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Comment by Clanan | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone else put off by this obsession with "solving" fake news? As if we can simply throw technology at such a contentious and controversial issue and then trust the results. It reads to me like the goal is censorship, where only "approved" articles/authors are allowed, all in the name of "fact checking". Never mind that it's incredibly easy to cherry-pick facts or exaggerations to target "offensive" articles (by both/all sides).

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> Never mind that it's incredibly easy to cherry-pick facts or exaggerations to target "offensive" articles (by both/all sides).

Exactly. I'd argue that disingenuous news from mainstream news organisations is worse than dedicated "fake news" websites because they exploit legitimacy and reader-trust to peddle falsehoods. They are our port in a storm of bullsh*t, and they're failing us.

Engineers often operate under the false belief that they can solve social problems with technology. And the systems they build rely on participants being rational actors that subscribe to a shared system of values. They end up devolving into censorship of opposing viewpoints.

In fact, I would go as far as saying that the internet, itself, was designed and built in the naive belief that humans would better themselves by instant access to knowledge. This past decade and a half has completely shattered our 1980s and '90s vision of the promise of the internet.

We have few means of combating propaganda that threatens our values, reclaiming our privacy, or maintaining our remaining sanity. When a shared objective reality no longer exists, we're all loons.

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