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Fake News 'Crowding Out' Real News (bbc.co.uk)
The volume of disinformation on the internet is growing so big that it is starting to crowd out real news, the Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee chairman has said. From a report: Tory MP Damian Collins said people struggle to identify "fake news." MPs in their committee report [PDF] said the issue threatens democracy and called for tougher social network regulation. The government said it plans to introduce a requirement for electoral adverts to have a "digital imprint". This would mean that all political communications carried online would need to clearly identify who they were published by. Labour said the government "needs to wake up to the new challenges we face and finally update electoral laws". The report follows the Cambridge Analytica data scandal earlier this year. The London-based data analytics firms and tech giant Facebook were at the centre of a dispute over the harvesting and use of personal data - and whether it was used to influence the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election or the UK Brexit referendum.
First, fake news is not crowding out real news. But this article is perhaps an example of fake news. Is it crowding out something?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
At least on social media, people have lost their collective minds. We've stopped posting anything that allows for any sort of discussion on social media, because people seem to be really insane on social media. They say and act very stupidly. If this is where most people are getting their news these days (and I don't doubt that it is), God help us all. The human race is going to eat itself because it's too fucking stupid to live.
I don't respond to AC's.
Correct, labeling everything on the internet 'Fake News' is more the death-rattle of the legacy media who have lost all relevancy.
making the news and journalism entirely unprofitable
They already did that with the advent of online news sources, and look where that got us. Hell, it's because the news has been so entirely demonetized that fake news thrives, since everything now has to be either uninformed listicles or vitriol-filled opinion pieces. And of course, if you want the truth made public with the sting of money, there has always been PBS/BBC news, but they don't present everything in sexy setpieces or easily digestible sound bites.
Starting? I think that boat sailed (and probably sank) years ago.
Indeed. The National Enquirer was founded in 1926. But then, it's not run by Russian agents (afaik), so maybe it doesn't count.
What about the New York Times? That one has been run by Russian agents since at least the 1930s.
By "legacy media" you mean traditional news sources that fact-check, edit, and issue corrections when mistakes are discovered?
That would be nice. Instead, we had Dan Rather.
Yep, the same ones who breathlessly reported on the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Saddam's WMD's.
It's a shame that /. has sunk so low. People think we are making shit up when you show them actual real evidence of DNC treachery and CNN fabrication of news, but sadly that's not the case.
The term "fake news" arose in US dialog to describe bizarrely distorted and completely made up hit pieces put out against Hilary Clinto and the Democrat campaign by various Trump-supporting people and also certain foreign actors, some of whom were supporting Trump and some were just out to make a living off ad-click revenue.
Just to set the record straight:
The term "fake news" went viral by panicked and authoritarian leftists after Trump won the election. It was an attempt to conflate blatantly "fake news" clickbait with right-leaning websites, so that those sites would be censored by the tech giants, conveniently ignoring the mirror version on the left. The future is now:
"So what happens if Facebook staff were to look at Zimdars' list and accept it and decide to censor the sharing of headlines from these sites? It's within Facebook's power and right to do so, but it would be a terrible decision on their end. They wouldn't just be preventing the spreading of factually incorrect, fabricated stories. They would be blocking a lot of opinionated analysis from sites on the basis of their ideologies. The company would face a backlash for such a decision that could impact their bottom line."