In 2019, Be careful about what kind of news you uncritically believe. The punishment to those who ignore due skepticism, is being governed by those who will manipulate.
People will read and believe what ever trickles in to their generated news feeds.
Of course there will always be demand for confirmation bias and an alt reality, but the fact there are teams of people manufacturing dis info with an agenda, actively competing for mind share, is way more concerning.
It's also terrifying that headlines and articles can be taken as valid. Smear articles and misleading information are troubling as well in the upcoming years.
We should be more sceptical about news more and more. This is what brings chaos in public. Last two years was perfect example. Scared public is ideal ground for new rules and simple solutions.
Every news source does sensational reporting and gives us conflicting information day by day. They do not report anything useful at this point. It's mindless. It's Orwellian. It's different depending on the network you listen to. The opinions change every day, all the leaders and corrupt, in every nation, and all we get are pieces of bullshit.
The truth of all of this won't be known until at least two years out looking back, studying the news from this era. I do not think history will look kindly back on this moment. I think the future will hold 2020 as a cautionary tale, of how even when the dangers are real, we can still be susceptible to hysteria on a truly global scale.
Unfortunately, I think it will be true. Unfortunate, because we lack trust already in society and people can now revert to believing what they want to believe. But, they will be skeptical of everything else they read.
I think it's pretty clear by now that all media platforms, social and broadcast, are either captured, compromised or directly controlled by the various states in which operate. All we users can do is move toward an attitude of 'general distrust' over produced information, and cross reference with our own direct experience of whatever it is that is being propagandised about. We must be universal skepticism, because propaganda is principally used by 'our' side, because we are actually the target of manipulation
Social media is just another media, and media hacve always been manipulated, somewhere more, somewhere less. This might be a news to Americans, as US propaganda efforts used to be more directed outwards, but us who grew up in (failed) socialism grew up knowing that most of political news are filtered lies and that you can't ever trust just one source. And I think that's the only viable solution, educating people to be skeptical of anything, on first ball at least. Check the multiple sources, wait a little for stories to be officially confirmed before reacting. It's not that hard, and Internet actually makes it a lot more viable, just that we still haven't really adapted emotionally to how the world works now. We still jump to conclusions, we still click the clickbait titles and the biggest problem, we're all deeply biased on our own views of the world - and these biases are the glasses that we view the world through, they affect every single aspect of our perception, often on a subconscious level. People often believe in fake news simply because deep inside they already think that's the case, they want it to be true.
We are witnessing very dangerous times. Groupthink is real now. If you disagree with a new story you can simply claim it’s “fake news”. Getting doxxed is a real possibility. The 4th estate is no longer to be trusted. “May you live in interesting times” is no longer just a fortune in a cookie...
2020 will be forever the year I lost total trust in mainstream media. It's one thing to just "get it wrong" it's an entirely different thing when the powers that be are actively trying to promote a false narrative.
And then to turn around and label actual journalism and truth seeking as "conspiracy-theorist" and "crack pots" it is just too much to bear.
Filling the news with endless critiques and shaming of the proper way and material of mask to wear but deflect any attempts at uncovering, How the Hell this thing Started in the First Place!
They have become the anti-thesis of news and journalism and a driving force of division in the United States.
A pillar of democracy and free speech has become the thing it was intended to prevent and is now firmly a Fifth Column [1].
Don't believe everything you read on the internet, or the newspapers. Nobody has the monopoly on truth.
Healthy scepticism is a life skill. More so now when rumours can spread globally in seconds. The solution is not control but education and discernment. Our prejudices and current knowledge often determine to a large degree what we more easily believe.
The traditional media is not only losing reach but also its power to 'shape and influence events' ie propaganda and in desperation the 'free press' has been reduced to the sorry state of seeking 'official source of truth status'. Sort of like a ministry of truth.
Social media is just as untrustworthy as traditional news.
Friends sharing news/propaganda from various outlets. Fake users astroturfing on reddit/twitter/HN/facebook/insta.
I dont know what the future is, but I'm positive its going to be first-hand sources. At least that way, you are going to be skeptical the entire time and that persons reputation is at stake.
I find it quite scary how easily people are influence/manipulated, especially in the age of the internet. It has never been easier to make sensationalist, misleading headlines without anything to back them up. Many people will only read the headline. The human mind is so easily manipulated and over time, makes up information and remembers it as fact (see confabulation-https://youarenotsosmart.com/2012/05/30/yanss-podcast-episod...). Who knows how much Brexit, Trump, etc are due to such manipulation?
Which is why the blanket "lying media" and "fake news" rhetoric is so dangerous. It removes that trust—often unjustifiably and usually in total—without specifying what other institutions or processes can be trusted instead for reliable information besides a known orange-tinted salesman with an affection for Mein Kampf.
GANs and other deep fakes are going to be weaponized and absolutely obliterate the foundations of this country if that trust in legitimate journalism cannot be adequately restored in time. All journalism is biased, but we're not talking about bias; we're talking about up is down.
Very soon literally anyone can be shown saying anything… to anyone else… anywhere… wearing anything (or nothing)… with resources akin to a typical gaming computer. As a nation, we are woefully unprepared for that day, and we will pay dearly for that lack of preparation.
It's already very easy to create a narrative by selective editing. There are high profile examples of this by major news networks. You should already be very skeptical of what you see in the media. It will only get worse.
Anyone who thinks this will lead to productive skepticism hasn't been paying attention. As the amount of information we have to digest has exploded, more and more people are overwhelemed and unable to process it; they then tend to fall back into believeing everything that comports with their worldview, or forming the belief that they're unable to know the truth, which really end up being two sides of the same coin. Our ability to have conversations is breaking down as our shared reality has become more and more narrow.
That's before you even bring in misinformation and disinformatoom, let alone AI.
We're going to get more skeptical alright, it's just not going to be in a good way.
I walked by a tv at work, and CNN was scrolling "BREAKING NEWS", with Trump talking, and I thought "What has he broken this time?"
But I don't think the current distrust of media is about the inaccuracy of journalism. "Breaking news" isn't fully investigated at the moment because it's breaking news. We'll learn why the plane crashed later; we don't need to wait until the root cause analysis is done to tell people a plane crashed.
Rather, the distrust of media is being fueled by the tendency to live in online echo chambers that reinforce preconceptions and ideology. When news happens that doesn't fit our echo-chamber worldview, it gets dubbed "fake news". And, since none of us are always right, sooner or later news is going to happen that contradicts our beliefs. We can adjust our beliefs about the message, or we can adjust our beliefs about the messenger. People choose the latter, because they're self-centered fools. Yes, even us.
Clever politicians have really learned to play this. "You can't trust the media, but you can trust me" turns into a systematic enforcement of blind loyalty. This isn't about any one figure - I see it happening on both the right and the left. Reality gets rejected by command of King Echo.
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