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The US Government Funds A War On Online Fake News (bangordailynews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: Congressional negotiators on Wednesday approved an initiative to track and combat foreign propaganda amid growing concerns that Russian efforts to spread "fake news" and disinformation threaten U.S. national security. The measure, part of the National Defense Authorization Act approved by a conference committee, calls on the State Department to lead government-wide efforts to identify propaganda and counter its effects. The authorization is for $160 million over two years...

The Senate Intelligence Committee, meanwhile, has approved language in the fiscal year 2017 intelligence authorization bill calling for new executive branch efforts to combat what it characterized as "active measures" by Russia to manipulate people and governments through front groups, covert broadcasting or "media manipulation." "There is definitely bipartisan concern about the Russian government engaging in covert influence activities of this nature," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "If you read section 501 of this year's intelligence authorization bill, it directs the President to set up an interagency committee to 'counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence over peoples and governments.'"

Several senators on the intelligence committee also asked President Obama to declassify any information relating to the Russian government and the U.S. election.

6 of 360 comments (clear)

  1. Onwards to victory. by durrr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let the US government fake news win!

    We called it propaganda for hundreds of years? Why change now? Is this some form of doublenextplusgoodspeak?

  2. Re:Good. by fnj · · Score: 1, Informative

    Immature know-it-all detected.

  3. Re:treating the symptoms by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's the school system that created all this snowflake syndrome we have now. You think that shit starts in college? I have news for you.

  4. Re:Total Coincidence by quantaman · · Score: 4, Informative

    Rumors about Pizzagate hit the internet. Twitter removes people talking about it. Reddit deletes the group talking about it (but leaves actual groups of pedophiles online!). Even 4chan, the internet's cess pit is trying to censor it. The MSM won't touch it. Suddenly there's a big war on "fake" news, simultaneously by the new media, the old media, and now the government.

    This much censorship makes it MORE likely there's something to the allegations, not less. Nobody cares when the National Enquirer makes up nonsense about Brangelina or the Weekly World News claims to have found aliens.

    Media should ignore fake news when possible. Reporting it, even to debunk it, tends to give the story more credibility and make the target look more suspicious.

    Pizzagate is a great example. It's fake news, a particularly ridiculous piece of fake news where people have invented a massive pedophile network all because they didn't understand why a restaurant owner (who was also a fundraiser) was mentioned in an email.

    Pizzagate isn't a scandal. It's a trashy detective model where the characters have been given names of real people.

    Now were Twitter and Reddit right to censor those discussions? I don't know. Going by the fact I've been spared knowing about this particular piece of stupidity until now I can't say they're wrong.

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    I stole this Sig
  5. Re:treating the symptoms by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Informative

    Don't forget their demands for safe spaces on campus, free from people harassing them by disagreeing with their political views.

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    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  6. Re:seek medical help, quickly by quantaman · · Score: 4, Informative

    You claim certainty that Trump is "...ridiculously unprepared and still doesn't really understand what the job entails." but there is a bit of reality you and others like you still have not yet faced:

    Barack Obama had never done a productive thing in his life when elected President.

    He had a good academic career, many years of experience as a State Legislator, almost 4 years as a US Senator, and was clearly competent and obviously had a strong grasp of policy.

    Still he didn't have sufficient Federal experience and paid for it in his first couple years in office.

    Everybody has their opinions about whether Trump is good/evil, right/left (Lots of Republicans fear he is too liberal and Democrat-aligned), etc but the simple fact is that the man is far more qualified to be CEO of the US (The President is the top executive job in the US government, the head of the executive branch)

    CEO is a very different position than President.

    than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and George Bush COMBINED. Trump has been successfully running a multi-billion dollar international corporation through about 40 years of economic ups and downs and shifting legal sands and even across shifting international lines. He has employed tens of thousands of people around the world and has hired and fired, promoted and overseen and monitored hundreds of managers of his many sub units of his vast holdings and has probably more experience in managing a team that manages a complex, hierarchical, distributed entity than ANY US President since Eisenhower.

    He's mostly a franchise at this point, licensing his name to other groups to throw on hotels. When he manages things himself bankruptcies and unpaid bills are a typical outcome.

    I suspect he's pretty good at real estate, and he may do a decent job of managing his organization, but his chaotic disorganized campaign was a common story line during the election, the most obvious evidence being the two campaign managers he fired and turfing the entire transition team several days after winning.

    His managerial abilities are clearly not universally awesome.

    He was also caught out many times simply not understanding fairly basic things about different policy areas, what the POTUS did, or even what the constitution said.

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    I stole this Sig