Hard to say what the takeaway or lesson is here, other than having trustworthy professionals disseminating unbiased information is a public good and losing it creates paranoia and social distrust everywhere.
Generating an AI hallucination of "called 278 likely voters in the district and it resulted in..." is just as fake as making up the data yourself.
AI hallucination could be a way to generate fake polling data, but that doesn't matter given that the intent is to generate fake polling data. It could have been done with a bag of dice just as easily.
There is a lot of crap being produced to sway the election from all sides of the political spectrum.
A more serious question of how and why an organization such as the NYTimes (and others of similar stature) would so easily and quickly incorporate polling data from a brand new polling company into its election data and articles and be so easily fooled.
And, when this was uncovered, they did not do much more than what seemed the minimal amount to CYA, quietly backing out the data and issuing an editors note that few people would find.
They do not seem that interested in protecting their reputation, or maybe they don't believe their readers care.
Trump has been manipulating the media, attacking the electoral process, lying, using federal resources to persecute political rivals... "all sides" seems unfair.
> "Right-Wing Influencers Amplify the Controversy"
Seems like the kind of thing someone should go to jail for. You can't just run a "social experiment" by committing fraud and lying to people, and that's assuming this isn't just an excuse someone came up with once they knew they would be caught.
It isn’t necessarily a crime to lie or do a hoax, and a fake poll by itself is probably well within the lines of free speech. The fraud question comes into it for two possible cases:
1) someone might have paid them to do a real poll and they faked it, which is just straightforward fraud with a clear victim.
2) (the fun one) they might have done it to manipulate political prediction markets, which gets into securities fraud questions.
Normally I wouldn't say something that lightheaded but.. I think this is what psyops look like. I'm not claiming it is one. But it sure sounds like one.
That was the first thing that I thought of and it does make way more sense than a few people wanting to make a name for themselves as an actual Polling org. I don’t see the incentive in producing fake polling unless there are ulterior motives
Would we have obtained the same "confession" after next Tuesday had they remained unexposed?
AI hallucination could be a way to generate fake polling data, but that doesn't matter given that the intent is to generate fake polling data. It could have been done with a bag of dice just as easily.
A more serious question of how and why an organization such as the NYTimes (and others of similar stature) would so easily and quickly incorporate polling data from a brand new polling company into its election data and articles and be so easily fooled.
And, when this was uncovered, they did not do much more than what seemed the minimal amount to CYA, quietly backing out the data and issuing an editors note that few people would find.
They do not seem that interested in protecting their reputation, or maybe they don't believe their readers care.
Trump has been manipulating the media, attacking the electoral process, lying, using federal resources to persecute political rivals... "all sides" seems unfair.
> "Right-Wing Influencers Amplify the Controversy"
Oh, I get it now.
1) someone might have paid them to do a real poll and they faked it, which is just straightforward fraud with a clear victim.
2) (the fun one) they might have done it to manipulate political prediction markets, which gets into securities fraud questions.