#media consolidation has destroyed a lot of good journalism

[mswyrr]

The second pillar of the argument Texas is making is the so-called “compact theory” – an idea that has not been entertained by serious people in a long, long time. According to the compact theory, the constitution is just a contract that entails certain duties the federal government, and especially the president, has to fulfill. If those duties are neglected, the states, understood as sovereign entities, are free to disregard federal authority, ignore federal law, and, ultimately, leave the Union. This is precisely the argument slave states used to justify secession. As Mark Joseph Stern succinctly put it with regards to Abbott’s statement: “This language embraces the Confederacy’s conception of the Constitution as a mere compact that states may exit when they feel it has been broken.” Honestly, it makes sense for Abbott and today’s reactionary Right to adopt these neo-confederate arguments. In a way, they are just explicitly emphasizing the tradition in which their political project stands, as they are once again defying the federal government and deploying “states’ rights” in order to justify inhumane brutality in service of upholding white nationalist domination. The fact that this argument was resoundingly defeated – politically and on the battlefield – does not matter to them: The Republican Party and the extremist Right are all in. Among the first to announce support for Greg Abbott was Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. 25 Republican governors have endorsed the position of Texas, pledging their support for Abbott’s fight against the federal government and for the legal theories justifying it; some are even vowing to send their national guards, itching to escalate the situation further. That is something Donald Trump would very much like – he has already called on Republican states to “deploy their guards to Texas to prevent the entry of Illegals, and to remove them back across the Border.” And nothing mobilizes rightwing extremists like a standoff with the federals in service of white domination: Elon Musk is on Abbott’s side, propagating Great Replacement conspiracies, the barely concealed subtext of this whole thing, by accusing Biden of wanting to bring in immigrants as illegal voters. And far-right activists have called for a “Take back our border” rally. What could possibly go wrong. [...] But as much as I am professionally obligated to caution against facile historical analogies, Republican states are, right now, openly and aggressively endorsing the argument that led this country into a Civil War. There are, at the very least, some very concerning echoes; and more importantly, there are powerful traditions and continuities. Republican governors are proudly taking up the “states’ rights” mantle to defy the federal government. On the level of the underlying political project and vision of what America should be, there is a fairly direct line from the secession of slave states to today’s neo-confederate use of the “compact” theory as a way to justify the cruel crackdown on an “invasion” of people of color. And as much as the Civil War analogy may tend to invoke misleading associations, it can actually be helpful if it alerts people to the seriousness of the situation and to the prospect of violence. Because the fact that we will not get a rematch between vast armies dressed in blue and gray meeting on the battlefield does not mean the current situation isn’t extremely volatile and dangerous, or that there won’t be violence. There is likely going to be a lot more political violence.

[charbarker]

A short review of Escape: How a generation shaped, destroyed and survived the internet. By Marie Le Conte

Beginning Bit

Yeah, the book put into words the feeling of how the internet has changed. It was hard to wrap my head around while it was happening, but looking back I can see that it happened. It felt very gradual, and then suddenly all at once.

The shift away from small and self-governing communities and towards centralization under corporate banners was a sudden jump I didn't notice. For perspective, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit feel like they make up most of the internet for everyday users. Two are owned by the same company, one by the Chinese government, and the third by a single tech billionaire with little interest in reasonable governance.

The Book

The book mostly follows Le Conte talking about early exposure to the internet and how this shaped herself and her career. This ranges from triggering her early interest in blogging which led to her career in journalism.

Broken up into sections: Who Am I? Who Are You? Where We Are? Where Are We Going?

And not only covered the kinds of communities that existed on the early internet, but also the kinds of people involved with them, using herself as a regular example.

Missing the "Old Internet": Being All Things to All People

One of the things Le Conte identifies is that the old internet involved a lot of hiding, pseudonyms, and a shifting identity between different accounts.

Part of this can come down to the time that she was active in these forums, her formative teenage years, but she also brings up the issue of the consolidation of social media into single websites and streams creating a single place to exist. A single identity that has to please your employer, friends, and strangers all at once.

The problem is that everything got very close together. It can be hard to take risks and be a bit of a misfit when there are people watching you that might not "get it", that's half the reason I have this blog.

Encountering The Bad

One of the points made in the book is that the slow rollout of the internet made encountering its worse areas more tolerable, you stuck your head in and adapted to the filth. There are references to Chat Roullete and the parade of dicks being funny rather than traumatizing, and the bullying that can happen on some forums being a method of dulling people's elbows, and showing them how to behave.

While this changed with the emergence of cyberbullying and the resulting harm it could cause, the disconnection from these digital spaces from the real world undoubtedly helped, the fact a lot of us just got lucky.

Nostalgia for The Internet or Nostalgia For Our 20s?

A recurring theme in the book is Le Conte having some kind of adventure, like going to indie music shows in Paris as a teenager or faking being a journalist to get press passes to events (Something I've also done in Berlin before)

The book makes regular reference to age and the passage of time and I can't help but think that the nostalgia is also for the periods of our lives less structured.

There's a portion of the generation that grew up as the internet matured that is now entering what could be seen as adulthood, late 20s early 30s, and many are caught in arrested development, unable to start a family but arguably too old to have the same chaotic life they enjoyed when the world was smaller.

TL;DR

Book is good, it made me feel a lot of nostalgia I didn't know I had, and made me think about how to continue the culture of older internet communities into the future.

A really good read for anyone under 20 or who never lived through the early days of the internet.

To quote its final chapter "Stay Weird"

[anneapocalypse]

Matt Hullum made the announcement in a journal entry today that Rooster Teeth is laying off 13% of its staff.

Variety has an article up about the downsizing, mostly the same info that's in Matt's journal, with a few other facts—notably to me, a mention of the fact that WarnerMedia (RT's parent company, all under the AT&T umbrella) also swallowed up and effectively killed the Machinima brand. In fact, it turns out a few Machinima properties were shuffled under the Rooster Teeth umbrella when that happened.

I was unfamiliar with Machinima the YouTube Channel and Machinima.com (as opposed to machinima, the medium) until Quinton Reviews did a Fallen Titans episode on it recently, and I'll admit I was kind of hoping he'd have more to say about Red vs. Blue as it's... really the only machinima work I care about, but his video was mainly about the Machinima brand. Still, it is informative if you, like me, know nothing about Machinima!

Anyway, from the second Variety article above, there's also this:

Warner Bros. acquired full control of Machinima in November 2016, and put Machinima under its Warner Bros. Digital Networks group. AT&T closed its $85 billion deal for Time Warner in June 2018 and since then has consolidated or killed off several digital businesses. Under AT&T’s ownership, WarnerMedia shut down FilmStruck, from Turner and Warner Bros. Digital Networks, and WBDN’s DramaFever. In addition, Turner shuttered its Super Deluxe studio.

Mm....hm.

Yeah, so AT&T seems to have an unsurprising pattern of acquiring and quietly destroying small web-based companies, particular those centering around streaming content for a somewhat niche audience.

I don't want to be a doomsayer, and it's not like I think Rooster Teeth is going to be shut down tomorrow. I do feel like this doesn't exactly bode well for the AT&T conglomerate's investment in this relatively small studio.

There are certainly other factors to be considered. Only a couple months ago Matt was responding to criticisms of Rooster Teeth related to crunch and their animation pipeline, and announcing that Gray Haddock would be stepping down as head of animation. Of course, downsizing the studio by more than 10% seems... not a strong step toward reducing crunch, unless they're drastically reducing or delaying content in kind.

In terms of content itself... this is purely speculation, but I do have some concern that gen:LOCK was not the hot property Rooster Teeth hoped it would be. I like gen:LOCK. I like it a lot, and hope we see many more seasons. But I don't exactly think it's taken off as the kind of viral hit RWBY has been for the company. gen:LOCK is a subscribers-only show. If you don't have a FIRST membership, you can't watch past the first episode... and that just might not be enough to get people hooked enough to subscribe.

Going back a little further, one of my personal favorite RT shows is the live-action apocalyptic drama Day 5. It's got high production value and some really excellent acting talent, both from Rooster Teeth regulars and outside names. It has a compelling story and great characters. And it barely has a fandom. The last post on /r/dayfive is two years old. The tumblr tags are barren. And good luck even finding a twitter hashtag. Day 5 has seven works on AO3. The show debuted three years ago.

Production was put on hold after season 2, while the show was syndicated on the El Rey network, and the episodes were temporarily removed from the Rooster Teeth site while it aired on El Rey (they're back now). But even while the show was airing, as a fan I found it was tough to find other people actively watching the show and talking about it, even among fellow Rooster Teeth fans. I didn't see gifsets pouring down my tumblr dash; I didn't see meta, or episode reaction posts.

I suppose I should've seen the writing on the wall, even then. Day 5 has not been cancelled as of now and I really hope we get a season 3, because I love the show. But I'll admit I am nervous for its future.

I bring up these examples because I think the subscribers-only content model is demonstrably not working for Rooster Teeth. And to be clear, this is not me saying that people shouldn't have to pay for things. I've had a Rooster Teeth subscription since it was called a "sponsorship" and being a sponsor meant getting episodes of Red vs. Blue a thrilling two hours ahead of the general public! And I've been lucky, because for all these years Rooster Teeth has had a policy of letting longtime subscribers be grandfathered in at their original price, which means I've been paying about a third of what an annual subscription now costs. Recently it was also announced that the grandfather policy would be coming to an end. I'm in no way surprised or angry; I figured this would happen eventually, and I sure enjoyed this gravy train while it lasted! What I will probably do, once my current pay period runs out, is subscribe month-to-month only when there's something airing that I really care about. I'm not even sure if that's going to be RvB when season 18 rolls around. (But if they announce season 3 of Day 5 I will be there with bells on.)

Anyway the upshot of all of this is:

A Rooster Teeth FIRST membership ain't as cheap as it once was.

One free episode tends not to be enough to get people hooked on a new property unless it's kickflip bananas amazing.

With fewer people watching a new property as it airs, and short seasonal runs (Day 5 had six episodes per season; gen:LOCK premiered with eight), there just isn't enough buzz to create a hit on the level of RWBY.

Without that buzz, you don't get the kind of FOMO atmosphere that the FIRST delay creates. When RT first went to the one week gap between subscribers and the public, fans were largely upset, on the grounds that this would divide the fandom and make it difficult for non-subscribers to interact with the fandom on the same level, cutting them off from discussions and general hype around each new episode. And they were right—that was the point. That's why it worked.

Day 5 and gen:LOCK are good shows. There are valid criticisms of both, of course, and both are niche genres that won't be for everyone, but they're by no means bad products. RWBY's first volume, by contrast, was messy, poorly-paced, and looked unfinished. It had charm, absolutely, but it was objectively a bad product and the show still managed to draw a huge audience in its first three volumes—because anyone could watch it. But if you subscribed, you could watch it first, and you could be one of the first to comment on it, make gifsets, theorize and speculate. You wouldn't miss out.

I mean I fully understand why Rooster Teeth didn't want to make an expensive live-action show and give it away for free. I do get that. Same with an expensive polished animated series featuring big-name voice actors. And I'm as sad as anyone to see that those shows haven't grabbed the kind of audience RWBY has.

But something's not working here, and I think the modest reception of their two most-hyped subscribers-only shows plus this layoff makes that clear. I don't know what the answer is. I wish there were an easy answer. There probably isn't.

I really do hope Rooster Teeth survives as a studio and is able to keep making cool, creative stuff. I've had plenty of criticisms of RT and their properties over the years, but at the end of the day I'm still a fan who's pulling for them. The pattern of global media conglomerates swallowing up and disappearing small, independent, web-based content makers doesn't exactly bode well, and that's... well, that's late capitalism for you. Still, I do hope they hold out for a while.

At least long enough to get us a third season of Day 5.

[scripttorture]

Torture in Fiction: The Dragon Prince

The Dragon Prince is a wonderfully written and beautifully animated cartoon. I don’t usually take on a whole series but I was interested in the pitch and have fond memories of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I was curious to see what the creators had come up with since.

And overall I really enjoyed it. The characters are engaging and the plot is an interesting twist on a lot of typical fantasy tropes. (It also helped that this is the first time I’ve seen an animated character sign.)

The review contains spoilers for the entire season (1) of this cartoon.

After humans started using dark magic, magic drawn from destroying naturally magical creatures, an alliance of elves and dragons drove them to the western side of the continent. In the war that follows humans killed the dragon king and destroyed his egg.

Years later a group of elves sneak into the human kingdom, determined to assassinate the king and his son in revenge. Rayla, the youngest of the assassins, discovers that the egg is intact and alive. With the human princes, Ezran and Callum, she sets out to return the egg, the titular Dragon Prince, to his home.

But once again I’m rating the depiction and use of torture, not the story itself. I’m trying to take into account realism (regardless of fantasy or sci fi elements), presence of any apologist arguments, stereotypes and the narrative treatment of victims and torturers.

Which means I’m not focusing on the main characters or their plot line here. Instead this review is going to focus mostly on three side characters: Runaan, the leader of the elven assassins who kills the human king, Viren, a dark mage and the king’s advisor who takes over the country on the king’s death and Gren a guardsman loyal to Ezran and Callum’s Aunt.

Viren chooses to have Runaan kept alive and imprisons him in a stone cell. He’s chained in a seated position with his hands raised above his head. Viren attempts to bribe and threaten Runaan into revealing information about a magical artifact. Runaan refuses and in retaliation Viren casts a spell imprisoning Runaan’s essence in a coin.

As Viren tries to consolidate power he clashes with the princes’ aunt, a military commander who insists the boys are alive and should be searched for. Viren manipulates her into returning to the front lines but not before she leaves Gren in charge of searching for the missing princes.

Viren has Gren imprisoned. He’s chained in a standing position with his hands kept level with his head.

I’m giving it 2/10

The Good

1) Torture and the threat of torture is used in the context of interrogation but the story shows it failing. Runaan rejects every request for information Viren makes. He also rejects every 'olive branch' Viren extends.

2) Torture isn’t shown changing or even mildly influencing Runaan’s strongly held beliefs. If anything the story shows Runaan’s anti-human stance becoming more entrenched in response to torture.

3) Viren’s motivation for imprisoning and torturing both Runaan and Gren is quite in keeping with reality. Runaan is an enemy soldier. Gren is loyal to the old regime that Viren is actively trying to replace. This makes both of them political enemies, treated as threats to the new regime’s security. That’s incredibly true to life.

4) The timing of Viren’s bribes also felt like a good point to me. Runaan is captured and abused and then Viren attempts to bribe him into cooperation. First he uses food and drink, then he uses the offer of freedom. I don’t know whether it was intentional or not but I liked this element because it supports the notion of Runaan’s opposition becoming firmer as he’s mistreated.

5) I enjoyed Viren’s general characterisation throughout this and the way he justifies his actions. He presents himself as a ‘pragmatist’. He says he’s willing to make the ‘tough choices’ for the good of others and the Kingdom. That’s the kind of torture apologia torturers often parrot.

6) And that view doesn’t go unchallenged in the story. Other characters point out that Viren’s actions mostly benefit himself. His cruelty and his so-called ‘pragmatic’ lack of morals are presented as causing bigger problems than they solve. Together it creates a really good, succinct and understandable portrait of a torturer. It shows him parroting typical torture apologia and it shows why those views are wrong.

The Bad

Both Runaan and Gren should be dead several times over.

The portrayal of stress positions here is frankly appalling. It's difficult to be exactly sure about the passage of time in the story but Runaan is kept with his hands chained above his head for at least a week. Gren is kept standing for days.

Stress positions kill after about 48 hours.

In this case, neither character is depicting as suffering due to the way they're restrained.

Runaan is shown suffering but this is visually and narrative linked to other things. He's bruised because he was beaten when he was captured. His arm is withering due to a curse. He's weak because he's refusing to eat and drink (which should also have killed him, however I’m willing to give that more leeway in a non-human character). But the stress position he's kept in isn't depicted as fundamentally harmful.

This is more or less repeated with Gren. He isn't shown refusing food or drink and he wasn't beaten when captured. His posture in his chains is relaxed. He shows no signs of pain or discomfort. He leans against the wall and whistles. His movement, colouration, coherency and memory all seem to be completely unaffected.

Stress positions are incredibly harmful. They are painful. They cause wide scale break down of muscles in the victim’s body. This initially leads to a build up of fluid in the extremities. Which causes painful, discoloured swelling in the limbs, sometimes to the point that the skin ruptures into blisters. As more muscles are destroyed the protein released into the bloodstream becomes too much for the kidneys to handle and they fail. One description I read described the kidney’s being turned into ‘swiss cheese’.

The result is a protracted, painful death that can occur a significant period of time after the victim is released from the stress position.

The fact that it’s a stress position singled out as a ‘harmless’ torture is extremely significant here.

This is a torture that generally doesn’t leave lasting marks. It’s a torture that’s common in the modern world. And we unfortunately live in a world where torture trials often hinge on the presence or absence of ‘physical proof’.

Scars.

Survivors are regularly dismissed and belittled because they were tortured in ways that didn’t leave obvious marks on their skin. Because their torturers used techniques like stress positions.

Showing these tortures as harmless backs up the societal view that these tortures don’t ‘count’. That the pain these victims experienced was not real and they don’t deserve our help or compassion.

It backs up the notion that these particular victims are to blame for what they suffered.

These aren’t obscure philosophical notions or debates. These tropes, these patterns, these arguments affect our treatment of torture and torture survivors now.

They are part of the social structures that deny torture survivors asylum. They are part of the reason it takes survivors an average of ten years to access specialist treatment.

Presenting these apologist views uncritically to young children isn’t neutral either.

Because even without taking into account parental blockers on internet searches accurate information on torture is incredibly difficult to find. Any curious viewer, of any age, who watches these scenes and searches for more information would come across more torture apologia long before they find research on torture.

Especially as they may not even link what they saw to torture.

A casual viewer would first need to make that link. Then be aware of the term ‘stress position’. Then be aware of the academic journals or niche authors who publish on these topics. And then have access to enough money to pay for those sources.

Some of the sources are not available in translation.

The result is that the overwhelming majority of viewers are likely to accept what they see: that stress positions cause no harm.

These details are small. They don’t get a lot of screen time. They’re unimportant to the plot.

But they are not neutral. They matter.

The way the different ideas at play here interact matters. As does their impact on the real world.

And as a result, despite many good points in the portrayal of torture, I feel like I have to give The Dragon Prince a low score.

Overall

Part of the reason I wanted to review this was to highlight how prevalent torture is in children’s media and how cartoons are often sending out the same misinformation as adult action movies.

The Dragon Prince doesn’t suggest that torture works and it doesn’t justify brutality. But at the same time it’s downplaying the damage torture causes by treating some tortures as essentially harmless. It’s telling that the tortures singled out this way are clean tortures common in the modern day.

The tortures that victims are commonly subject to now, the ones that don’t leave lasting marks, are the ones being singled out as harmless. As not ‘proper’ torture.

The message that only some tortures and only some victims ‘count’ starts young. And the sad thing is the people creating this, writing it and drawing it probably had no idea they were portraying torture when they chose to have characters chained to the wall.

The background knowledge most people have on torture is poor, made up of apologist tropes and rumours and misinformation. But it is so widely accepted that it probably doesn't even occur to most creators to fact-check what they write.

And the result in this case is a wonderfully made cartoon, which includes fantastic representation of disability, of racial diversity and women. While parroting tropes about torture that are actively harmful to victims.

Edit: If creators are not prepared to show the effects of torture then they should not use torture. If those effects are unsuitable for a children’s show then I’m left wondering why they included torture.

Personally, given the level of research these particular creators lavished on other areas, I suspect this was ignorance not malice. 

Disclaimer

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

She’s an expert at spotting fake news. This is what she wants you to know.

“Fake news” is more than merely the utterance the president are applied to brush aside tales he doesn’t like. It’s a real thing, and something we should all be on the lookout for . strong > b> An image of Parkland student Emma Gonzalez tearing up a follow of the U.S. Constitution became viral over the weekend, casting some areas of social media into a frenzy. There was one problem, however: It was altogether fake. Disinformation about #ParklandShooting survivor Emma Gonzalez ripping up a photocopy of the United States Constitution on camera was promulgated by a spoof Photoshop job: https :// t.co/ 7wZoP3d5ri — snopes.com (@ snopes) March 26, 2018 The actual photo came from a Teen Vogue video film boasting her and some of the other Parkland students. In the real excerpt, Gonzalez is heard tearing up a paper killing target. The fact-check was swift, but a lot of damage was done, as the neutered portrait prolonged performing the rounds. At left is @tyler_mitchell’s photo of @Emma4Change for the shield of @TeenVogue. At right is what so-called “Gun Rights Activists” have photoshopped it into. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/ jW6tTOv2Db — Phillip Picardi (@ pfpicardi) March 25, 2018 It’s easy to be hoaxed by online hoaxes — so we spoke with someone whose racket it is to discern them every day. Managing editor Brooke Binkowski battles with the importance of faith and figuring out how to halt the spread of hoaxes every day for the most trusted fact-checking website Snopes. Brooke Binkowski. Photo courtesy of Brooke Binkowski, sketch by Tatiana Cardenas/ Upworthy. The site, put in place in 1994, inaugurated as a accumulation of fact-checks on some of the internet’s early urban myths. Wanted to be informed about whether or not that storey about the killer with a fasten for a hand was true-blue? Snopes had you reported. Requirement to know whether your favorite brand of bubble gum is fitted with spider eggs? The answer was time one click away. In more recent years, the place has made on even more serious topics, online hoaxes, and “fake news.” Did Donald Trump wade into the sprays of a inundated Texas city to save two felines from submerge after Hurricane Harvey?( No .) Did Barack Obama congratulate Vladimir Putin on his 2012 electoral victory?( Yes .) Snopes is often cited alongside FactCheck.org and PolitiFact as some of the best, most accurate, and bias-free fact-checking websites in the world, even paying it a partnership with Facebook. Binkowski spoke with Upworthy about how to deal with increasingly sophisticated hoaxes we all encounter online( and gave us a few behind-the-scenes secrets about how the peoples of the territories at Snopes do what they do good ). The following interview has been softly edited and abbreviated for clarity . i> Why does the truth concern, and what evil is there in sharing bogus stories ? b> The truth materials because without being able to agree on the most basic facts, “were not receiving” democracy. Democracy depends on an informed, drilled person in order to live. To actively suppress interest or obscure details is to actively suppress democratic norms. When you share counterfeit or misinforming storeys, first of all, don’t defeat yourself up about it if you were trying not to ! We all fall for it. Some of it is extremely reassuring . strong> I strongly believe that the onus should not be on private individuals to sieve through all the scrap to attain good, vetted report on top of every other thing they have going on in their life, as I sounds countless indicate — that’s why journalism exists. I envisage beings are overall extremely smart and implore info, but without vetted and translucent information, they fall for conspiracy speculate. That’s what propaganda and disinformation seize on. If you repeat that pattern across a country, it dramatically deteriorates these democratic norms. Plus, have you ever tried to talk to a really entrenched plot theorist? So I would be as wary as they are able to about the sources of narrations and try the very best not to share disinformation — and if you do, I would try to be upfront about it and remove it so that it does not spread. Right now is a crucial time to be wary, although there are I just said the onus shouldn’t be on the individual. It shouldn’t , em> but we plainly don’t have enough directing correspondents to go around right now, because our manufacture has been allowed to collapse in the name of director profit. Illustration by Tatiana Cardenas/ Upworthy. Can you walk us through how Snopes fact-checks a storey ? b> We don’t have any one specific course that we fact-check a storey — there’s no real formula for doing so. A batch of which is something we do is so disappointing when I describe it to people, because it’s not magic. It’s “just” journalism. I try to give my scribes season and infinite to do the research that they need to do, although sometimes it’s a little difficult when we have “conspiracizing” from all sides. So sometimes, one of us will have to head to the library to attract journals or go over to the local university to look through articles on campus. A lot of the time we do old-fashioned reporting. Our faculty is all over the United States and they know their substance, so I’ll take advantage of that and send them out on the field sometimes. We also, of course, know the reiterate fake-news and caricature crimes, so that acquires it easy, because we can save a lot of duration exactly by noting that they have an all-purpose disclaimer interred somewhere on their site. Sometimes we do photo or video forensics and FOIA applications( not that we get a lot of those rebutted, hahaha ). We try to be as thorough and as transparent with our toil as is practicable, which is why we have a source inventory at the bottom of each sheet and perhaps describe our technique in a bit more detail than we should — but that’s how we all roll. Which is also why, on a side greenback, I find the scheme thoughts about us a bit puzzling. We’re really easy to track down online, we register all our roots, and we try to be as open as humanly possible without also being suffering about our methodology. And yet parties still think we’re part of a grand scheme. I’m still waiting for my check from George Soros/ the Lizard People/ the Clinton Foundation, though. It’s been, like, 20 years! …OK, if you’re a conspiracy theorist speaking that last sentence, that’s a gag. I already got my checks. No , no, I’m sorry. I just can’t stop myself. Photo via Teen Vogue, instance by Tatiana Cardenas/ Upworthy. What can regular, daily beings do to avoid hoaxes and “fake news? ” My best gratuity that I can possible utter books is this: Disinformation and propaganda classically take hold by expending emotional appeals. That is why what Cambridge Analytica did should be viewed through that lens. One of the more malevolent happens that I have spoken that they did, in my opinion( among other things I’m sure that no one more knows ), was track people who were highly susceptible to authoritarianism, then spate them with vicious imagery that was invisible to everyone else on social media, so that they were always in a state of fear and emotional arousal and most suggestible to an dictatorial send. That’s the type of person propaganda historically targets anyway — the individuals who feel out of gradation with culture and have strong predilections toward authoritarianism — but now, groups like Cambridge Analytica are doing it faster and more surgically. If you’re reading, considering, or listening to a tale that’s inundating you with high-pitched emotion, negative or positive — whether it’s fright, frenzy, schadenfreude, gratification at how gullible everybody else is — check your generators. You are being played. Do a quick search for the tale, see if it has been debunked at minimum, and/ or look for other sources and perspectives. One of “the worlds largest” injurious happens about disinformation and information is that both knit some truth into their lies, which reaches the lies much, much stronger. Something I like to say about political lists is that the right acquires it has the moral upper hand and the left assumes it has the scholastic whip hand — both are massive inadequacies that are easy to exploit. Don’t let yourself be employed. Be on guard. Don’t premise other parties are sheep and don’t usurp other parties are morally bankrupt. Propaganda would be willing to assume the worst about your fellow denizens; the people who propagandize it out want the basic fabric of culture destroyed. It wants you hating your fans, your neighbors, your family members, the person at the collect, the madam at the coffee shop. Propagandists miss you distrusting each other, bickering, and unable to agree on the most basic facts — because then they are unable exploit those cracks further and consolidate power in the process. Don’t let yourself be taken in. The basic take-aways for the average person? Get your information from trusted roots, confirm it with a second source, check your own confirmation biases, and get very well known reverse image search tools. Read more: http :// www.upworthy.com/ she-s-an-expert-at-spotting-fake-news-this-is-what-she-wants-you-to-know http://dailybuzznetwork.com/index.php/2018/05/28/shes-an-expert-at-spotting-fake-news-this-is-what-she-wants-you-to-know/

[ethelbertpaul444-blog]

She’s an expert at spotting fake news. This is what she wants you to know.

“Fake news” is more than merely the utterance the president are applied to brush aside tales he doesn’t like. It’s a real thing, and something we should all be on the lookout for . strong > b>

An image of Parkland student Emma Gonzalez tearing up a follow of the U.S. Constitution became viral over the weekend, casting some areas of social media into a frenzy.

There was one problem, however: It was altogether fake.

Disinformation about #ParklandShooting survivor Emma Gonzalez ripping up a photocopy of the United States Constitution on camera was promulgated by a spoof Photoshop job: https :// t.co/ 7wZoP3d5ri

— snopes.com (@ snopes) March 26, 2018

The actual photo came from a Teen Vogue video film boasting her and some of the other Parkland students. In the real excerpt, Gonzalez is heard tearing up a paper killing target.

The fact-check was swift, but a lot of damage was done, as the neutered portrait prolonged performing the rounds.

At left is @tyler_mitchell’s photo of @Emma4Change for the shield of @TeenVogue. At right is what so-called “Gun Rights Activists” have photoshopped it into. #MarchForOurLives pic.twitter.com/ jW6tTOv2Db

— Phillip Picardi (@ pfpicardi) March 25, 2018

It’s easy to be hoaxed by online hoaxes — so we spoke with someone whose racket it is to discern them every day.

Managing editor Brooke Binkowski battles with the importance of faith and figuring out how to halt the spread of hoaxes every day for the most trusted fact-checking website Snopes.

Brooke Binkowski. Photo courtesy of Brooke Binkowski, sketch by Tatiana Cardenas/ Upworthy.

The site, put in place in 1994, inaugurated as a accumulation of fact-checks on some of the internet’s early urban myths. Wanted to be informed about whether or not that storey about the killer with a fasten for a hand was true-blue? Snopes had you reported. Requirement to know whether your favorite brand of bubble gum is fitted with spider eggs? The answer was time one click away.

In more recent years, the place has made on even more serious topics, online hoaxes, and “fake news.” Did Donald Trump wade into the sprays of a inundated Texas city to save two felines from submerge after Hurricane Harvey?( No .) Did Barack Obama congratulate Vladimir Putin on his 2012 electoral victory?( Yes .)

Snopes is often cited alongside FactCheck.org and PolitiFact as some of the best, most accurate, and bias-free fact-checking websites in the world, even paying it a partnership with Facebook.

Binkowski spoke with Upworthy about how to deal with increasingly sophisticated hoaxes we all encounter online( and gave us a few behind-the-scenes secrets about how the peoples of the territories at Snopes do what they do good ).

The following interview has been softly edited and abbreviated for clarity . i>

Why does the truth concern, and what evil is there in sharing bogus stories ? b>

The truth materials because without being able to agree on the most basic facts, “were not receiving” democracy. Democracy depends on an informed, drilled person in order to live. To actively suppress interest or obscure details is to actively suppress democratic norms.

When you share counterfeit or misinforming storeys, first of all, don’t defeat yourself up about it if you were trying not to ! We all fall for it. Some of it is extremely reassuring . strong>

I strongly believe that the onus should not be on private individuals to sieve through all the scrap to attain good, vetted report on top of every other thing they have going on in their life, as I sounds countless indicate — that’s why journalism exists. I envisage beings are overall extremely smart and implore info, but without vetted and translucent information, they fall for conspiracy speculate.

That’s what propaganda and disinformation seize on. If you repeat that pattern across a country, it dramatically deteriorates these democratic norms. Plus, have you ever tried to talk to a really entrenched plot theorist?

So I would be as wary as they are able to about the sources of narrations and try the very best not to share disinformation — and if you do, I would try to be upfront about it and remove it so that it does not spread.

Right now is a crucial time to be wary, although there are I just said the onus shouldn’t be on the individual. It shouldn’t , em> but we plainly don’t have enough directing correspondents to go around right now, because our manufacture has been allowed to collapse in the name of director profit.

Illustration by Tatiana Cardenas/ Upworthy.

Can you walk us through how Snopes fact-checks a storey ? b>

We don’t have any one specific course that we fact-check a storey — there’s no real formula for doing so. A batch of which is something we do is so disappointing when I describe it to people, because it’s not magic. It’s “just” journalism.

I try to give my scribes season and infinite to do the research that they need to do, although sometimes it’s a little difficult when we have “conspiracizing” from all sides. So sometimes, one of us will have to head to the library to attract journals or go over to the local university to look through articles on campus.

A lot of the time we do old-fashioned reporting. Our faculty is all over the United States and they know their substance, so I’ll take advantage of that and send them out on the field sometimes. We also, of course, know the reiterate fake-news and caricature crimes, so that acquires it easy, because we can save a lot of duration exactly by noting that they have an all-purpose disclaimer interred somewhere on their site. Sometimes we do photo or video forensics and FOIA applications( not that we get a lot of those rebutted, hahaha ).

We try to be as thorough and as transparent with our toil as is practicable, which is why we have a source inventory at the bottom of each sheet and perhaps describe our technique in a bit more detail than we should — but that’s how we all roll.

Which is also why, on a side greenback, I find the scheme thoughts about us a bit puzzling. We’re really easy to track down online, we register all our roots, and we try to be as open as humanly possible without also being suffering about our methodology.

And yet parties still think we’re part of a grand scheme. I’m still waiting for my check from George Soros/ the Lizard People/ the Clinton Foundation, though. It’s been, like, 20 years!

…OK, if you’re a conspiracy theorist speaking that last sentence, that’s a gag. I already got my checks.

No , no, I’m sorry. I just can’t stop myself.

Photo via Teen Vogue, instance by Tatiana Cardenas/ Upworthy.

What can regular, daily beings do to avoid hoaxes and “fake news? ”

My best gratuity that I can possible utter books is this: Disinformation and propaganda classically take hold by expending emotional appeals. That is why what Cambridge Analytica did should be viewed through that lens.

One of the more malevolent happens that I have spoken that they did, in my opinion( among other things I’m sure that no one more knows ), was track people who were highly susceptible to authoritarianism, then spate them with vicious imagery that was invisible to everyone else on social media, so that they were always in a state of fear and emotional arousal and most suggestible to an dictatorial send.

That’s the type of person propaganda historically targets anyway — the individuals who feel out of gradation with culture and have strong predilections toward authoritarianism — but now, groups like Cambridge Analytica are doing it faster and more surgically.

If you’re reading, considering, or listening to a tale that’s inundating you with high-pitched emotion, negative or positive — whether it’s fright, frenzy, schadenfreude, gratification at how gullible everybody else is — check your generators. You are being played. Do a quick search for the tale, see if it has been debunked at minimum, and/ or look for other sources and perspectives.

One of “the worlds largest” injurious happens about disinformation and information is that both knit some truth into their lies, which reaches the lies much, much stronger.

Something I like to say about political lists is that the right acquires it has the moral upper hand and the left assumes it has the scholastic whip hand — both are massive inadequacies that are easy to exploit.

Don’t let yourself be employed. Be on guard. Don’t premise other parties are sheep and don’t usurp other parties are morally bankrupt. Propaganda would be willing to assume the worst about your fellow denizens; the people who propagandize it out want the basic fabric of culture destroyed.

It wants you hating your fans, your neighbors, your family members, the person at the collect, the madam at the coffee shop. Propagandists miss you distrusting each other, bickering, and unable to agree on the most basic facts — because then they are unable exploit those cracks further and consolidate power in the process.

Don’t let yourself be taken in.

The basic take-aways for the average person? Get your information from trusted roots, confirm it with a second source, check your own confirmation biases, and get very well known reverse image search tools.

Read more: http :// www.upworthy.com/ she-s-an-expert-at-spotting-fake-news-this-is-what-she-wants-you-to-know