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from the no-more-profits-from-false-prophets dept.
Google and Facebook finally announced steps to tackle fake news on their respective platforms this week following increasing pressure from critics eager to halt the flow of falsehoods online.
Both companies said they will prohibit fake news websites from advertising on their platforms, thus reducing the exposure of such articles to the public while also starving the companies of an important source of advertising income.
The move comes after the companies received a wave of criticism over its role in propagating misinformation, particularly in this election cycle in which many observed that a bitter partisan war was potentially worsened by polarizing news sources touting untrue assertions. While the technology companies have in the past been hesitant to mediate the flow of news, this change might signal a change in thought as they come to grip with the real-life implications of lackluster surveillance on their platforms.
Wrongthink will not be permitted, citizens.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @10:59AM
What non-fake media? Better still, what is "fake"?
Is it fake to sensationalize to gain marketplace buzz? They all do it. It's a business, after all.
Is it fake to adopt an unbalanced opinion-shaping narrative? They all do that too.
Is it merely positing the empirically false?
Maybe the core question is, "What is journalism?".
(Score: 1) by moondoctor on Friday November 18 2016, @03:51PM
>Maybe the core question is, "What is journalism?".
Now we're getting somewhere... it's a very interesting question. Journalism is not a business in the sense that it's purpose is to create wealth, and holds to different ethical standards. A frightening amount of what is represented as 'journalism' these days is opinion, innuendo and worse.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 18 2016, @04:41PM
Journalism requires standards and accountability. If you won't print retractions, if you won't fire people who fail to apply standards like fact-checking, then its not journalism.
(Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Friday November 18 2016, @08:53PM
Given that MSM (WTVT: Fox channel 13 in Tampa Bay, FL) did fire journalists who refused to present false information as fact I'm not sure where you think you are going to get 'non-fake' news in the land of the free.
There is a very old joke from the 80s about communist Russia and the press. "The difference between the US and Russia is that the Soviets know their press is controlled." Here we live in the delusion that the US has a free press .. and we do, sort of, to a degree, kind of, or we did, once, a long long time ago.
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday November 19 2016, @03:52AM
The US does have a free press. Free in the sense that the press can publish most whatever it wants, whether true or not. This goes back at least till, IIRC, Jefferson vs Adams, where each bought newspapers to publish their versions of the truth, whether actually true or not.
It's the problem with freedom, it includes the freedom to do dishonest shit and as long as people support it, what can you do?