SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, Insightful) by bradley13 on Thursday November 24 2016, @07:34PM
The problem, as I've written before, is that someone will be empowered to define what is, and what is not "fake news". That is a lot of power, and it will be abused.
- The "Flat Earth Society" exists. Do they really believe the earth is flat? Should we censor them?
- The KKK exists. Stormfront exists. The Communist Party exists. Deluded idiots all. Shall we censor them, too?
Once an organization starts censoring, the program will only grow. The boundaries will shift. The people empowered to decide what is "correct" and what is "fake" will, inevitably, prefer sites that align with their personal views.
Since virtually all Silicon Valley companies are SJW-converged, this will inevitably lead to suppression of conservative and right-wing views, while tolerating rather extreme progressive and left-wing content.
tl;dr: Censorship is censorship, it doesn't matter what excuse is used.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @08:18PM
> - The KKK exists. Stormfront exists. The Communist Party exists. Deluded idiots all. Shall we censor them, too?
Are the KKK censored because the local newspaper won't print their letters to the editor?
Are you one of those libruls who thinks refusing to support something is censorship?
Because I haven't seen anyone say the government should get involved.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Thursday November 24 2016, @09:45PM
Since virtually all Silicon Valley companies are SJW-converged [...]
Specifically,
The following is a list of SJW converged organizations.
Beamdog
Django
ESPN
Facebook
Gawker Media
GitHub
Google
The Guardian
LWN.net
Mozilla
National Union of Students (NUS)
O'Reilly Media
Reddit
Shopify
SocialAutopsy.com
Strange Loop
Target
Twitter
WTAE Pittsburgh
-- http://sjwlist.com/Organizations [sjwlist.com]
The same site offers "a complete catalog of Social Justice Warriors."