Your Internet Is About to Get a Lot More Censored

(ANTIMEDIA) — The term “fake news” sits at the heart of a raging battle between political dynasties, media conglomerates, and alternative Internet news sites. In the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, which many establishment pundits and operatives argue was heavily affected by online propaganda and ‘weaponized’ information, few people can say with any authority what constitutes “fake news,” but that hasn’t stopped mainstream news outlets and tech giants from attempting to censor it.

The newest effort sees an alliance between the world’s two most powerful tech companies, which arguably control the vast majority of what people see online. Google and Facebook have partnered up with 75 other global news organizations and tech firms, including The Washington Post, to combat online misinformation with the ‘Trust Project.’

The ‘Trust Project’ will attempt to establish a ‘transparency’ system of rating and tagging the trustworthiness of an article and the news source that produced it. This system will feature “trust indicators” developed for each online platform.

According to the project leader, Sally Lehrman of Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, the project will also include information about funding and details about specific journalists and their sources and references.

“An increasingly skeptical public wants to know the expertise, enterprise and ethics behind a news story,” Lehrman said.

The project will involve a far-reaching collaboration between different companies. Launch partners include the Economist, the Globe and Mail, the Independent Journal Review, Mic, Italy’s La Repubblica and La Stampa, and the Washington Post. Tech giants like Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Microsoft will integrate trust indicators using “machine-readable signals” that will be specially tailored to their platforms by Schema.org. They plan to eventually spread the plan out to incorporate smaller news websites and non-profits by creating indicators for WordPress and Drupal.

According to the project’s website, there is a core group of 8 trust indicators that were whittled down from an initial 37. These core indicators are Best Practices, Author/Reporter Expertise, Type of Work, Citations and References, Methods, Locally Sourced, Diverse Voices, and Actionable Feedback.

Lehrman says her work on the ‘Trust Project’ dates back to 2012 when she asked a specialist in machine learning at Twitter, and Richard Gingras, head of Google News, if it was possible to create ethical algorithms — algorithms that can be used toward an ethical means. They said yes. Together with Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist, Gringas provided early financial and consulting assistance to the project.

Greg Sterling, a contributing editor for the Search Engine Land blog, believes the project may be too ambitious.

“Readers should be able to see what’s behind the labeling scheme, but they should be able to tell at a glance whether an item is from a credible source, not have to spend time evaluating it based on a range of factors that may be obscure to them,” he wrote.

On its homepage, the ‘Trust Project’ asks a question. “We all think we can tell the difference between opinion, advertising and accurate news. But how do we really know?”

A more pointed question to ask may be: can an algorithm designed to provide ethical reporting be trusted if the gatekeepers leveraging it already have track records of tweaking their algorithms to restrict the reach of independent media sites? State Department-friendly news sources like the Washington Post joining forces with tech giants that already have a track record of algorithmic censorship is not terribly surprising or inspiring. Such an endeavor may not garner much “trust” from independent publishers who already believe the “fake news” narrative has been weaponized to destabilize the alternative media landscape.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Google Putting CNN, Washington Post, NYT in Charge of Fact-Checking News

(ANTIMEDIA) Google announced Friday that it’s adding a special feature to its news service — Fact Check. Searchers will now know who checked the validity of a news story and the conclusion they arrived at.

The Fact Check tag “identifies articles that include information fact checked by news publishers and fact-checking organizations.” Each Fact Check snippet “will display information on the claim, who made the claim, and the fact check on that particular claim.”

The rating system will rank stories from “true” to “false” but will also denote stories it finds “partly true” and “partly false.” Searches will also have the option, via hyperlink in the snippet, to review the fact-checkers’ content on the same subject.

We"re revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.

This, of course, begs the question: Who are the fact-checkers?

Anyone can volunteer to be one, says Google, cautioning that “Only publishers that are algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information will qualify for inclusion.”

Currently, the growing list of 115 organizations includes the likes of CNN, The Washington Post, NBC, CBS, and The New York Times, to name a few.

So now, not only will the corporate media be able to deem which content is acceptable and which isn’t, it’ll also be able — again, the link will be right there in the snippet — to guide readers toward their own view on the matter.

Fact Check: A rating system for the corporate media and by the media corporations.

Incidentally, there’s already a mechanism in place for calling out bullshit. It’s called the independent media.

Creative Commons / Anti-Media / Report a typo

Fact-checking the wrong way, featuring PolitiFact

Let PolitiFact help show you the right way to fact check by avoiding its mistakes.

by politifactbias

Fake and skewed news do present a problem for society. Having the best possible information allows us to potentially make the best possible decisions. Bad information hampers good decision-making. And the state of public discourse, including the state of the mainstream media, makes it valuable for the average person to develop fact-checking skills.

We found a December 11, 2016 fact check from PolitiFact that will help us learn better how to interpret claims and make use of expert sources.

The interpretation problem

PolitiFact believed it was fact-checking Republican Reince Priebus’ claim that there was no report available saying Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 presidential election:

Was Priebus saying there was no “specific report” saying Russia tried to “muddy” the election? Here’s how PolitiFact viewed it:

“Let’s clear this up. Do you believe — does the president-elect believe that Russia was trying to muddy up and get involved in the election in 2016?” Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked on Dec. 11, 2016.

“No. 1, you don’t know it. I don’t know it,” Priebus said. “There’s been no conclusive or specific report to say otherwise.”

That’s wrong. There is a specific report.

It was made public on Oct. 7, 2016, in the form of a joint statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. At the time, the website WikiLeaks was releasing a steady flow of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee and top Hillary Clinton adviser John Podesta.

“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” the statement said. “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.”

Based on the context of Priebus’ appearance on “Meet the Press,” we think PolitiFact botched its interpretation. NBC’s Chuck Todd went back and forth with Priebus for a number of minutes on the nature of the evidence supporting the charge of Russian interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The main topic was recent news reports suggesting Russia interfered with the U.S. election to help Republican candidate Donald Trump. Todd’s question after “Let’s clear this up” had little chance of clearing up that point. Priebus would not act unreasonably by interpreting Todd’s question to refer to interference intended to help the Republican Party.

But the bigger interpretation problem centers on the word “specific.” Given the discussion between Todd and Priebus around the epistemological basis for the Russian hacking angle, including “You don’t know it and I don’t know it” in the immediate context, both the “conclusive” and the “specific” definitions of the word address the nature of the evidence.

“Conclusive” means incontrovertible, not merely featuring a conclusion. “Specific” means including a specific evidence or evidences, and therefore would refer to a report showing evidences, not merely a particular (second definition as opposed to the first) report.

In short, PolitiFact made a poor effort at interpreting Priebus in the most sensible way. Giving conservatives short shrift in the interpretation department occurs routinely at PolitiFact.

Was the report PolitiFact cited incontrovertible? PolitiFact offered no argument to that effect.

Did the report give a clear and detailed description of Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 election? Again, PolitiFact offered no argument to that effect.

PolitiFact’s “fact-checking” in this case amounted to playing games with the definitions of words.

Read more here.

Another voice on the DNC hacking issue, Judge Andrew Napolitano:

Obama’s Blaming Russia But Judge Napolitano Source Said DNC Hack Was Done By NSA