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posted by
n1
on Saturday November 19 2016, @11:52PM
from the so-when-does-real-news-become-fake-news dept.
from the so-when-does-real-news-become-fake-news dept.
Earlier this week Google announced that its advertising tools will soon be closed to websites that promote fake news, a policy that could cut off revenue streams for publications that peddle hoaxes on platforms like Facebook.
The Verge reports:
The decision comes at a critical time for the tech industry, whose key players have come under fire for not taking neccesary steps to prevent fake news from proliferating across the web during the 2016 US election. It's thought that, given the viral aspects of fake news, social networks and search engines were gamed by partisan bad actors intending to influence the outcome of the race.
What constitutes 'fake' news?
Who decides what is 'fake'?
Who is a 'partisan bad actor'?
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I'm mentally OVERDRAWN! What's that SIGNPOST up ahead? Where's ROD
STERLING when you really need him?
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday November 20 2016, @12:56PM
You're not wrong, but:
(a) So what? People have been telling lies as long as there have been people.
(b) Where do you draw the line? We have fiction - every novel ever written is a lie. We have parody sites, like The Onion, that are happy to sucker people into taking them seriously. We have April Fools' Jokes [youtube.com]. Where are you going to draw the line on "fake news", and who are you going to empower to draw it?
The US ideal of freedom of speech should hold; it's too important to relinquish, just to save a few people from being confused...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:40PM
Cue the rightists jumping all over themselves to scream that Google and Facebook are private companies and aren't bound by the constitution, so they can do whatever they want.
...Curious why they haven't yet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @06:10PM
Actually this time they're silent on that regard because "freedom of speech"!! It is amusing, I wish I could pull up the comments whee constitutional worries were blown off by "its a private company, don't like it? Go somewhere else!"
All because they think it is some attempt to dethrone their guy or come down on conservatives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @08:36PM
Actually, I see this argument more from leftist when a company is doing something to promote their narrative, and more resignation from the right that the market will eventually correct itself.
But yes, they are private companies, and they can do as they wish.
And people are free to complain about it (event though news of such will never get reported now) and take their business elsewhere.
But now we have a clear indication that google and Facebook are in the business of yellow journalism, and I'm happy to watch it all burn.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday November 21 2016, @12:28AM
(b) Where do you draw the line? We have fiction - every novel ever written is a lie. We have parody sites, like The Onion, that are happy to sucker people into taking them seriously. We have April Fools' Jokes. Where are you going to draw the line on "fake news", and who are you going to empower to draw it?
The US ideal of freedom of speech should hold; it's too important to relinquish, just to save a few people from being confused...
I don't claim to have a practical solution. And I certainly AM NOT ADVOCATING for actual suppression of speech. But I could, for example, think it reasonable if a site that aims at deliberate parody actually displays with some sort of "parody" tag somewhere, or a work of actual fiction is somehow flagged as such.
I'm not in favor of censorship, but I am in favor of education and information. If there's a potential way to inform people of the status of certain fictional or parody sites in a straightforward way (while not censoring them), I'd be all for it. I don't know if there's a practical way to do it... but that's one sort of thing I might be in favor of.