Fake news is not the only problem | Hacker News Reader

Fake news is not the only problem

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10 pointsrdl7 comments

It's not even the primary problem. I can't believe the incredible outsize attention this is receiving, as though 2016 were the first time people were passing around false or misleading information online.

Yeah, fake news is the easiest problem to solve in this space; lots of the other issues are much more insidious or technically/socially challenging to solve.

The only thing about fake news that is surprising is that the attention it's receiving now only started growing very recently. I am confused so as to why there's a surge of discussion regarding the topic.

Is it the election results that made it worth discussing and addressing?

In my opinion the media totally screwed up their analysis of the Trump phenomenon and they're grasping at anything that would explain it without having to do too much self-reflection. And this stuff mostly seems to be leading up to some kind of push for censorship of news outlets and more centralization, which is something where it seems like the cure is worse than the disease.

I don't know if it were the results per se, but that likely hasn't helped. The level of discourse of the campaigns, coupled with the increased use of social media by both populations and the campaigns increased the exposure of click-bait and webspam and such, increasing its exposure.

My question then is if we actually passed the critical mass of fake news that only now warrants all these blog posts and mainstream media discourse.

Look how much discussion there is about fakenews/webspam here on HN. It's a popular topic. As for blog posts and media, they're following the popularity as well in part to cash in on the traffic they'll see due to people's interest on the topic.

I'm not sure what your premise is. Is it that this is a topic now only because of the election results? That it's a hot topic now because of some media conspiracy because of the election results? That the fakenews meme has been planted because of the election results?

Those are all potentially interesting premises which could be researched and tested.

I think we can agree that some news topics are faddish. For fakenews/webspam, the trigger that kicked it off is the election.

Here's what I'm positing:

We have a much larger number of people using social media since the last election (2012).

People are spending a much larger amount of time online engaged with social media since the last election.

People are getting a much larger percentage of their news online in general and social media in particular since the last election.

Campaigns have spent much more on online advertising since the last election.

Online advertising in general is much increased since the last election.

All of these things contribute to an environment where people are going to be sensitive to news about online news and advertising.

Even before the election, I'm sure you can find examples of people complaining about fake articles, both related to the campaign and otherwise. As an example, Ryan Holiday's "Trust Me I'm Lying" was published in 2013.

This all makes for a great environment for a meme such as fakenews to take off. With all of the other increased politicization and polarization accompanying the election, it's unlikely that it needed much of a push. People were already complaining about untrue claims, cherry-picking, and the like.

All of these things could likely be easily backed up, but I don't think they're likely to be particularly contentious. Any you disagree with?

I don't know if any additional nefarious push needs to happen.

What do you think?

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