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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @07:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 24 2016, @07:41PM (#432530)

    > Change We Can Believe In

    Ok, the Obama campaign published a 64-page plan detailing exactly what that meant.
    They called it The Blueprint for Change [ontheissues.org]

    Here's the TL:DR:

    1. Expand access to contraception; reduce unintended pregnancy so there would be less need for abortion
    2. Protect consumers with Credit Card Bill of Rights.
    3. More accountability in subprime mortgages.
    4. Fight job discrimination to give women equal footing at jobs.
    5. Remove discriminatory barriers to the right to vote.
    6. Reduce recidivism by providing ex-offender supports.
    7. Ban racial profiling & eliminate disparities in sentencing.
    8. Fight to rid our communities of meth.
    9. Expand drug courts; help prisoners with substance abuse.
    10. Children’s First Agenda: zero to five early education.
    11. $4,000 college tuition for 100 hours’ public service a year.
    12. Reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050.
    13. Passed tax credit for installing E85 ethanol at gas stations.
    14. Regulate animal feeding operations for pollution.
    15. Expand flex-work & Family and Medical Leave Act.
    16. More Transition Assistance for displaced workers.
    17. Shine light on federal contracts, earmarks, & proposed bills.
    18. Ended corporate jet travel subsidized by lobbyists.
    19. No one turned away due to illness or pre-existing condition.
    20. Buy private insurance via National Health Insurance Exchange.
    21. Expand Peace Corps and AmeriCorps to 266,000 slots.
    22. Pursue goal of a world without nuclear weapons.
    23. Improve veterans’ mental health treatment & PTSD benefits.
    24. Immigration raids are ineffective.
    25. Fight attacks on workers’ right to organize & strike.
    26. Focus farm programs on family farms, not giant corporations.
    27. Stop any efforts to privatize Social Security.
    28. Incentives for next-generation broadband in every community.
    29. Two-state solution: Israel & Palestine side-by-side in peace.
    30. Create 20 Promise Neighborhoods in high-poverty cities.

     
    Obviously not everything was accomplished, but a lot of it was and most of it was at least attempted. You know who was pretty dedicated to stopping change.

    So, you were saying about MAGA? What specific policies and more importantly how will we know when america achieves greatness again? What's the benchmark?

  • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday November 25 2016, @09:02PM

    by butthurt (6141) on Friday November 25 2016, @09:02PM (#432997) Journal

    The Republican Party has a platform to:

    https://gop.com/platform/ [gop.com]

    It carries the disclaimer "Not Authorized By Any Candidate Or Candidate's Committee."