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Comment by ykler | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that "fake news" refers to stories fabricated, often by small-time entrepreneurs, to make money off of Internet ads and typically spread through social media. Propaganda, on the other hand, is biased or fabricated stories promulgated to forward a political agenda, especially by a government or other entity in a position of power. However, the term "fake news" has rapidly been politicized, and a lot of people, especially on the right, have used it to refer simply to biased news and false reports (typically with the implication of insufficient checking). So three really different motives here:

1. Fake news makers are exclusively after money. 2. Propagandists are exclusively after a political end. 3. Journalists are mostly after the truth, even if they are very biased and far from immune from the corrupting influence of money and political ends.

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I don't think this is it. The very concept of fake news is, fundamentally, propaganda.

The mainstream media's privileged position of controlling the narrative is under threat, both from within the media (e.g. Breitbart) and without (random guys on the internet creating narratives).

The idea of "fake news" is propaganda, created in order to push Facebook/Twitter/etc into shutting down the media and random guys that are threatening the mainstream media. It'll probably work too.

Incidentally, insofar as "fake news" is real, it is highly unlikely to have any major effect. ...for fake news to have changed the outcome of the election, a single fake article would need to have had the same persuasive effect as 36 television campaign ads. https://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/fakenews.pdf

Yes, news outlets that use terms like 'fake news' to shut down competitors should be treated with suspicion. The term went mainstream over a period of a few weeks due to it being pushed relentlessly by the media. It has the hallmarks of propaganda.

> The idea of "fake news" is propaganda

What do you call information that is produced to resemble reputable news sources but contains very little true information?

Is there any support for the claim that it was reported, and a term was coined for it, in order to limit competition?

Why should we think it's that vs genuine reporting on a trend where people profit from producing this material AND a complimentary trend for Americans (trending toward conservative views) to believe anything that fits their preferred narrative without question?

I think this is absolutely different from propaganda because it's done first and foremost from a profit motive. It did not generally (as far as we actually know) come from powerful groups who want to control a political narrative. [0] I'm sure that has already started to change- Russia and other countries will certainly use this attack vector. The material they produce would be fake news used as propaganda.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503...

> What do you call information that is produced to resemble reputable news sources but contains very little true information?

The status quo.

That's why I can't watch any of the national news stations. Foreign broadcasters are less likely to pump things up, and some local news stations are passable, but the big boys have been transparently biased and driven by clickbait, since before clickbait was a thing.

> Incidentally, insofar as "fake news" is real, it is highly unlikely to have any major effect

I think this study is too limited. The problem is not that a single article changes minds. It's a well-poisoning problem. Stories about the Clintons assassinating their opponents have been floating around right-wing media for decades.

When I was growing up, I heard an adult talk about the time their friend went to see the Clintons land at an airport. When the friend asked Hillary to end abortion because it was killing babies, Hillary supposedly replied "We will kill your babies."

Nonsense circulated for decades has a toxic effect on political discussion. "Fake news" is just the latest nonsense fad to join Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity and their kind.

I guess you never argued with Trumpers on the Internet at election time. The Fake news were widely distributed and very frustrating to argue against! The template is practically a hack of human laziness and selective bias. Example:

http://archive.is/9CXYO

This archive of a disreputable website has an article that claims Clinton bribed prominent Republicans (which were at that time Trumps opponents in the primary). It even links Wikileaks and gives an id for the email. Only ... the ID simply doesn't exist. It even made it into an Interview of Hannity with Assange:

https://www.reddit.com/r/WhereIsAssange/comments/5ion2c/full...

> Hannity: Let me ask you about Wikileaks. I think this could shake up the political world. Is it true that an email sent in July of this year that you have, that describes how funds could be diverted from the Clinton campaign to the super PACs of Jeb Bush, Carly Fiorina, and John Kasick. Specifically document number 1078645. Assange: I don't have that in front of me. We have published nearly 100,000 documents so. I mean I have seen references to things like that. I don't recall seeing an 'eyes only' phrase.

Assange didn't recall it because there is no email. The whole story was made up as clickbait for conservatives. But even Assange guards his statement, because it is normal that one doesn't recall everything, right?

Another example was a story about Supreme Court justice Ginsberg. Another clickbait website made up a quote of her and linked as proof an interview of Ginsburg in the NYTimes. And the NYT is reputable, right? Only the quote is fictional it never was in the NYT article. In a time were many people just read the headline and skim the rest (if at all) and sharing via social media is one click away, this is disappointingly effective.

http://www.snopes.com/ruth-ginsburg-president-resign/

All the Trump supporters I know seem far more knowledgeable than the Trump opponents, and the opponents have all sorts of silly beliefs of their own.

(This is almost certainly due to selection bias - Trump hatred is a socially required belief in my circles, while Trump support is a very unusual position adopted only after careful thought and kept carefully hidden.)

There are many silly beliefs that Trump opponents have picked up from the mainstream media. For instance, compare beliefs about Trump-inspired crime to reality - most are hoaxes perpetrated by Trump opponents, and the most serious incidents (e.g. the kidnapping/torture of a mental retard) were committed by Trump opponents.

Or beliefs that Bannon and Trump are somehow antisemitic Nazis. Never mind that Trump was mentored by (((Roy Cohn))) and that the key people in his organization are (((Allen Weisenberg))), (((Michael Cohen))) and (((Jason Greenblatt))). Somehow (((Jared Kushner))) and (((Ivanka Trump))) are also involved. Not to mention that Bannon's rise to power came from working with (((Andrew Breitbart))), and he's secretly communicating with (((Curtis Yarvin))). [1]

Strangely, these crazy beliefs are never cited when discussing fake news. They just aren't part of the narrative. That's why I characterize this "fake news" push as propaganda - it's only about keeping non-mainstream sources out of the narrative.

[1] I'm only using the alt-right ((())) to emphasize what actual anti-semitic people would think of Trump.

> the opponents have all sorts of silly beliefs of their own.

Chiefly that owners have the cattle's best interests in mind and will tell them the truth.

(Actually, they mostly do. The advertisers are mainly very selective about the facts they publish. And the way they wrap them up for delivery. "Never give a sucker an even break" as one famous advertiser candidly put it.)

No, fake news is a real and distinct phenomena from propaganda.

Propaganda: The NYT, at the behest of the government, publishing reports of Iraq possessing WMD's in order to lay the groundwork for an illegal invasion and occupation.

Fake News: A fabricated story about a made up individual finding boxes of ballots marked for Clinton, complete with a photo pulled from Google. The story then is pushed on social media sites by sockpuppets.

In other words there's a difference between Judith Miller and Stephen Glass.

Of all the significant distinctions, the most important one is that fake news is driven by the current state of the internet: ad revenue based click grabbing, pushing of content on social media (sometimes through sockpuppets), an elevated level of anonymity, etc.

So is this fake news or propaganda?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_(testimony)

The original use applied largely to VNR and AVR (video and audio news releases) created by government or corporate entities, largely as what we'd consider to be propaganda or public relations efforts.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fake_news

With the rise of weaponised viral clickbait and advertising-driven Internet competition over attention, we've seen an increase in algorithmic content created solely for the purpose of driving up advertising revenues.

Even that isn't an entirely new phenomenon. The rise of "penny presses" -- daily common-circulation newspapers based on advertising, and selling for a penny, as opposed to the "professional" six-cent press, gave rise to the New York Sun's Great Moon Hoax of 1835, with the goal of driving up circulation numbers:

http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/the_great_moon_hoax

I think you had to be pretty dialed-in to daily news to get the "fake news" origin story, and then how it turned to be something else.

In the beginning there were articles and there was fact-checking. Specific articles that failed checks (failed QA) were fake. A rush of those in 2016 were found to be for-clicks and for-profit.

One might have really hoped that more checking (better QA) would come out of that, but perversely the opposite happened. "Fake news" became a blanket condemnation not just for unchecked stories, but often unread ones. "The headline says that? Fake news!"

This is kind of a critical juncture, but I worry that it is becoming a wrong turn.

>"and a lot of people, especially on the right, have used it to refer simply to biased news and false reports (typically with the implication of insufficient checking)."

I read a lot of what most would consider "alt-right" news. They've repossessed that term and now use it to refer to really biased reporting on the part of the "mainstream media". The accusation is usually very biased reporting, blatantly favoring left-leaning ideas and politicians, as well as not reporting on issues that contradict the mainstream narrative.

Sometimes they go too-far with conspiracy-theory-level stuff, I'll give them that. But for the most part, they're spot on when it comes to reporting on the mainstream media's blatant left-leaning bias and selective reporting. When I read them, it sounds like a "normal" person, one that doesn't jump through hoops to justify their points. The points are just there.

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