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Any communication platform that is easy to use and easy to reach people on, and will therefore be popular, is great channel of dissemination of fake news. Well,

• Barrin92 7y ago
  I think one needs to be very intentionally oblivious to not notice the qualitative difference between fake news of the past and fake news right now. Fake news in the past always had an identifiable source, because there was still an institution, a company, or someone with their name on the door between reader and publisher. As it stands, no such barrier exists any more. Things can be inserted by malicious actors into the debate, and they spread automatically simply because they have the tendency to 'go viral', something entirely absent in the past. That has added a completely new set of problems. >Blame people for believing most of anything they're told Precisely because it is very much in everyone's nature to suffer from these mechanisms it makes no sense to blame ' the people'. What does this imply, a great re-education of everyone? Obviously the only thing we can change is the companies, institutions and rules that determine how we consume the news, not how human brains disseminate them.
  • pferde 7y ago
    Yes, the Internet has made spreading fake news easier, but let me reiterate my argument - the Internet has made communication as a whole easier, so it's only natural that fake news spreads easier. However, that is not the fault of any given communication platform on the Internet, unless that platform happens to explicitly select fake news stories to spread, and suppress anything else. Which certainly is not case for WhatsApp. Even in the past, good old rumor mills (I heard it from a friend of a friend of a cousin's barber) were reigning supreme in spreading bullshit around, by simple word of mouth. The Internet here is just a compounding factor to something that is very, very old and already very, very effective. Edit: expanded first paragraph
    • Barrin92 7y ago
      >Yes, the Internet has made spreading fake news easier, but let me reiterate my argument - the Internet has made communication as a whole easier, so it's only natural that fake news spreads easier. I totally agree, but it doesn't follow that this means that the fake news situation is acceptable, or that Facebook isn't responsible as a platform which the OP argued. With the increased density of urban living came more opportunity but also more crime and disease, but we don't shrug and accept that barowners have no responsibility as platforms, we give them a set of safety and health regulations and responsibilities, and we equip the police with tools to combat crime. So in that spirit, just as the internet isn't the internet of the hacker and small community age, companies should have to deal with the problems they produce. Just like everyone else always had to.
      • isbvhodnvemrwvn 7y ago
        You're trying to cure the symptom, not the disease. The disease is people being morons. If you want people to not be affected by fake news, making platforms censor people won't have any positive effect. You have to educate people.
  • repolfx 7y ago
    No it didn't, that's historical revisionism. Go read any historical text or even Chinese censorship propaganda today and you'll discover the authorities were/are obsessed with "rumours". Attempts to control what people can say are a historical constant, the only difference between then and now is the lingo has changed. There's no need to change anything, people or companies. Left to their own devices people figure out propaganda eventually. It may not be in the direction to your liking, but then, as a supposedly rational person, you must accept that maybe it's you who is victim of propaganda and the other people who are not. The best example of this in recent times is the large number of supposedly smart people who fell in love with "The US President is a Russian spy" as an idea, which was based on nothing - it was rumours, it was fake news, it was propaganda distributed by the press, and now 50% or more of the US population agree with their president that it was also a witchhunt. Seems like people were drowned in fake news and still, a large chunk of them understood it was fake. Of those who still believe it, it might be more accurate to say they wish it was true - but that's a common theme in all rumours and propaganda throughout history.