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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

> I was merely pointing out that "fake" is more of a propaganda, not a completely black and white issue.

Don't pretend that your comment history doesn't display a clear Trump bias.

There might be some difficult cases at the margin, but lots of fake news is very easy to spot. No, ISIS was not founded by Clinton. No, Obama is not instituting Sharia law. No, George Soros is not hacking voting machines.

> Or do you think it's a coincidence the "fake news" story only broke after the "non-fake" media lost the election, not before while they were still very confident they'd win?

No, I don't think it's a coincidence. It seems very natural that new events would shine an event on existing trends. Or perhaps do you think that Islamic terrorism only began on 9/11, or that mortgage fraud began in 2008?

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I like to think that my comment history displays mostly a contrarian (vis-a-vis mainstream) bias, although admittedly that would seem pro-Trump to most HN users (I think yummyfajitas is often the target of similar accusations).

You can "like to think that" but there's a difference between being "contrarian" and partisan.

Though I might disagree with yummyfajitas on things, he at least brings data and arguments to back up his claims instead of just asserting that the MSM is obviously fake and biased.

> No, I don't think it's a coincidence. It seems very natural that new events would shine an event on existing trends. Or perhaps do you think that Islamic terrorism only began on 9/11, or that mortgage fraud began in 2008?

So instituting censorship (since you agree there is a bias in your previous paragraphs) to affect the outcome of an election is:

1) acceptable

2) you DO realize the keys to the kingdom will be handed off to Trump, Pence and Steve Bannon, right ? Really think about what you're doing here. You're mounting a bigger gun on a tank that will be driven by Trump. Do you seriously not realize who it'll be firing at ?

But clearly you think things like censorship are acceptable as long as you agree with them. Hell, it seems the entire democratic establishment agrees with it. Why ? Just to not offend Hillary Clinton ? Fuck that.

Trump won because he showcased the ugly side of the democratic party and Hillary Clinton in particular, quite successfully. And what is being done in response ? Dig deeper. Of course the issue MUST be that they're being shown in the wrong light by "fake" articles. Even if that actually is the issue you should still assume it's not.

I would love it if this whole nonsense stopped, and some serious introspection would be done instead. How about we declare that Middle America's white supremacy fringe is about as offensive as Islam's sharia laws, that underwear toting rednecks with guns are pretty much the same thing as child-raping muslim "revolutionaries", and should be ignored and marginalized WITHOUT marginalizing the entire population there, and since they are having a hugely difficult time, they deserve the same protection and help and state action that minorities get (they are, by the way, a minority) ?

Now THAT would help the next president to be democratic. THAT is what we should do.

I'm not sure where you go the idea that I support instituting censorship. You seem to have written an entire comment attacking a non-existent strawman.

To make it unequivocally clear: no, I do not think the government should be in the business of censoring news (fake or not).

So what exactly do you think this anti-fake-news thing is ? You agreed that it's at least partially a matter of perspective.

Government vs. private. A media outlet has a full choice in terms of what they send out. They can self-censor and always have. But the government has no business in telling _all_ media what they can or cannot publish. Fake news at its core is not subjective at all. Is Obama on record anywhere saying "I want to institute sharia law"? No. you can write an opinion piece if you think this is the case or have facts but its not _news_ and should be labeled so.

Reading those "fake" news stories I would say that they don't actually claim that. Now, I am sure there's an exception, but I haven't found one and I've honestly read every article in the first 2 pages of google results for "Obama sharia law".

Most take offence at Obama defending muslims and sharia law, voluntary application of sharia law that is, after Newt Gingrich's call for mass-deportation. They do not claim Obama said anything he didn't say. Obama was very political, leaving out any actual controversial statement.

So I don't think, on the whole, that your statement is fair. These articles mostly lack quality, so they're easy to attack. They're not wrong, in a strict sense. Clickbaity, spammy, unpleasant, even misleading ... yes. Wrong, no.

And I have no trouble whatsoever finding all those properties in articles linked from the homepages of CNN, MSN, ... especially in the business and science sections. And I have to say, I am against Trump, but most of the frontpage stuff I would agree if anyone said half of them were hit pieces.

Lol. Are you saying ISIS was not founded by Hillary? What proof do you have?

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