3 ms·

The "fake news" term is itself actually fake news (unless you're liberal). It is synonymous with "we did everything we can to influence the election outcome and

by myf01d 10y ago

The "fake news" term is itself actually fake news (unless you're liberal). It is synonymous with "we did everything we can to influence the election outcome and yet we lost, now we should regulate the news media industry so only WE can publish our agenda."

nyolfen 10y ago
i realize there's a partisan bent to the fake news story, but the indisputable fact of the matter is that there are a lot of sites that straight up fabricate outrageous news to generate clicks that have a lot of circulation on facebook now. the liberal side of the media is beating the drum about it right now, but it's still a true claim. https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became... https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-... also i may be wrong, but as far as i know buzzfeed isnt known for being especially partisan towards liberal causes
- douche 10y ago
  It's sort of ironic citing BuzzFeed here, as they were long a primary supplier of bullshit news and questionable listicles, before they pivoted into actual journalism.
  - nyolfen 10y ago
    to be fair, i think there's a pretty big difference between 'bullshit' (ie inconsequential) and fabricated news. i remember when i still used facebook, being intensely annoyed every time i saw news that seemed to have vaguely plausible but clearly fake content -- the sites in question were 'satire', a la the onion, though much less clever. in retrospect, now, it seems predestined that at some point they would drop the pretense altogether, though.
pohl 10y ago
There is a real (and relatively new) phenomenon here that the phrase refers to, and it goes beyond bias and even beyond propaganda. There are businesses whose only agenda is to harvest ad revenue from viral shares. They are working for neither the red team nor the blue team. Their agenda is to tap into the reflex to share, and it makes no difference what achieves that aim. It just so happens that everyone's racist uncle is the easiest vein for them. Google "fake news Macedonia", it's pretty fascinating.

by myf01d 10y ago

nyolfen 10y ago

i realize there's a partisan bent to the fake news story, but the indisputable fact of the matter is that there are a lot of sites that straight up fabricate outrageous news to generate clicks that have a lot of circulation on facebook now. the liberal side of the media is beating the drum about it right now, but it's still a true claim. https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became... https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-... also i may be wrong, but as far as i know buzzfeed isnt known for being especially partisan towards liberal causes

douche 10y ago
It's sort of ironic citing BuzzFeed here, as they were long a primary supplier of bullshit news and questionable listicles, before they pivoted into actual journalism.
- nyolfen 10y ago
  to be fair, i think there's a pretty big difference between 'bullshit' (ie inconsequential) and fabricated news. i remember when i still used facebook, being intensely annoyed every time i saw news that seemed to have vaguely plausible but clearly fake content -- the sites in question were 'satire', a la the onion, though much less clever. in retrospect, now, it seems predestined that at some point they would drop the pretense altogether, though.

pohl 10y ago

There is a real (and relatively new) phenomenon here that the phrase refers to, and it goes beyond bias and even beyond propaganda. There are businesses whose only agenda is to harvest ad revenue from viral shares. They are working for neither the red team nor the blue team. Their agenda is to tap into the reflex to share, and it makes no difference what achieves that aim. It just so happens that everyone's racist uncle is the easiest vein for them. Google "fake news Macedonia", it's pretty fascinating.