The Fake News Machine: Inside a Town Gearing Up for 2020 (cnn.com)

CNN has a story on Veles, riverside town in Macedonia, which back in the day was known to make porcelain for the whole of Yugoslavia. But now, as an investigation by the news outlet has found, it makes fake news. Veles has become home to dozens of website operators who churn out bogus stories designed to attract the attention of Americans. Each click adds cash to their bank accounts. From the report: The scale is industrial: Over 100 websites were tracked here during the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. election campaign, producing fake news that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump. One of the shadowy industry's pioneers is a soft-spoken law school dropout. Worried that his online accounts could be shut down, the 24-year-old asked to be known only as Mikhail. He takes on a different persona at night, prowling the internet as "Jesica," an American who frequently posts pro-Trump memes on Facebook. The website and Facebook page that "Jesica" runs caters to conservative readers in the U.S. The stories are political -- and often wrong on the facts. But that doesn't concern Mikhail. "I don't care, because the people are reading," he said. "At 22, I was earning more than someone [in Macedonia] will ever learn in his entire life." He claims to have earned up to $2,500 a day from advertising on his website, while the average monthly income in Macedonia is just $426. The profits come primarily from ad services such as Google's AdSense, which place targeted advertisements around the web. Each click sends a little bit of cash back to the content creator. Mikhail says he has used his profits to buy a house and put his younger sister through school. [...] That site was blocked a few months ago after Facebook and Google started cracking down on fake news sites. Mikhail is now retooling his operation, with his sights set firmly on the 2020 presidential election.

Comments

Trump was right

[Sindar By Choice]

The election was rigged.

Re:Trump was right

[Ayano]

Not rigged, influenced. Mostly it's just a reflection of Americans seeking validating stories to share with others gullible enough to be influenced.

Re:Trump was right

[XxtraLarGe]

Not rigged, influenced. Mostly it's just a reflection of Americans seeking validating stories to share with others gullible enough to be influenced.

That's pretty much it. I have a few friends who were Trump supporters, posting a lot of fake news articles every day. The articles were obviously fake: "Hillary indictment this week!", "Hillary dropping out of race!", etc. It is hard for me to imagine them posting those articles had any influence over anyone to change their vote, and these people wouldn't have voted for Hillary under any set of circumstances.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard it was 57 million.

Re:Trump was right

[ctilsie242]

There are many parties influencing the election. What is the difference between anonymous donations that are protected as free speech (under the Citizens United verdict) hiring shills versus a sovereign nation doing the same thing. Ideally, elections should be closer to Canada, where there is no advertising permitted so candidates have to stand on their own merits.

Or just dispense with the pretexts, and just auction the seats off to the highest bidder. Money is free speech, right, as per that SCOTUS decision.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

"False equivalence", was the secondary theme of the entire election, right after post-truth Trumpian lies.

Plenty of people who don't pay enough attention saw the garbled mess, along with the very valid, but exaggerated criticisms of Clinton (shouldn't have had her own email server), and concluded that all sides were equally bad.

Re:Trump was right

[tbannist]

There are many parties influencing the election. What is the difference between anonymous donations that are protected as free speech (under the Citizens United verdict) hiring shills versus a sovereign nation doing the same thing. Ideally, elections should be closer to Canada, where there is no advertising permitted so candidates have to stand on their own merits.

Or just dispense with the pretexts, and just auction the seats off to the highest bidder. Money is free speech, right, as per that SCOTUS decision.

Just to be clear as I understand it, in Canada:

1. During an election period, only candidates and parties can run ads for or against candidates and parties and both candidates and parties have strict and separate spending limits.
2. During an election period, groups that are not political parties can spend money on issue based advertising but may not endorse or oppose specific candidates or parties.
3. Outside of the election period, there are no limits on spending.

The previous Canadian governing party, the Conservative Party of Canada, was notorious for trying to game the system during elections by hiding party advertising as candidate advertising in what became locally known as the In and Out scandal. Essentially money was deposited into a local candidates account to pay for national advertising just in time for it to be spent immediately, sometimes without the candidate even knowing the money was ever there. This behaviour tripped a few candidates up who didn't know that they were exceeded their spending limits because of the federal party's advertising schemes.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

concluded that all sides were equally bad.

Well, they certainly aren't equally good

Re:Trump was right

[Sindar By Choice]

The real irony is that Trump bitched up a storm all of 2016 about how everyone was out to get him, and he was the underdog, when in reality, he had plenty of "help" getting elected.

Re:Trump was right

[danbert8]

They were equally bad, but they were both still bad. I voted for the lesser of evils, Gary Johnson.

Re: Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

If it was that many, than you shouldn't have a problem collecting 1% of the names as proof.

Re:Trump was right

[WrongMonkey]

And how does Canada enforce such laws if the ads are being run on the internet from outside Canadian borders?

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

That would absolutely run afoul of first amendment protections here. Canada and most of Europe are definitely heading down a slippery pro-censorship slope in this area as of late, so I personally wouldn't ever be in favor of anything that erodes the first amendment, or else we could very well do the same.

Re:Trump was right

[ctilsie242]

My question is... where does the First Amendment end and overt bribery begin? As it stands now, the CU verdict has pretty much put any electable seat in the country up for sale. Or, do we just want to say that the invisible hand will take care of all this, as we ride down the lassez faire ideology into another Great Depression?

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does Canada enforce such laws if the ads are being run on the internet from outside Canadian borders?

Television, radio, and newsprint are geographically local and so easy to control.

If you're talking about online ads, then many people visit the web pages of newspapers and such, and so there's a gatekeeper there. For something like (e.g.) Facebook and Twitter, they have offices in Toronto, and so if there are too many shenanigan they can expect a visit from Elections Canada officials.

National elections are not distributed like in the US, but are run by a central bureaucracy (that's fairly transparent, independent, and trusted). Enforcement of rules is by the same org, but any allegations / charges are ruled on my the judiciary before fines or imprisonment.

For "random" fording-based web sites that use a foreign-based ad network: you're right that there's no way to control these things. So if GeoIP thinks your IP is in Canada, and you visit (e.g.) US-based Breitbart, their network may serve you an illegal-per-Canadian-law ad, and there's not much that can be done.

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

I'm not sure why fake news seems to be news as of late. I remember around the 04 election and shortly after there was a lot of fake news going around about Bush with some of it even making it to the mainstream media, and in fact slashdot even posted a few.

http://www.factcheck.org/2007/...

(Every now and then, somebody repeats the one about the constitution on slashdot and gets a +5 moderation.)

Also from CapitalBlue, which spread to many mainstream media sites before being quickly removed, and also unsubstantiated:

http://www.rense.com/general62...

And then there was memogate, aka rathergate, which needs no link. I remember when the paper was shown to be a forgery, and no document experts wanted to authenticate it, CBS acknowledged that it was probably fake, but continued to argue that the story was true anyways, even when it later turned out that the source of the story (who conveniently burned the "memo" after sending it) was somebody who hated Bush for a very long time. Slashdot's Kdawson made the same argument on a front page posting as well.

There were many, many others as well. If you peruse democraticunderground for posts around that time period, you'll find plenty, but very few ever made news in the mainstream media.

Fortunately, I think that the mainstream media mostly learned their lesson during that era, though I wouldn't be surprised if they forget it after a generation passes by.

Re:Trump was right

[hey!]

But it's not just dumb people. Confirmation bias is baked into human cognition, and it's hard to overcome; even if you're inclined, it bites everyone on the ass.

Bandwagon effect too. It's easy to see when other people who you disagree with indulge in it, but I strongly suspect everyone does. And, in a natural enviornment (e.g. small hunter gatherer groups) the bandwagon effect is probably a useful heuristic. But it makes the social media the most powerful amplifier of propaganda ever. It's no longer Big Brother playing on everyone's TV, it's your friends and family who are indoctrinating you.

Re:Trump was right

[clodney]

My question is... where does the First Amendment end and overt bribery begin? As it stands now, the CU verdict has pretty much put any electable seat in the country up for sale. Or, do we just want to say that the invisible hand will take care of all this, as we ride down the lassez faire ideology into another Great Depression?

Actually, it is not true that elections are for sale. Because of gerrymandering, most seats are so safe for one party or the other that even huge amounts of cash don't budge the needle meaningfully. Political advertising and campaign spending matters, but no matter what you spend, you aren't going to elect Hillary in rural Mississippi, or Trump in Berkeley.

Now the behavior of elected officials may be influenced by donations to reelection campaigns, but mostly that is when they are in and safely incumbent.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not slippery at all, they're banning hate speech which is nearly always from conservative and fascist retards which is completely rational.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought hook line and sinker into the Libertarian mantra of the election: why have the right nut or the left nut, when you can have the Johnson?

Re:Trump was right

[Plus1Entropy]

Johnson gave stoners a bad name. It's not the weed, he's just an idiot.

Re:Trump was right

[Plus1Entropy]

But now he doesn't care because it was rigged in his favor.

Re: Trump was right

[Plus1Entropy]

Hell, I'll settle for 0.1% or 0.01% or even just 1 fucking name.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Confirmation bias is baked in. But there is a big difference between people who try to correct for it by using critical thinking and those who don't. It's entirely fair to call those in the later category 'dumb'.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of idiots seem to be just now in 2017 discovering that A) People lie online and B) People in foreign countries have internet access too - things most of us figured out two minutes after we got our first dialup connection. (Maybe we can forgive them for not realizing C) A lot of what you read in the news is agenda-driven bullshit fabricated to push a partisan narrative)

Either that or it's selective outrage driven by a media determined to find a scapegoat for Clinton's loss.

Fortunately, I think that the mainstream media mostly learned their lesson during that era

Not if we're counting Buzzfeed or CNN as part of the "mainstream media".

Re:Trump was right

[modmans2ndcoming]

the biggest issue with the current crop: 1) Social Media makes it worse 2) Foreign entities are making it to influence our elections 3) Because of 1 and 2, it is now more dangerous to our union.

Re:Trump was right

[modmans2ndcoming]

Sounds like you listen to conspiracy theory driving nut jobs that bloviate about how evil the MSM is. #irony

Re:Trump was right

[modmans2ndcoming]

This is why Gerrymandering needs to be attacked at the state level across the country. At the very least, an elected bi partisan group (independents are not bi partisan) of non-legislators who will not seek legislative office during the period they partake in redistricting should be in place in every state. Best situation, the above group, but the required use of a mathematical construct to ensure closed and compact districts that maximize the required population with the minimum perimeter needs to exist. Adding things like "respecting local political boundaries" helps too so a city has representatives who live in the city rather than someone who lives 100 miles away and is connected via a spaghetti noodle.

Re:Trump was right

[hey!]

Situationally dumb, yes.

But people who can do better often don't, especially when their emotions run high. So the fact that you can be smart and have exhibited a pattern of smart behavior -- even critical thinking -- doesn't mean you're immune.

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

With regard to his last sentence, he's *sort of*, but not quite, on the right track about CNN. If you look at their headlines as of late, it's really heavy on the hyperbole. Take for example their (and many other mainstream media news organizations) reporting of the Google memo, labeling it an "anti-diversity" memo; this label is a bit disingenuous even if many interpret it this way, and I tend to think that a news organization that aims to be truthful would opt for a different label.

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

Its not slippery at all, they're banning hate speech which is nearly always from conservative and fascist retards which is completely rational.

It obviously isn't working because fascism is actually gaining ground in the EU, where it isn't in the US, which doesn't ban any speech that doesn't advocate violence. By that I mean there isn't a single politician who openly identifies as such in the US, yet the combined EU has many of them, with up to 25% of the votes in many EU states going towards the local fascist party, and in some that party is actually the governing party:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

At any rate, here's why it's slippery:

https://yro.slashdot.org/story...

Effectively what the EU is doing is saying that it must be up to private entities to censor speech, and that they must do it quickly, which opens up a gigantic can of worms: They're inevitably going to have to develop automated filters that will delete posts before a human can review them, which means many will just get deleted outright, and in the case where human review is required, you're just asking for somebody with a particular political view to delete content that *they* don't like, which would be perfectly legal, or even content that is really benign from any perspective at all, but was deleted because it was reviewed by somebody who just likes to quickly press the delete button so they can leave work early.

Even in the case where the police are the ones permitted to do the deleting off of these sites, they still go overboard for all of the above reasons, especially in cases where the difference between right and wrong is purely subjective.

Even as it is, it's already bad, and for no good reason. In the US, people are allowed to talk about their thoughts on subjects like immigration and openly debate it so that cooler heads can prevail, but the EU just hamfisted tells them what they will think on the subject as if they can just force cooler heads to prevail. One approach is going to draw less resentment and give less people an excuse to join clubs that are far off of the deep-end, and the other approach will encourage that environment while appearing to be the most tolerant group of people on the planet, even though it's a lie.

But that's not all! France seems keen to the idea of a Great Firewall of Europe to filter speech that has nothing at all to do with hate:

https://cdt.org/blog/global-ap...

The US has been doing this a lot longer than the EU has, so we've had a lot more time to get it right. The EU has still yet to learn that censoring speech and being highly dismissive of certain portions of the population doesn't work, and then they wonder why they started two world wars. The US just received its reminder of this last November when the political elite were constantly dismissive instead of engaging towards relatively small yet still very important segment of the population, which resulted in a turd being planted in the white house. But fortunately it's not outright censorship, so we'll come out of it smelling like roses in the long run.

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

My question is... where does the First Amendment end and overt bribery begin?

Speech alone inherently cannot be bribery.

As it stands now, the CU verdict has pretty much put any electable seat in the country up for sale.

No, it really hasn't. There have been many elections since CU that put this notion completely to rest. During Colorado's state senatorial recall election, John Morse outspent his opponent 11 to 1, and still lost anyways. Hillary's campaign + superpacs outspent Trump's by 6 to 1, and look how that turned out.

But most importantly, remember Larry Lessig's Mayday PAC? I remember myself saying that it's not going to work here on slashdot, and he and his contributors found this out the hard way: The only politicians his PAC supported that got elected were already likely to win anyways without his help, and all of the rest of them lost.

In other words, advertising dollars only go so far to win elections, but if your candidate is less popular than their opponent, then all of the money in the world won't change a thing.

Or, do we just want to say that the invisible hand will take care of all this, as we ride down the lassez faire ideology into another Great Depression?

Actually the economy wasn't at all laissez-faire before the great depression. In fact, after the stock market crash, the economy began to recover until the government tried to "fix" the situation by adding tariffs, and that's where things really went wrong. Thomas Sowell describes it quite well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because 8 months and counting of wall-to-wall "Russia hacked the election! Trump is a russian puppet! FAAEEEKKK NOOOOZZZ!!" coverage that ended up boiling down to "Don Jr talked to some random lobbyist for 15 minutes last June and Russia bought a few facebook ads" is the mark of responsible journalism.

Re: Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course! Why distribute the fake voters in states where it would have made a difference when you can put all of them in the bluest state of them all? Makes sense.

Or maybe they did exactly that, but Trump won despite it. He had 99.9% of the real vote, I'm sure /s

Re:Trump was right

[danbert8]

I don't think he's an idiot, just goofy and awkward on TV. Bill Weld was the more polished guy that should have been the top of the ticket.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Diplomatically.

Interfering in another country's elections (including endorsing certain candidates) is a serious attack on the principles of democracy.

That the US has clandestinely interfered in other countries in the past has been seen as a major black stain on its reputation. Now, the USA is slowly developing a reputation of dropping the ball on protecting democracy, since it doesn't seem to be doing much to protect its own elections from foreign influence.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, you didn't just throw away your vote, you gave it to Trump.

Congratulations, you're a moron. You probably shouldn't breed.

Re:Trump was right

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And then decided not to vote for either Hillary or Donald, and instead voted 3rd party. I can't see anything bad about that reaction, as the major parties were both posting fake news.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

The Great Depression was caused by banks. They went TU, causing most people to lose their earnings. This was because there were no regulations on banks.

Tarriffs are a good thing, overall. Better people buy domestic products and have jobs here, than the money fly to China, never to be seen again, other than perhaps to drive real estate prices even higher and more Americans to the homeless shelters.

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

The Great Depression was caused by banks.

Not caused by, and even then, "banks" is misleading, because it was only one bank: The central bank; aka The Federal Reserve, aka The Fed. What kept the depression going after this was heavy deflation due to mismanagement on the part of the Fed. Milton Friedman explained it rather well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

But everyday citizens were to blame as well by means of doing what's called a run on the bank. A run on the bank will ruin ANY economy, no matter how it's run. Arizona saw another example of this a few years back when a gas pipeline broke, and people en masse decided that they wanted to fill up many gas cans of fuel, thinking that they'll never get any more for a long time. What resulted was a huge shortage, insanely long lines at the pump, with gas prices exceeding $5 per gallon when the rest of the country was at about $2 per gallon.

But get this -- it was all totally unnecessary. The broken gas pipeline only resulted in a 20% decrease in supply to the state, which wasn't enough to cause any major shortage, rather the big shortage was only caused by everyday people panicking. This is exactly what happened during the depression.

Re:Trump was right

[painandgreed]

It is hard for me to imagine them posting those articles had any influence over anyone to change their vote, and these people wouldn't have voted for Hillary under any set of circumstances.

Well, it's not just a matter of convincing people who to vote for, but just as much in getting them motivated enough to go out and actually vote (or making them decide it's just not work it so they don't). Make people a little more angry and that could influence the final number of voters, not matter if the cause was real or not.

Re:Trump was right

[MooseMiester]

You have it 2/3 right. C) News is a PRODUCT design to generate the highest CPC and CPI revenue. It only matters that it SPREADS not that it is TRUE. Pissing people off is very profitable, people who are pissed off leave comments (more ad revenue, this is why the page refreshes to load the comments section and scrolls to the top). So stories are designed to piss off liberals or conservatives. Think I'm wrong? It applies to 90% of what the slash dot editors post here, including this story.....

THEY don't want you talking about this. THEY don't want you publicizing this. What better strategy than to fan the flames of division?

Re:Trump was right

[modmans2ndcoming]

Russia did attack out elections and Trump's campaign did have many interactions with the Russian government during the election.

Re:Trump was right

[modmans2ndcoming]

It was a BS memo that claimed men were superior to women in a software engineering world and used debunked nonsense about women and men.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for showing a great example of right wing historical revisionism. Luckily, anyone well versed in history knows that you're full of shit, and the internet is here to dispel your falsehoods.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for the example of right wing historical revisionism. This is a great learning experience for those not exposed to the sneaky ways conservatives try to rewrite history so as not to look like the idiots they are. Luckily most of us knowledgeable in history can point this out readily and warn future generations of your deceit.

Re:Trump was right

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for proving that right wingers embrace fascism by trying to redefine it as left wing. The only places fascism has taken hold in Europe are in Ukraine, where literal neo-nazis have power, and in Poland, where the people are honestly too dumb to know how to handle themselves, and thus let authoritarians control them with right wing propaganda.

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

I'll just leave this here.

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

This isn't right or left wing, it's simple economics, and there isn't any commonly accepted economic theory that says that banks caused the depression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The most common consensus however, was that the federal reserve acted poorly.

Re:Trump was right

[ArmoredDragon]

First of all, I'm not right wing. Second of all, let's use the internet then:

https://sunlightfoundation.com...

http://fortune.com/2016/12/09/...

https://politics.slashdot.org/...

So no, it's not a falsehood. An example of a falsehood would be if somebody said that you were any smarter than a tic-tac.

Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This dick had to point out the fictitious republican connection to the town while failing to mention any other political afilitations. I have a sneaking suspicion that the people in this town don't give a shit about American politics.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course they don't care about US politics. Just look at what the guy said:

I don't care, because the people are reading

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[mingot]

You are correct -- they don't give two shits about any party. They are just marketing towards the folks who will fall for this sort of thing.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[ganjadude]

just because people share these things, doesnt mean they fall for them. that is something that seems to be ignored. on my social feed, 95% of the stuff i share is bogus, and obviously so. usually im pointing out how bogus it is for the lulz

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So he's a capitalist and he knows what people want. Sounds smart to me. Hell, now I'm going to start up my own "news" site just to bring in a bit of easy cash.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[PopeRatzo]

just because people share these things, doesnt mean they fall for them.

Trump-era logic.

Yes, my friend, if you share these stories, you have fallen for them. That's the whole point of their existence - to be shared. Just because you do it, "for the lulz" doesn't mean you have somehow risen above their intended effect.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Verdatum]

What are you talking about? The article doesn't make any reference to a Republican connection to the town at all.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

However, they found that pro-Trump fakes would get a lot more amplification. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/ https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo

Re: Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

OP still has his Hillary victory party tickets.

Re: Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Stick to ebooks and affiliate links Creimer.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[ganjadude]

i think it depends on what you mean. "falling for it" in the sense that some guy is making money off it? sure, in that case i fell for it.

if you mean actually believing that hillary was on her deathbed or that bernie was really an alien, no, never fell for that. sure shared it to laugh at it however

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[amicusNYCL]

just because people share these things, doesnt mean they fall for them. that is something that seems to be ignored.

Sharing things and "falling for them" are precisely the same thing, whether you want to believe that or not. What's the goal of the people creating the fake news stories? To get people to share them, and click on them. That's the goal. The goal is not to get people to believe them. They don't make money when people believe their stories, they make money when people read and share them. So, you did fall for them. You're one of the people paying the people who write fake news, so congratulations.

As far as the political lean of the stories, the creators themselves will point out how stories that would appeal to conservatives spread far more quickly than those targeted at liberals. The people who would share a story like the fake Denver Guardian story in the article don't even bother to look at the source site and figure out that this fake news story is literally the only one posted on the site. You'll get people calling bullshit on any little detail on a site like Slashdot and doing research to back up their point of view, but that doesn't happen on the Facebook feeds of conservatives. People like the guy in that article rely on the lack of fact-checking among conservatives to bring him 5 figures in income per month, so it obviously works.

When did you notice that fake news does best with Trump supporters?

Well, this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin's famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn't something that started with Trump. This is something that's been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it's always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat.

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

Re: Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not Creimer. Amazon affiliate links don't generate shit for profit.

If you hate freedom and capitalism so much, maybe you should move to North Korea, APK.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[fustakrakich]

There's belief and there's business. And marketing to the believers is good business.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

If I share something that isn't true, it will be stated as such, perhaps with a reliable debunking source like Snopes. Otherwise, someone else on FB will call it out quite quickly.

Oh, and if you don't like Snopes, please cite something where they have been proven wrong.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

Some observations:

1. That's great. Liberals and the mainstream media want us to think it was fake news during the election, but this news based on an interview of a supposed, unnamed fake news publisher is real. By default, a fake news publisher has no credibility, unless you're a liberal hearing what you want to hear after suffering an embarrassing election defeat.

2. Liberals tend to read headlines, while conservatives tend to read stories. And, reading stories requires that "click" the fake news publishers generate their ad revenue from.

3. Liberals are followers and groupthinkers. If one liberal says something, the rest dutifully follow, knowing that liberals rarely disagree because to disagree would require actual original thought, which they either aren't capable of or are too lazy to produce. Reading, comprehending, and thinking about the news in a critical way, as an individual is too hard for liberals.

4. I thought fake news was about Russia influencing the election, not "clicks" to generate advertising money. I wonder where I got that idea.

What a joke . . .

Re: Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now wait for the CNN Liars to demand censorship in their favour.

Classic communists Work Like that.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[amicusNYCL]

but this news based on an interview of a supposed, unnamed fake news publisher is real.

If you're referring to the link that I posted, which contains the interview I quoted, some observations:

1. You did not click on the link.

2. You did click on the link, but did not read the story.

3. You did click on the link and read the story, but you didn't understand anything.

In case you're still not getting it, the person is cited, by name, in an interview about a rather famous piece of fake news which he admits to publishing. That's a pretty fantastic tactic you're going with there though. "This 'fake-news' interview does not fit into my predefined worldview which says that liberals are idiots and I'm not, even though it's my side that falls for the fake news. Since this goes against what my gut tells me, I'm going to suggest that this interview itself is fake news. Checkmate, libs!"

As for the rest of your so-called "observations", the fact that people make 5 figures per month spreading obvious bullshit to conservatives tends to undermine your arguments about who engages in group think, who questions what they read, who does even the most basic research, etc.

I thought fake news was about Russia influencing the election, not "clicks" to generate advertising money.

"If there's one thing I know, it's that if Russia is using bots to spread the stories that they want to spread, then that makes it impossible for teenagers in Macedonia to create bullshit news sites and get ad revenue. The two things cannot co-exist in any possible universe. I know this is true because I'm a fancy conservative thinker that reads news in a critical way while I paint everyone else with as broad a brush as possible."

Anyway, see you next time, Anonymous Coward, you bastion of intelligent analysis.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

In case you're still not getting it, the person is cited, by name, in an interview about a rather famous piece of fake news which he admits to publishing.

While I'll give you that he was named (my mistake), my point remains that it is ridiculous to believe someone who is known to produce fake news. They have no credibility by definition, yet liberals like you lap it up.

To quote you:

. . . the fact that people make 5 figures per month spreading obvious bullshit . . . undermine your arguments . . .

The two things cannot co-exist in any possible universe.

I never said that. On the other hand, I simply highlighted the lopsided coverage of the supposed "fake news" (which has been around for years) when it came to reporting on the embarrassing election loss in the 2016 election.

All of the sudden fake news goes from being about ad revenue to excusing the failures of a useless, corrupt political party and their fanatical followers.

What a joke indeed . . . .

Get back to me when you actually address some of my points . . .

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[amicusNYCL]

my point remains that it is ridiculous to believe someone who is known to produce fake news.

That's a stupid point, so please elaborate. Why is it ridiculous? This is some old-fashioned investigative journalism that tracked him down and got him to talk about it. At first he didn't want to talk, then he opened up a little bit. It's obvious what his motivation was for producing the fake news in the first place - he admits to quite a bit of money. What's his motivation for doing a fake interview? He's not getting money from a fake interview. Why not believe that some of the basic claims he makes are true? He has no reason to lie. If he was going to lie, might as well not do the interview at all. So, again, please elaborate on your point. Because it really sounds like you're just trying to make an argument along of the lines of "if they say stuff I agree with, it's true, and if they don't, then it's not true."

They have no credibility by definition, yet liberals like you lap it up.

Liberals like me, huh? Yeah, you know so much about me, Anonymous Coward.

I simply highlighted the lopsided coverage of the supposed "fake news"

I'm not sure what you find lopsided about the coverage. Yeah, fake news has been around for a long time, you've been able to see it at every grocery checkout lane for as long as I can remember. You used to see articles about Bat Boy, or Hillary meeting with aliens. It used to be obvious that it was bullshit, and the people who believed in it like it was true were people who were generally not to be taken seriously. The thing that is different about this election is all of a sudden you have all of these conservatives passing around that article about Hillary meeting with aliens like it actually happened, that there are people making a lot of money on that fact, that some people think the obviously fake stories colored peoples real opinions of people, that the effect was enough to partly influence a presidential election, and that the people behind it, the people publishing the stories, were willing to talk about it. Yeah, fake news has been around forever, but I don't think tabloid fodder has ever helped push a candidate to the presidency, and that's why it is newsworthy. It's just a footnote that it was conservatives with no research ability or desire who were the ones duped into believing everything. You were just talking about critical thinking when reading news, I'm surprised that you need me to point all of this out to you.

All of the sudden fake news goes from being about ad revenue to excusing the failures of a useless, corrupt political party and their fanatical followers.

I'm not sure what you think you're arguing about here, Mr. Critical Thinker, but if you want my opinion then Hillary Clinton is an historically bad candidate, probably an awful person, I believe the poster child for political corruption and a lack of integrity, and that the DNC was completely in her pocket the entire time and fielded probably the only candidate capable of losing to the single most disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling, who is now leading our country (also in an historically bad way). I've never liked her, and I didn't vote for her, in any election, so again, I'm not sure what exactly you think you're arguing about here, but I think you're the only one arguing those points.

Now, go back and look at the date on that article. It's from last November. This isn't "all of the sudden" (and it's "all of a sudden", but you "read good" so you knew that). This has always been about ad revenue. That's what the current story that CNN is talking about is also about - the same people who made money last time are getting ready to do it again, and here's a look at them. You don't give a shit about any of that though, because all you see is identity politics. It doesn't matter to you that the fact that Putin and Russia want t

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Plus1Entropy]

Fake News-ception.

BWAAAAMP

Re: Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, you guys are really an entirely new breed of stupid motherfucker.

As a centrist called a liberal by conservatives, I'm pretty sold on picking a side these days.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[PopeRatzo]

i think it depends on what you mean. "falling for it" in the sense that some guy is making money off it? sure, in that case i fell for it.

if you mean actually believing that hillary was on her deathbed or that bernie was really an alien, no, never fell for that. sure shared it to laugh at it however

You "fell for it" in both senses, because you amplified the message. Whether or not you believe the message was true, or whether you laughed at it simply does not matter. By amplifying the message, you you are like an asymptomatic carrier of a disease. You may not get sick from it, but many of the people who you inadvertently (or not) infected with the message by sharing it will get sick.

Not everyone has your keen intellect ganjadude. Many will take the fake stories you shared at face value.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

my point remains that it is ridiculous to believe someone who is known to produce fake news.

That's a stupid point, so please elaborate.

Please re-read my previous elaborations:

By default, a fake news publisher has no credibility, unless you're a liberal hearing what you want to hear after suffering an embarrassing election defeat.

They have no credibility by definition, yet liberals like you lap it up.

This is some old-fashioned investigative journalism that tracked him down and got him to talk about it.

. . . or so the story goes. Why would you believe anything a proven, admitted liar would say? That's just gullible.

He's not getting money from a fake interview.

Are you sure about that? A fake news ad scammer is going to do an interview for free? Again, gullible.

He has no reason to lie.

He was found out and had every reason to lie. Again, the man literally makes a living at lying. What don't you understand?

Yeah, fake news has been around forever, but I don't think tabloid fodder has ever helped push a candidate to the presidency, and that's why it is newsworthy.

Exactly, this modern day "tabloid fodder" we call fake news still hasn't helped push a candidate to the presidency. The whole "fake news" narrative is an absolute un-newsworthy sham -- people have been pushing fake news since the beginning of time in order to influence politics and society.

It doesn't matter to you that the fact that Putin and Russia want to influence Western governments and elections to get back to the era when they were the major political power in Europe.

He/they have and do influence our governments and elections, and have for decades, and we do the same to them. None of this is the slightest bit new. Any suggestion otherwise is fake news!

You don't give a shit about Putin's long game, again, you just want to bitch about "the other side" in US politics.

I'm glad you liberals can finally get on board with the fact that Russia is our enemy, and it's not the "1980s calling wanting its foreign policy back". What a joke!

All of these things are real and are happening and you can't keep them straight so you just go ahead and say everything is fake.

Yeah, some critical thinker you are.

You're projecting again . . .

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Darinbob]

You're really stretching and making stuff up, or presenting your own opinions as settled fact.

Ie, the Rush Limbaugh fans were called "ditto heads" and not because they were independent thinkers but because they were being told what to think and readily agreed to it. On the other hand, Hillary wasn't the liberal candidate, she was centrist, the liberal candidates were Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, and they certainly stole away a lot of thunder by attracting liberal voters away from who they were expected to vote for rather than following the groupthink.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

People like the guy in that article rely on the lack of fact-checking among conservatives to bring him 5 figures in income per month, so it obviously works.

Making money by duping the gullible is a time honored tradition. The fact that it's being done "on the Internet" doesn't make it new, although it may make it more effective. I don't think that you can stop these guys anymore than you can stop the National Enquirer or Star Magazine from putting their newsprint in the supermarket checkout aisle. Just because a story is fake doesn't make it illegal, at least not in the United States where freedom of speech enjoys wide latitude, especially with political commentary, whether it's true or not.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ie, the Rush Limbaugh fans were called "ditto heads" and not because they were independent thinkers but because they were being told what to think and readily agreed to it.

Actually, due to your groupthink nature, you don't even know what a dittohead is. Rush Limbaugh fans began expressing "dittos" to Rush or the last caller as a short hand way of saying I agree with the last point. They began calling themselves "dittoheads" as a way to identify themselves as fans of Rush and the show. Much like the "deplorables" insult, to be called a "dittohead" by a liberal is a badge of honor. It doesn't mean all callers pledge to blindly agree with anything Rush Limbaugh tells them, which is a ridiculous notion.

You illustrate the problem liberals have with gathering and interpreting facts well.

On the other hand, Hillary wasn't the liberal candidate, she was centrist, the liberal candidates were Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein, and they certainly stole away a lot of thunder by attracting liberal voters away from who they were expected to vote for rather than following the groupthink.

Hillary has always been a liberal in centrist clothing, and even saying that is probably generous. The Democrat party is all about fooling those in the center into supporting their far left agenda. Hillary is just as liberal as Bernie and Jill -- she just tries to hide and obfuscate it because she knows she can't win elections running as a socialist.

Bernie, Jill, and Hillary all have the same liberal goals, just different ways of getting there. Not to mention the liberal echo chamber that is the mainstream media, academia, and the arts. Liberals are the very definition of groupthink.

When you compare the few candidates Democrats had to offer in the 2016 election to the 17 candidates Republicans had to offer, the party that relies on groupthink is very clear.

Groupthink is in the DNA of liberals as their policies value the group over the individual. It's who they are through and through. Try not to fool yourself.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[amicusNYCL]

Please re-read my previous elaborations:

By default, a fake news publisher has no credibility, unless you're a liberal hearing what you want to hear after suffering an embarrassing election defeat.

They have no credibility by definition, yet liberals like you lap it up.

Ah. Well, you could have saved some typing and just said "because I say so." You're setting the defaults, you're setting the definition, etc. If I understood your own habits I'm sure I could point to plenty of sources of fake news which you feel differently about because you agree with it, but if your argument boils down to "because I say so" then there's not exactly any room for discussion. So now I'm arguing with some anonymous person who doesn't understand who I am and who wants to make their own rules. I think I'll go ahead and bow out here. I'd like to say it was an enjoyable discussion, but when you wrestle with a pig you end up covered in shit and the pig likes it. Or, a more apt metaphor for your case might be playing chess with a pigeon: the pigeon just shits on the board and struts around like it won. I don't think you're understanding anything I'm saying here in the first place, so I'll save some time and just let you think you've won. Great job!

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for confirming you are unable to debate my points, which I've made over and over again and in different ways.

You've been thoroughly defeated and do what liberals always do when they run out of their pathetic talking points -- they resort to insults and run away from the debate with their tail between their legs.

Just another dishonest, liberal scammer with no credibility or intellect. Next . . .

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for confirming you are unable to debate my points, which I've made over and over again and in different ways.

You've been thoroughly defeated and do what liberals always do when they run out of their pathetic talking points -- they resort to insults and run away from the debate with their tail between their legs.

Just another dishonest, liberal scammer with no credibility or intellect. Next . . . . .

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[amicusNYCL]

Whoa, go easy on me there pal. Like I said, you won. You definitely won. As for me, I'll just watch the free market to see who everyone who makes money on fake news targets. The free market can't be wrong, after all, so if everyone is pumping out conservative tabloid fodder that's all the evidence I need about your ability to think rationally and critically. I know it's a hard pill for you to swallow. But, remember. You won. You always do. That's what you are, you're a winner. You know it, I know it, the free market knows it.

Now, back to your scheduled rant over "you liberals", as if you think you're describing me. I'm not trying to suggest you have no idea what you're talking about, I'm just pointing out that you've won. I'm sure that you're late to post the latest story about a child sex ring being run from a pizza restaurant on your Facebook feed, so I don't want to keep you. I just want you to remember that you're a winner. Go ahead, strut around like you've earned it, because you definitely have.

Re:Talk about fake news!!!!!

[MooseMiester]

Actually the lefties started the whole thing with the journolist, Chris North @ Blue State Media perfected it in 2008, and then the GOP stole it because it works.

That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

wait til they start writing eBooks about an incestuous uncle with a bucket of lard!

Why keep calling it fake news?

[charlie.bean]

Just call it 'lies'.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Propaganda is what they do...

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[omnichad]

Because then you have to admit it's always been around and you don't have to fall for it. Coin a new term and no one will blame your innocent self for trusting it.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[bobbied]

One man's lies are another's news these days.

Inventing news for the sake of ratings is more of the issue here than outright lies. Sometimes it's more about what they choose to report on than that the reporting is false. I learned about this a long time ago...

I was watching the local news reporting covering a Senate campaign in North Carolina (Jessie Helms was running for re-election for who knows how many times..). I remember a day when both candidates had rallies in Raleigh on the same day and the local TV news on WRAL covered both events on the evening news. For the challenger's rally, they covered the candidates speech, which was highly critical of the incumbent. Nothing wrong with that right? Yea, but for the incumbent's rally they covered only the protestors that shoed up, who where (you guessed it) highly critical of Senator Helms, but didn't choose to report on anything Helms said. Yes, they covered both rallies, but ALL the reporting was critical of Senator Helms. THEN they reported on a poll they had taken, that showed the incumbent loosing the upcoming election by nearly 10%... Helms won by nearly 20% in the election 2 weeks later.

This is how "fake news" is made. Nothing they reported on was actually a out right lie, it all was true. However, the perception is that Helms was loosing the election because everybody was critical of him and the polling showed it. The perception was fake...

I'll leave it to you to apply this to today's political reporting... But "Fake news" is not always untrue, sometimes it's just really biased in it's selection of the reported facts that makes it fake.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we don't really understand what news is or should be.

Information that matters. That makes a difference in people's lives. It might even be better to present this information with less anxiety, spin, and what not.

Currently the format is too much like this:

'Here is some news...'
'Now, here is how I FEEL about this news...'

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just call it

CNN

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[will_die]

Because the word "lie" says that you are making a deliberate false statement. this implies that you know the truth or there is reasonable expectation that you know the truth. Also you are in a situation where you are expected to be telling the truth; for instance if we are playing poker and I act like or tell you I have two aces that is not considered a lie since it is expected that I could be misrepresenting what I have.
In this case they are making up stories based on know truthful facts then adding commentary that is made up. They don't know for sure that the made up stuff is true or not so it cannot be a lie. However at the same time it is not representative of what may of actually happened so is a fake.
For contrast lets say I received classified email over my gmail account and keep telling people "I never sent or received any classified material." after I had been informed for reliable sources that it was classified. This would be a lie since I was told the material was classified.
The news had a few big days talking about how trump had gone in and photoshoped pictures of himself to make his hand look bigger. This was based on the original reporter looking at two pictures that were from a different angle, distance and light. Would it be reasonable to a journalist to understand those items, probably not so it is not a lie. However there was no truth to the claim that he had changed the photo so the claims were fake.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Obfuscant]

Yea, but for the incumbent's rally they covered only the protestors that shoed up,

Hey, in North Carolina, putting on shoes means you're going to Sunday meeting on Easter. It's pretty significant, and the news was quite right to cover that part of the event.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Obfuscant]

Because then you have to admit it's always been around and you don't have to fall for it.

+5. The Internet has always been a source of some pretty ridiculous disinformation, but it's a new phenomenon created by the alt-right when it might have affected your preferred candidate.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Obfuscant]

Because the word "lie" says that you are making a deliberate false statement.

So does "fake news".

In this case they are making up stories based on know truthful facts then adding commentary that is made up.

In other words, "fake news" is just an opinion that differs from your own.

This was based on the original reporter looking at two pictures that were from a different angle, distance and light. Would it be reasonable to a journalist to understand those items, probably not so it is not a lie.

Journalists not understanding common photographic effects? I think they certainly should have understood that. Photos are a stock-in-trade for journalists, and they've certainly all seen tens, if not hundreds of them, during their careers.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Tranzistors]

"Fake news" is not always untrue, sometimes it's just really biased

Nope. One sided, biased news is not fake news. Even deceit by omission is not fake news. This is why Fox News and Daily Mail is not Fake News. It is fake when it is just a fabrication. Those guys in Macedonia are not selectively covering real events, they are making shit up. Remember when Pope Francis endorsed Trump? This is what Fake News is. This is what the friendly article is about.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[NicknameUnavailable]

Just call it 'lies'.

They've been called liers so often and so aptly that they rebranded the word "lie" (think the show "Lie to Me" and such,) much as they did with "regulate," "global warming," "extremist," "youths," etc. Politicians and media manipulators have to create new weighted terms or reuse terms in incorrect contexts to create new meanings to sway opinion. Once the reality sets in the public mind in greater force than the lie it loses impact and they once again need to change it. The natural reaction to a weighted term is typically what they want it to be, but after they see "this group is actually pretty non violent" or "this group is actually much more violent" then that is what the new term becomes and it becomes worthless for manipulation.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Tranzistors]

Just call it 'lies'.

“Lies” are too generic. Compare “Veles, riverside town in Macedonia, where fake news are made” and “Veles, riverside town in Macedonia, where lies are made”. The second one sounds like an advertisement for tourist attraction. “Fake news” are a specific kind of lies.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

So CNN telling me its illegal to read WikiLeaks was a mistake? Or did they know they were lying?

When CNN interviewed an anti-Trump protestor, that the anchor said he knew the guy was a cameraman (not realizing they were lying to the public) that was them making a "mistake"? They used a cameraman as a protestor.

Or the other time they gathered protestors around and got caught telling them what to say?

Or the focus group going live a few seconds too early and the CNN host coaching them what to say?

Yea, none of those were "mistakes". CNN is INTENTIONALLY making fake news daily. They have literally been caught plenty of times to the point where it is a joke at this point. You coming here and telling us its an "accident" shows your outright dishonesty. We can't have debates with the "left" anymore, they lie so frequently and get upset with being called out when they do it so badly. You lie, plain and simple.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

someone with points mod this up

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[bobbied]

Sorry.... "shoed" should have been "showed", but you knew that.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

bobbied is a goddamned moron for not being able to figure this out himself. He's why this whole strategy works. Plenty of conservatives have been conditioned to scream and cry media bias, that even if the news if completely made up, they find a way to justify it to themselves.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[danbert8]

And "loosing" should have been "losing" but you should know that. Yet you used it multiple times...

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[porges]

The original canonical example of "fake news" was something called the "Denver Guardian", which was a single false story framed (literally, in the html sense!) as being a report in an online outlet for a real newspaper. There is no such newspaper, either print or online, but the entire site made it seem otherwise. To my mind, the term has been diluted to shift attention away from such obvious frauds.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[WrongMonkey]

Fakes news are lies, but not all lies are fake news. Sometimes it necessary to be specific.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake news is a specific kind of lie that involving lying about being from a reliable news organization, either a specific one by making a site that looks identical to, say, CNN's website, or a made-up one that appears to be real like the Denver Guardian discussed in other replies to your comment. Usually the content also contains lies, but that's not the defining quality.

Re: Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Call IT CNN THE ECONOMIST BBC wmd Lies. Or DESTRUCTION OF IRAQ for nothing.

Re: Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Compare that to the Mainstream Media whores who worked nicely for Hitler and Cheney. In Order to make wars for No reason.

The Internet has Bern a force for good.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[hey!]

"Lie" is the genus and "fake news" is the species.

However, if I were to choose a more helpful term than "fake news", I'd use "propaganda".

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[hey!]

I would say in most cases there is no practical or moral difference between lying by omission and lying by false statements. The effect is the same: to establish an untrue picture of reality in the recipient's mind. The method by which you do this is just a minor detail.

There is, however, another class of untruth which ihas always been important politically but has become even more important in recent years: bullshit.

Bullshit is distinct from a normal lie in that the target is not the recipient's factual beliefs, but his feelings and attitudes towards things and people. It often takes the case of statements which the recipient is not expected to believe, but which he will nonetheless react to emotionally as if true. Diplomacy, for example, is largely bullshit. If someone has a "frank exchange of views" there was a shouting match. In Japan there is a phrase maemuki-ni kento sasete itadakimasu which literally means "I will examine your proposal in a forward-looking manner", but really means the speaker regards this idea is too stupid to be considered at all.

I suspect bullshit is fundamental facet of human communication; rooted in the need to communicate emotion without necessarily imparting facts. But in a modern media environment it's possible to weaponize this communication mechanism.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Plus1Entropy]

Because it's a specific kind of lying. Perjury is another example.

It's like saying, why call them robins when we can just call them "birds"?

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

I call bullshit!

Sorry. Had to be done.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Darinbob]

News is all about the ratings, and that means having stories that are new and novel and interesting. Not necessarily intended to be fake. The new candidate was new, and thus what the new guy had to say was the news, as well as interesting. The old candidate had run many times before so what the old guy had to say was not news, it's been said so much it's a bit boring by now. Protesters however are interesting so they get covered. That's why the headlines that people read are "Man Bites Dog" and they don't care about the headlines that say "Dog Bites Man".

This new sort of fake news is about explicitly trying to get people to read further. Thirteen Secrets Women Know That Men Don't. Senator Caught In Sex Ring. Hillary's Secret Agenda Exposed. Trump Reveals the Top Ten Pussies to Grab. How Your Microwave Oven May Be Spying On You Right Now!

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[cpm99352]

Ron Paul received this sort of treatment when he ran for president (as R) in 2012. His censorship from the press prepared me for Sanders' run in 2016. The tricks were the same...

Paul had second place in the Iowa primaries, but his name was never mentioned by the mainstream media. They seamlessly transitioned from first to third place without blinking an eye. An uninformed primary voter would not have heard of Ron Paul. If I recall correctly, he was unable to purchase ads in key markets.

Fast forward to 2016, and magically we're concerned about the popular vote numbers while never mentioning super delegates. Google and Facebook now get to "filter" so the hapless voter is protected from thoughtcrime.

Re: Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chill out, comrade, you'll still get your check in the mail if you take a breath in between sentences.

Re: Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the quantum nature of reality, this could be true in some universe? I find your lack of imagination troubling

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Evtim]

Thank you for the very good example!

I guess there is a reason behind the oath you need to take in court. The truth, the whole truth and noting but the truth, if I remember right. Deviation from those requirements results in information which is unreliable, can be misleading and basically amounts to a lie, as you point out. Sounds quite reasonable to me...see also logical deconstruction of an average advertisement. Everything stated in the ad is true, yet it misleads you to draw conclusion about the product or service that is not true.

News reporting is business (the goal is money not accurate reporting) and an obvious target of all sorts of political agendas with the invertible corruption that would occur and other highly undesirable outcomes. The worst situation possible....while having no dictator or state control like we had behind the wall. The more a live the more I realize how meaningless the political labels are, yet we focus on them rather than the actual, measurable outcomes that the proposed systems produce...

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know Clinton was complaining that "fake news" is how she lost the other day. I didn't know she was a right wing wack-o, who knew?

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it really "propaganda" when the writer didn't care what the article said and just wrote in way to optimise the amount of readers and how much it spreads?

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[skam240]

One sided news can be fake news. Take one of my favorites from years passed, Fox's "War and Christmas". Every year Fox would dig up any little story about some one being an ass hole about Christmas and would then declare that there was a liberal war on Christmas. I'm sure the stories were mostly true but as for the war? Pure fabrication.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[skam240]

Correction "War on Christmas"

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Tranzistors]

That is sensationalism. I'm not a fan of it either, bat it is not Fake News.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[skam240]

It is though, there was literally no liberal agenda against Christmas. They said there was. That is fake news.

Re:Why keep calling it fake news?

[Anonymous Coward]

By your own definition, Fox News and Daily Mail are both fake news. There are websites dedicated to keeping track of Fox News' outright lies and made up stories, and close to 30% of their stories are literally that: completely made up without even a shred of truth behind them.

Random Balkans Backwater Has Dubious Businesses

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow what ground breaking stuff.

captcha: nonsense

Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

I would have expected this kind of thing in Serbia for sure, not Macedonia. I guess poverty is playing a role here. Macedonia is said to be one of the poorest countries in Europe and that probably makes it easy for Russians to use them as cheap labor for this kind of thing.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[ganjadude]

they arent being paid by russians but google adsense. this entire russia thing is the epitome of fake news

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[Anonymous Coward]

It could probably have occurred in a lot of places. The basic requirements are poverty, reasonable internet connections, and a reasonably well-educated populace. Beyond that, it's just a certain random factor, that somebody in this town started making money from this business, word got around, and it spread. The fact that it's so concentrated in this town kind of implies that it spread by off-line word of mouth rather than online, because there's no real reason for these people to be concentrated locally otherwise, so I guess that probably implies a certain size of town and kind of society.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article at all and happened to follow the links, it's quite obvious the main site(s) they're talking about are digital tabloids. They're website and headlines are about as believable as the onion. I don't believe you could convince me that the majority of people who visit politicspaper don't see that. The most amusing thing about this is you have a new organization who actively tries to manipulate facts with bias and pass them off as the whole truth calling a tabloid fake news. Of course it's fake news, every knows they are, but cnn has their head so far up their own ass that they believe they're the good guys when they're even more guilty of it.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[Anonymous Coward]

You today for your work get maximum rubles, tovarisch.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[deadwill69]

This group might not be specifically, but there are many more that are:

https://www.google.com/search?...

You know, this fake news thing might actually be real. Who would have thought.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[number6x]

I have it on good authority that a guy named 'Sergey' founded Google, was born in Russia and is behind this whole 'ad-sense' payment system!

See!Proof that the Russians are to blame.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[JaredOfEuropa]

For a couple a grand a day, hell, for €250 a day, it makes sense to quit your day job and just do this instead, even for a lot of folks in first world countries.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[ganjadude]

that comment wins the internetz for the day

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[allcoolnameswheretak]

> this entire russia thing is the epitome of fake news

No it isn't. But the Russians have their own sophisticated troll and fake news factories. They probably don't need to rely on some freelancers in Macedonia.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[amicusNYCL]

The "entire Russia thing" is the epitome of fake news? Well, you're not necessarily wrong. Here's some research which shows that some of these bots, identifying themselves as British people or whatever, post exclusively between 8am and 8pm Moscow time. People pushing out propaganda which favors Russia and their goal of destabilizing the Western governments set up after the fall of the Soviet Union, doing their work during 12-hour days in Moscow time.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[Anonymous Coward]

"Most of the 3,000 ads did not refer to particular candidates but instead focused on divisive social issues such as race, gay rights, gun control and immigration."

I've looked around, but I don't think anyone's released the actual ads for people to see. Not really sure what to make of it. I'm assuming they're from a right wing point of view, if the purpose was to purely be divisive, then the ads could just as easily be far left too. Promote the anti-white side of black lives matter while also promoting alt-right talking points about blacks. Promote far left talking points about gun control and the NRA while also promoting the anti-government "they're coming to take our guns" side. Who knows though, really this is another reason why people need to be demanding transparency from the social media companies, and also on this whole issue of Russia. This is a pretty big claim, and there's absolutely no reason not to be showing everyone exactly what was being pushed on social media.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting that this and the other reply linking to a Guardian article about Russian trolls factory both currently appear to me as "(Score:2, Troll)". Someone doesn't want reliable sources about Russian influence being visible on Slashdot, although there's enough posters here that claim it doesn't exist that this isn't too surprising. It does make me wonder if the Russian troll army bothers to moderate Slashdot or if it's actual right-wing Americans who don't want to believe in it.

Re:Kind of surprised it's in Macedonia

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, man, I didn't know bots were punching time cards now!

How much did he earn?

[Anonymous Coward]

$2500 per day? Sounds like a lot of money from website advertising

Re:How much did he earn?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that his pool of suckers is at least 60 million people, and that they love to share and click on absolutely anything that reaffirms their worldview, no matter how false.

What's the point of this story?

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know fake news are being forged all the time. It's ok when CNN does it (for advertising/lobbyist money) so then it must be ok if anyone else does it anywhere in the world for the same reason. It just so happens that the this guy comes from the region where most people suffered severely while CNN was making fake news about events in that region.

Maybe the point of the article is that these days everyone has a chance to fuck up someone else's life by casting fake news thanks to Intercrap that occupies people's life instead of TV.

Because of CNN

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN started the term "fake news". Unfortunately for them, they started lying on their news stories and getting caught frequently lying. Trump then used their term "fake news" to describe CNN. It stuck to CNN because they were literally making up stories they hoped was true.

So that's why people are using the term. Its a form of irony and being mean towards CNN for telling people not to read WikiLeaks (what they were calling fake news) because it was illegal for US citizens to read WikiLeaks according to them.

Re:Because of CNN

[CodeHog]

Is that you Mikhail? I mean 'Jesica'.

Little off topic here

[rsilvergun]

but this is why you want liberal arts majors. You've got millions of folks who just aren't sharp enough for science & engineering but they _can_ make it through a liberal arts degree. Believe it or not critical thinking is a skill that can be taught, it just takes time and effort. And there are advantages to having an electorate who's learned that skill.

Re: Little off topic here

[Anonymous Coward]

Your side lost.

Re: Little off topic here

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we didn't, faggot.

As opposed to the usual places that do this

[Crashmarik]

New York and Los Angeles undoubtedly will still have the lock on supplying fake news in 2020. In case you have forgotten that's where all the stories about how wonderful Hillary was came from and how she was a lock in for the win.

An article about fake news

[emho24]

I stopped reading the summary about fake news when it stated "CNN has a story ...". CNN *is* fake news, very politically motivated and biased.

Re:An article about fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

politically motivated + biased != fake

"fake news" apparently now means "i don't like the perspective used to discuss this news event.", which is exactly that certain people wanted: de-legitimatize all sources of news. However what fake news *should* mean is "this story is made up/has no basis in fact."

Fox news is also not fake news(most of the time) though it is also politically motivated and biased.

Re:An article about fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

"CNN *is* fake news, very politically motivated and biased."

Sounds like someone doesn't like their narrative being challenged at all!

Re:An article about fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

But at least they're biased the right way, unlike Faux Knews.

My son did a science fair project in May on fake news. He found that nearly half of the stories about Trump on Fox News were positive. That's ridiculous considering a more fair source like CNN was 95% negative. Fox News spins the truth so hard.

Re:An article about fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post history is a textbook guide to how we got here. You've learned nothing, you'll learn nothing, and I will cheer when you are dead.

By 2050, nonwhites will outnumber whites. Your kind's time is numbered.

Re:An article about fake news

[Shotgun]

I'd be interested to know how you define "fair".

Re:An article about fake news

[amicusNYCL]

So despite the stories for the past year or so about groups of young people in Macedonia cranking out fake news sites, you've decided that this story is fake because CNN is now also reporting on it. So, just to be clear, you're saying that anything reported by CNN is fake, correct? Anything at all, if it appears on the CNN site, it's fake, right?

Re: An article about fake news

[CrybabiesArePeople]

And I guess you sir, deserve a Pulitzer for your investigative an reasoning powers ? :)

Re:An article about fake news

[Tulsa_Time]

politically motivated + biased != fake

But it is fake NEWS... news is objective and unbiased by definition

politically motivated + biased == fake news

Re:An article about fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

By *what* definition is news "objective and unbiased", exactly?

I don't think anyone has ever made that argument, not seriously at least.

News is passing on what you've been told. Doing it transparently and faithfully means "telling your audience who, specifically, told you this thing, and (if possible) how it correlates with other things you've been told". Fake news is "pretending to have been told something that you haven't been".

Just more of the same

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this want all news agencies do? Churn out garbage stories to get people to click?

Re:Just more of the same

[Verdatum]

Real news sites use journalism techniques like fact-checking. Fake news sites do not; they fabricate falsehoods.

Re:Just more of the same

[danbert8]

You mean like the Associated Press claiming "There are no government rules dictating how tanks [oil storage] are designed." ?

https://www.apnews.com/0485b3c...

Where's the fact checking in that article?

Re:Just more of the same

[Verdatum]

The sentence is poorly worded, but you can figure it out by reading the rest of the paragraph. The information it intends to convey is "there are no government rules regarding the rate at which an oil tank must drain". The rules regarding oil tank design come from 40 CFR 112. And while it is true that they mandate that a drainage mechanism must exist, it does not in fact make any mention of the level of rain-flow a tank must be able to drain. The paragraph goes on to say, "But the American Petroleum Institute has established industry standards for tank construction that call for tanks to be able to drain at a minimum 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain over a 24-hour period." in other words, in addition to the government, the industry also self-regulates via the API, and that this storm was so bad that it could not handle this.

It sucks when news reporters are confusing like this, but again, that's not a fabrication.

Re:Just more of the same

[danbert8]

They didn't exactly consult with experts. CFR references the API standard (650) which means that the API standard is not "self regulated" it is incorporated into the federal law by reference. Also in the article they interview another "expert" who says there are no design requirements for hurricane areas. Again, this is not understanding how standards work. No, API-650 doesn't specifically mention hurricanes, but there are design requirements for wind and rain loading according to ASCE 7 which DOES have design criteria for hurricane zones.

It's not a fabrication, it's reporting on things they don't understand and are factually incorrect about. They had their slant decided and they got the answers they wanted and stopped before investigating to determine if the statements were actually correct. That's internet research for you. Search until you find someone who says what your opinion is and call it a reference so it's not "your" opinion anymore. Even better if some sort of organization employs this person so you can call them an "expert."

From Fake News King, CNN, no less.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. So the King of Fake news did a story on fake news. Lovely.

Re: This entire story is made up.

[oobayly]

Just in case somebody is thinking of taking this seriously. Macedonia has an average internet speed between 4 and 10 Mbps.

The idea that Macedonians don't have the ability to make websites is quite frankly insulting. Whether on not they can swing elections is of course debatable. However that wasn't the aim of the sites, the aim was to generate content that people wanted to read (or believe), and they appear to have succeeded.

http://www.bandwidthplace.com/...
http://www.dospeedtest.com/spe...

this isn't the fake news people are upset about

[Anonymous Coward]

Clickbait shops? Not even close to the type of fake news everyone is pissed about. This is an attempt from CNN to deflect from it's own litany of literally made up lies masquerading as factual stories.

Can they at least PRETEND not to be biased?

[computational super]

that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump

Yes, of course it did. Even if it didn't. It still did. It has to. Trump is evil, he can do no right.

Re:Can they at least PRETEND not to be biased?

[T.E.D.]

that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump

Yes, of course it did. Even if it didn't. It still did. It has to. Trump is evil, he can do no right.

They don't give a flying F about the man's morals. What's important to them is that his followers have been trained for decades to trust only information that confirms their beliefs and to trust that information no matter what the source. It starts with disimissing any story you don't like as "biased liberal media", and ends up with an industry of people making a living out of lying to your supporters. If only once side gets these kinds of parasites attached to it, perhaps its time to take the hint that that side has a problem.

And really these guys in Macedonia are playing for peanuts. Half of Washington these days makes their living lying to Conservatives, and that's in the Billions or Trillions. Remember all those guys who spent the last 8 years promising to kill "Obamacare" if sent to Washington? They were lying about what it does, and they were lying when they said they'd get rid of it. They are just the tip of the iceberg. There are lobbyists, TV and radio personalities, columnists, authors...

Re:Can they at least PRETEND not to be biased?

[computational super]

If only once side gets these kinds of parasites attached to it, perhaps its time to take the hint that that side has a problem.

So you admit that liberals are the problem in America, then?

Re:Can they at least PRETEND not to be biased?

[Verdatum]

Do you have any evidence that they didn't/don't primarily write articles that favored Trump? Because most fake-news articles I've seen shared on FB have been pro-Trump stuff.

Re:Can they at least PRETEND not to be biased?

[amicusNYCL]

Yes, facts have a well known liberal bias, right? Forget about the interviews over the past year with the creators of these fake news sites talking about how and why they target conservatives, since now that it's CNN that is reporting on this everything is fake and there's liberal bias everywhere, right? All of those interviews are now retro-actively fake because CNN decided to report on it also.

Re:Can they at least PRETEND not to be biased?

[T.E.D.]

So you admit that liberals are the problem in America, then?

The funniest part of this response is that you probably don't even get how hard you just proved my point.

CNN Blaming Fake News on Foreigners

[ZippyTheChicken]

what a joke CNN had to fire a dozen of their people NYTimes same deal .. its not tiny websites in eastern europe its PRIMARY Websites like CNN that get Billions of views that are the problem.

Re:CNN Blaming Fake News on Foreigners

[Anonymous Coward]

Versus fox news who had to be threatened with a lawsuit from the canadian government to take down a false story about the terrorist attack from the trump supporter?

Re:CNN Blaming Fake News on Foreigners

[Verdatum]

3 people resigned from CNN as a result of a retracted article. I'm unable to find any evidence of anyone being fired or resigning from New York Times for fabricating stories. The difference between CNN and actual fake news sites is that when CNN learns that it made a mistake, they issue a retraction. Actual fake news sites don't care and leave it up.

Re: CNN Blaming Fake News on Foreigners

[CrybabiesArePeople]

Da.

So people are gullible idiots...

[Anonymous Coward]

who believe whatever they read if it aligns with their world view. This is hardly a revelation. Most people shouldn't be allowed to have a say on important matters and anyone who should have a say knows this. Sadly that's ultimately fascism which doesn't work since in every group, regardless of intelligence, there are people that only look out for themselves. Perhaps even more sadly, the average Trump supporter knows absolutely nothing about how the world works on any level. Be it politically, economically, socially, legally, etc it they are either unwilling or unable to comprehend. The left is better as has been objectively demonstrated by the various fake news research but we shouldn't pretend this is a one party problem.

The true problem is most people are no longer capable or interested in rational thought, long term thinking or basic common sense. Take the border wall for instance. Anyone who believes that America will be building a border wall paid for by Mexico has abandoned any common sense. Even if you think the wall will be build, the notion that a foreign nation being actively targeted by our current administration would pay for it is beyond laughable. It shows a detachment from reality so extreme we should be far more concerned than we are. If we fix the core problem the fake news problem will go away. It's only a problem because people believe it.

CNN is crying about 100 foreign websites?

[ZippyTheChicken]

the number of people that Visit CNN in an hour is more than the number of people that visit all these websites combined in a month CNN is the problem

Re:CNN is crying about 100 foreign websites?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like how they kept claiming Trump said Mexicans were rapists? That's not what he said. I hate Trump, but damn that's a terrible misquote.

Re:CNN is crying about 100 foreign websites?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like how they kept claiming Trump said Mexicans were rapists? That's not what he said. I hate Trump, but damn that's a terrible misquote.

Who? All the news I read actually quoted his idiotic and clearly false claim. I see no reason to replace it with another equally stupid one like you claim happened.

Somehow related: fake backlinking

[CustomSolvers2]

I am currently building a web-domain ranking whose main metric is counting (properly-weighted) backlinks. This has allowed me to have a quite good understanding about another online fake reality, which is likely to also be closely related to these fake news: domains whose sole purpose is to backlink others as a way to improve their visibility. I have found quite a few situations involving various thousands of different domains, repeating the same or similar content or even not content at all and linking to all the other domains in the corresponding fake network. Some times the names are very similar (site1a.com, site1b.com, site1c.com), other times they are pure nonsense (asdfasdf.com, aserrffeff.com, dddeddfsfs.com, asdfasdf.com) and there are even quite elaborate cases (whatever.com, otherhing.com, nothingtodowithothers.com).

These are quite common scenarios and, actually, represent one of the main obstacles for my ranking to deliver accurate enough conclusions. That fact, together with the associated cost/effort and not being precisely easy to be tracked, seems to indicate that this kind of crappy approaches are actually very profitable. I might even say that the current internet reality, formed by search engines, advertisers, investors, users, etc., somehow promotes these behaviours: the prize is high (at least, for those caring just about money) and the eventual punishment virtually inexistent. Fully solving all this seems almost impossible, although more demanding users looking for high-quality, reliable, objective outputs (as opposed to anything, quickly, easily and from anywhere) might certainly help to improve things.

Re:Very Fake News Calling out Fake News

[Anonymous Coward]

You're 100% right. There's no Veles in Macedonia, the whole report was filmed in a studio with a green screen, and all the people in the video are paid actors.

Re:Very Fake News Calling out Fake News

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much everything that Trump and his surrogates claim are fake news turn out to be real news, it is just news that isn't favorable to them. Fox only prints glowing puff pieces about trump and at times makes up news to harm his enemies (ie.. the article about the dead DNC staffer having been found to be the wikileaks source) that get discredited immediately but stay up for days and even after being forced to take it down have Hannity pledge to not stop talking about it.

Re: Random Balkans Backwater Has Dubious Businesse

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on, its been a while since the last political clickbait was posted. This is just the normal Slashdot cycle these days:

Engadget copypasta, then some news for fat people, then some politics, repeat.

Gotta lock down the internet...

[Anonymous Coward]

...before the next election.

We can't have citizens getting their information outside of approved bias dispensation networks.

Fakes News Exposes Written By Fake News

[NicknameUnavailable]

What a time to be alive.

Advertising in Canada

[Comboman]

Ideally, elections should be closer to Canada, where there is no advertising permitted so candidates have to stand on their own merits.

Not sure where you heard that, but we definitely have election advertising in Canada. The main difference to the USA is that in Canada you can only run election advertising in the 37 days prior to the election (which helps limit the never-ending election cycle where candidates are in determinant campaign mode) and no advertising on the actual day of the election (which may be the cause of your confusion).

So, is this Hillary's latest excuse?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, you all read her book, right? It's blame passing extraordinaire, hundreds of pages of eternal whining. Should be a best seller amongst the democrat fanboys

Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

How did I just *know* that this story's comments would be packed with pro-Russian trolls and alt-right cretins?

Can't see the forest for the trees

[Solandri]

Over 100 websites were tracked here during the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. election campaign, producing fake news that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump.

They should try self-reflecting on why almost every major news organization and poll showed Clinton winning before the election. Maybe the problem isn't that a handful of websites which favored Trump somehow skewed the election. Maybe it's that the media's expectation for the election was skewed from reality.

The one poll which called the election correctly noticed that Trump supporters were less likely to admit to pollsters that they were going to vote for Trump. When they corrected for this, surprise surprise, their poll showed that Trump would win. That's what happens when you engage in campaigns to shame people with certain political beliefs - they disappear from public view, but still show up in elections (thanks to secret ballots).

Real change comes about from convincing people that your way is right. Not from shaming, ridiculing, and attacking those who disagree with you. Unfortunately, the media and to a lesser extent the Democratic party seems to be trying its hardest not to learn this lesson.

Re:Can't see the forest for the trees

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't that far skewed... I mean she did win the popular vote and had Comey not come out day's before she likely would be our president. Not a fan of either of them personally, but thems the facts.

" Not from shaming, ridiculing, and attacking those who disagree with you. Unfortunately, the media and to a lesser extent the Democratic party seems to be trying its hardest not to learn this lesson."

Right and you guy's (assuming you are a republican) voted for a man that made a campaign doing just that. LOL.. did you seriously write that?

Re:Can't see the forest for the trees

[jader3rd]

They should try self-reflecting on why almost every major news organization and poll showed Clinton winning before the election.

Because for some strange reason the national polls don't weight the votes by the electoral weight of the state. It's weird.

No verifiable content, article itself is fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Skim it through, have a look elsewhere, you will not be able to definitely verify anything in CNN's "article". You should know by now that CNN itself is a source of fake news that further American agendas.

There's always someone on their list that needs to be turned into a boogeyman of some random size.

Re:Fake News Organisation Reporting on Fake News

[caseih]

Sorry but your claims about the "staged Muslim protest" are unsubstantiated claims, with no evidence. The CNN side of the story is a heck of lot more believable than yours (I say yours because you're the one promoting these tweats). Sorry. You weren't there; you don't know what was going on. Talk to someone that was involved in the protest as the reporter did. All you can do is make allegations based on your own feelings and beliefs. That's not news. To perpetuate these unsubstantiated claims as if they were facts is, well, a lie. Fake news. And it promotes the very kind of hatred that people at that protest were trying to protest against. You are part of the problem. Maybe you should stop following extremists on Twitter and make friends with Muslims, blacks, hispanic immigrants, refugees that live near you, and find out what things are really like in their families and neighborhoods.

Muslims in many places feel they want to speak up, protest against those who commit atrocities in the name of Islam, and tell us what the vast majority of Muslims think and feel about peace. I'm glad those protesters talked to the reporter and showed her their signs, and posed for pictures. It's a very important thing!

No quarter

[Anonymous Coward]

Any method that fucks-in-the-azzwhole globalist poly-cunt and Trotsky progressives is a good method. Macedon factoids? They've been hoeky since Alexander ... bitchy DemoRats? Smashface them into the gutter. Got a problem? Come see me, though I will always appear behind you ... it's war baby and USA yeomanry intends putting-down the Soros/Feinstein/Shumer narco.MEX , nibberizing faggot army.

Re:Project Veritas exposed CNN for the liars they

[wyHunter]

The Clinton New Network is biased? I'm shocked, shocked I say.

Re:Project Veritas exposed CNN for the liars they

[Anonymous Coward]

projectveritas.com ?

LMFAO

What? You mean those click-bait articles are fake?

[DidgetMaster]

The headline saying Trump is going to jail tomorrow or the one saying Hillary wants to commit suicide are just made up? Now I feel better about not clicking on them, I was so worried that I missed out on the story of the century.

Re:Very Fake News Calling out Fake News

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me see if I have this correct.. Very Fake News network CNN publishes a story about "Fake News" creators in a bid to rid itself of its very well deserved Very Fake News label.

Got it.

I see the Fully-Brainwashed BernieBot/Giant Meteor supporting moderators have decided to "-1 Troll" this post. Sad..

Re:Fake News Organisation Reporting on Fake News

[clonehappy]

CNN's lies would make Goebbels blush. But they all learned this from the same place, so it should be of no surprise that CNN can find some cockamamie story to promote to try and deflect. That's all lieberals can do, deflect, project, and blame. It's sickening at this point.

The Russia hacked election story is fake news.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is important to note that he made his money on adds. That he promoted Trump is incidental. If anything it shows that this is where the opportunity was because Hillary propaganda was already saturated. It reads to me like a sly way of pushing the Trump Russia story without directly stateing it.

Voting Methods

[Tenebrousedge]

I feel like instant runoff, range voting, or approval voting would have had a strong chance of electing Johnson. I don't think that Trump's most ardent supporter could claim that he would win under approval voting, and Hillary was nearly as disliked. The country seemed like it was poised to take a more conservative turn, or perhaps I should say some conservative backlash, but Johnson might have won broad approval as everybody's second choice.

I disagree totally with libertarian principles, but I think that it's pretty clear to everyone that they are a large segment of American politics and that our political parties don't necessarily reflect the broad divisions in our society very well. I would like to institute a voting system which would more accurately reflect the support there is for your party. I think it would be better for the nation for us to have more choices at the polls, and more meaningful ones. I mean, at this point random lottery might even be a good option: I can certainly say that I trust the average person far more than the average politician. In any case, I reserve the right to an opposite opinion, but I do think it's a shame that neither of us are being heard.

Re:Voting Methods

[Anonymous Coward]

I still think Deez Nutz was a better choice overall.

I wish I was joking....

Re:Voting Methods

[clodney]

I disagree totally with libertarian principles, but I think that it's pretty clear to everyone that they are a large segment of American politics and that our political parties don't necessarily reflect the broad divisions in our society very well. I would like to institute a voting system which would more accurately reflect the support there is for your party. I think it would be better for the nation for us to have more choices at the polls, and more meaningful ones

I often wonder if we would have better outcomes with a parliamentary systems, with a mixture of regional representation and at-large candidates. Having lots of parties would mean that people would find parties that match their ideals, and parties getting some seats gives them some influence. And having more at large candidates reduces the winner-take-all aspect of state by state campaigning, without going all the way to a nationwide popular vote.

It seems that the two party system leaves lots of people feeling like neither candidate represents them well.

Re:Voting Methods

[Actually, I do RTFA]

I feel like instant runoff, range voting, or approval voting would have had a strong chance of electing Johnson.

I'd imagine that with any of those options, you'd find political parties and their nominations were pretty different. I'd imagine that either Clinton, Cruz or Kasich would win. I'd imagine that all three, plus Trump and Bernie would be on the ticket, as the parties moved towards nominating a slate. And then the never-Trumpers and never-Bernie-ers would vote for the rest of the field. Okay, Cruz probably would be out of the running as well.

Re:Voting Methods

[modmans2ndcoming]

I'd prefer proportional representation to be a component of the vision of a US constitutional parliamentary system. Much more responsive to the people's true views.

There's a market demand

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a market demand for media presence that makes a conservative feel good, and that openly embraces their narrative. With the notable exception of Fox News (part of Murdoch's media empire, one of six media companies, and obviously biased to the prejudiced of the right wing billionaire owner), all the other media empires (all five of them that exist) are highly leftwing biased (again, owned by left wing billionaires- but everyone who sees the truth of the Fox News thing seems to struggle with this part, and vice versa).

With almost all media bitingly anti-Trump, being totally unwilling to cover positive news about Trump, relate a single positive fact about Trump, being unwilling to report honest polls about Trump, and constantly sliming everything in an elitist veneer of disdain about Trump, is it any surprise that there's a market for good news about Trump? And given that journalists are professionally forbidden from being nice to Trump (they'll get kicked out- same thing as actors), you'd expect non-journalists to pick this up.

Check out One America News Network. It looks like a college level effort. They try their best. Check out right side broadcasting. Those guys stutter on air sometimes, they are just doing their best. They aren't fake news, but they are pro-Trump. If some guy in Europe is busy sharing and making articles talking about how Trump was visited by a kindly alien or whatever, and people are clicking it, it's because anyone who would talk about the actually nice guy things Trump does is kicked out of Hollywood and 5/6th of media empires (and many parts of the remaining 1/6th- you can't be too pro-Trump at the Wall Street Journal, and that's about as conservative as mainstream magazines go).

So, supply and demand.

Also this whole thing comes from CNN, who has ran with fake news multiple times in an attempt to smear Trump. Once they had to pull a whole journo team off of it because it was bad enough that they were at risk for libel, but the truth won't get in their way- they just really really really hate Trump.

Re:Very Fake News Calling out Fake News

[Anonymous Coward]

> the article about the dead DNC staffer having been found to be the wikileaks source

His name was Seth Rich.

Staged news != Fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because CNN stages a rescue of a guy driving into a drainage ditch in Houston or buses Muslims from location to location in London to protest a copy cat White Supremacist hit and run, doesn't mean these events didn't happen.

Fake News CNN doing a report on fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Does ANYbody believe any of the trash they publish?

CNN

[Miamicoastguard]

CNN has a story on fake news? You're kidding...

TSA body scanner sees chief wearing bra

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes you wish such news were true - that is why we read them.

Bana Alabed is CNN propaganda

[anyaristow]

Bana Alabed is a seven-year-old Syrian Girl. She's also a pawn in the propaganda war. CNN manufactured a story of a seven-year-old Syrian girl asking America to liberate Syria from its tyrant president. Problem is, she doesn't understand English, so her CNN interview is implausible.

https://www.youtube.com/result...

Re:Bana Alabed is CNN propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

Because translators and video editing don't exist. Right..

NOTICE ALL THE PANICKING TROLL POSTS

[Anonymous Coward]

These roaches know they won't live long and are afraid of the light being shined on the real origins of their fake but previously adopted as "popular" hatreds. Russian spies weakening America with fanned hate campaigns, supported by criminal enterprises throughout their failed attempt at a larger nation, and loved by stupid American traitors - news story at 5. Kill Putin and all of his cronies, save the world.

Fake news is only one part of a larger design.

[PJ6]

The internet is the greatest tool ever invented for education and sharing information - it can greatly strengthen democracy, and has become a serious threat to private industry's control over governments. We're seeing three main tactics to counter this:

Destroy faith in government.
Do this and you also destroy faith in the vote, and democracy itself. The vote is dangerous because it can't be controlled. Strangely, "government is bad" has long been a classic conservative standby. Power not claimed by government gets seized by private industry.

Turn voters against each other.
Another way to sabotage democracy is to turn the public against itself so there's no unity. Hammer on polarizing issues to distract everyone from the dangerous ones.

Destroy faith in sources of information.
We see attacks on the mainstream media as well, but the biggest attack is on sources of information on the internet itself. Democracy is less effective when the electorate is misinformed, or feels all information is suspect.

I would love to read the article, but...

[arctother]

While trying to read the linked story, I was overwhelmed by the atrocious web design. It was basically unreadable.

CNN comes clean

[Anonymous Coward]

They moved their headquarters to Macedonia.