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Tim Cook Describes Fake News as 'One of Today's Chief Problems'
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Honestly, I was half expecting this to be a fake news article. 
Regardless, fake news is easy; don't click on it and don't read it and don't share it. Read things with good sources.
It's usually easy to spot ahead of time, but the problem is that so many people don't take the mental precautions to be aware of it ahead of time, and just believe whatever is written anywhere. I can't tell you how many times people see iPhone *insert next iPhone name here* rumors online and tell me in person that it's fact that Apple has released or announced it already. Especially when it's from an article about it being a rumor. There will always be instances of this, even if it's clearly stated in the "news" article itself that it's not real. People just jump to conclusions.
Regardless, fake news is easy; don't click on it and don't read it and don't share it. Read things with good sources.
It's usually easy to spot ahead of time, but the problem is that so many people don't take the mental precautions to be aware of it ahead of time, and just believe whatever is written anywhere. I can't tell you how many times people see iPhone *insert next iPhone name here* rumors online and tell me in person that it's fact that Apple has released or announced it already. Especially when it's from an article about it being a rumor. There will always be instances of this, even if it's clearly stated in the "news" article itself that it's not real. People just jump to conclusions.
Cool, see you in 8 years!Looks to me more like we're coming together. It's the White House that's falling apart.
This is a dangerous viewpoint that is currently being pushed: why not just dismiss everything as fake and live your life with your own uninformed opinions? There actually is truth out there, but you have to be willing to put in the time and effort to find it. If something matters to you, thoroughly research it. A true democracy demands that citizens be well-informed, and that doesn't mean that the information is simply handed to you. It takes work. But if instead you want to live in a comfortable bubble of your own beliefs, then fascism will probably work well for you.
Even assuming you could run the government exactly like a business -- a dubious idea, as Trump is finding out -- we'd need someone who is more than a cranky child.
As fast as supporting Trump's policies, he's losing that battle fast.
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LOL. And tgara thinks I make wild "predictions".
(Hard to tell with him anymore since I added him to my ignore list.
)We should be running the government as a quasi-business. It's the largest "employer" in the country. Let that sink in for a bit.
And I wonder how much of his "declining" popularity is due to the news media's negative bias in reporting his actions. See the "Muslim Ban" that is nothing of the sort. Or the nonsense about his picks for cabinet positions. We've been going down the wrong path for a while with the "experts" so why not try something different. When the establishment says you are doing something wrong you are doing it right.
Although I think he does need to do some things like release his tax returns and stop focusing on the noise (like voter fraud, the wall, etc) and stop the Twitter feuds.
Public Policy Polling? You can't be serious. According to them we should all be celebrating a Hillary landslide.
Coincidentally this is also my reaction to Tim's opinion that "fake news" is one of our biggest problems. Or at least his perspective on what constitutes "fake news".
It's the most powerful MacBook ever made ...
(Tim Cook complaining about news ... pfff. He should have 5 better things to do.)
(Tim Cook complaining about news ... pfff. He should have 5 better things to do.)
I'm thinking he meant avoid some of the more clearly biased mainstream outlets. I find I read a lot of mainstream news items and then have to re filter everything I read to remove biased wording and re-digest what is actually going on. It's exhausting and frustrating, but does exercise those critical thinking skills and does give me many "teachable moments" for my 12 year old so she doesn't grow up a malleable sheep.
As far as the appropriateness of Tim being involved in this issue, I think it's actually very important that he take an interest in it. Smart phones are often the first devices people get their news from. The news aggregators on various devices can really vary in quality. I'm glad Tim takes an interest in the news and I hope his interest leads to even more improvements to how iOS aggregates and presents news sources.
There is a potential technical solution for this, in the shape of a third party journalism standards service, which would evaluate the sourcing, factuality and language etc of any article and provide error bars in the margins, approximating the error bars on scientific publications relaying the objective veracity of the information to the reader. Program it, supervise it, build it into the browser so it can't be faked.
Until then, it's just censure and censor and semi-justifiable conspiracy-theorizing.
Until then, it's just censure and censor and semi-justifiable conspiracy-theorizing.
Dear Tim,
I would counter that The Chief Problem at Apple is that its CEO is paying way too much attention to political and social issues and not on the actual company.
I would counter that The Chief Problem at Apple is that its CEO is paying way too much attention to political and social issues and not on the actual company.
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if only there was a way to do several things basically at once, man sure would be great if humans had that ability
Is the News app not part of Apple's "services"?
If the populous starts believing all news is "fake", then that would destroy credibility and usefulness of the News app. That is an issue a CEO would/should care about. Especially, since services have become such a big part of the company's bottom line.
I had to give you a thumbs up on that even though I loathed Trump so much I switched parties and voted for Hillary. But I loathe journalistic bias and shenanigans even more.
When I get done processing "news" articles and mentally noting biased and manipulative language to get at the essential facts that are either being highlighted or glossed over to suit an agenda that reveals itself as I read the drift of the articles, I'm left to conclude that Trump isn't necessarily a paranoid ranting toddler about everything. The press really is out to ride him out of D.C. on a rail.
It does not help that Trump and his team are their own worst enemies and also play fast and loose with the facts.
We have three components of the system of checks and balances in such a sad state of dysfunction and chaos they barely work. I would say our founding fathers would be rolling in their graves, but stepping back and taking a historical perspective, our country has been through iterations of this chaos before.
The difference now is that we santize so much out of our historical literature in the cause of political correctness that younger generations don't have any historical points of reference to realize we've been through this before. We are losing lessons of history and how earlier generations got through these quandaries that we face again.
For example, the original Nancy Drew books featured depictions of the main characters that showed their prejudices against Irish immigrants at the time the books were written. Subsequent "updates" to the same stories not only dumb down the language and plot points (implying young readers are no longer expected to handle literary complexity) but also remove any language indicating that in the past housekeepers were viewed strictly as servants and NOT the more egalitarian extended family members, and Irish immigrants were viewed with as much disdain and expectation of criminal behavior as Hispanic immigrants are today. There were derogatory comments about other non-WASP demographic groups as well.
These days it's absurd to think of the Irish as so "alien" they were, and it was a part of our pop culture until we scrubbed it clean. Someday it will be absurd to think of Mexicans as so alien, but since we've forgotten our history, or discarded it so as to not shock or offend, this all seems so new and insurmountable.
Well maybe if people got off of Facebook and Twitter and lived in the real world...there wouldn't be an issue. This all comes back to Facebook/Twitter and people believing everything they see on it and sharing it around. Facebook and Twitter are NOT news organizations. The more online our world becomes the more disconnected it becomes. It should be clear by this situation alone. Facebook itself is like a drug to people. The "connected" world was intended for communications, not the spread of rubbish news, political propaganda, and endless photos of food and kids on a social media platform.
Social media needs to die. It does nothing but manipulate, steal, and monitor us. Clearly society can't handle it. It has proven that the lowest common denominator is the vast majority of people.
Social media needs to die. It does nothing but manipulate, steal, and monitor us. Clearly society can't handle it. It has proven that the lowest common denominator is the vast majority of people.
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If steve jobs around never messed around like Tim Cook does he just got on with making great products instead of worrying about fake news he should be cracking the whip and making better products then last year
That is one way to look at it.
Another is that he is a refreshingly engaged leader of one of the largest, most public companies on the planet. He could, like the vast majority of CEOs, sit in silence, collection their billions - too scared to speak out against injustice for fear of jeopardizing their personal status. That's executive behavior with which we're all too familiar. Fortunately he is, like everyone else, a living, breathing, soulful human who is effected by the environment(s) around him. He, also like everyone else, is completely entitled to his opinion, his feelings and his expression. He is in a uniquely public and influential position - which carries incredibly responsibility few have the capacity to grasp. And I completely support him - or anyone - whose intent is to make the planet better than it was yesterday. That is a basic human right and something that - for the most part - links us all (we've been on that incremental improvement path [aka: evolution - shhhh] since we crawled out of the ocean).
For me, Tim's (brace yourself) courageous stance against James Comey and the FBI cemented him as an actual leader. Not just a CEO title. That, took some balls. Balls you simply do not find hanging from your run-of-the-mill CEO - for the same "too scared" angle mentioned above. And as you will notice, it wasn't until Tim took a public stand against the FBI that others followed. As much as some like to spout otherwise, that is the definition of a leader. For all the "Steve wouldn't"s out there, that was a battle I am certain Steve would also have fought with every ounce of his being. Privacy has, and hopefully always will be, at the core of Apple's DNA. And I am SO GALD Tim didn't cave to the pressures of our time.
Again, that's another way to look at it. There are others, as you will find here in these forums. Happy Friday!
Really? Are you suggesting the solution is to live in a bubble of ignorance? Where do you get your information from, tea leaves?
FAKE NEWS!!!
We have some great products in the pipeline………...
We have some great products in the pipeline………...
Exactly why the founding fathers did not choose
democracy, history has proven over and over again (not that many take the time to understand the past) that the the populous are too easy to manipulate with fake news. They want to act emotionally, not rationally. That is a great picture of irrational behavior.
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Hey if we're gonna have an American president who acts like he's running a company I don't have a problem with a CEO telling an American president what's wrong with that picture including fake news efforts from the White House. More power to Cook and where the hell is the House of Representatives with their used-to-be cries of "tyranny" since they're watching Trump pave the way for that right now.
Anyway looking forward to the next round of iPad Pro... and maybe the long-rumored Mini since I might finally be in the mood to park a computer on a desk with a big display next to it, instead of making a laptop follow me around with 13" versions of "full screen" movies.
Yes, bias and "believing what you want to believe" is a huge issue these days. Making informed decision also has become a question of "What can I believe?" or "What should I believe?" If media is becoming such a divisive force, what is the solution? Is some form of automated journalism possible? The idea would be to create a media source that is as unbiased as possible through robots/artificial intelligence.