It looks to me that you are spreading unnecessary confusion. Let me give you two scenarios: (1) I go to a marketplace and buy a service to plant a news story.

It looks to me that you are spreading unnecessary confusion. Let me give you two scenarios: (1) I go to a marketplace and buy a service to plant a news story. Assume that the title of the story is "oceanplexian is part of DC pizza scandal". This story is posted on their affiliate websites, by bots on Twitter/Facebook, it is even reported on your local TV as "rumors emerge about oceanplexian (with a healthy dose of nuance, skepticism, logic)". This is certainly fake news, right? (I hope so!) (2) In the second scenario, imagine if two of your coworkers contact a journalist with information that "oceanplexian is making bombs at home". Then the journalist finds out that you are buying fertilizers even though you live in a multi-story building. The police refuse to comment. Then a news story is published with the title of "suspicious behavior by oceanplexian". Later it turned out that you had joked to your friends about making bombs and the fertilizers were for your science experiments. So this was a false story, the people involved in spreading this story apologize and move on. Also, the meaning of words depends on context and the context changes with time. There is a current meaning of fake news. And we can easily classify many fake news stories with 100% certainty as fake. I do not know how muddying the water with Iraq War, Y2K, etc. helps in the discussion about fake news in the current context.