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I think you had to be pretty dialed-in to daily news to get the "fake news" origin story, and then how it turned to be something else. In the beginning there w
by haltandsleep 10y ago
I think you had to be pretty dialed-in to daily news to get the "fake news" origin story, and then how it turned to be something else.
In the beginning there were articles and there was fact-checking. Specific articles that failed checks (failed QA) were fake. A rush of those in 2016 were found to be for-clicks and for-profit.
One might have really hoped that more checking (better QA) would come out of that, but perversely the opposite happened. "Fake news" became a blanket condemnation not just for unchecked stories, but often unread ones. "The headline says that? Fake news!"
This is kind of a critical juncture, but I worry that it is becoming a wrong turn.