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.

Comments

headline is Logic bomb exploding

[goombah99]

First, fake news is not crowding out real news. But this article is perhaps an example of fake news. Is it crowding out something?

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[Train0987]

The beauty of the internet is that it allows readers to check multiple sources for any one subject/story, as opposed to just swallowing whatever the legacy media told them to believe. That scares the shit out of them.

Re:headline is Logic bomb exploding

[rickb928]

It was once assumed that any news outlet that could afford to publish was trustworthy - proof that not only does money talk, it demands to be heard.

And we know that news outlets that predated the Internet are no more or less trustworthy now than they were back then. Discerning truth or at least objectivity isn't any easier than ever, though it seems harder because there are more to consider. This is false. Those legacy outlets had a history that confirmed trust without any real foundation.

People have gone really stupid

[DogDude]

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.

Re:but this article

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Starting?

[tsqr]

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.

Re:Politicians need to control this

[cascadingstylesheet]

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.

Re:Politicians need to control this

[Train0987]

Yep, the same ones who breathlessly reported on the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Saddam's WMD's.