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Comment by unavoidable | Hacker News Reader

OT, but, Jefferson appears to have anticipated fake news and the thirst for eyeballs.

>To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

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I think it's less that he anticipated fake news, and more that it's always been a problem. Journalism has always been self-serving - after all, it's a business.

But politics and industry are similarly self-serving, and that's what journalism is supposed to balance. Everyone lies all the time, and that's always been the case - after all, they are human.

Certainly, I think it is borderline madness that entities such as facebook are being called out in the current "fake news" discussion, this is far from anything new and does not come from media centralization or the internet.

Its a level of degrees, though

Volume of available information has certainly increased drastically, that is for sure.

The actual fake news problem is purely a product of the internet though. Traditional media often contains biases of some kind, it's inevitable, but good journalists genuinely try to minimise the impact of that.

Previously the only way to get news was through these slow, controlled channels. And the people controlling these channels were responsible for the content being delivered, so if a slanderous lie was published they could be held accountable.

But with Facebook I can make up anything I want, frame it as fact, and get it seen by millions of people. Many of whom will believe it if it is convenient for them to believe it. And many of whom will never realise or accept that is a lie. And nothing bad happens to me for sharing these lies, I just make a bit of money from the ads.

This is a phenomenon that can only happen with the awesome communication enabled by the internet. And it's much worse than minor press bias.

He was Hamilton's contemporaries, of course he know a thing or two about fake news.

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