I have a habit of not relying on sources that are rated poorly by fact checkers or that I assess to be unreliable or crackpot in some way(s). I sometimes get criticized for (1) ignoring important and useful perspectives and information from these sources, and (2) being misled, deceived and bamboozled by America's bad bad mainstream media and the propaganda it routinely puts out.
There is truth to the allegation that our MSM is biased and often presents intentionally misleading narratives. Our MSM is significantly corrupted and subverted by corporate ownership, big advertisers and the usually (~75% of the time ?) inconvenient fact and truth distorting or killing profit motive.
But regarding unreliable information sources, why should someone invest precious time and effort on their content. With poorly rated sites, it requires lots of time to see what is reasonable content and what isn't. Life is too short for that.
Here's an example of the most recent round of debate on this topic. In this debate, I was arguing for censorship of provable lies on private social media platforms, not in places where lies(free speech) cannot be censored. I argue this in view of the what I see as massive damage to American society and government that divisive lies and propaganda has inflicted on us. My interlocutor argues that at least some poorly rated sites deserve some consideration.
The debate
Me (to someone else): .... Eau contraire, mon ami. Tens of millions of conservatives, haters or not, have been fooled and still are fooled.
My interlocutor: All well and good... but we don't see as many provable lies proven in the news we're provided with as we do true incidents very carefully framed to leave us with a strong impression. That's why I believe it's necessary to follow as wide a variety of sources as is possible. Which in the Age of the Internet is quite a generous field of choice.
Here's a view (four years old) of social media censorship as seen from a Scandinavian POV (the source is a site that calls itself Global Research, "GR").
Here's a view (four years old) of social media censorship as seen from a Scandinavian POV (the source is a site that calls itself Global Research, "GR").
Me: Sigh (citing this MBFC rating)
My interlocutor: See, this is where you and I part the ways. You present yourself as being incapable of critically examining a specific piece of writing, but instead go to the publisher's general reputation... as though anything appearing on this Canadian lefty site must be rubbish, therefore not worth reading. To me, this individual brings a refreshing perspective. In fact I see reliance on a quick study guide as being a sure way to stovepipe your thinking, so you limit yourself to only looking at a single POV. This places you exactly in the company of conspiracy-theorists like QAnon and the anti-vaxxers. Their tunnel vision forces them to become fanatics because they are determined to never read any opposing viewpoint. Like you, might I suggest?
I would like to see you take apart the specific article I cited, using your renowned critical intelligence.
I would like to see you take apart the specific article I cited, using your renowned critical intelligence.
Me (now mildly riled up): Yes, here we part ways. And for a damn good reason. My time is valuable and quite limited. I don't want to critically examine specific pieces of writing from crackpot conspiracy sites. Should I spend my time combing through the tons of garbage that Global Research or QAnon spews to find a nugget or two of truth or insight somewhere in the huge steaming pile?
If so, why? Why is it that places like Global Research or QAnon would be a great place to spend one's time looking in good faith for something of value that cannot be found more easily elsewhere? Just tell me why.
"Global Research" says: "One doesn’t need to look far to understand who the Atlantic Council are and what they stand for : it is a think tank essentially funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military."
So what? Big deal. Fact checker says this about the Atlantic Council:
If so, why? Why is it that places like Global Research or QAnon would be a great place to spend one's time looking in good faith for something of value that cannot be found more easily elsewhere? Just tell me why.
"Global Research" says: "One doesn’t need to look far to understand who the Atlantic Council are and what they stand for : it is a think tank essentially funded by NATO, weapons manufacturers, Middle-Eastern oil-state monarchies, billionaires and different branches of the US military."
So what? Big deal. Fact checker says this about the Atlantic Council:
OK, so it is pro-war biased, but factually accurate. Now we know. We can all use our critical thinking skills to assess whatever it is the Atlantic Council is saying. At least its not making stuff up.
"Global Research" says: "Hence, it should come as no surprise that when the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab gets down to work weeks before the upcoming midterms, it has little intention of putting a stop to actual disinformation groups and rather silences those that speak a message opposing their own."
Germaine says: "Global Research" cites The Anti-Media and Free Thought Project as examples of shutting down opposing messaging, not disinformation. So I looked and found these:
More crackpot sites. So my critical thinking analysis is that "Global Research" ("GR") is a leftist crackpot site complaining about the crackpottery at other apparently radical right sites crackpot sites. Who cares? Why should anyone care?
"Global Research" says: "Shortly after, Twitter decided to take them down as well, as well as Carey Wedler‘s (editor at Anti-Media) own personal account for literally no reason:"
Germaine's critical thinking analysis on that asks what evidence does "GR" have that Twitter had literally no reason? Since "GR" itself is a crackpot site, why should Germaine accept that allegation as true? "GR" didn't ask Twitter or Carey Wedler why Twitter suspended Wedlers' account, because if it did ask either (1) it would have said so, or (2) was incompetent and thus not trustworthy for omitting to say so. (see the critical thinking there? that was a fun one!)
"GR" says: "Many of the pages taken down had already been targeted back in 2016 by the McCarthyist webpage PropOrNot.not, endorsed by the Washington Post, in an effort to arbitrarily mark pages that they believe somehow are connected to Russian propaganda efforts. Already back then it was clear that many of the pages targeted by PropOrNot were leftist, anti-war pages, and almost none of them had anything to do with Russia whatsoever. The Washington Post finally later on retracted their article endorsing PropOrNot, but this didn’t help the fact that these websites had now already been flagged as propaganda by many."
Germaine says: WTF!! WaPo makes a mistake and then retracts it, but gets blasted by "GR" for having made a mistake. But on the other hand, "GR's" vaunted Carey Wedler says in her own video that she makes mistakes but when she does she retracts them.
"GR" says: "RT Reporter Rachel Blevins with 70,000 followers on Facebook and investigative journalist Dan Dicks with 350,000 followers also both saw their accounts taken down overnight – both were very critical of mainstream journalism."
Germaine responds:
1. For Christ's sake, Blevins was an RT reporter, i.e., a professional Russian propagandist.
2. Who the hell is Dan Dicks? search . . . . . search . . . . find a relevant hit, read it. Here's the hit -- Dicks runs the web site "Press For Truth":
3. Just because Dicks was critical of mainstream journalism does not mean that his journalism (or whatever it is) has merit. Maybe he is pissed at the MSM because he was got good enough to get a MSM job as a reporter. The "GR" article does not support its implied but not stated allegation that Twitter unfairly banned his crackpot ass from its platform. (see the logic in that analysis? there really is logic in it, honest)
So, I could probably go one and on ripping the "GR" article to pieces, sentence by sentence. But sadly, I've already spent well over two hours of my precious time discovering what I strongly suspected would be the case right from the get go. Namely I suspected that based on its MBFC rating, the "GR" article would be mostly crap not worth spending my time on. That suspicion turned out to be true.
I don't resent or regret the time I spent on this. Three reasons. First I respect you, (interlocutor). Second, I hope this example of how to do my brand of critical thinking and analysis is instructive to anyone who reads it. Third, I hope this exercise shows at least some basis in fact and reason for my reluctance to spend my time with sources that get poor fact accuracy ratings. That includes sites that engage in non-trivial amounts of pseudoscience or crackpot conspiracy theory.
Am I being unfair here? Are my facts and analysis insufficient to support my distrust in sources that get poor fact and/or reasoning ratings? Do all fact checkers just produce nonsense that everyone should ignore?
Me again: Well, what do you have to say about my critical analysis of the GR article you cited? I spent over 2 hours on those insightful comments.
My interlocutor: It took you two hours to find that page, where somebody says that GR rates high in pseudoscience? Dude, what happened to your research skills?
For starters, there's no pseudoscience in the article. It's an assessment of the bias to be found in the work of the Atlantic Council. If you want to undercut it, show me how we can dismiss the notion that the AC is biased. It's a creation of NATO, and thus approx as objectively reliable as anything we might read from Tass. They are not the right org to be censoring comments on YouTube.
So let's try it again. Take a look at the article and find any lies or distortions you can describe to me. Maybe I'll learn something from you. But in my view, if Facebook wanted an outside party to come in and censor everyone's comments, they'd be better off to employ an outfit like Aljazeera for the job. They are in my view accurate, insightful and highly unbiased.
For starters, there's no pseudoscience in the article. It's an assessment of the bias to be found in the work of the Atlantic Council. If you want to undercut it, show me how we can dismiss the notion that the AC is biased. It's a creation of NATO, and thus approx as objectively reliable as anything we might read from Tass. They are not the right org to be censoring comments on YouTube.
So let's try it again. Take a look at the article and find any lies or distortions you can describe to me. Maybe I'll learn something from you. But in my view, if Facebook wanted an outside party to come in and censor everyone's comments, they'd be better off to employ an outfit like Aljazeera for the job. They are in my view accurate, insightful and highly unbiased.
Me: No, it did not take me over two hours to find the MBFC rating. That task took about 20 seconds and posting the image took about 1 minute. So based on that, my research skill for that kind of info was OK as far as I can tell. If MBFC and no other fact checker had rated GR, it would have taken many hours of my time to assess GR.
For starters, there's no pseudoscience in the article. It's an assessment of the bias to be found in the work of the Atlantic Council.I know. I didn't say there was any pseudoscience in it. You said I said that, I didn't.
It's a creation of NATO, and thus approx as objectively reliable as anything we might read from Tass.I know it is biased. I was explicit about that in my comments. I even cited the MBFC rating of it and its analysis of the bias being pro-war and pro-corporation. But, unlike GR, the Atlantic Council doesn't lie much and has a high fact accuracy rating. Like I said in my comments: "OK, so it is pro-war biased, but factually accurate. Now we know. We can all use our critical thinking skills to assess whatever it is the Atlantic Council is saying. At least its not making stuff up."
They are not the right org to be censoring comments on YouTube.I agree. But here's some more of my critical thinking. First, Twitter bans Twitter accounts. The Atlantic Council does not ban Twitter accounts. The GR article strongly implies that, but it's a lie of omission. The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab looks for disinformation sites, it does not run Twitter or ban accounts.
Second, look at the sites that Twitter banned, The Anti-Media and the Free Thought Project. Both are crackpot liar sites. Even if the Atlantic Council did influence Twitter's decision to ban them, what's wrong with that?
Yes, Al Jazeera would probably be less biased than the Atlantic Council, but at least the AC doesn't lie. As far as I am concerned, let pro-right biased and pro-left biased and pro-truth disinformation seekers feed honest information to Twitter and Facebook so that more liar accounts get removed. What's wrong with that? If liars want to lie to the public, let them do it on their own rotten, immoral sites.
And with humans, there is no such thing as completely unbiased. But when humans sincerely respect facts and truth, it is harder for their biases to render their content as morally rotted as what Anti-Media, Free Thought Project and Press for Truth sites spew on the public.
So let's try it again. Take a look at the article and find any lies or distortions you can describe to me.I did point out a lie in this comment. Specifically, GR lied by omission that the Atlantic Council bans Twitter accounts it dislikes. That is false.
But it's more than just lies that kills the credibility of the GR article. For example, the GR article asserts: In total, 559 pages and 251 personal accounts were instantly removed from the platform, for having “consistently broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior” according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity and former White House National Security Council Director of Cybersecurity Policy under Obama. This is but one of similar yet smaller purges that have been unfolding in front of our eyes over the last year, all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”.
That is loaded with deceptive rot. First, 559 pages and 251 accounts is less than puny. There are far more rotten accounts and pages than that, over a billion according to a reliable source. IMO, what the GR article relies on constitutes essentially no effort by Facebook to deal with divisive disinformation and lies. The propagandist who wrote the GR article doesn't know what he is talking about. He is using motivated reasoning to concoct a nutty narrative.
Second, GR's assertion that Facebook's puny account bans and page take downs are all in the name of fighting “fake news” and so called “Russian propaganda”, directly implies that there is no such thing as fake news or Russian propaganda. That is so wrong that one could, and I do, consider it to be two blatant, insulting lies. If the author intended something else, he should have made his intent clear. That leaves three main possibilities, (i) the author is incompetent as a writer, (ii) the author is intentionally deceptive and mendacious, or (iii) a combination of the two. GR certainly failed to edit clarity into that, so GR deserves the exact same analysis, i.e., it is incompetent, mendacious or both.
I doubt we are going to come to much or any agreement here. But, at least you can see why we disagree. There is value in that.
Interlocutor: You expose your own grey area when you equate Global Research and QAnon. And you expose the core of that ignorance when you admit there's a whole world of info-- info you present yourself as being qualified to comment on-- that you just never read? That would make you like the ardent anticommunist, pontificating on Soviet disinformation, who admits he has never read either Pravda or Izvestia. He would be speaking from a position of utter ignorance. I would think a zealot, speaking out against, say, the evils of the Christian Right, might at least find a little time reading their literature to be well spent. Not referring to you personally, of course. Just some anonymous zealot.
But to move from the general to the specific, don't you think if I have found and posted an article in support of some thesis, you might at least glance at the article itself? You might just find it contains something of value. Why, you might even find it does not represent the sort of worldview you assume everything ever published by GR shares. (For the record, I do not compulsively consume every morsel appearing in GR. Some of its articles I find weak and unconvincing. And in fact I rarely even read it. I was googling for articles relevant to Facebook + AC when I found this.)
At any rate, I see I've wasted too much of your valuable time already. So I'll just ask you this brief question: How objective and unbiased do you feel the work of the Atlantic Council to be? And please don't just look in the back of the book, to see how your source rates them. Just give me your off-the-cuff opinion. Your gut sense.
Thanks in advance. I hope we both end up finding this to be a productive engagement.
But to move from the general to the specific, don't you think if I have found and posted an article in support of some thesis, you might at least glance at the article itself? You might just find it contains something of value. Why, you might even find it does not represent the sort of worldview you assume everything ever published by GR shares. (For the record, I do not compulsively consume every morsel appearing in GR. Some of its articles I find weak and unconvincing. And in fact I rarely even read it. I was googling for articles relevant to Facebook + AC when I found this.)
At any rate, I see I've wasted too much of your valuable time already. So I'll just ask you this brief question: How objective and unbiased do you feel the work of the Atlantic Council to be? And please don't just look in the back of the book, to see how your source rates them. Just give me your off-the-cuff opinion. Your gut sense.
Thanks in advance. I hope we both end up finding this to be a productive engagement.
Me:
And you expose the core of that ignorance when you admit there's a whole world of info-- info you present yourself as being qualified to comment on-- that you just never read?I am presenting myself as able unwilling to rely on unreliable sources. There is an ocean of politics out there. I can only consider ~0.00001% of it.
.... don't you think if I have found and posted an article in support of some thesis, you might at least glance at the article itself?
Yes, I probably would have read it, because I like, trust and respect you. You earned and deserve that. After you asked, I read the GR article.
How objective and unbiased do you feel the work of the Atlantic Council to be?
I didn't know what the Atlantic Council was before now. I'd heard of it and thought it probably was a think tank, probably pro-NATO because of its name. That was all. Now, I understand that it is pro-war, and pro-military industrial complex biased, but it doesn't lie about facts. As far as I can recall, I've never relied on anything from the Atlantic Council, so my opinion about it was mostly neutral to non-existent. Based on what I know now, their bias is conservative and hawkish, but their facts are legit.
Yeah, this was productive.
Yeah, this was productive.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeez, that was really long. I'm a gas bag. ☹️
Q: Am I self-deluded, misguided or otherwise wrong, and should give more time to the content at poorly rated sites, if so, which ones?
No comments:
Post a Comment