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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.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday November 24 2016, @05:15PM
So who gets to decide what "false news" is? Some algorithm? A corporation which does censorship? The government?
After all, critics have called Fox News "faux news" for many years. I suspect "false news" is going to come down to "news I don't agree with" much like calling anyone you disagree with mentally ill.
So do we want corporations controlling the definition of what is real and false with algorithms (or Mechanical Turk style outsourcing)?
Wait, before you answer, remember the media mergers going on. LinkedIn is going to be owned by Microsoft soon. They have curated news links, but no one pays attention to them. What happens in a few years, as a hypothetical, when AT&T or Verizon buys out Facebook?
We sure don't want the government deciding what is real or fake news. We've already had that whole revolutionary war thing and freedom of the press as part of the constitution.
Honestly? I think "fake news" is a sign the system is working fine.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @07:52PM
> So who gets to decide what "false news" is?
Obviously the people who write it. This guy deliberately set out to write fake news.
> Honestly? I think "fake news" is a sign the system is working fine.
No, its a sign that the internet is really good at tearing down corrupt institutions but utterly shite at creating new institutions to replace them. For all the bitching about the corrupt media, they had standards. They failed to meet those standards often enough, but 9 times out of 10 they did a good job. They fact-checked, they verified with multiple sources, they passed on stories that couldn't meet those standards and when they screwed up, they were accountable. They printed retractions, they had mechanisms for public self-criticism through an ombudsman, they even fired people who were just too egregious. Even when those people had long distinguished careers (e.g. Dan Rather, Brian Williams).
We are on the way to replacing all of that invisible infrastructure of integrity with ... nothing. Why? Because the human endeavor of journalistic integrity was imperfect. We've turned hysteria over imperfection into an indictment of complete failure. We have made the perfect the enemy of the good and as a result thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gidds on Friday November 25 2016, @12:51PM
Well, for starters, how about the dictionary?
It doesn't take a corporation, government, or authority of any kind to distinguish genuine from fake; it just takes an ability to identify claims and assertions and compare them with reality (inasmuch as it can be determined).
As I said here recently [soylentnews.org], what I don't understand is why people attach so little importance to doing so...
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Tuesday November 29 2016, @02:06AM
I agree but... :)
It takes a lot of work that's why. I'm not claiming to do it to any great extent because I know I spend a hell of a lot of time just keeping up with the more-or-less uncontroversial news (well and a little science, space, some computer stuff and other stuff like that) generated by 8 billion people and that's part of why I'm always late on SoylentNews (I'm below 600 unread stories on the SN RSS feed now, triage is the name of the game). Even if you don't do something from scratch but only go through every little piece that someone else has documented (a situation which is rare to find oneself in to begin with because plenty of people won't even provide links never mind detailed reasoning) it would take ten or a hundred times more time than I have (and I'm an unproductive loser somewhere close to the end or reincarnation so good luck to anyone who actually does important stuff like having a life). It would be great if we could create tools that made all this much easier, it will happen some day (and I love SoylentNews), it kind of must (RSS helps a lot, I'm thinking about whether one could build something more specialized on top of it ← might be the wrong direction).
There's a reason why other places I won't mention by name (and don't visit except a few times a year because I don't have the time!) talk about weaponized autism, they're right about that :)
And the rabbit hole is always deeper no matter how many actual Wikileaks files and actual Snowden files you read. Thus people need to cut it off at some point and unfortunately many cut off at "listening to the news" and some (perhaps even more) at "whatever I already believe" or "whatever my parents/peers/friends thought/think" or "the opposite of whatever...".
Often it's hard to blame anyone for that (as if one has any right to blame them anyway since it's their life).
I suspect people who either despair or celebrate at this —at that insight— turn into some form of fascists (including those opting to create or peddle lies for personal gain of some sort) and people who don't despair are able to believe in some form of democracy and/or freedom/liberty.
So I guess I'm saying: don't despair :) (and always remember to take breaks! There's more to life than being "right" or knowing "the truth").
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