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posted by janrinok on Thursday November 24 2016, @03:29PM   Printer-friendly
from the peeling-the-onion dept.

The Washington Post published an interview [...] with Paul Horner, who has made his living off of writing viral news hoaxes on sites like Facebook for the past several years. "But in recent months, Horner has found the fake-news ecosystem growing more crowded, more political and vastly more influential: In March, Donald Trump's son Eric and his then-campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, even tweeted links to one of Horner's faux-articles. His stories have also appeared as news on Google."

Although Horner compares himself to parody and satire sites like The Onion (though less obvious), he's now concerned about the influence of fake news. A few excerpts from the interview:

On why he has seen greater popularity recently:

Honestly, people are definitely dumber. They just keep passing stuff around. Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that's how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn't care because they'd already accepted it. It's real scary. I've never seen anything like it.

How he thinks people should treat his fake news:

I thought they'd fact-check it, and it'd make them look worse. I mean that's how this always works: Someone posts something I write, then they find out it's false, then they look like idiots. [... But] they just keep running with it! They never fact-check anything!

On the recent push by Facebook and Google to target fake news sites:

Yeah, I mean — a lot of the sites people are talking about, they're just total BS sites. There's no creativity or purpose behind them. I'm glad they're getting rid of them. I don't like getting lumped in with Huzlers. I like getting lumped in with the Onion. The stuff I do — I spend more time on it. There's purpose and meaning behind it. I don't just write fake news just to write it.

[...] I'm glad they're getting rid of those sites. I just hope they don't get rid of mine, too.

Related reporting from Alternet.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:16PM

    by jmorris (4844) on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:16PM (#432440)

    Bzzt. Wrong answer. Go look at the election returns for that last couple of cycles. The Republican numbers have been remarkably stable, showing little variation. It is the Democrat column that is interesting. It varied about eight million from the "Hope n Change" high in 2008 to the dismal turnout in 2016. Especially in the Rust Belt States that the election turned on. For all the saturation media about what a *ist Trump was, all the #NeverTrump virtue signaling by (((certain people))) off in a corner doing something pointless with Gay Mormon, in the end the Republicans turned out about the same number of people at the polling places. They were only slightly different people but the fact it didn't hurt the down ticket means they were close enough to Republican they voted like one all the way down so it was more a case of motivating a different subset to come out and vote for Trump.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:38PM (#432499)

    Shhhh! At this point, I'm tempted just to let it be, and let the liberals dig themselves in deeper.

    ALL CONSERVATIVES ARE DUMB. ALL TRUMP VOTERS ARE RACIST. ALL RIGHT WING NEWS IS FAKE. DRINK YOUR OVALTINE.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @06:43PM (#432503)

    > It varied about eight million from the "Hope n Change" high in 2008 to the dismal turnout in 2016.

    2008 was the highest percentage turnout in decades. Incumbent parties generally lose enthusiasm the longer they are in office. In fact, the number of times a party has held the presidency for three terms in a row is exactly once since FDR's four terms resulted in the passage of the 22nd amendment limiting a candidate to two terms. You are ascribing meaning to facts that are meaningless. Pretty standard for the alt-white because y'all are kinda stupid that way.

    > #NeverTrump virtue signaling by (((certain people)))

    Take your racist shit somewhere else.
    For anyone else reading along who doesn't know what that racist goatfucker just did: triple parentheses [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by jmorris on Friday November 25 2016, @05:40AM

      by jmorris (4844) on Friday November 25 2016, @05:40AM (#432756)

      > #NeverTrump virtue signaling by (((certain people)))

      Take your racist shit somewhere else.

      The meaning is a bit more subtle than the progs at Wikipedia are going to be able to grasp... or allow anyone else to edit in. The "stormfags" use it as a bludgeon against anyone known or suspected to be Jewish or sympathetic to them. Nazis hate Jews, here is my shocked face. Most of the rest of the Alt-Right use it to call out Jews who don't call attention to their tribal allegiance to a foreign power as they expound on what "we" Americans should do. I was mostly ripping on the #NeverTrumo guys, who are dominated by the NeoCons, who are almost all Jews. They grabbed their ball and left the Party, I want to make sure they stay gone, that the door stays closed to their return. It is doubly pathetic in the case of guys like Kristol and Goldberg since Trump is probably more pro-Israel than they are themselves, they just fear Trump really means it when he says he doesn't plan to shed a lot of American blood in the Middle East fighting pointless wars.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @06:01AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @06:01AM (#432764)

        > The meaning is a bit more subtle than the progs at Wikipedia are going to be able to grasp...

        Take your racial realist "nuance" shit somewhere else you goatfucker. It ain't subtle. You are a fucking nazi, so fuck off.