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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, Interesting) by fritsd on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:21PM

    by fritsd (4586) on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:21PM (#432444) Journal

    The left progressives are the party of oppression now, not the gun-toting rednecks, and even their own kinds are aware of their hypocrisy.

    Could you please give a link explaining how the Green Party or Jill Stein or the Humane Party or the Party for Socialism and Liberation are the party of oppression now?

    Yes, I'm taking the piss, because the Democrat Party is economically quite far right, just like the Republican Party. You hardly have *any* left progressives.

    Somehow, there's a big gaping crater in the centre of the surface of political compass of the USA, that nobody dared to fill up.

    Like where the German SPD or the Dutch PvdA or the French PS occupy quite a broad blot, overlapping with the other large parties. Economically centre-left, party for the working class people, socially centrist to slightly progressive. Normally attracts 30-60 % of voters depending on what they did wrong in the previous government. Why do you not have representation for those voters? It is weird.

    In Britain, Tony Blair dragged the Labour Party (which occupied that spot) to the right, with his neo-liberal politics. Maybe Obama and Clinton(s) dragged the Democrat Party too far to the right, too.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:52PM

    by digitalaudiorock (688) on Thursday November 24 2016, @04:52PM (#432457) Journal

    Could you please give a link explaining how the Green Party or Jill Stein or the Humane Party or the Party for Socialism and Liberation are the party of oppression now?

    I'm seeing a trend now where any accusations of "fake news", even when true...something that everyone should be appalled by...are being branded as some sort of attack on free speech. This is almost indistinguishable from the manner in which everything related to race/gender/sexual preference equality, along with countless other important issues, have been trivialized and branded "political correctness". So that's apparently the "oppression" going on here. This "fake news" is apparently the new politically correct SJW snowfake...whatever all that shit's supposed to mean.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:27PM

      by jmorris (4844) on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:27PM (#432469)

      Because we have all seen the list being floated around the Left and their media operations, they all unerringly point back to a list put out by Melissa Zimdar, an until now utterly unknown cog in the Prog brainwashing machine. Almost like an order came down on a hidden listserv, but we know that is juts conspiracy theorizing. (cough, journolist, cough)

      Google will give you her list easy enough and ALL of the leftist hate targets are on there, deemed 'fake news' and ready for the banhammer. So carry your lying ass off somewhere stupid, clueless folk congregate because you can't sell it here.

      Yea there is some chaff on that list, some real clickbait typosquatters and such, but it isn't hard to notice Project Veritas, Breitbart, The Blaze (crazy but not fake), Twitchy, Zerohedge, RedState (cucked, not fake), IJR, etc. The only one who didn't was Drudge but we know that oversight will be corrected. Now note who ISN'T on the list. No Progressive outlet, not even Huffington Post.

      • (Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:52PM

        by digitalaudiorock (688) on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:52PM (#432482) Journal

        No Progressive outlet, not even Huffington Post.

        Wow...There's a big difference between slanted and fake. There are sites out there swearing that Trump won the popular vote ffs.

        • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday November 24 2016, @10:32PM

          by butthurt (6141) on Thursday November 24 2016, @10:32PM (#432633) Journal
          • (Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Friday November 25 2016, @04:40AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 25 2016, @04:40AM (#432742) Journal
            I too overwhelmingly won the popular vote (apart from people voting for candidates running for election and a bunch of write-ins who weren't).
        • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday November 25 2016, @05:13AM

          by jmorris (4844) on Friday November 25 2016, @05:13AM (#432753)

          There's a big difference between slanted and fake.

          One word: Wikileaks. Peddle that shit elsewhere pal, HuffingPaint wasn't biased, they were on the same Org Chart with HRC.

          Now, compare the made up shit they were doing, including that bullcrap "disclaimer" on every article and tell me why they are "real news" and breitbart.com is "fake news." Remember, that is what is under discussion here, please try to keep up. Considering their editor in chief did end up in the Trump White House you could argue (and I wouldn't seriously dispute) they are AS BAD as Huffpo.

          • (Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Friday November 25 2016, @02:50PM

            by digitalaudiorock (688) on Friday November 25 2016, @02:50PM (#432850) Journal

            Peddle that shit elsewhere pal, HuffingPaint wasn't biased, they were on the same Org Chart with HRC.

            Much the way Fox News is always on the Republican "org chart", and while they're biased, I wouldn't lump them in with "fake news" sites either, even though they often get their facts seriously wrong.

            The fact that you think HP is "fake news" is a pretty good sign that you believe sites that actually are.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @03:06AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @03:06AM (#432721)

        Still not engaging with reality huh?