Since the election last week, there has been a lot of discussion about "Fake News" and the effect it had on the election, especially since Donald Trump was the winner. Twitter, Google and Facebook have all taken action in response. Twitter in the last few days announced that it was banning "alt-right" accounts (it banned Milo Yiannopoulos a few months ago). Google and Facebook have announced that they will ban "Fake News" websites from using their advertising platforms, which will also deny them the associated revenues on their publications. Of course Facebook had a controversy earlier this year around censoring conservative content, after which it fired a whole team of its content review staff. Google is notorious for its search algorithms, which promote websites in the search list based on a variety of criteria, some apparently content related and of course also apparently based on the money paid to Google. Twitter has apparently banned a number of people who posted messages that did not fit in with their preferred political "narrative". As I search for information on Google, I increasingly find myself needing to use alternative search engines, as Google seems to be devoted to promoting information relating to certain topics that is not what I am looking for. A good example of this is Brexit, on which I started a thread here that I have made quite a few researched posts in. Starting the day the vote came in, the Google news feed was almost entirely filled with negative and very critical stories about Brexit, even though Brexit had just won a decisive victory. There were plenty of pro-Brexit articles, news sites, and blog posts about Brexit on the internet, but it was damn hard to get at them using Google. Also, let's get real. The mass media organizations like the New York Times and the Cable News networks publish dishonest crap all of the time, then just move on like nothing ever happened. These stories are in too many cases "Fake News," that were either published to promote a partisan narrative, or just to be sensational in order to jack up their ratings and their revenues, which is exactly what these "Fake News" websites are accused of doing. Some of this is clearly just a partisan retaliation against Donald Trump winning the election. In fact, it appears that a number of popular conservative websites are being tagged by some as "Fake News," while similar leftist websites are given a free pass. For example, here is a link to an article about a list of "Fake News" websites produced by an assistant professor at Merrimack College, which is apparently a popular topic of discussion on Facebook, which includes Brietbart on the list, but excludes the Huffington Post. Assistant Professor’s ‘Fake’ News List Has Breitbart, Not HuffPo Both of these websites spew their share of fabricated, sensationalist crap, that is a fact. But the problem here is the disparate, clearly partisan treatment, which appears to be a lot of what is motivating these actions. So, should "Fake News" be suppressed by these sorts of large social media organizations on the internet? This is such a difficult thing to do, that they would probably be better off staying away from it unless they can do it in a clearly unbiased, non-partisan way. Which the people leading these organizations appear to be anything but.
This is why the media has an even lower trust rating than politicians....as low as 6% according to at least 1 survey. Of course, pollsters now are not trusted either after their horrible performance in this last election. I say leave em alone. Stop trying to "protect" people and let us figure it out on our own.
You still have Fox. Part of the strong distinction between huffpo and white power sites is editorial and contributor comments are distinctly labeled whereas Breitbart (are we still trying to legitimize this ********er?) displays a level of sureness that doesn't even have a semblance of research or follow through.. Forbes and Fortune follows the same format as huffpo that makes their editorial content show up on feeds, and Fox makes more reactions and humdingers than people care to admit or remember and still shows up as a recommended feed. Americanconservative, federalist, and reason aren't being filtered out either. It's a fine line to balance as they are private organizations. I don't want to see fake news from both sides but I get that people take news as a form of manufactured consent and belief.
Decent list - but it needs to add Conservative Tribune. So glad to see that AddictingInfo is on there although I'd downgrade it from a 3 to a 2. HuffPo is highly biased, but not any more than Fox News which also isn't on the list.
You know there's a difference between having a bias or slant about what you report and reporting fake or false news, right?
It's a problem. There are certainly bad actors out there that are literally making stuff up to get clicks and ad revenue. There should be a distinction between straight-up fake news and partisan news. Partisan news might be selective about reporting, suggestive in their writing, and editorialize in their analysis, but they at least do some kind of journalism. The line between fake and partisan though has gotten very blurry. I've been noticing recently how valuable brand is with the internet-based economy. More than once, I've shopped on price via the internet and got something of such shabby workmanship as to essentially be fraud. So brand has gotten to be far more important to me in internet shopping than it is in brick-and-mortar where I can see the workmanship. Same with news. If it was written by a credible news organization I already know and trust, I'll take it seriously. Some random article I was linked to from facebook has no credibility because I have no read on the workmanship. Some teenager will say I'm a sheep led around by the nose by the lamestream media. That I only believe what the establishment wants me to believe. Good luck to you with zerohedge.
We are not talking about being "biased". We are talking about publishing "Fake News," which are stories that are entirely fabricated out of whole cloth, from start to finish and everything in between. A story that is partially correct, but is misleading and contains flat out lies, that is published for purely partisan purposes would not be "Fake News". It would just be dishonest, misleading, bad, partisan reporting. The Huffington Post publishes articles that are of this sort and so does Breitbart. Fox News gets stuff wrong and clearly leans to the right. But I am not aware of them pushing out stories that are knowingly and intentionally completely false from beginning to end.
Sounds like 1984. Perpetuate a war and limit free speech i.e. labels, adjectives and emotion. IF anyone think Google is going to stop fake news, people are fooling themselves. They were the forefront in spreading and censoring news.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_fake-news-845a:homepage/story
That's up to each social media platform. Of course there is a responsibility to the truth and if you do not have a sense of that responsibility, hopefully you pay a price for that in the long term.
If you ban "fake news" does that mean you have to ban Last Week Tonight, The Daily Show, and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee? What about The Onion or Duffel Blog?
Did they stop selling those scandal rags in the grocery stores? People need to be more discerning in what they read and believe.
I generally agree with you, and then I look on Facebook and people fall for the dumbest ****. Do we really trust our voter base not to be duped? I feel like there should be steps to educate the uneducated, we just need to find a bipartisan way to do it.
The steps to educate the uneducated is what the public school system is supposed to be, unfortunately they've seriously dropped standards so that they don't have to fail anyone. I personally know someone who graduated high school despite being illiterate. When standards are that low, you get a population full of uneducated people.
