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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Today's Internet: All the fake NEWS that's fit to publish

    August 15, 2012

    Today's Internet: All the fake news that's fit to publish

    Fictional Apple screws, phony New York Times editorials, bogus sources -- is anything on the Net not a fake?

    By Robert X. Cringely | InfoWorld
    Follow @ifw_cringely

    On the Internet, every day is April Fools' Day. But lately it's getting much harder to separate the fake from the real.

    Example du jour: Did you hear about the new screw Apple engineered that makes it impossible to disassemble its devices? No more modding, no reverse engineering, only authorized Apple techs have the secret tool that unlocks the iScrew.

    [ Also on InfoWorld: Why we need a code of ethics for the Web. | For a humorous take on the tech industry's shenanigans, subscribe to Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter. | Get the latest insight on the tech news that matters from InfoWorld's Tech Watch blog. ]


    Pretty typical, right? The InterWebs was abuzz with news and diagrams of Apple's latest example of geeky arrogance. The only problem with this story: It isn't true. It was a deliberate hoax, cooked up by a handful of Swedish tricksters at the design blog Day 4, just to mess with the rest of us. Per Day 4's Lukasz Lindell:
    One afternoon we sketched out a screw in our 3D program, a very strange screw where the head was neither a star, tracks, pentalobe or whatever, but a unique form, also very impractical. We rendered the image, put it in an email, sent it to ourselves, took a picture of the screen with the mail and anonymously uploaded the image to the forum Reddit with the text "A friend took a photo a while ago at that fruit company, they are obviously even creating their own screws."
    Who took the bait? Just about every online news source that slavishly follows all things Apple -- which is to say just about every online news source. Apple blog Cult of Mac was first out of the chute, though it also added this disclaimer, of sorts, in paragraph five:
    Keep in mind that this is an image posted to Reddit, and the only say-so we have that it comes from Apple is what the original poster has said. Also keep in mind that Apple often works on designs that never see the light of the day, and this new asymmetric screw could end up never being put into production.
    Yahoo, Wired, and Macworld UK followed suit, along with a raft of blogs. Apple has released custom screws in the past, so the idea wasn't entirely implausible. But rather than wait and try to confirm the story, these sites ran with what they had (a photo posted to Reddit) and hoped to back it up later. Because if they didn't, they knew their competitors would; if the screw actually existed, they would have missed out on the story.

    Once the story got to Twitter and Facebook, Lindell notes, all doubt disappeared: Apple really was trying to (ahem) screw over its customers.

    This is hardly an isolated example. Late last month, an op-ed appeared in the online version of the New York Times, written by former editor Bill Keller, that expressed a grudging yet articulate defense of WikiLeaks.

    The problem? Yes, that's right: Keller never wrote it. A day after the column appeared, WikiLeaks

    Granted, it was an impressive hoax. Save for the fake editorial, the page (at the cleverly named opinion-nytimes.com) looked identical to the real one at nytimes.com/opinion, with live links to actual New York Times stories. The fake domain was registered using the same information as the real one. The fakers even managed to ape Keller's writing style. It was so realistic, in fact, that the New York Times' own Nick Bilton tweeted out links to it before he learned it was bogus.

    What was WikiLeaks thinking? Good question. Whatever credibility WikiLeaks had is now completely shot. So when WikiLeaks reported it was under a massive DDoS attack by a group calling itself AntiLeaks earlier this week, the first thought on everyone's mind was: Yeah, right. What's your next fundraising ploy?

    Gaming the media seems to have become the second-most popular attraction on the Internet besides porn. A couple of weeks before the Keller hoax, <acronym title="Google Page Ranking">PR</acronym> flackette and self-proclaimed liar Ryan Holiday revealed that he had managed to dupe reporters from the New York Times, ABC, and MSNBC into believing that he was a) a devoted collector of vinyl records, b) a long-suffering insomniac, and c) someone who got sneezed on at Burger King, respectively. None of those things were true, and all the publications Holiday tricked were forced to retract or print corrections.

    Holiday says he did it to expose the flaws in a service called Help a Reporter Out (HARO), which connects journalists to sources. But it was conveniently timed to coincide with the release of his new book, which shall go unnamed here.

    Why are all these incidents hitting at once? Because people are finally getting sick of the Internet news cycle, where being first is more important than being right. Unfortunately, in a world where pageviews rule and news spreads in 140-character chunks, accuracy will always be forced to the back of the bus.

    Think of that when you peruse the latest iPhone 5 rumors or the headlines about Microsoft's alleged $200 Surface tablet. We are rapidly approaching a point where no one is credible and nothing can be believed. When you can no longer separate fact from fiction or reality from propaganda, the media simply becomes a megaphone for whoever can shout the loudest. That's a dangerous place to be.

    Whom do you believe, and why do you believe them? Post your credible sources below or email me: cringe@infoworld.com.

    This article, "Today's Internet: All the fake news that's fit to publish," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the crazy twists and turns of the tech industry with Robert X. Cringely's Notes from the Field blog, and subscribe to Cringely's Notes from the Underground newsletter.

    http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/todays-internet-all-the-fake-news-thats-fit-publish-200172
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 02-01-2015 at 11:06 PM.
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    More on today's internet and what you can do with it now.

    http://www.alipac.us/f19/world%92s-m...engine-272409/
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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    All this is interesting when we know that "reliable" new sources selectively report, report news with a political bias, manipulate and edit videos, etc.

    All good propaganda for the administration to take over the internet. JMO

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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Super Moderator Newmexican's Avatar
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    Here is one from the "Mother Ship". This is full of half truths and at least one outright lie. Lou Dobbs is not anti immigrant, but he has questions about ILLEGAL Immigrants.

    Anti-Immigrant Fox Host Dobbs Fails On Basic Immigration Facts

    April 22, 2013 11:39 PM JUSTIN BERRIER
    ]
    Lou Dobbs asked a series of questions about immigrants in America, claiming the answers didn't exist. In fact, many of his questions are not only easily answered, but highlight the contributions of immigrants of all kinds.

    On his Fox Business program, Dobbs used his "chalk talk" segment to claim that immigration reform was being rushed through the Senate. As evidence, Dobbs asked a series of questions about undocumented immigrants, such as their education levels, employment status and economic contributions. In each case, Dobbs insisted that "we don't know" the answer:

    Dobb's ignorance on basic immigration facts is surprising considering immigration has been one of his primarytargets for years. Not only are the answers to many of his questions readily available, they point to both the accomplishments and contributions of immigrants and the need for comprehensive reform.

    A 2009 report by the Fiscal Policy Institute found that between 1990 and 2006, "the metropolitan areas with the fastest economic growth were also the areas with the greatest increase in immigrant share of the labor force." A Bush-era study found that immigration as a whole adds $37 billion to the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) every year. The New York Times reported on the various economic benefits of immigrants, concluding, "Nearly all economists, of all political persuasions, agree that immigrants -- those here legally or not -- benefit the overall economy.

    The economic contributions of immigrants would be even greater with immigration reform. UCLA professor and immigration expert Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda estimated that passing comprehensive immigration reform would add at least $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy over 10 years. By comparison, Hinojosa-Ojeda found that expelling immigrants would decrease GDP by $2.6 trillion over 10 years.

    Immigrants also pay taxes. The New York Times article pointed out that "undocumented workers contribute about $15 billion a year to Social Security through payroll taxes. They only take out $1 billion (very few undocumented workers are eligible to receive benefits). Over the years, undocumented workers have contributed up to $300 billion, or nearly 10 percent, of the $2.7 trillion Social Security Trust Fund." The Immigration Policy Center estimated that households with undocumented immigrants "paid $11.2 billion in state and local taxes. That included $1.2 billion in personal income taxes, $1.6 billion in property taxes, and $8.4 billion in sales taxes."

    Further, educational levels of immigrants have been studied. According to a Brookings Institution report, the "share of working-age immigrants in the United States who have a bachelor's degree has risen considerably since 1980, and now exceeds the share without a high school diploma." A 2011 article in The Washington Postreported that "Highly skilled temporary and permanent immigrants in the United States now outnumber lower-skilled ones, marking a dramatic shift in the foreign-born workforce." According to Pew Hispanic Center, 52 percent of adult undocumented immigrants have a high school degree or greater.

    The Soros Funded Liberal Media supplier. JMO

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    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    5 Easy Ways to Spot a B.S. News Story on the Internet | Cracked.com

    www.cracked.com/.../5-easy-ways-to-spot-b.s.-news-story-intern...


    by David Wong - in 290 Google+ circles
    Feb 27, 2013 – The Internet, while awesome, is also a mind-boggling marvel of bullshit production and dissemination. A misleading or outright fake news story ...
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    Pass the Tinfoil New Hampshire Lawmaker Wants Joe Arpaio's Birther Posse to Investigate Boston Bombing


    By Matthew Hendley Fri., May 3 2013 at 2:20 PM

    http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/val...a_tremblay.php
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