".[0] Summary: It is believed some media, like The Sun, have a big effect on elections' results, like with the recent Brexit referendum. This led some people to believe it's pretty much impossible to win against sensationalist media in the UK. (But please correct me if I'm wrong, that's my take after living in London for around 6 years.) And so Trump can be thought of as a surprise given his victory against the overall media landscape.
This fear is rooted in a continued misunderstanding of the election result by people in tech. Voters didn't vote for Trump because they read some fake news story on Facebook, they voted for him out of economic desperation. They weren't tricked or mislead into it.
Yeah. There's going to be millions of words spouted about this in the next week or so from people trying to explain the result, but I think the simple reality - as with Brexit - is that a large section of society are just sick of the way they are being treated.
Perhaps due to overconfidence (to the point of arrogance) that they'd win, as with Brexit, some on the 'losing side' have to tell themselves, or anyone that will listen, that people who voted differently did so because they're stupid, misled or otherwise didn't know what they were doing.
People who voted Trump and people who voted Brexit knew exactly what they were doing and had their own real and personal reasons for doing so.
It's hard to put exactly one reason on why Trump was elected and Clinton was not. I got the feeling more it was a rejection of the insider/elitist makeup of politics. Many people expected this rejection when Obama ran for "change" in 2008, but didn't see any change in how the political class conducts business.
> Voters didn't vote for Trump because ... they voted for him out of ...
I'd like to propose a rule on HN, Don't make claims about issues like this without a serious factual basis. We have more than enough speculation already; more is just spam.
Really? The entire election can be boiled down to a single, concrete, easily understood reason? There's no diversity of thought at all? How remarkable.
It's funny how if HRC had won they would be praising FB for spreading the word. Obama was probably the first candidate to really use technology and social media effectively and was also praised for its use. Now that Trump has won FB is bad.
I saw a person on my FB feed the other night say that she knew Trump was going to take away her right to vote now that he won, and her post was like by many. Trump is flawed in many ways, but that is absurd.
Most(all?) of us here know to go and fact things we read, but this is not a new thing. The media has always been this way. The nightly news shaped the public by what stories they told and left out. It's not a FB problem, but a people problem who surround themselves only with groups that confirm their already existing opinions, and stop questioning.
Apparently they don't believe that social media worked in HRCs favor? I've seen many posts comparing Trump to Hitler . I don't think this article would have been printed if Hillary won, because she was the choice of most media outlets. When would Facebook stop with the moderating/fact checking? Would they allow personal false stories, but not official ones?
This smacks of a journalist frantically attempting to remain relevant, similar to CNN saying:
Remember, it’s illegal to possess these stolen documents. It’s
different for the media. So everything you learn about this,
you’re learning from us.
Maybe if they didn't suck, people would still go to them for news. But as it stands, journalists with that "proclivity for fact checking" that the author mentions universally failed to see Trump winning. Their echo chamber is no better than most peoples' Facebook feeds these days.
Those are baseless assertions about made-up facts (including a fabricated quote). That's the difference between random information on the Internet and serious journalism.
The former is sensational and provokes an emotional reaction, but those don't indicate truth. IME when professional communicators, like political leaders and news sources, increase the former, it's a very good sign that they lack the latter.
Insinuating that he is in fact to blame. The article doesn't make an argument that he is (other then repeatedly mentioning that he didn't say who he voted for), but intent of the headline is obvious.
"Program or be programmed" - Rushkoff said it best.
In a world where your Rushkoffs[1] go unread, we are spiraling into some sort of local maxima where social media is realized for what it is, and the problems associated with social media are epidemic.
The crux of the issue lies in the fact that nobody knows what social media is, or indeed cyber. "Cyber" as it stands now is some far off place, in a William Gibson fantasy, but infact operates in the world seemingly un-noticed by the smartphone equipped masses.
As I said; it's not long until people realize they've been played and their eyeball hours and data exhausts are being sold to the highest bidder for hard cash. It makes me wonder why smartphones even cost so much. Surely they should be 'free' given how much data can be gleaned from a smartphone owner?
I have had this feeling for a year but I think FBs decline has started. Facebook Inc always presents growth during their quarterly report, but the truth is that its growing in "3rd world" countries but dying in the western world.
I admit I do have a facebook account, but its only used for events and messenger. I havent posted for like 4 years now. The few times I check FB its filled with memes, autoplaying videos and few individuals who seems to be very noisy.
The gut feelings is that facebook.com will become less valuable, but I still think facebook inc will keep growing. They have acquired Whatsapp and Instagram so in a way they have maintained a significant section of the people who "left" facebook.com.
I would love to hear the opinion of other people on this matter.
I went through and unfollowed every single person and group on my facebook, life is far more pleasant. Boy the unimaginable amount of people basing their lives off sharing memes and untrue articles was just plain unbelievable.
That's a squishy headline. That Facebook is too influential (both directly in terms of the impact of their policies, and indirectly in terms of its power as a misinformation amplification device) is abundantly clear.
Not to say that I have a solution for it. Anything I can think of has its own problems. But, we should accept as a truism that any centralized service with that much sway over multiple hours of hundreds of millions of people's days is "too influential".
Regulators should shutdown or deny fb many of the privileges it currently has; consumers should minimize or avoid Fb altogether. Its doable, I stopped using Fb regularly two years ago and now I only check my page twice or thrice a year.
Fb is not in any way essential for daily living.
“Technological change is mostly inevitable ... I don't think we could have avoided what's happened. Often when technology causes a problem, it also hands you a solution. I'm hoping that will be the case here. But I'm damned if I know what it is.”
I think these are common cop-outs, easy irresponsibility by people in our industry (in fact, I'm omitting the speaker becasue my comment is about the industry and not to pick apart the words of someone who spoke off-the-cuff in a moment). They only work because outsiders exalt us and don't question us (yet), and insiders don't question these ideas because they serves our interest and we hear them so much that the ideas have become normalized. But let's look at them with fresh eyes:
* "Technological change is mostly inevitable" is just really a way to rationalize doing whatever you want without the burdens of accountability and responsibility - 'there's nothing I can do, it's inevitable!'. It's similar to 'God made me do it' or 'I was following orders'.
* "Often when technology causes a problem, it also hands you a solution." As I understand the implication, the premise is that the problem is unanticipated and the solution a reaction. But that again avoids responsibility: Many problems of tech, especially the consequences of spreading misinformation widely, can be anticipated and dealt with proactively. Also, it assumes that some god, Technology, is giving and withholding things - again it's out of our hands.
* "I'm damned if I know what it is." That's another rationalization to avoid responsibility, a common one: a claim of helplessness. People in SV pride themselves on solving the impossible; probably these words wouldn't be heard if solving the problem was a priority.
I'd like to see Facebook add an 'Unverified' reaction button. I know people can post rebuttals in comments but making it easier and more visible may help people report factually unsupported stuff.
It could have an question mark icon to emphasize that there are questions remaining around a post.
Facebook might eventually use this to lower visibility of articles that are widely marked as 'Unverified'
So, in other words, the people of America are not capable of interpreting information when it is not tightly controlled by a small number of outlets. Therefore we, the elite that know better, need to manage this medium so that they get the information that we deem correct.
Hyperbole aside, we're probably better off using this as a tipping point for teaching people to think critically.
For every online platform that controls political messaging there will be an alternate platform that allows it to flow. It's the nature of the web, you can't put it back in the bottle now.
edit: not that bubbles don't exist - suggest you expand your own bubble. Relevant preview from Adam Curtis' new doc:
No it's not. People just in general have a herd mentality. If social signals are important to you, if your need to fit in is more important than having your own opinion then no amount of "fixing" the algorithm is going to change that.
Furthermore those 40% comes from all sorts of papers but all but one was against Trump. Yet he won.
Fake news is only useful to fuel your anger if you have already decided. The reason why people are swing voters is exactly because they weight in many factors not because they let themselves be fooled by fake news IMO.
Furthermore the beauty of networks like Facebook and Twitter is that they are self-correcting. The lie doesn't travel faster than the rebuttal of that lie.
Lastly I am not sure the article has a very clear idea of what actually constitutes a lie since a lot of those lies are really just different interpretation of the same things. And FB is actually quite good at having related articles of something which often will have different views in them.
Facebook is one of the places where you actually meet most people of dissenting views to yours.
so it basically says you need some censorship into the social media? who is going to censor the content then? maybe consult with some countries that are good at censorship.
or just develop some new AI algorithm that does fact-check with a colored button, the darker it is the more fake it is, or something like that?
[+] [-] Inconel|9 years ago|reply
To be clear, I did not vote for Trump, but my rejection of his candidacy was certainly not based on the stance of the LA Times editorial board. To be honest, with the amount of biased and sloppy journalism I read from even the venerated newspapers like the LA and NY Times, I'm not sure why the author assumes anyone should listen to the suggestions of their respective editorial boards.
[+] [-] seren|9 years ago|reply
Now today, we realize that it has no effect on the average voter.
This is a shocking realization if your are a journalist working for a newspaper. It is a "Emperor's New Clothes" moment. For the rest of us, I would say this has less an impact.
[+] [-] ben010783|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gdulli|9 years ago|reply
The tone is that a racist demagogue who made up lies off the top of his head at every speech was found acceptable by (almost) a plurality of voters.
The tone is that voters have been proven to be manipulable through fear to blame people of other races and nationalities for whatever economic conditions are unfavorable to them. The tone is that the truth and nuance of these issues are now irrelevant in elections.
The tone is that serial bullying and abuse of women is not a disqualifier for what should be the most-respected office in the nation.
Newspaper editorial staffs are not to be shamed for being disgusted by it. But yeah, there's no more denying the extent to which that tone exists now.
[+] [-] pessimizer|9 years ago|reply
As for Trump, he won with fewer votes than McCain or Romney. The suspicion caused by the spirited media advocacy (the media being one of the only groups with a lower approval rating than Congress or Clinton/Trump) made people who suspected that they had been suckered by Obama into voting for the oligarchy were absolutely sure that they were being suckered into voting for Clinton.
The US media used to be better at this. It was the advantage that we had over the USSR.
[+] [-] tzs|9 years ago|reply
I think that the important point, though, is that there are also a lot of newspapers that usually endorse Republicans, and far more of those went for Clinton this time than Trump.
Wikipedia has a nice sortable table here [1], showing endorsement, circulation, and who the paper endorsed in 2012. Sort it by 2012 endorsement, and scroll down to the Romney endorsements
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_...
[+] [-] flippyhead|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phhlho|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iaskwhy|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_The_Sun_Wot_Won_It
[+] [-] akerro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg_is_a_butt|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] onewaystreet|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quirkafleeg|9 years ago|reply
Perhaps due to overconfidence (to the point of arrogance) that they'd win, as with Brexit, some on the 'losing side' have to tell themselves, or anyone that will listen, that people who voted differently did so because they're stupid, misled or otherwise didn't know what they were doing.
People who voted Trump and people who voted Brexit knew exactly what they were doing and had their own real and personal reasons for doing so.
[+] [-] caseysoftware|9 years ago|reply
Reading coverage of the 1984 election is eerily similar with the whole "I don't know anyone who voted for Reagan!" line.
If someone doesn't know a single person who voted for a candidate who received over 59M votes, I'd suggest the speaker has a problem.
[+] [-] andrewmutz|9 years ago|reply
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-...
[+] [-] ErikVandeWater|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] boardwaalk|9 years ago|reply
On the face of it you clearly can't describe the reason all Trump voters voted Trump so simply.
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
I'd like to propose a rule on HN, Don't make claims about issues like this without a serious factual basis. We have more than enough speculation already; more is just spam.
[+] [-] nitwit005|9 years ago|reply
Really? The entire election can be boiled down to a single, concrete, easily understood reason? There's no diversity of thought at all? How remarkable.
[+] [-] gaur|9 years ago|reply
Right, the people chanting "fuck Islam" and "Sieg heil" [0] at Trump rallies surely cast their votes out of economic desperation.
[0] http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004533191/unf...
[+] [-] daxorid|9 years ago|reply
It was not out of economic desperation.
Data point of one.
[+] [-] popmystack|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] matwood|9 years ago|reply
I saw a person on my FB feed the other night say that she knew Trump was going to take away her right to vote now that he won, and her post was like by many. Trump is flawed in many ways, but that is absurd.
Most(all?) of us here know to go and fact things we read, but this is not a new thing. The media has always been this way. The nightly news shaped the public by what stories they told and left out. It's not a FB problem, but a people problem who surround themselves only with groups that confirm their already existing opinions, and stop questioning.
[+] [-] newdayrising|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshkpeterson|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] yolesaber|9 years ago|reply
Trump wants to register and record all Muslims in a database. You can't tell me that doesn't smack of Nazism / fascist policies.
[+] [-] mi100hael|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
The former is sensational and provokes an emotional reaction, but those don't indicate truth. IME when professional communicators, like political leaders and news sources, increase the former, it's a very good sign that they lack the latter.
[+] [-] desireco42|9 years ago|reply
I think this explains it all.
[+] [-] TheGirondin|9 years ago|reply
The Verge: [Mark Zuckerberg sidesteps blame for Trump presidency, says we should all 'work harder'](http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/10/13582008/mark-zuckerberg-...)
Insinuating that he is in fact to blame. The article doesn't make an argument that he is (other then repeatedly mentioning that he didn't say who he voted for), but intent of the headline is obvious.
[+] [-] zerognowl|9 years ago|reply
In a world where your Rushkoffs[1] go unread, we are spiraling into some sort of local maxima where social media is realized for what it is, and the problems associated with social media are epidemic.
The crux of the issue lies in the fact that nobody knows what social media is, or indeed cyber. "Cyber" as it stands now is some far off place, in a William Gibson fantasy, but infact operates in the world seemingly un-noticed by the smartphone equipped masses.
As I said; it's not long until people realize they've been played and their eyeball hours and data exhausts are being sold to the highest bidder for hard cash. It makes me wonder why smartphones even cost so much. Surely they should be 'free' given how much data can be gleaned from a smartphone owner?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Rushkoff
[+] [-] gressquel|9 years ago|reply
I admit I do have a facebook account, but its only used for events and messenger. I havent posted for like 4 years now. The few times I check FB its filled with memes, autoplaying videos and few individuals who seems to be very noisy.
The gut feelings is that facebook.com will become less valuable, but I still think facebook inc will keep growing. They have acquired Whatsapp and Instagram so in a way they have maintained a significant section of the people who "left" facebook.com.
I would love to hear the opinion of other people on this matter.
[+] [-] codyb|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skywhopper|9 years ago|reply
Not to say that I have a solution for it. Anything I can think of has its own problems. But, we should accept as a truism that any centralized service with that much sway over multiple hours of hundreds of millions of people's days is "too influential".
[+] [-] Lordarminius|9 years ago|reply
I do.
Regulators should shutdown or deny fb many of the privileges it currently has; consumers should minimize or avoid Fb altogether. Its doable, I stopped using Fb regularly two years ago and now I only check my page twice or thrice a year. Fb is not in any way essential for daily living.
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
I think these are common cop-outs, easy irresponsibility by people in our industry (in fact, I'm omitting the speaker becasue my comment is about the industry and not to pick apart the words of someone who spoke off-the-cuff in a moment). They only work because outsiders exalt us and don't question us (yet), and insiders don't question these ideas because they serves our interest and we hear them so much that the ideas have become normalized. But let's look at them with fresh eyes:
* "Technological change is mostly inevitable" is just really a way to rationalize doing whatever you want without the burdens of accountability and responsibility - 'there's nothing I can do, it's inevitable!'. It's similar to 'God made me do it' or 'I was following orders'.
* "Often when technology causes a problem, it also hands you a solution." As I understand the implication, the premise is that the problem is unanticipated and the solution a reaction. But that again avoids responsibility: Many problems of tech, especially the consequences of spreading misinformation widely, can be anticipated and dealt with proactively. Also, it assumes that some god, Technology, is giving and withholding things - again it's out of our hands.
* "I'm damned if I know what it is." That's another rationalization to avoid responsibility, a common one: a claim of helplessness. People in SV pride themselves on solving the impossible; probably these words wouldn't be heard if solving the problem was a priority.
[+] [-] BenoitEssiambre|9 years ago|reply
It could have an question mark icon to emphasize that there are questions remaining around a post.
Facebook might eventually use this to lower visibility of articles that are widely marked as 'Unverified'
[+] [-] riebschlager|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mbostleman|9 years ago|reply
Clearly nothing has changed since Tuesday.
[+] [-] nikcub|9 years ago|reply
Hyperbole aside, we're probably better off using this as a tipping point for teaching people to think critically.
For every online platform that controls political messaging there will be an alternate platform that allows it to flow. It's the nature of the web, you can't put it back in the bottle now.
edit: not that bubbles don't exist - suggest you expand your own bubble. Relevant preview from Adam Curtis' new doc:
https://streamable.com/qcg2
[+] [-] ThomPete|9 years ago|reply
Furthermore those 40% comes from all sorts of papers but all but one was against Trump. Yet he won.
Fake news is only useful to fuel your anger if you have already decided. The reason why people are swing voters is exactly because they weight in many factors not because they let themselves be fooled by fake news IMO.
Furthermore the beauty of networks like Facebook and Twitter is that they are self-correcting. The lie doesn't travel faster than the rebuttal of that lie.
Lastly I am not sure the article has a very clear idea of what actually constitutes a lie since a lot of those lies are really just different interpretation of the same things. And FB is actually quite good at having related articles of something which often will have different views in them.
Facebook is one of the places where you actually meet most people of dissenting views to yours.
[+] [-] ausjke|9 years ago|reply
or just develop some new AI algorithm that does fact-check with a colored button, the darker it is the more fake it is, or something like that?
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mtgx|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] debacle|9 years ago|reply