
We Tracked Down a Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs - dkarapetyan
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs
======
epicureanideal
This was the most interesting part for me...

\--------

He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the
white nationalist alt-right.

"The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of
infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional
stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the
fact that they were fiction," Coler says.

\--------

So in this case, the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-
right, rather than by the alt-right to promote their views. Oh man. I don't
think this tactic can lead to anything good. I hope we don't get to the point
where it's really just all out information warfare... and it seems like we're
already halfway there.

~~~
noobermin
>the fake news was created by the left to discredit the alt-right

I would say that this individual who was a liberal tried to do this. This
isn't like a group of leftists conspiring to do (anti-)propaganda. It is
pretty stupid, and his continuation of it is extremely confusing.

Sorry, but a side rant to the more "entrepreneurial" startup-cats who browse
here. Would you consider this fellow and others like him an entrepreneur? I
ask because there is talk in the article that he is one. Even if you take him
at his word that he is trying to highlight the problem of disinformation
rather than profit off of it, it seems quite suspect to me.

A good analogy here is a cook serving spoiled food to highlight healthy and
safe cooking habits, regardless of who it hurts. It makes no sense.

~~~
enraged_camel
The term "entrepreneur" is value-neutral. It refers to someone who
successfully forms a business venture by noticing and taking advantage of an
opportunity or need.

~~~
throwanem
> The term "entrepreneur" is value-neutral.

Even on Hacker News?

------
dluan
What boggles my mind is that Facebook and Twitter are so very complicit by
creating platforms for very granular targeting.

You liked the Green Bay Packers, a gun owners group, an old 2008 Tea Party
video, live 60 miles outside of a city and between 40-65? Not only is that
profile there, Facebook ads will tell you almost exactly how large your reach
is.

This is nothing more than information arbitrage, and that the unit economics
from advertisers hasn't quite caught up yet. It's what allowed Buzzfeed to
exist in the first place, and ultra targeted startups like Teespring to grow,
by training a small part of the crowd to become content creators. Moreover,
traditional content creators like NYTimes don't even understand how much they
are being undercut cents-to-words.

You work out the funnel conversion, hope for some organic spread, and just
pump things out. In a few years, this whole thing could be automated and AI
generated to sway elections and public opinions. All you need is a training
dataset for the targeted population's underlying views and beliefs.

Imagine a startup trying to do this at scale, growing 10% week over week or
something insane. At this point it's basically going to match the velocity of
information across online networks of people.

If this becomes a positive feedback loop where readers start to accelerate the
spread after becoming radicalized - this becomes a social virus.

~~~
dluan
"In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public
discourse anymore."

[https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-
histo...](https://medium.com/initialized-capital/fascism-and-the-historical-
irony-of-facebooks-fake-news-problem-d744b05045fd#.xe5433ci0)

~~~
atmosx
> "In any case, we can’t pretend that engineers are not legislators of public
> discourse anymore."

Legislation is a rather complex sport that requires deep understanding of
repercussions.

I've seen rather skilled blockchain hackers talking economics, finance,
politics and monetary policy. Their understanding of the current system (in
terms of structure) was appalling. One needs to know the role of central banks
before bashing them.

I am afraid that your average engineer will make a pretty incompetent
legislator. So let's leave legislation to legislators... :-)

~~~
jnbiche
> I am afraid that your average engineer will make a pretty incompetent
> legislator. So let's leave legislation to legislators... :-)

I disagree. Aside from a few highly political engineers and/or software devs,
almost all engineers I know insist on actually looking at the facts and
evaluating them to the best of their ability, regardless of their political
inclinations. This is a very rare characteristic in our society, and I can't
help but to believe it's a very virtuous trait to have for a legislator.

Most engineers also aren't inflicted with the lust for power and status like
so many (most?) attorneys I know.

Most engineers also have a pretty rare ability to listen to and to accept
criticism. That's not always something legislators can boast of.

I think we need _more_ scientists, engineers, software professionals, etc. in
our political system, not less.

Also, what exact lack of understanding in terms of "structure" of the current
system did you find appalling in those blockchain hackers? Can you be more
specific?

~~~
ryuker16
that's a techocracy.... unfortunately, many modern horrible regimes are
techocracies since engineering/science majors are the norm outside the west.

Communist governments were super big on STEM and still implemented the same
horseshit policies and woo woo beliefs.

>Most engineers also aren't inflicted with the lust for power and status like
so many (most?) attorneys I know.

In the west, engineering doesn't attract those types. In other countries where
its the quickest way to make buck? Hell yeah!

>I think we need more scientists, engineers, software professionals, etc. in
our political system, not less

I think we need a bigger guild like organization with a lobby. Not some
industry sponsored group either.

~~~
jnbiche
> In the west, engineering doesn't attract those types. In other countries
> where its the quickest way to make buck? Hell yeah!

This is an excellent counterpoint. You're totally right that in many countries
(former communist countries, particularly, as you say), STEM educated elites
often were the top officials.

However, it doesn't detract from my point that in _this_ country, we would
benefit from more scientists and engineers in government.

> I think we need a bigger guild like organization with a lobby. Not some
> industry sponsored group either.

This may help us with professional issues, but it likely won't help our system
of government.

~~~
intended
Take this as a warning - I think your idea is too late.

I've been watching the various attempts at improving education in America and
it smells Exactly like what india/china have.

There's many details but broadly there's 1 major forces that shape this

economics-jobs

1) as normal jobs dry up/stop paying a good wage, it puts a downward pressure
on education in things like politics/English/arts/philosophy and so on. This
means people shift to the only hope left - STEM

Talking to people on forums from America who were exposed to multiple streams
(and not just STEM) I can say you guys have historically enjoyed a deep
insulation/resilience to stupid ideas/half baked ideas. Because you had people
with diverse information, you could always stop a neophyte engineer from
executing a shortest path solution with costs not apparent to engineers.

Once you have no jobs left for those people, parents will force their kids
into the only options left.

This saturates the system with posers - people who pretend to like engineering
but would rather be psychologists, painters, marketers or any non technical
job.

This overloads and blows the fuses in the higher education application
process, which forces them to adapt by adding more criteria and stricter
criteria to get in.

The kinds of engineers you produce tomorrow are going to be unconcerned with
being engineers. They are engineers to finish their first job stint and get an
MBA.

Ethics become a word and a course you waste your time on, because if ethics
mattered you wouldn't be an engineer in the first place.

Any system proposed needs to build with this in mind. I think simply making it
useful to have multi discipline knowledge will be a way to maintain Your
cultural resistance.

Sorry if I'm rambling

~~~
ryuker16
Your 100% right.

Although admittedly in america, our lack of stem focus partially comes from
the cult of money. Brilliant would be scientists and inventors are financially
pushed towards the business, law, & finance fields.

It helps keep keep engineering well paid which is nice....but I suspect we've
could have advanced much further if half the traders and quants on Wall Street
were in an innovation oriented field.

Reminds me of a guy from a top comp science program getting paid to be
basically a secretary in a finance firm.

------
A_COMPUTER
He is doing the same thing to NPR, and by extension NPR's listeners, what he
was doing to low-info right-wingers: telling them what they wanted to hear,
whether or not it's true. He's good at it.

He wants you to believe that he tried, but he just couldn't get the left wing
to fall for it. But anybody who has used Facebook as seen how popular
AddictingInfo-org is, and it is an overtly left wing fake news site. It's not
remotely the only one.

The fake news reporting is itself filled with fake news. And it's easy to find
marks because after the election, many people need to find a scapegoat so they
are turning off their critical faculties. The current complaining about fake
news is a mirror image of the right's disrespect of the "mainstream" media.
For instance all the reporting on the Trump-Russia covert email server
communication matches the formula for fake news, it took a nugget of truth,
twisted it, and tried to ride the lie long enough that by the time it was
exposed as nothing, the election would be over and the "damage" done. But it
wasn't fake news I guess because the outlet has to be small and the target and
victim were reversed. Anybody looking at that should reasonably be upset about
"fake news" but it's categorically ignored by the left. You are not inhumanly
wise and immune to the effects of incentivized bias.

~~~
MaxfordAndSons
> "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of
> infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or
> fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and
> point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler says.

Listening to the audio of the interview, I couldn't help but hear him say the
above with a sneer. He claims to be a registered Democrat, maybe it's true,
but since this is how he makes his living, he clearly doesn't give a fuck in
either direction. It's something I detect from a fairly large portion of
supposed alt-righters online: they don't actually believe that the racism and
fascism they're espousing is righteous or good for them/humanity, but they
just don't give a fuck. Years of living with their main source of
socialization coming via disembodied interactions in the ether of memes,
cynicism, shock material, etc of 4chan and reddit has driven many to a deep
and true nihilism. This guy is the one eyed king troll in the land of the
emotionally blind.

------
greggman
Fascinating. I'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the right.
Or at least not without more proof?

I suspect you'd need a right leaning person with a similar background writing
left bait fake news to have the same impact though. Write fake news about
charter schools doing something bad (charter school puts LGBT students in
detention) or fake churches doing bad (church in Idaho found funneling funds
to Trump campaign) or fake doctors doing something the left would find
atrocious but believable (medical clinic in Utah refuses to help unwed
pregnant teens unless they agree to marry)

I say that because I know lots of traditionally left leaning people who
believe all kinds of unscientific stuff with the same fervor as the "religious
right". Auras, Rieki, Astrology, Homeopathy, Chakra, etc...

~~~
analog31
_Fascinating. I 'm not sure I buy the left isn't just as gullible as the
right. Or at least not without more proof?_

Not proof, but an interesting analogy: The relative success of right- and
left-wing talk radio. Right wing talk radio is a huge industry, left-wing is
practically nonexistent. Maybe it points to an asymmetry in how left- and
right-wingers consume information. Granted, it could also be related to other
factors such as having spare time for listening to talk radio, or having a job
that doesn't require much concentration.

~~~
Slothrop99
I don't think that's correct. My mother is someone who watches left-wing
biased news (MSNBC) all day, for example. And while I wouldn't call NPR
specifically left-wing, they have a heavy establishment bias, and were running
anti-Trump stuff continually through the election. Plus, there is a whole
media establishment out there preaching to the far left (Democracy Now,
"hippie" radio, etc.)

~~~
analog31
I'm thinking in terms of the magnitude of commercial success. As a counter-
anecdote, I live in a liberal enclave -- Madison Wisconsin -- and there is a
successful radio station with continuous right wing talk for several hours
running. They have Limbaugh book-ended with other right wing shows, national
and local. In contrast, attempts at finding a similar market for liberal talk
have failed. One station that made a go of it in my locale just gave up and
switched to a music format.

And the _quality_ was just never there. While I have no use for Limbaugh, I
respect that he delivers a quality product to his audience. In contrast, the
liberal shows just seemed half-assed.

I'm pretty far to the left, but outrage propaganda turns me off. I also just
don't react to the news in a tight feedback loop. I'm open minded, but being
open minded means come back in a decade and see if my opinions have changed.

------
freshhawk
I guess a lot of people don't know the type, judging by the accusations that
his "this was to troll the alt-right" was a lie.

Seems obvious to me, he started with that intent, thought that obviously the
stories would be discredited and the people who bought it would be shamed.

It sometimes happens to organizations that promote an Onion article as real.
It does a lot of damage to their reputations.

Then that didn't happen and he made a lot of money. He was disgusted by how
stupid everyone is, liked the money and justified it to himself that he's
conning money from gullible rubes who are bad people.

I don't know this guy, but I know more than one person just like him.

------
caf
The first "fake news" I remember seeing was about a year ago, and it was
completely apolitical - it was a made-up story about a multiple-fatality car
crash in my city. When I investigated the source, it had several exact copies
of the same article, just set in different cities around the world.

At the time I was completely bewildered as to the motive behind this, but I
can only assume that it's the ad money, as paltry as that would seem. Coler's
protestations notwithstanding.

~~~
nickfromseattle
I was tricked by KNP7.com. If you search "Eminem moves to {city name}" the
exact same article appears for multiple cities including Seattle, New York and
probably dozens of other cities.

~~~
joshmn
Taylor Swift, Miley, and the Biebs himself also moved to my hometown.

------
JonnieCache
This is utterly offensive and this man is utterly corrupt. He claims to be
doing this to discredit his foes, but there's no evidence that he's done any
of the "public denouncing" which he gives as his justification for polluting
the public sphere with his lies. He does however admit to coining it to the
tune of six figures.

If we've learned anything from the twentieth century its that corrupting the
public discourse like this can lead to the slaughter of millions and the
downfall of whole societies. This man and those like him deserve harsh
punishment.

There's a similar interview here, with another left-winger who claims to be
making "satire" and is more outwardly racked with guilt than this man, but who
is also still cashing the adsense checks:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-
the-white-house-because-of-me/?tid=a_inl)

~~~
dmichulke
It almost sounds as if you believe that silencing these fake news will stop
people from believing fake news. I don't think so.

Also, slaughtering millions in the 20th century was usually the job of a big
government in a big country and I have difficulty recalling that "fake news
believers" or any kind of people actually voted for a war or went on the
streets in favor of a war.

And practically always before and during these wars the governments regularly
shouted "fake news" on everything that didn't fit their narrative.

~~~
JonnieCache
I'm not talking about wars - I'm talking about the holocaust and the deaths
from internal repression in the soviet union and maoist china. One of the
preconditions for such things to take place is the corruption of truth in the
public discourse.

I'm sorry if this seems like exaggeration or scaremongering but I find these
stories terrifying far beyond the election of donald trump.

 _> the governments regularly shouted "fake news"_

This is another aspect of what I'm talking about. Once you break the good
faith assumption of truth speaking in the public sphere, it becomes a vicious
cycle as nobody is incentivised to speak truthfully.

Of course the press has always been used to manipulate the public, but this
seems categorically different. The people who are writing these stories are
shamelessly fabricating them, as opposed to uncritically republishing
information fed to them by authority figures. This breaks down interpersonal
trust in society in a way that simply pushing the government line doesn't.

~~~
dmichulke
I think it all three cases one problem was the lack of news. News agencies
were shut down unless they "cooperated".

Therefore having a wide spectrum of media is IMO desirable, even if it means
fake news. The problem starts when the state regulates the media because
that's when having only one (government friendly) source of information
starts.

Finally, I think, the problem is not the liars but the _acting_ believers. If
you fall for such a lie, fine you are entitled to think whatever you want.
However, if you act on it (by threatening or committing violence), then you
become a criminal. But that part is already covered by current legislation.

~~~
tormeh
>Finally, I think, the problem is not the liars but the acting believers. If
you fall for such a lie, fine you are entitled to think whatever you want.
However, if you act on it (by threatening or committing violence), then you
become a criminal. But that part is already covered by current legislation.

It doesn't matter who the problem is, it only matters how to solve it.
Claiming the mainstream media is lying ("lying press"/"Lügenpresse") and
sowing distrust in traditional sources of truth was one of the tactics that
helped Hitler rise to power. I don't know how to prevent this tactic, but the
current approach of letting people just blatantly make shit up and push it as
truth isn't working very well. It's very possible that it's the least bad
approach, but we should at least consider the alternatives before concluding.

------
krige
I think he straight up lied, or "rused" as I think they call it, the
journalist. I mean, the line >>>Coler says his writers have tried to write
fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait.<<< is as blatant
winking and nudging as it can get without spelling it out. In other words
"Liberals never take the bait", he told to a liberal as he was taking the
bait.

~~~
donkeyd
Either that, or they're not very good at writing fake stories for liberals.
They might have different triggers that he's unable to find.

------
visarga
> At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers

Ha! He's hired some shady SEO company to write those. You can buy "spun"
articles by the hundreds from black hat forums. I wouldn't be surprised if
they were actually written by some poor Indian. No way can he pay 25 writers
with $20-30K/month. It's just a get rich quick scheme, a spammer, but one that
destroys a lot of public value in order to profit a little.

~~~
vidarh
Fiverr. You can buy a huge amount of unique ("unspun") articles with $20k-$30k
month.

Maybe he spins them too, but getting huge amount of unique content cheaply is
trivial if you don't care much about the quality.

------
CalChris
HN has a hide button. Click it and something's gone, no questions asked. That
should be the standard.

FB has some hide buttons. Click it and up pops a menu. Click _Hide Ad_. Up
pops a dialog asking _Why don 't you want to see this?_ Choose _It 's not
relevant to me_. This is followed by a _Thanks_ dialog. And after it's hidden,
it's not hidden. There's a grey box saying and asking _You won 't see ads like
it. Undo?_

FB also doesn't have some hide buttons. For suggested pages, I was getting a
completely offensive German page. There was not way to hide it. And it showed
up regularly. To be clear, I don't speak German and I really wasn't interested
in what the page was purveying.

Their iPhone app is even worse.

If there's anyone from Facebook reading this, y'all are idiots.

Google News is pretty much the same. Frankly, everyone is pretty much the
same.

I should be able to click hide or left swipe and it's gone. And no, I don't
want to answer a quick five minute customer support questionnaire. Y'all don't
like Ad Blockers? Well, I don't like not being in control of what's in my
face.

~~~
j2kun
Problem is, when every fake news story comes from a new fake news website,
clicking hide doesn't help for the future.

~~~
CalChris
I can't dictate what FB does with my hide clicks since I don't really have
them right now. Literally it takes 30s to fight through their _helpful_
screens.

But they should use hide clicks to determine whether to show that entry to
others. I can imagine there are sophisticated ways of doing that. But it
starts with that vote and right now FB, Google, basically everyone, is saying:

    
    
      We don't want to give you that vote.
      We just want to give you this ad
      because that's what we're getting paid for.
    

When I get a Breitbart story listed on Google News, I'm wondering about the
programmers who wrote the policy that served it. What were they thinking?
_Rarely_. Were they _Rarely_ thinking? I could maybe slap them upside the head
with a Swipe Left but apparently they know better.

~~~
j2kun
That being said, you're proposing introducing a dynamical system, and
dynamical systems are freaking hard to get right. Extremely sensitive, with
counterintuitive consequences. If you want the engineers to even understand
_why_ pages are served the way they are, or to improve the quality, you should
not be advocating for user-submitted votes.

------
vinhboy
This story is fascinating to me. I also run a couple of these "wordpress"
informational type sites, but never in my dream did I thought about publishing
fake news to make money.

Too bad I was not smart enough to get into this business.

I wish he would be more honest about it. I am pretty sure he's just doing it
for the money. I don't blame him. That's good money.

The moral and ethical dilemma of it is kinda murky. Is it really his fault
people are so stupid?

~~~
msane
Wow. Thanks for the insight into this psychology. It's all greed with you then
isn't it? You'll lie to people and de-educate them for good money. Perhaps you
would consider being a slum lord or a pimp or a drug dealer for the right
price?

~~~
pakitan
Do you really think it's possible to de-educate any further people who think
the moon landing was faked?

~~~
usrusr
Just as education, de-education is a lifelong process.

~~~
pakitan
If one lacks education in the first place, they don't have much to de-, do
they?

~~~
msane
I suppose you would watch the world burn.

------
kordless
> But, he says, dozens, maybe hundreds of entrepreneurs will be ready to take
> his place.

This is one of many examples of the dialog where this individual is speaking
for others while ironically indicating he's running a "business". The
fabrication and willful spread of disinformation is a powerfully disruptive
behavior.

~~~
derrickdirge
This is a common "troll" mentality.

Truly they just get a thrill from getting a rise out of someone (and/or
there's an economic motive, as is the case here), but they're able to post-
rationalize it as a helpful service to their victims. They're pointing out
areas of weakness; or they're playing 'devil's advocate'; or they're
demonstrating the folly in engaging with an unreasonable person.

One of the things I find most frightening about people is that, generally, we
all think we're the good guy.

~~~
Pokepokalypse
>This is a common "troll" mentality.

Also the justification for nuclear proliferation. . .

------
paulajohnson
I notice that his attempts to seed fake news on the liberal side always got
promptly debunked. I think this election is going to be the high water mark
for fake news, its just that liberals are ahead of the curve in being
skeptical about information on the Net.

What this needs is a click-baitey headline to make it go viral on the Right.
Something like "You won't believe how this liberal guy made $$$ scamming
conservatives!".

~~~
ryuker16
I thought so too but on some issues like GMO, gun control, diamonds, etc.
liberals believe fake news all the time. Breitbart came from a guy who learned
the business working at Huffington post.

Post an inaccurate article about evil Monsanto(and ignore its bigger gmo
competitors) or the long dead debeers cartel(diamonds aren't pricy because of
debeers).

The load of horse shit on gun controls blows my mind.

~~~
philovivero
Ding! "Left isn't fooled by fake news" makes me just shake my head in
disbelief. You named three or four in what... two minutes?

I'm glad you spent the 120 seconds of your life enumerating the ones that work
over and over and over again. I wasn't even going to bother.

Left/Right just have different triggers that shut their brains down and make
them believe what they're told without any thought whatsoever.

~~~
ryuker16
I missed my thanksgiving flight

------
castratikron
>He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in
Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot. "What that turned
into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual
legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana
based on something that had just never happened," Coler says.

Amazing.

------
ndr
Quote 0:

    
    
      What that turned into was a state representative in the House
      in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from
      using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something
      that had just never happened," Coler says.
    

Quote 1:

    
    
      Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his 
      fake news empire. He doesn't think fake news swayed the
      election.
    

Quote 2:

    
    
      However, Coler insists this is not about money. It's about 
      showing how easily fake news spreads. And fake news spread wide 
      and far before the election. When I pointed out to Coler that 
      the money gave him a lot of incentive to keep doing it 
      regardless of the impact, he admitted that was "correct."
    
    

Did he created his own bubble to justify this?

------
WhitneyLand
Jestin Coler is a cancer and his actions should be made illegal. It seems
possible such a law could be narrowly applied such that it would prove
constitutional. Judicial review could weigh the value to society of false
speech, or lying, against the erosion of integrity in the free press.

One example of a false speech review was the stolen valor act. Lot of doors
left open here;
[http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/the_first_amendment_a...](http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/the_first_amendment_and_the_right_to_lie)

~~~
veidr
As long as we're making up fantasy laws to solve this problem, why don't we
just outlaw being lazy, stupid, and gullible?

~~~
jknoepfler
Playing devil's advocate here, but why don't we? It's not the worst idea
anyone has ever hand.

I sort of think epistemological pollution is an externality of being
stupid/gullible that we should make people liable for.

Laziness is pretty difficult to operationalize, but if you were literally too
lazy to feed your children that would be a form of criminal negligence. So we
do, to an extent, already do this.

~~~
freshhawk
Why don't we? Because thankfully some people understand how power works.
Especially the power to imprison people for subjective qualities.

Depending on who's judging, this comment could get you in some legal trouble
if those laws existed.

Flawed people adjudicate and enforce laws. Because they are people. Forgetting
that is dangerous.

~~~
jknoepfler
We already do this very liberally in the United States judicial system:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negligence).

This has nothing to do with power, and everything to do with a setting minimum
legal bar for due diligence below which an individual can be held accountable
in a court of law.

------
jlubawy
Makes me really question if this article is fake to prove some sort of point,
it's really hard to know (for sure) anymore

------
wobbleblob
If people see a headline that doesn't reinforce what they already believe,
they dismiss it as obviously alt-right fake news, or obviously part of the
liberal media conspiracy.

Maybe it's a good idea not to unfriend your [Wrong side] voting facebook
friends and relatives, but to keep your network diverse. At the very least you
won't be as utterly shocked when [Wrong side] wins, even though absolutely no
one you know would ever vote for [Wrong side].

~~~
philovivero
The real problem right now is if you say anything that identifies you as being
in someone's [Wrong side], they will attack your livelihood and send you death
threats and tell you you're voting for Hitler (yes, many on the right saw
Hillary as Hitler, so this works both directions).

We have a society that has been taught:

0) Truth is bad, honesty is a sin 1) Intellectualism is bad 2) Your feelings
are as valid as facts 3) [Wrong side] are actually evil 4) [Wrong think] is as
bad as murder/rape 5) Do whatever is required given the above

Lawlessness, riots, class struggle, fake news. It all seems a logical
extension of what we're being taught.

Point 0 above might seem a little odd to you. So ask yourself: what is the
dominant mode of communication in society today? Get up, walk around, observe
who is telling you what. Remember, billboards, magazines, TV, salesmen,
politicians all count.

Also, ask yourself how long anyone's political career (or even just regular
old career) would last if they were honest and truthful 100% of the time?

------
jondubois
I think that all the news which we consume is misleading in one way or
another; whether they deceive us through outright misinformation, unevenly
balanced arguments, or priming (through repeated exposure to particular
concepts).

While these small fake news creators deceive us through outright
misinformation, big news corporations deceive us through priming.

If you repeatedly draw peoples' attentions to the same concepts and ideas over
and over again; they will incorporate these ideas as part of their core belief
system and it will cause them to block out real information which opposes
those ideas.

Small independent 'news' creators just don't have the necessary scale to
leverage priming effects, so they are forced to resort to outright
'sensational' misinformation to push forward their agendas.

I think that fake news is important for society, just like religion; sometimes
the intention behind the text is more important than the actual information
content within.

~~~
makomk
Definitely. For example, compare these two Wired articles about the
possibility of rigging the US election by hacking voting systems:

[https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-
rig...](https://www.wired.com/2016/10/wireds-totally-legit-guide-rigging-
presidential-election/) was from before the election and claimed that it would
be virtually impossible, would require a conspiracy of thousands to get past
all the safeguards, and was ridiculous.

[https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-
rest...](https://www.wired.com/2016/11/hacked-not-audit-election-rest/) after
the election claims that actually, it's well established that they're
hackable, and that the audits are so ineffective it's almost as though they're
designed not to detect hacking.

Two completely contradictory positions, both backed up with an arsenal of
facts and expert opinions and presented as definite truth. All that changed is
that the idea the election results could be hacked became anti-Trump rather
than pro-Trump.

------
failrate
The problem I have is that I have never seen a denouncement. If there have
been any denouncements, then they have not had the same amount of impact as
the initiating fake news lie.

------
tigerBL00D
If a post is being pitched as news, then some amount of fact checking needs to
take place. Traditional media has been doing that forever and identifying
sources of information, since they have to uphold their reputation. I think in
this day and age the responsibility falls on Facebook, or whatever is
publishing the "news". Facebook could use a standardized and easily
recognizable visual language to indicate how "newsworthy" a given post is.
Heck we now have an animated language for reactions, why can't we have this?

I would be cautious about outright filtering content without giving user some
way to set thresholds. It feels like handing way too much power to the
algorithm. I want to make the final (informed) decision on what to read and
what to believe.

~~~
zigzigzag
_Traditional media has been doing that forever_

Have they? I got to admit I used to think this too. But in the past few years
I've had quite a few occasions to talk to the media due to them covering a
topic I happen to be (publicly) knowledgeable about. I've been quoted in a lot
of media stories in various highbrow outlets. So I've been approached by
journalists a whole bunch of times for stories.

However, I have never been approached by a fact checker. If news firms were
routinely doing fact checks, I'd expect to see

1) Way fewer obvious mistakes that could be detected with 60 seconds Googling

2) Fact checkers emailing me as part of cross-checking stories they're doing
on my area of specialism

But I see (1) a lot and (2) never. I've also never heard any journalist refer
to fact checkers or tell me to expect my statements to be fact checked, or
actually seen any evidence of these people existing at all.

------
axelfreeman
He doesn't need to display ads to make his point. But he does. There is also
no "public denouncing" of anything here. (Maybe change the text after 1 hour
or something)

He just said that because he don't want to be the bad guy in front of the
reporter and his family.

------
meira
So npr created a fake news based on a fake news created by a Hillary
supporter. Let's track down another fake news creator. Who wrote this?

------
matt_wulfeck
> _" FBI Agent Suspected In Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead In Apparent Murder-
> Suicide." The story is completely false_

Yes this story false. What's not false is that a DNC staffer was found
murdered in DC and nothing was taken from his pockets right after the DNC
email leaks. Assange suggested he was the source and offered up a $25k
reward[0].

1\. [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/10/assange-
implies-m...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/08/10/assange-implies-
murdered-dnc-staffer-was-wikileaks-source.html)

~~~
ec109685
Assange could have made things clear by confirming he was the source.

Otherwise, it is ineuendo:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Com...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_email_leak)

------
kriro
My cynic takeaway: it seems like the concerns over falling ad revenues due to
ad-blockers are exaggerated.

~~~
kristjansson
There's probably also a relationship between users likely to click on these
things, and users likely to have ad block off.

------
dpeterson
The MSM is butt hurt they don't control the narrative anymore. The last
election proved that. They are scared. Their current strategy is to label
their call for censorship as limiting the reach of fake news. Of course
everything not in line with whatever narrative they control is fake news. They
find some real fake news and attempt to blur the lines in people's heads by
associating real fake news with anything not MSM.

------
dqv
When I got to the midpoint of the article, I started to wonder if the author
was going to tell me at the end that the whole article was fake news.

------
bitJericho
Wow this is really interesting. I did the satire writing thing and was
disgusted when people believed it without question. I didn't want my real name
associated with it, and so I would be unable to promote it. Promoting it under
a fake name to people who believed it was distasteful to me, and so I just
kinda quit after only writing a few articles.

------
EEGuy
What to do about fake news?

Some suggestions[1] from John Bothwick Jeff Jarvis.

I particularly like #4. "Make the brands of those sources more visible to
users".

\-------

[] [http://buzzmachine.com/2016/11/18/call-cooperation-fake-
news...](http://buzzmachine.com/2016/11/18/call-cooperation-fake-news/)

------
dmfdmf
Since the government had taken over education aren't they responsible for
churning out morons who can't think for themselves and distinguish fake news
from real news? Perhaps that was their goal all along.

~~~
insertnickname
When companies fail, consumers go somewhere else. When the government fails,
we give it more money. The real problem with government is not enough
spending.

~~~
neom
Not enough or misapplied?

~~~
insertnickname
That's the point.

------
hartator
trolltrace.com becoming reality.

------
sethx
Am I the only one who had a deja vu reading this article?

------
LargeCompanies
And fake news the majority of it on Facebook is shared by Trump supporters.

A demographic who are neophytes....

~~~
LargeCompanies
Im just sharing what Im seeing ... older demographic are not tech/Internet
savvy and voting data shows that demographic's majority voted for Trump (no
matter what I think of him and or Clinton .. i didnt vote for either).

~~~
throwanem
Possible older folks are less likely to lie to exit pollers, too?

------
natural219
Flagging this issue, again. It's a one-sided, polarized political issue.

