
What was fake on the Internet this week: Why this is the final column - braythwayt
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/18/what-was-fake-on-the-internet-this-week-why-this-is-the-final-column/
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braythwayt
A sobering and sad read. The tl;dr is that modern hoaxes are manufactured to
appeal to a demographic of society that either doesn’t care if they are
hoaxes, or is so cognitively biased that they won’t believe evidence debunking
the hoax.

It’s the same mechanism behind denying evolution or climate change: Some
people simply say that the “evidence” against their beliefs is manufactured by
a conspiracy.

We saw this is the false murder statistics shared by Donald Trump: People
shared them widely because they confirmed their fears about blacks.

When pinned down on the fact that the numbers were ridiculously wrong and that
the source had been completely fabricated, they shrugged and said, “Well, its
still useful to share because we need to have a conversation about the problem
with black people in America.”

~~~
tomaskafka
Facebook and other social networks are factories built to exploit these human
biases and audiences on industrial scale.

If you work in FB, TW, BuzzFeed et al and haven't questioned/fought this, you
are responsible too.

