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> Once upon a time (like, three [thirteen] months ago), "fake news" had a precise meaning. It referred to total fabrications — made-up stories about Donald Trum

> Once upon a time (like, three [thirteen] months ago), "fake news" had a precise meaning. It referred to total fabrications — made-up stories about Donald Trump suffering a heart attack or earning the pope's endorsement — and the phrase burst into the political lexicon as Facebook and Google vowed to clean up some of the garbage that had polluted the Internet during the presidential election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/09/fake-news-has-now-lost-all-meaning/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/09/fa...

ajmurmann 9y ago
I'm shocked that yours is the only comment on here that actually remembers what happened. The actual "fake news" that was entirely fabricated as click bate was discussed for a few weeks even on This American Life if I recall correctly. There was even an interview with a guy from Georgia (the country) who made a mint making up stories that appealed to Trump supporters and now nobody remembers how that important concept was hijacked by the demagogue.
- jochung 9y ago
  Fake news was an own goal by the left wing press. After selling a fable to their readers about a Clinton landslide, they tried to deflect by blaming the election outcome on fabricated stories. But there was never any evidence these stories had more reach and influence than what mainstream outlets were peddling. Same way there is no evidence Russian Facebook ads and social media postings eclipsed the millions e.g. the Clinton campaign spent to Correct The Record. Similarly, laments about r/the_donald were categorically ignoring how the default news and politics reddits had become unofficial Clinton cheering squads with moderators complicit. Most ironically, lefties lamented the ignorance of right wing voters in accepting stories that confirmed their bias and preconceptions, while they themselves eagerly accepted the fake news narrative. Fake news was not an important concept. Media manipulation however was, and the two got conflated for very obvious reasons.
  - ajmurmann 9y ago
    I don't know if the original fake news was important to the election. I do think though that it's a very important issue in general. How do we prevent entirely fabricated click bait from going viral?
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    You really don't know, do you? > Following the 2016 election, a specific concern has been the effect of false stories—“fake news,” as it has been dubbed—circulated on social media. Recent evidence shows that: 1) 62 percent of US adults get news on social media (Gottfried and Shearer 2016); 2) the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories (Silverman 2016); 3) many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them (Silverman and Singer-Vine 2016); and 4) the most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton (Silverman 2016). Putting these facts together, a number of commentators have suggested that Donald Trump would not have been elected president were it not for the influence of fake news (for examples, see Parkinson 2016; Read 2016; Dewey 2016). https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf
belorn 9y ago
Researchers at Harvard made a study on which news paper focused on which candidate and was used by followers by each side (https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33759251/2017-08_electionReport_0.pdf?sequence=9 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33759251/2017-08...). The washingtonpost had, like many others, a very clear bias in both which candidate they promoted and their intended reader demographic. I don't trust anyone marked clearly blue or red to make a trustworthy description about events around the election. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#Definition), even if they are not intended to be used as an authority, are more trustworthy. Alternative one can look at the baloney detection kit by Carl Sagan and simply define any baloney that get published in news format to be fake news.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  The Washington Post has existed for 140 years and has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes. It's the newspaper that broke Watergate. You can acknowledge a news source for its editorial bias and still trust it not to print outright falsehoods on a regular basis. The Wall Street Journal is editorially right-leaning but that doesn't mean I think it prints lies, I will trust it regarding statements of objective fact up to the point that you can trust any news source (of course both WaPo and WSJ flub stories and have to make retractions from time to time, journalists are humans).
  - hiram112 9y ago
    The Washington Post, IMO, has taken a serious dive in the past few years. Unlike the NYTimes and WSJ, WAPO has simply become another click-bait, hit-piece site like Salon or Buzzfeed. It's shameless.
    - aalleavitch 9y ago
      I disagree, it has very much been on the ball regarding its investigative reporting this year. The editorials have been the same constant stream of hysterics you see everywhere else, but they've broken some fantastic articles regarding disinformation campaigns with hard fact-based reporting. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kremlin-trolls-burned-across-the-internet-as-washington-debated-options/2017/12/23/e7b9dc92-e403-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.9b2cedace7e3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kreml...

ajmurmann 9y ago

I'm shocked that yours is the only comment on here that actually remembers what happened. The actual "fake news" that was entirely fabricated as click bate was discussed for a few weeks even on This American Life if I recall correctly. There was even an interview with a guy from Georgia (the country) who made a mint making up stories that appealed to Trump supporters and now nobody remembers how that important concept was hijacked by the demagogue.

jochung 9y ago
Fake news was an own goal by the left wing press. After selling a fable to their readers about a Clinton landslide, they tried to deflect by blaming the election outcome on fabricated stories. But there was never any evidence these stories had more reach and influence than what mainstream outlets were peddling. Same way there is no evidence Russian Facebook ads and social media postings eclipsed the millions e.g. the Clinton campaign spent to Correct The Record. Similarly, laments about r/the_donald were categorically ignoring how the default news and politics reddits had become unofficial Clinton cheering squads with moderators complicit. Most ironically, lefties lamented the ignorance of right wing voters in accepting stories that confirmed their bias and preconceptions, while they themselves eagerly accepted the fake news narrative. Fake news was not an important concept. Media manipulation however was, and the two got conflated for very obvious reasons.
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  I don't know if the original fake news was important to the election. I do think though that it's a very important issue in general. How do we prevent entirely fabricated click bait from going viral?
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  You really don't know, do you? > Following the 2016 election, a specific concern has been the effect of false stories—“fake news,” as it has been dubbed—circulated on social media. Recent evidence shows that: 1) 62 percent of US adults get news on social media (Gottfried and Shearer 2016); 2) the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories (Silverman 2016); 3) many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them (Silverman and Singer-Vine 2016); and 4) the most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton (Silverman 2016). Putting these facts together, a number of commentators have suggested that Donald Trump would not have been elected president were it not for the influence of fake news (for examples, see Parkinson 2016; Read 2016; Dewey 2016). https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf

belorn 9y ago

Researchers at Harvard made a study on which news paper focused on which candidate and was used by followers by each side (https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33759251/2017-08_electionReport_0.pdf?sequence=9 https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33759251/2017-08...). The washingtonpost had, like many others, a very clear bias in both which candidate they promoted and their intended reader demographic. I don't trust anyone marked clearly blue or red to make a trustworthy description about events around the election. The Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#Definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#Definition), even if they are not intended to be used as an authority, are more trustworthy. Alternative one can look at the baloney detection kit by Carl Sagan and simply define any baloney that get published in news format to be fake news.

aalleavitch 9y ago
The Washington Post has existed for 140 years and has won 47 Pulitzer Prizes. It's the newspaper that broke Watergate. You can acknowledge a news source for its editorial bias and still trust it not to print outright falsehoods on a regular basis. The Wall Street Journal is editorially right-leaning but that doesn't mean I think it prints lies, I will trust it regarding statements of objective fact up to the point that you can trust any news source (of course both WaPo and WSJ flub stories and have to make retractions from time to time, journalists are humans).
- hiram112 9y ago
  The Washington Post, IMO, has taken a serious dive in the past few years. Unlike the NYTimes and WSJ, WAPO has simply become another click-bait, hit-piece site like Salon or Buzzfeed. It's shameless.
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    I disagree, it has very much been on the ball regarding its investigative reporting this year. The editorials have been the same constant stream of hysterics you see everywhere else, but they've broken some fantastic articles regarding disinformation campaigns with hard fact-based reporting. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kremlin-trolls-burned-across-the-internet-as-washington-debated-options/2017/12/23/e7b9dc92-e403-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html?utm_term=.9b2cedace7e3 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/kreml...