The Science of Truthiness 180
E IS mC(Square) writes "Researchers at Indiana University have just launched Truthy.indiana.edu, which they humbly declare 'a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation leading up to the Nov. 2 elections.' According to their FAQ, they define 'truthy' thus: 'A truthy meme relies on deceptive tactics to represent misinformation as fact. The Truthy system uses Truthy to refer to activities such as political smear campaigns, astroturfing, and other social pollution."
summary: (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are interested in the truth and have the required attention span to analyse detailed information, you won't be using Twitter.
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Or shitty social networking websites, for that matter.
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If you are interested in the truth and have the required attention span to analyse detailed information, you won't be using Twitter.
Or shitty social networking websites, for that matter.
I don't see how these critiques are relevant to adding an "I call bullshit" button to such services, and an aggregator which charts the currents of bullshit across these mediums. All forms of communication deserve the benefit of fact-checking. Whether you use them or not, they are popular, and I guarantee you're related to people who will believe what they read there. Leave them alone and they'll all rise up as one to elect Sarah Palin for president, and then the terrorists win.
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That's a rather limited view. Twitter is a communication tool used by millions of people. It consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.
The "everything new is a waste of time" attitude just makes you sound like a dottering old fool.
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Twitter ... consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.
Minor status updates are just that - minor. 24hr news networks can cover the breaking news.
The "everything new is a waste of time" attitude just makes you sound like a dottering old fool.
There are new things that are not a waste of time. Twitter is not among them
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That's a rather limited view. Twitter is a communication tool used by millions of people. It consumes and distributes everything from minor status updates to breaking news.
The "everything new is a waste of time" attitude just makes you sound like a dottering old fool.
And the fact that you would rely on any social networking portal for anything that would even remotely resemble "truth" doesn't make you look much different.
There is "data" (a.k.a. noise, lies, bullshit, or the random "I just farted" post), and then there is "information", with the latter being the only useful part. Unfortunately, "information" on most social network portals represents itself as a tiny needle in a haystack the size of Texas, and thus I see little point in relying on a tool that is churning
Twitter. New? Ever hear of IRC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Twitter is not new (just a much worse implementation).
Signal to noise ratio about 0.
That isn't new ether. Twitter takes it to a new low.
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How dare you defend Twitter! OHhh I'm so angry at you right now, I'm going to write about it on my Livejournal!
Research of only Politics (Score:2)
First time I've seen @justinbeiber and @akibablog as being political. For a chuckle, run @akibablog [twitter.com] through Google Translate. There isn't enough context for it to translate short Japanese messages well.
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tl;dr
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My post including subject was exactly 140 characters. Not that I expected anyone to notice ;'(.
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I find it amusing that you were able to express this sentiment in fewer than 140 characters.
Bears! (Score:3, Insightful)
...which they humbly declare 'a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation...
Deceptive tactics, such as using data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing?
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Calling your tools "sophisticated" just because they use the latest buzzwords seems rather deceptive to me. Hell, there's something very fishy about promoting your research in that way.
uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation... (Score:3, Insightful)
> ...leading up to the Nov. 2 elections
What's to uncover? Just look at anything published by or in support of any politician.
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Re: uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some politicians are honest, some are liars, some are incompetent, some are just fucking nuts. If you say "who cares, they're all crooks" it just means that you're too damn lazy to do the research.
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I've been observing politicians for half a century. I was even actively involved in politics for a decade or so.
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Some politicians are honest
Name one. Extra credit if they hold an office at any level above "Municipal"/"Town council"
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I would say both Rep. Ron Paul and Sen. Bernie Sanders are pretty honest about their politics. They probably hold their nose and vote for things at times but they'll tell you why they did it.
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It's easy to be honest when you're insane.
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Jesse Ventura. I get the impression that his honesty isn't really a moral principle, he just really doesn't care what people think of him, so he can't be bothered to deceive them.
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Jesse is also a much better actor than Schwarzenegger. He should have gotten the lead role in "Predator".
Twitter used for anti-smear campaigns (Score:2)
We're fucked.
Hope they've got a big server (Score:2)
'cos that's gonna be one huge dataload.
Social Pollution (Score:2)
What is bad about it? In analogy to pollution, leading to climate change (not a catastrophy, beware), it just leads to social change, and is not change (equated with progress) just the thing we want?
CC.
PR teams inject memes (Score:2, Interesting)
Undercover, well funded efforts by governments,
A random set of users twisting and distorting, voting down and attacking.
They will then just drift back down, waiting for the next mission.
At best you expose 1 ip with a users who has x post over y months.
They are quickly back with a new ip and 'old' users name even if detected.
For best results shine light on their masters, infiltr
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PR teams inject memes
It works best when they rhyme.
Social Pollution (Score:1, Redundant)
What is bad about it? It just leads to social change (like climate change), and change (aka progress) is the thing we all want!
CC.
Hmm. (Score:2)
I don't believe them.
Truthiness is truthy (Score:2)
Truthiness is truthy. The cake is a lie :)
Yep (Score:1)
Can they scream their bias any louder? (Score:2)
Really, this should be fun to watch, to see just how ridiculously one sided that they will be.
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CONSERVATARD SPOTTED.
Where is the reference to the words origin? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Where is the reference to the words origin? (Score:5, Informative)
Truthiness was not coined by him as it was already a valid, albeit obsolete, word. He just attached a new definition to it.
Re:Where is the reference to the words origin? (Score:4, Insightful)
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OK. "Truthy", and "Truthiness" are terms coined by Steven Colbert (or one of his writers), so why don't I see him getting any acknowledgment?
OK. "Coin" and "Coined" are terms originally used by George Puttenham (in 1589), so why don't I see him getting any acknowledgement in your post? :)
Seriously, are you suggesting that every word we write should include an acknowledgement of etymology and coinage?? I don't think that's gonna work, somehow ...
First post! (Score:2)
...but this is just part of the shady machinery of high-profile congressional campaigns
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In my defense, the comment system broke completely and this appeared to be the first post when I posted it.
"Science"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, I detest astroturfing as much as the next person who values "truth", but anyone who cares to look, can see lies and half-truths for what they are. Detecting them, then, is not the problem. The problem is that so many people can't, or won't.
Re:"Science"? (Score:5, Insightful)
When most of the science is sociology - a science of human interaction - I think crowd-sourcing is an acceptable way to do experimental data collection.
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Let's not talk about the brigher people out there, the ones who always can see political doublespeak for what it is. Let's also not talk about the, uh, less bright people out there, the ones who are absolutely set in there ideas and eat up any reports that fit their viewpoints. Let's talk about Joe Average, the
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How can we believe anything thing you say, when your sig is such a blatant lie.
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Well, my sig is somewhat related to the topic, after all.
I've explained my sig to someone before. Most libertarians believe that government regulation restricts and impedes business, that the free market is being strangled by market and employer regulations. The inevitable response to that is, what will you do when an employer is treating its workers unfairly, or if a business is harming consumers? Then, libertarians sa
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I find your post to be very patronizing of the average person. You portray everyone as helpless, stupid animals, and your answer to people not being willing to leave a crap job for a better one, is to allow a self-selecting crew of patronizing, self-absorbed PR people run our lives down to deciding how many handicap parking spaces must go into every business? Politicians must be PR hacks. They won't get elected otherwise.
Grass-roots campaigns are difficult? It took 3 people to bring down the ACORN organ
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It gets worse when you consider the studies that show that debunking lies tends to reinforce those lies in the people who believe them.
Good point. Thanks for brightening my day. :/
Seriously, that does make for a grim outlook when it comes to that "informed electorate" that a functioning democratic republic relies on so heavily.
Paging Mr Orwell... (Score:2)
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So truth is a lie?
Well, according to Fox News, a lie is the best alternative there is to the truth, and as such is worth the same level of 'respect'.
Bloomington, IN (Score:2)
~
Buzzwords (Score:2)
But ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Because the majority is always right... (Score:2, Insightful)
I always find myself suspicious when people claim that they have some sort of uncontested claim on truth - politicians who start sentences with the words "believe me" spring to mind.
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Exactly. Even if sites like politifact are well-intentioned, it often turns into more of a counter-argument (e.g. presenting additional, possibly relevant facts from another perspective) than fact-checking (that is, something is actually false in the original claim).
Nothing really wrong with that, except that they present the site as though it i
Progress report (Score:2)
Is there any progress in the field of internet technology that isn't about twitter/failbook social data mining crowdsource analysis network social social social cloudsourcing?
If there is, why is this all that makes it to slashdot these days?
Not the first post (Score:2)
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Hey, I got first post above, up in the middle there!
Okay.... (Score:2)
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Smart. Kinda. (Score:2)
First?
And their list of facts is displayed where? (Score:2, Insightful)
If we're going to have a group of social scientists run a negative points scoring system it would be great to start out with them saying which views of the world are false and which are true. "Obama is a communist" or "Obama is a muslim" is no different from saying "Republicans are racist" or "Bush was uneducated". Although based on my existing prejudices and the examples they use I suspect they disagree.
Uninterested (Score:2)
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Wow, this story has been up for nearly an hour and there's still no comments?
No, posting wasn't working properly for the first hour or so because of slashdot's shitty code. As you probably discovered if you refreshed the article page after you hit "submit" and found that your comment had not been posted yet.
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Benchmarks? (Score:2, Interesting)
And what shall we use to benchmark this tool?
We have been constantly lied to by both Democrats and Republicans for around a century or so since Wilson and Roosevelt took us into this age of swinging socialism and declared the lie of democracy.
We are so gullible we have been talked out of rights and into atrocities without even the benefit of reflection of the wrongs done over long periods of time and lies so old no one recalls the truth.
Suddenly someone finds the "magic 8 ball" algorithm to divine cheese fr
Seems handy (Score:2)
The word (Score:2)
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No it's not. See this. [wikipedia.org]
If these guys would just join the BSA... (Score:2)
...they could get these pirates raided and shut down.
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First question (Score:2)
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What ? (Score:2)
It's so good (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
So ... "truthiness" eh ? (Score:2)
Do they declare which party THEY vote for ? Seems somehow relevant.
No Market (Score:2)
There will be no market for this product. Nobody wants to listen to reason, and it does not sell advertising.
We want to hear that grandma will be put out of her home by the evil "OTHER" candidate.
We want to hear that the highways are riddled with drunks and unsafe cars.
We don't want to hear that grandma's income is actually quite safe, or that highway fatalities today kill fewer people than suicide.
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> Nobody wants to listen to reason...
Don't worry. There will be no actual reason involved. This will just be another source of "truthiness".
Crowdsourcing the truth (Score:2)
Crowdsourcing may be great for evaluating the popularity of a particular statement but it has nothing to do with the truthfulness of any statement, ideology or belief. I cannot think of a worst way to evaluate the accuracy of any piece of data.
Well, we can see where this is going (Score:4, Insightful)
Not Truthy (Score:2)
That's not what truthiness is though. Truthiness is the purposefuly following of what one wants to be true, ignoring logic/reason.
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What's the point? (Score:2)
Aren't there already sites out there that do this, much more effectively? Snopes.com and FactCheck.org are two that immediately come to mind.
I'm really having a hard time figuring out how this uncovers anything. How would it account for some actual event that causes a shift in the nature of associated tweets? It also seems like it might be subject to the old, persistent problem that if people repeat something enough eventually it's considered fact. And what's the benchmark for spotting astroturfing? Is it g
Just because 50 billion flies think.... (Score:2)
....shit tastes good does not mean it does.
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It does, if you are a fly. Of course different kinds of flies like different kinds of shit, and so we have political parties.
I just like the song. (Score:2)
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
That's the site I'm gonna surf.
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Tells me if it's astroturf.
If you need to get political explication,
Or to know whether it's data manipulation,
Or perhaps it is an outright prevarication,
There is just one page to fuel your outrage.
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Not O'Reillyana, Beckistan,or Hannitone,
But Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
Truthy, Indiana,
The real spin-free zone.
My apologies for Ha
Wow, bad news for Democrats! (Score:3, Interesting)
"'A truthy meme relies on deceptive tactics to represent misinformation as fact. The Truthy system uses Truthy to refer to activities such as political smear campaigns, astroturfing, and other social pollution.""
So here of course they are talking about things like the claim Palin said "she could see Russia from her house" (said by Tina Fey playing her), or the notion that Tea Party protestors are racist when in fact they simply represent individuals wanting smaller government that spends less, or the notion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen despite having at least one parent who is so obviously he must be?
I look forward to what they discover with "science", which must be bipartisanly bad and in that way bad news for Democrats, used to having news flow on their side... but of course the discoveries would never be themselves a kind of astroturfing, unveiling only what they thought would help the right people....
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When you put together panels that decide to withhold some medications due to cost...
The term "death panel" is certainly sensationalistic, but not inaccurate.
Wouldn't it be nice though if we could all have a rational discussion about what it meant to have a single government panel deciding why could get what medications without using sensationalistic terms or demonizing those who thought it a bad idea?
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Yeah, because there was no way death panels [telegraph.co.uk] could ever happen in the real world. No way at all. [telegraph.co.uk]
There is, and never was, a need to villify the messenger. Socialized medicine has its insurmountable problems. The big one is who gets to decide how much to spend keeping a random person alive. Palin was attacked for this, because you and the left dislike the unavoidable aspect of this ridiculous legislation and would rather not have a rational discussion about it.
Define "ALL" (Score:2)
I'm sure all those signs they wave depicting Obama as a witchdoctor with a bone through his nose, or the ones emblazoned with "WHITE SLAVERY", or maybe all those comments about how Barack is a "thug" and Michelle is an "ape"
You say "all" like they are common.
I have yet to see one thing you mentioned at a Tea Party event.
Perhaps you will be the first to trigger the "bad meme" meter.
Like it or not, my friend, but the Tea Party movement was founded in ignorance
The only ignorance I see at work here is those ag
The site itself is pretty "truthy" (Score:2)
For trying to even pretend it's remotely useful.
I tried it out by clicking on a few "memes", and apparently they are just collecting twitter posts with the same tags in them, and trying to correlate them in some way.
But in practice - wow, who knew that the most common tags would be 3-4 letters long, and mean something completely different to every person who uses them? That along with so many people indiscriminately using tags to try to get their posts noticed. Useless! (or truthy?)
great thing about this research (Score:2)
The great thing about this research is that, no matter what you find, you can't be proven wrong.
Why is this in Science? (Score:3, Insightful)
It belongs in Idle.
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Wouldn't "Falsy memes" be a better name for misinformation?
Because misinformation isn't necessarily false informaton. It may be selectively true information.
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I like this.
One would say to an obvious liar:
"I can see your falsies from here, they stand out a mile!"
or:
"Your truth is like a really obvious boob-job"
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It isn't serious.