Posting and discussing sources: a D&D feedback thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Posting and discussing sources: a D&D feedback thread

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

I've argued it before, and I'll argue it now: Just force people to commit to a position on what they link by actually making commentary on it. If it's a tweet which itself links an article, make them comment on both. I've championed that idea before as a way to cut down on the torrent of tweets that sometimes get posted, the same one occasionally cropping up multiple times, but it makes sense in the context of sources too.

Basically:

- State what the source(s) say(s)
- State what your position is vis-a-vis the topic of the source

Obviously misrepresent the source and you get probated, fail to state your position and people are free to take the least charitable read if that's what they feel like. Mods can respond appropriately.

Aside from the above, I'd add another modern debating issue relating to sourcing: Sources getting deleted. If you post a source and it gets deleted, that's entirely on you for not preserving it. Mods and posters should be entirely free to judge your post based on the actual content the moment they read it, not the content you intended. If you're posting what appears to be insanely spicy takes because what you're responding to has been deleted, even though they're completely reasonable takes with the proper context, then that's just too bad - should've screenshotted Harris calling for the abolition of the 6th amendment or whatever.

Slow News Day posted:

Your definition of propaganda in this context is overly broad and misses the mark.

Here's the short version: political propaganda almost always originates with official government sources

How can propaganda meaningfully be said to originate from government sources alone? No part of what you laid out there can't be done by a private organization, for similar reasons. In that case the purpose might not be to turn a country's populace hostile towards its leadership, but instead against each other, as we see time and time again with for example the Murdoch empire. The notion that state propaganda is the only kind of propaganda that exists, or that only heavy-handed directions like you see in Russia count, is preposterous.

Slow News Day posted:

This is not to say that all propaganda is foreign. What it means, though, is that simply pushing an agenda is not necessarily propaganda; they have overlaps, but also important differences. Propaganda always mixes facts with fiction, and its goal is always to sow discontent and mistrust and cause chaos amongst real or perceived adversaries.

Propaganda does not have to be negative. The idea that America is #1, that everyone wants to live there, that it must be defended at all costs and that there's nothing to improve, is all forms of propaganda propagated for the purpose unifying the country around the state.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 20:09

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 06:40

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Slow News Day posted:

Sorry, I should have been more clear: by "context", I was referring to the RT vs. NYT argument people were having earlier. Propaganda can definitely originate from non-governmental sources as well, such as a conservative think tank that pushes misleading or false anti-tax narratives. And you're right, there isn't a rule that says it cannot be positive; again though, RT is unlikely to spread pro-USA propaganda.

Still applies though. Just because some types of propaganda are more subtle does not make it not propaganda, nor does aligning with establishment thinking. The US has had literally two centuries of propaganda building up a certain image of itself, internally and externally, an image still propagated by organizations like the NYT. The difference is that it's almost invisible when you live and breathe it every day, raised by people who too lived and breathed it, right back to whichever one of your ancestors first embraced the image of the Land of the Free.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 20:29

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jaxyon posted:

The NYT has done direct propaganda for the US government, not just generalized American Dream stuff and running Tom Cotton op-eds.

Notably under the Bush administration.

Yeah, I was focusing on the �majority good non-propaganda journalism� to the bad apples of direct propaganda, because it seemed like the former was a defense of the existence of the latter.

In any case, the point is basically that every source should be held to the same standard. If you post garbage and say that�s exactly your position, then that�s something people can respond to, whether it�s RT or a �respectable� source arguing for a Salazzar. No need to pre-approve/block any.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2021 20:54

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Main Paineframe posted:

what are y'all's thoughts on people getting fooled by satirists and posting joke tweets that they didn't realize were jokes

I've seen a fair few instances of that lately

If you just enforce:

- State what the source(s) say(s)
- State what your position is vis-a-vis the topic of the source

then that should take care of a lot of it, just because people have to actually engage with the tweet before posting. For tweets that do get through, that's mostly just embarrassing to the poster. Sure, if the same poster keeps getting fooled then you can consider doing more about it, but badly presenting real sources seems way worse to me than being fooled by satire, from a debating point of view. The latter is almost by definition bad faith, while the former just requires you to be gullible.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2021 06:29

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jarmak posted:

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. This is how the well is poisoned in order to pave the way for disinformation: claim that everyone is acting in bad faith so who's really to know? See also "you can't trust any source", "fake news media", "everyone's lying, they're just the mainstream lies"

You do not have to act in bad faith to produce bad information. The stenographer style of journalism is not (necessarily) done in bad faith, but is essentially just a way to launder opinions into facts.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 21:16

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jarmak posted:

Sure, but no source is 100% free from bad information. There is an important distinction between a source that has bad information despite it's efforts to be truthful, and source that is trying to push bad information.

There's also a difference between a source possessing a bias and a source possessing an agenda. Big media outlets often have a structural bias toward the establishment for example, but this is different from an outlet like RT or Brietbart whose purpose is not to be informative, but rather to distort information in service of their larger goal.

Why is that an important distinction? A "respected" news source who in good faith acts as a stenographer for someone intentionally trying to push bad information, due to the inherent structures bias of the media outlet they work for and the society they live in, is no more telling the truth or improving the reader's understanding of the world than the same reporter just making that exact same poo poo up. The difference between the two is largely whether they are or perceive themselves to be pro-status quo/establishment or not. Talking the actual material effect of their output, not whether one is more morally correct than the other.

To be clear, I am not arguing that they're all just the same, or that on average some outlets are not more factual than others, merely that ANY article or source must be interrogated. I very much get the feeling that some people here want to just blacklist "known propaganda outlets" without ever being forced to question establishment outlets, or even seeing others do the same.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I think this is the part where you take a huge hit from your bong and go "what even is truth, maaaan"

OwlFancier is 100% correct.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 21:38

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Herstory Begins Now posted:

he can be correct, but because I don't think anyone tasked with moderating here neither wants to nor feels qualified to be some absolute arbiter of political objectivity, it's a lot easier to just disallow stuff that walks and swims and quacks like a propaganda duck

So don't be? Just enforce the "Say what the article is actually about and state your position" rule.

Deteriorata posted:

Stenography is an important, if unfortunate, part of news reporting. "Important Person X said Y" is factual information that should be part of the public record.

That thing Y was complete bullshit is a separate issue. That is what analysis and opinion writing is for.

I meant it as the kind of reporting where it's not "Important Person X said Y", but articles that basically rewrite opinions/quotes as facts. Though the mere selection of quotes alone can be used to push an agenda too. If you have three people quoted as saying essentially the same thing, then the take is that that is fact, even if that's never actually established. We're getting into a more meta discussion of journalism in general here maybe, but I do feel it is relevant to the discussion. Journalism can be bad in a lot of different ways, which is why I'm kinda not a fan of the whole blacklist idea. It's too black and white, too easy to turn into an idea that the sources YOU like are inherently trustworthy, aside from the obvious issue of having the potential of being insanely biased politically under a sufficiently aggressive standard.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

The objective reality is that USPol regularly, and I mean frequently, questions and shits on both mainstream outlets and specific journalists and authors. It is why we know Maggie Haberman is terrible, for example: because we have in fact questioned the veracity of her reporting, and the answers we found were less than ideal. Similarly, though the same mechanism, we have come to determine that The Hill regularly posts clickbait trash.

What we don't want to have to do, however, is spend enormous amounts of time and energy tediously refuting sources like Russia Today, which have become very good at mixing truth with fiction because it exists for the sole purpose of pushing propaganda. The reason we don't want to have to do it is because of this wonderful post Epinephrine made on page 2 (which everyone seems to have ignored):

There's a difference between "I don't want a blacklist" and "You have to treat every source and poster as a good faith participant that must be converted through the enlightened process of debate". The reason why no one is engaging is probably that they don't disagree, even if some people are too easily trolled to not try anyway.

Facts on the table, I am not generally a participant on USPOL threads, so I am not aware of the specific issues or level of garbage sourcing that happens there. I do have to have to engage though, because the (unsurprisingly) American bent of SA means your poo poo eventually rolls down on all us non-Americans. Mostly we try to keep to our own threads, but it wouldn't be the first time that an American thread issue was used as an argument for changing moderation among communities that do not need that kind of babysitting.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 22:15

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Deteriorata posted:

Which is exactly the point of posting the lovely article in the first place. They're trolling, so getting a couple pages of "gently caress off" instead of meaningful discussion is what they're after.

You don�t have to have a couple of pages. Like, the moment you see 2-3 of those replies you can just ignore it.

# ¿ Feb 6, 2021 23:04

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Aruan posted:

The solution with this isn�t to try to place guardrails on sources, it�s actually to punish bad faith trolls for being bad faith trolls. Let�s enforce the rules these people are already breaking instead of trying to invent new ones - and since the core problem here is failing to enforce existing rules, how is adding more rules going to help?

This is 100% the issue, though I would argue it takes two to tango. Plus it's not always a case of one poster being the obvious troll, disagreement alone does not bad faith make, despite that clearly being a position held by a sizeable minority of posters on the forum. In any case, I don't really care if one poster is a "bad faith troll" in the eyes of some people, if they're prolonging a derail and making GBS threads up the thread for like ten pages they need to get corrected too. Like straight up just hand out 24 hour probations for taking the bait and making GBS threads up the thread, no matter how justified their posting. Maybe they'll learn to chill out eventually.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

It's disappointing to read this because being able to critically evaluate the credibility of a source, and analyze how their motivations affect that credibility, is Media Literacy 101 stuff.

The premise here is that the information has already been vetted. I think OwlFancier is perhaps reacting to the unstated belief that information coming from a "propaganda outlet" is automatically invalid because it comes from a "propaganda outlet", and should thus be distrusted or even dismissed if you find it elsewhere too.

Slow News Day posted:

Things like white supremacy and genocide denial are not political positions.

White supremacy was official policy in the US for centuries, to say it is not a political position is absurd. This is actually what I mean with trolls actually sometimes just being people you disagree with, except in this case I think I'd trust you more to make a blacklist of political sources if this was in fact just you trolling.

Slow News Day posted:

Rather, the question is, should foreign propaganda outlets, which operate solely to advance the interests of monstrous totalitarian regimes at the expense of liberal democracies (who themselves aren't perfect, mind you), be accepted by posters as valid and credible sources in debate and discussion? If we think that those regimes are vile and immoral, then there is no reason to accept their mouthpieces as sources, and no reason to expect other posters to tediously and painstakingly try to refute them using counter-citations. Instead, the poster who is using them as sources should be dunked on and told to use a better source. And you know what? For virtually anything that is credible and newsworthy, there will almost always be one.

Question: OwlFancier and I are not Americans, are we allowed to judge American outlets differently than Americans? Does it depend on which country we live in? In terms of political culture and representation, and the integration of state, media, and business interests, the US is (at best) to Denmark what Russia is to the US. Am I allowed to treat mainstream US media as foreign propaganda outlets, propagating views that are intensely harmful to both its own populace and the world in general? Views that undermine the political representation in my own country in favor of foreign interests?

# ¿ Feb 7, 2021 08:57

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Information coming from a foreign propaganda outlet (no need to use scare quotes, we know for a fact that RT and Epoch Times are propaganda outlets) absolutely and definitely cannot be trusted. The entire point of propaganda is that it mixes truth with fiction to the point where the line becomes very blurry, and the truthy bits (that often can be verified via other sources) make it much more likely that the fictional bits will also be accepted and internalized. This is especially true when the message has been carefully crafted and fine-tuned for a specific audience who may have a propensity to not question it because it fits their existing worldview and biases. Therefore, you shouldn't use propaganda outlets as sources even if the stuff they are reporting has been confirmed by other sources (this is extremely rare by the way � these outlets are almost never the ones breaking important news or doing original investigative reporting that can be verified).

As someone who has studied this, I can tell you that there are people whose full-time job is to pick apart things reported by foreign propaganda outlets and trace their various elements to their origin. It is painstaking and tedious work that requires training. It is not something that your average poster can be expected to do reliably (either as the person using the source, or the person consuming it), because you need access to specialized tools and third-party expertise to do it. Adopting a "I will read it and make up my own mind" approach will quickly lead you off a cliff and make you an unwitting vector for the propaganda (such people actually tend to be the easiest targets).

The reason I put propaganda outlet in scare quotes is that I am not sure the people using propaganda outlet mean propaganda outlet, or only a subset of that category. The continued insistence of stressing foreign really seals the deal for me in this regard, and is extremely funny to read for me since every news source even mentioned in this thread is a foreign outlet to me. But I see that Roland Jones has already expanded on that point.

Roland Jones posted:

Really, if one wants to ban outlets for being biased sources of misinformation or the propaganda arms of their respective states, they should be able to explain why the source responsible for this isn't fundamentally unserious and slanted in ways the "bad" sites they want gone are:

The only way the BBC is not a "foreign propaganda outlet" is if you're living in the UK yourself, and that only gets rid of the "foreign" part; you need stronger guidelines than that if you want to justify completely banning the use of certain sources. (Or actually follow through on it and ax the BBC and such too, though that's clearly not what the people posting here want. It's not the position I support either, but I would at least be impressed if someone actually did sincerely and consistently argue for that.)

Government founded: Check
Leadership packed with members of the ruling party: Check
Straight up makes up stories or doctors them in service of the ruling party: Check

RT or the BBC?

# ¿ Feb 8, 2021 18:34

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Epinephrine posted:

So far as I can tell the last time someone earnestly used the BBC as a source was 3 months ago (and I think they could have used another source for that), and a search of BBC in the USPOL fall thread only gave 21 hits and that one from December is literally the only one I could find that uses the BBC as a source [EDIT: earnestly, not ironically or to criticize the BBC]. In the entire thread. A google search suggests the last time the BBC was linked in a USPOL thread (search: site:forums.somethingawful.com uspol bbc.co.uk) was back in June. I went through all this work because I didn't recall the last time the BBC was actually used, in earnest. as a source.

This thread is about D&D, not USPOL. Unless it is actually just about USPOL rules? In which case, might I suggest making American politics a subforum of D&D and disallow it entirely in D&D proper rather than creating some sort of dual-rules system where you have to guess whether the American moderators believe it to be an American thread using American rules.

Epinephrine posted:

I'm sure others will be willing to debate you on the merits of whether state-sponsored media is the same as propaganda (imo it's not)

This is what I mean when I say I don't trust the definition of "propaganda outlet" in this thread.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 06:25

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

fool of sound posted:

This thread is relevant to all of D&D but is particularly important to the upcoming USNews thread.

Can the mod team clarify its position vis-a-vis "foreign" outlets then? Because this thread is heavily skewed towards an instinctual understanding of politics as being American or foreign, when in fact to a lot of goons, America is foreign.

Same for questions of the trustworthiness of institutions. The consensus among the "America = (inherently) not foreign" posters seems to be that America is the baseline, representative of a general category of "Good Western societies with a trustworthy mainstream media and political class" - a position that is hardly aligned with reality if you actually bother to compare it to other Western societies. Not saying it is uniquely bad, worse than all other Western societies at everything, but to flatten "the West" into some general good category in which you can just trust the mainstream requires some major ideological blinders.

Basically, what is your position in regards to the non-American parts of the forums, the non-country specific parts, and their interactions with rulesets created within the context of the American parts which appear to take up 90%+ of your time?

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 07:36

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Discendo Vox posted:

Response:
No one's proposing that mods run a blacklist of sources. That's obviously unnecessary and a burden on moderators. People talk about a blacklist specifically to make the idea of dealing with this stuff seem like too much work, and make the mods=censors argument.

Literally my first post in this thread was laying out a ruleset in a similar manner to what you've done now. My suggestion focused a bit more on the content and whether the poster agreed with it, AND the actually quite important rule of having to ensure your post makes sense if your source gets deleted, but very much in the same vein as what you've suggested here. Your accusation of bad faith is itself in bad faith.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 06:42

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Jarmak posted:

My favorite part of this post is how you accuse DV of posting in bad faith because "no one actually has been making that argument".... and then the very next post after it was someone making that arguement.

My point wasn't that no one would do that, but that the characterization DV made is not universally true.

Jarmak posted:

edit: I lied, my favorite part of this post is that you're lying out your rear end and you yourself very specifically made that arguement

How does this do what DV claimed? My argument is that propaganda encompasses more than some people would prefer it to mean, not that it's too much work to figure out what is propaganda so just don't bother. Like, it's almost the opposite argument, that the discussion of what sources should be considered automatically suspect is too limited. It's not that it's too hard, it's that it's the easy way out. People need to question every source, defining a line just lets people off the hook for unquestionably buying into the (insert percentage) bullshit a given outlet spews.

As for bad faith, I really do think it's a big issue that people see bad faith when it's just disagreement. Like, sometimes posters are just so far apart ideologically that they have a hard time reading each others posts properly. It becomes more like "What would this mean if I wrote it?" rather than "What is this person trying to say?" I'm actually not a big fan of calling things bad faith, but when someone literally writes out the motivations of other posters like it's just fact then I have a hard time seeing another conclusion. There's no attempting to find some common understanding, just a broad dismissal of all posters using a word in an argument for having a bad motive.

Handsome Ralph posted:

I think that's a fair ask and I'd be fine with that.

Maybe point out the source within the article rather than the outlet itself. "CNN is reporting that experts say schools must open" is very different from "CNN is reporting that Todd Bonzales, Wall Street banker, is saying schools must open". Same if it's an anonymous source, that's super relevant to the discussion of an article.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 17:32

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Discendo Vox posted:

I didn't say anything about you. You're basically just telling on yourself.

Discendo Vox posted:

People talk about a blacklist specifically to make the idea of dealing with this stuff seem like too much work, and make the mods=censors argument.

Am I not people? Because I talked about a blacklist.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 17:47

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Discendo Vox posted:

If you talked up a blacklist, then yes, the shoe fits. You're consistently arguing for more onerous, less feasible moderation and trying to create a space for nonsense equivocation between sources. I attacked the argument, and you made it personal. This is, of course, the root problem- having to constantly navigate a tide of bad faith arguments, in service of other bad faith materials.

Point to where I've argued for more onerous, less feasible moderation. Not gonna get into the "nonsense equivocation" bit, we clearly do not see eye to eye at an ideological level here, but the latter is something we can actually have a discussion about.

Discendo Vox posted:

I attacked the argument, and you made it personal. This is, of course, the root problem- having to constantly navigate a tide of bad faith arguments, in service of other bad faith materials.

The moment you ascribed motive to the argument you made it a personal argument.

# ¿ Feb 11, 2021 18:40

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

What is the material difference between the two, when it comes to any given article? The motivation of the journalist is different, but whether they're coldly doing what they're told, completely aware of the actual purpose of their actions, or they're being swept up in the emotions of the moment and convinced by the lies of the government, the outcome is the same: The populace is deceived by the media, according to the wishes of the ruling class.

Sure, the person with the brief of "Run the story we tell you to, like we tell you to, otherwise just report the truth when it undermines our enemies" is probably* going to be doing more heavy lifting in deceiving the populace, but the "na�ve" journalist that lets their adherence to authority and near-unquestioned belief in the common narrative of the nation blind them to the truth of what they're doing is doing the exact same "Make the lie plausible because its mixed in with truthful reporting" thing people have been harping on. Whether that is propaganda or not isn't really relevant to the question of the trustworthiness of an article, hence the need to be at least a little skeptical of all sources.

*If you've yourself been deceived about the world, even honest reporting can be as damaging as knowing deception.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2021 21:16

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Solkanar512 posted:

You're conflating temporary issues that are corrected later with constant and systemic malice. There's a massive difference and you need to acknowledge it.

I do not believe it is a temporary issue. Yes, the specific instance of bad reporting (trusting the administration on Iraq) was dealt with after a million dead and a destabilized Middle East, but is there any reason to believe it dealt with the underlying issue? The press of 2020-21 has basically played along with the rhetoric on corona in the same exact fashion, which is on track to cause at least as many deaths just within the US. The US media basically seems to reset it's credulity meter at the start of any given administration.

Yes, there is a difference between deliberately trying to spread false information and doing it accidentally. However, and this is the core of the issue for me, the level of dereliction of duty that the US press manages time and time again is still at a level where you should question literally anything it puts out, especially for the kind of issues D&D can be bothered to talk about.

A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Feb 13, 2021

# ¿ Feb 13, 2021 08:07

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Nobody seems to be saying "don't question mainstream sources," friend.

Seriously, are you under the impression that people are advocating for unquestioningly swallowing anything CNN/NYTimes/WaPo/etc. reports hook, line and sinker? Because that impression is... false.

I'm basing the idea that some people would want to not do that on posting/feedback outside the thread, the quite vehement defense of lovely (but not RT lovely) media outlets in this one, and I'm harping on it bassed on the record of how mods translate feedback into action. In my experience, you need sustained effort for the final rule set to not become overly colored by the people making the rules, and even then it is not a sure thing. Now perhaps I'm underestimating the D&D mod team here, but better to push it a little harder than needed than not enough.

Discendo Vox posted:

No. You need to make them say it. If they can think it's obvious, then you're just going to get the same issues of people spamming "obvious", misleading, tweets. Enforcement also becomes subjective. This keeps all the problems of toxic abuse and feedback that a clear rule would avoid.

Agreed. Though I would add, it might not be done as much in bad faith as you suggest here as just people having different perspectives on things. Of course the motivation does not matter one bit, and hell, a disagreement about which sources are obvious between people arguing in good faith opens up a thread to far more strife than a committed troll - which will eventually spill out into the forum in general as one side ends up punished and the other not. The conclusion is the same though: Treat nothing as obvious.

This has the added benefit of forcing people to engage with what they're posting, and ties in very well with the idea of making posts have content beyond a link to somewhere else.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2021 06:42

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# ¿ May 10, 2024 06:40

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Kalit posted:

Everyone gets things wrong. Media like CNN/etc sometimes give US politicians the benefit of the doubt on what is true.

Sometimes? Consistently would be a much fairer assesment.

Kalit posted:

By truth and honesty, I mean news outlets that are not knowingly using misinformation/lies in their news articles.

Things don�t become true just because the person saying them believes them to be true. Conflating honesty with truth is incredibly dangerous.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2021 16:19

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Posting and discussing sources: a D&D feedback thread