Comment by roenxi
8 days ago
I have to say that is almost an excellent point - think tanks are ultimately propaganda outfits, so it is hard to have a "fake" think tank which is merely that.
But in this case the "fake" label means that the think tank itself doesn't actually exist. The article expands on the topic with "apparently does not exist as a legal entity in any jurisdiction, has no physical address, and carries no named staff and no bylines on any of its reports".
So if they hired some people to set up the HIPP and posted the same material it'd be a real think tank, but because the institute doesn't seem to exist at all it is a fake think tank. That isn't a comment on the writing produced.
I think it's a misunderstanding of what is alleged here. It's not alleged that the website produces propaganda. It's alleged that the website is fake, designed to seem like a legitimate source of information where info about it is just not available, in order to get AI to scoop up what it writes and treat it like a legitimate source of information vs how it would treat a real think tank which has a point of view that's documented and known in the world
A real think tank with real authors and disclosed funding sources could have something one can learn about it and its political leanings. A fake one can seem impartial due to little info existing about it (since it's fake).
That does kind of make it sound like think tanks are normally either straightforward or fundamentally honest about their agendas, which they pretty much never are. Even the ones that register and have DBAs fund reports that end up in scientific journals and publish articles through chains of obfuscatory intermediaries.
Really only possible in broken-futureland, to have a company whose sole purpose is to get paid to have an opinion.
Their purpose is to oppose/defend and research an opinion.
IMO this is a good thing. How else would society organize resources to investigate political opinions? It's certainly a very partisan job and doesn't fit well into nonpartisan organizations.
This is deliberately missing the point.
Everyone knows think tanks are opinionated.
This one doesn’t have real staff or a real address. It’s an attempt to benefit from “intellectual” engagement with an issue, and having a corpus of work in support of a view, without doing the work or spending the time.
Plenty of people support Israel’s worldview. They are just choosing not to hire and pay them in this instance. That’s what makes it fake.