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> extrapolates from the fake news crisis that started in 2016 That's fake news. A fake news crisis was popularized in 2016, around the election of a particular
by hirundo 7y ago
> extrapolates from the fake news crisis that started in 2016
That's fake news. A fake news crisis was popularized in 2016, around the election of a particularly controversial politician. But I've seen no evidence that it started or even got much worse then, rather than just becoming more visible. And it's worse when we're not aware of it, so this "crisis" may have actually been progress in that it deservedly decreased trust in news.
- jboynyc 7y agoOf course there was disinformation ("fake news") before 2016 -- nobody would dispute that -- but it wasn't really framed as a crisis yet. So I would suggest you don't just dismiss this whole essay on the basis of semantic squabbling about the tl;dr summary.
- swiley 7y agoWho has to frame it as a crisis for it to count? I remember being very disturbed by the fake news getting upvoted on reddit when I was in high school. I remember talking about it with other people who were also disturbed.
- asjw 7y agoWhen you were in high school Reddit accounted for maybe 5% of the users that Facebook and Twitter have right now Most of them were not moms or grandmothers
- j4kp07 7y agoTIL The Spanish-America war of the 19th century, was not a crisis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Spanish–American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Spanish–Amer...
- arkh 7y agoI remember some fake news about Iraq and WMD around 2003.
- type0 7y agoIt wasn't news, that was convenient untruth.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- paganel 7y agoUp until two years ago I was still able to find a NBC or CBS article from May 2003 saying how more than 80% of the US public was approving of said military intervention and how that was making the whole thing ok (or at least that was the implicit message). I used to link to that article whenever this subject of fake news (or propaganda as it was called at the beginning of the 20th century) came into discussion on reddit or here, on HN. A couple of times I also linked to the Athenians' pre-Sicilian Expedition [1] propaganda campaign led by a certain Alcibiades, a war which had disastrous consequences on Athens itself. So it seems that we have been in an "information apocalypse" for at least ~2400 years now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicilian_Expedition
- YarickR2 7y agoThere are much more recent examples. Venezuela, "burned humanitarian aid trucks" fiasco.
- simonh 7y ago>A fake news crisis was popularized in 2016 I think it's reasonable to characterise that as a fake news crisis. I'm fed up with pedants insisting that every mention of everything has to be annotated and caveat-ed with every possible qualification. If you want to add context or broaden the discussion, there are positive ways to do that which add value other than a whiny "well actually" post.
- Merrill 7y agoIt's a crises because establishment media now have difficulty shaping public opinion through the traditional mechanism of editorial choice.