
How to Destroy the Business Model of Breitbart and Fake News - rgejman
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/opinion/sunday/how-to-destroy-the-business-model-of-breitbart-and-fake-news.html
======
sheraz
Here is another narrative:

Attack the business models of companies who produce content we find offensive,
politically incorrect, or don't align with our world view -- yet are still
protected under the first amendment.

The problem is that Mr Phillips mentioned in the article must lack a sense of
humor and/or information literacy if he thought he was reading hate speech. He
was reading an opinion / sarcasm piece from Milo, Breitbart's in-house
provocateur.

It is such a tiresome narrative that the liberal media outlets continue to
trot out their own versions of fake news when they attempt to label breitbart
sexist, racist, homophobic, or antisemitic.

It is sites like the nytimes who, through their reporting, have completely
defanged the labels of "racist" and "hate speech" to the point that they mean
nothing.

Calling women fat and unattractive for their use of birth control is not hate
speech. It might be in poor taste, but it is not hate speech. Mr Phillips, the
professor quoted in the article, would do well to leave his ivory tower and
actually talk to someone from another walk of life. Leave the coddled campus
life, head to a bowling alley, and listen to the Thursday league banter. Maybe
then, in the cloud of rough and jockular language Mr Phillips and his ilk will
see a small piece of the substrate of Americans who tell dirty jokes. Who make
fun of their spouses. Who call each other names (often politically incorrect)
and do so as members of a tribe.

They read breitbart and Drudge Report because those sites offer an alternative
narrative to what comes from regular mass media.

Just because it is a different point of view does not make it fake or hateful
or undeserving of ad dollars.

How does this end? My guess is it won't matter in the end. Thankfully.

Breitbarts traffic shows no signs of slowing. That inventory vacated by the
brands too weak to ignore these internet-crybullies will be snapped up by the
brands who want to reach a conservative readership.

~~~
jbob2000
> Hate speech is speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of
> attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or
> sexual orientation

> Calling women fat and unattractive for their use of birth control is not
> hate speech

Something isn't quite lining up here...

~~~
sheraz
Calling someone fat and unattractive is NOT hate speech.

Besides, whatever happened to just ignoring it and getting on with one's life?
It is this constant cry-bully public outcry and constant whinging that has
propelled people like Milo into the daily news cycle.

~~~
jbob2000
Right, calling a person fat and unattractive isn't hate speech. Calling "women
fat and unattractive for using birth control" is. Nice strawman though.

~~~
sheraz
Strawman-schrawman....

Your threshold for hate speech much be pretty low if you think "fat and
unattractive" fits the definition.

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relics443
So I only see right-wing fake news sites called out by Mr Phillips. Is he not
worried about the damage that left-wing fake news causes?

~~~
gotofritz
Given the rise Trump, Brexit, AfD in Germany, M5S in Italy, and all the rest,
it seems obvious the problem at the moment is mainly right-wing fake news
sites.

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rgejman
Crowdsourcing a "hitting them where it hurts" approach to fake news seems like
an interesting and promising strategy to eliminate the income streams of
websites that promote hatred. I am trying to think of the downsides, i.e. how
will this come to bite us in the butt...

~~~
amorphid
A version of that idea was the winning project from the Reboot Democracy
hackathon last month in San Francisco. They called it AdStrike.

[https://twitter.com/rebootdem/status/808456933795475456](https://twitter.com/rebootdem/status/808456933795475456)

[http://adstrike.us/](http://adstrike.us/)

~~~
rgejman
Very neat. Thanks for the link.

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DougN7
I think articles like this are what helped Trump get elected. People are tired
of being told what to think. They're tired of SJWs. They're tired of the
pitchforks and public shaming.

Nobody changes by bring attacked.

~~~
gotofritz
Well, doing nothing and hoping the whole thing goes away also doesn't seem to
get us anywhere.

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trav4225
We need more "real news" like all the mainstream reports about how the
Russians just penetrated our power grid. ;-)

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Turing_Machine
Complaining about "fake news" while citing "BuzzFeed News" as a source?

Mote. Beam.

~~~
yifanlu
BuzzFeed News has actually become a pretty reputable organization in the past
couple of years. They have quality journalists working there (according to
journalist friends). I was also surprised when I heard about this since I
associate them with listicles, but appearently that's how they fund things...

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Neliquat
Pretty ballsy coming from nytimes. If this election taught me anything, they
are not much better than breitbart.

