Confessions of a Fake News Writer | Hacker News Reader

Confessions of a Fake News Writer

medium.com

35 pointsunquote65 comments

I may sound too jaded, but how do I know this piece (or book, the one reviewed here?) is not fake? Maybe I've gone way meta on this, but isn't kind of oxymoronic to write about how one fakes what one wrote and then expect the reader to take that particular writing seriously? The Kantian in me is particularly bothered with this. ;)

Edit: typos.

It seems to be a parable. Maybe the story is not true, maybe it is, it doesn't make it less insightful about the trends of the last decade about the emergent phenomena of massively profitable fake content publishing.

> Maybe the story is not true, maybe it is, it doesn't make it less insightful about the trends of the last decade about the emergent phenomena of massively profitable fake content publishing.

I'd say that depends. If this story paraphrases a bunch of facts we know to be true from other sources, then I see your point.

But if this story is not literally true, then we should be very cautious about using it as the grounding for other beliefs.

It serves as a possible mental model for how to think about (advertisement-driven) content/publications on the Internet.

The sad thing is I don't think it is massively profitable, just slightly profitable. We're all paying a very high price in the form of growing political mistrust relative to what these publishers make in profit.

Agreed, it simply became more profitable thanks to the economy of scale (thanks to the Internet).

No need to berate yourself about being meta. It's a perfectly valid question to wonder if this article is fake.

It's one of those self-referential problems like "This sentence is false".

Regardless of whether it is fake or not, at the very least, you know it has an agenda behind it. It's advocacy. It's trying to sell you something.

That’s a good question. I guess the first step is, does it pass a sniff test? Are there any claims which sound too good to be true? Is there anything that it describes which seems implausible or impossible? As near as I can tell, there’s nothing impossible about what was written.

Unfortunately it's not oxymoronic at all. In the country I currently live there is a blog supposedly dedicated to expose "fake news" and media bias, and the blog is actually a propaganda front created by an elected representative of the governing party. The "fake news" blog, expectedly, posts hit pieces targetting any report that may be remotely unfavourable to the current government with personal attacks and smear campaigns.

Even when stories aren’t made up there seem to be a clear focus on generating attention, because our attention is the real product on free news. That’s had a social media effect on news, and much like our Instagram profiles, it’s so heavily edited, that truth has lost its place, even when people aren’t intentionally lying. Obviously there is a difference, but I think it’s getting smaller by the minute.

This is exactly why I pay for news. Because fake or not, my attention is worth more to me than what everyone of the free media outlets are giving me in return.

I have a subscription to a news paper, that only comes out once a week and only has paid content. By only coming out once a week, I get the added benefit of its content being the digested sum of what actually mattered. If something dramatic happens, that I can’t wait to read about, I’ll turn on public service.

The only area where I’m not doing this is in tech, but tech news aren’t really important.

I do feel sorry for the author, I know the guilty learn not to feel guilty, but lying for a living must be absolutely terrible in the long run.

Care to share what weekly subscription newspaper you read?

Sure, it’s danish though, called Weekendavisen. Until earlier this year it didn’t have digital news, they do have a digital edition now, but I’ve never used it.

Which weekly newspaper? I'd love a recommendation. For me, this used to be The Economist, but either the quality of their journalism has gone down, or I've become better informed and thereby also more discerning.

Could you please point to pieces by The Economist that made you unsubscribe?

Sorry, it's been a while (over a year) and I don't feel like resubscribing just to find examples to support my point.

But, pas, if you work for The Economist in an editorial position, and are asking because you want to take action based on feedback, then feel free to contact me via email.

I'm just a curious bystander, I'm of course interested in the actual piece, but much more so in your recollection of their errors/faults/misdeeds/inaccuracies.

I feel this attention seeking has infected everything though.

Even these subscription also realize that you are more likely to pay if they have your attention (and feel they must constantly remind you how awesome they are and that you couldn't live without them). In the end it doesn't really matter if you pay with money or ads. And with news subscriptions you very often don't even get rid of ads if you pay so those incentives are still at play.

Yes there are nuances and exceptions but this is a trend that deeply saddens me.

I caught myself writing way too intense titles when sharing very legitimate stuff on Reddit for that same reason. I keep telling myself that if my title is "just normal", nobody will take a look at what I'm sharing... when it's probably the opposite.

> but tech news aren’t really important.

I thought this was hackernews...

I write a media literacy guide, and this is the key takeaway. Engagement is king, and social media seems to exacerbate this effect.

https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media

The challenge is that while you and I pay for reliable news, the majority of people seem to prefer not paying for news. And those people vote

This whole fake news thing is interesting for me, the author mentioned that real honest news just don’t get as many clicks. At the end of the day I think we’re tuned to sensationalist things that trigger our emotion in some ways much like the feeling we get when we watch movies or read fictitious writings.

Because of social media and being driven my vanity metrics all the time have we as a collective lost the ability to discern the real from the fake? I think this is something worth questioning.

> have we as a collective lost the ability to discern the real from the fake?

I don't think so. Even people who frequently click on fake news articles probably would accept the content they read is probably fake. Those articles satisfy curiosity and relief from boredom on a level that's different from the one we use to think critically. Even if the content is fake does not mean that it is not fulfilling its purpose or even harming readers' ability to see it as fake.

> real honest news just don’t get as many clicks.

Both the number clicks and their "velocity" are an important metrics, though velocity is even more important. You don't want a lot of clicks spread out within 2 weeks, you want a story that is a hit within a single day. That's why editors double down on sensationalism and click-bait. The mindset is one can always correct a story a week after. What matters is the immediate viral impact. A huge amount of click fast = more money/engagement.

This is mostly why I have come to hate most social media: too many people around me share this crap, most of the time, without even reading it I guess. I open Facebook and within seconds, I'm hit with mixed feelings of sadness, anger, despair and anxiety (something I'm actively working on).

I recently installed my own Mattermost instance where I invited close friends and some family who I trust won't share all this crap.

Fantastic article! Thanks for sharing!

"There is no such thing in America as an independent press. I am paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New York journalist is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

An anonymous New York journalist (actually John Swinton), quoted in Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism, 1909.

https://archive.org/stream/commercialismjou00holtuoft#page/2...

The book -- a speech given at UC Berkeley -- is a fast, easy, information-packed, and insightful read from the dawn of the advertising-driven journalism age. I recommend it strongly.

I find that I'm significantly happier when I don't read or watch the news. In this case; ignorance is bliss.

Being informed is important when you're > voting age, besides that you might end up in a world that you hate because you chose not to want to know what direction it was headed in.

If you read the news twice a week, you’re going to be plenty informed (and IMO actually better-informed) than if you binge-read headlines throughout the day.

There's the theory that you will get informed of what is important by other humans rather than the news. This assumes that one lives in a social way and talk to a wide range of people. It also means you won't get to know about celebrities or far off troubles.

I've found that getting the majority of my news from offline sources helps.

The CBS Evening News eventually ends. The New York Times, and my local papers eventually end.

Internet news sites are geared to make you scroll and click forever to see more ads and slurp more data about you. In order to keep feeding that beast, the selection has to be necessarily be reduced in quality.

> We wrote about weed day in and day out, extolling both real and exaggerated virtues of cannabis. The company told us to describe it as a miracle plant that could do all sorts of extraordinary things, including halting migraines, resolving insomnia, and, um, curing cancer.

Assuming the linked article is not itself fake, it sounds like their employer was involved in some strong astroturfing.

If you want to see the true cost of an ad-based internet economy, this is it.

It's basically turned all the world's media into the equivalent of a tabloid. Things like the Daily Mail and the Sun and the Daily Star were doing this sort of thing way before the internet ever existed, and now the ad model has basically turned their style of reporting into the only way to make money.

> "I find it hard to trust any of it, and there are only a handful of sites I will rely on for accurate reporting."

Boy, would I like to know which sites.

I’d start with sites that don’t rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat. So probably subscription sites like the Economist and Wall Street Journal, and public news sources like NPR and PBS. Though for the latter there is the pressure of government to consider.

I often browse the Australian ABC news site and have definitely noted a government influence on it, mostly the anti-China bent of many of the opinion and essay style articles. Interestingly, whenever censorship of the ABC comes up, the ABC is often the most reliable and up to date source of current events. It gives me a little faith in my country's democracy.

That's an interesting take, as often the ABC is accused of pandering to the left and being anti-government. Living outside of Australia I rely almost exclusively on the ABC website for news about Australia, and IMO most of the time it presents quite a balanced perspective.

Both of the subscription sites you mention have ads in both their paper and electronic editions. They receive a significant proportion of their revenues from advertisers. They don't have high net profit margins.

What makes you think they don't rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat?

I was curious about the details, so I looked up The Economist's 2018 annual report. They get 17% of revenue from advertisements, while 60% of revenue comes from subscriptions. Their operating profit is 13% of revenue.

Right, but of course without ads they would save some cost as they wouldn't need people to sell ads, they could get rid of a bunch of ads-related overhead costs etc.

If the operating margin on the ads part of the business is less than ~25%, then they could break even without ads. Of course, breaking even is worse than making 35MM profit each year.

NPR takes a ton of advertising money. Whether they'd be able to exist without it isn't super relevant. The conflict of interest is still there.

I would be more suspicious of the article as a long winded advertisement if he had mentioned the sites :)

But to answer your question, I'd say the best bet is to follow the money. Sites that rely on subscriber revenue are more likely to have good journalism standards than sites based on ad revenue.

Try Blendle: https://blendle.com/ (using it myself, no affiliation)

The Guardian is pretty good.

Not sure if it's a joke or not, but at the bottom of the story I have this:

"YOU MAY ALSO LIKE: Read These 15 Books Before Starting Your Next Startup, Side Project"

Speaking of news, and the negative effect some people here share it brings them, I've been received "bit of news" by email everyday and it's great. A few important news everyday. I usually don't even read the articles, just quickly glance at the headlines.

http://bitofnews.com/

The Economist’s Espresso is also great for bite size news every day.

And you can choose focus by geographic region, which is nice!

I just tried to look at that online to see what it's like.

I was immediately greeted with "You've reached your article limit."

Interesting for a publication I've never read before. I guess my limit is zero.

Unfortunately it's a paid-for app. You should be able to get the first month for free to see if you like it.

> later realized that this DJ buys so much advertising space that he effectively edits the magazine.

That's the main problem isn't it? It would be nice if publications could opt in to putting some type of badge on an article that indicates it was written without corporate or political influence, with jail time if you lie. It's like writing content under oath. I think that would help visually distinguish news you can trust.

Well, one of the features my own news platform had was a giant banner saying any influences behind the piece (like the presence of review copies, personal relationships with sources, etc), with the rule being that the platform would ban those who lied. So I guess that's like the flip side of this idea.

But the issue is that regardless of what you do, controversy and biases will creep in for all kinds of reasons. Even if the company doesn't gain anything, the writer/creator likely gains from their work being heavily shared...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18099217

That one was a rip-off posted by a spammer. We changed the URL to the correct article for a while, but when this submission appeared, I thought it would be better to move the discussion here. (That's also why there are so many comments on a submission that doesn't have many upvotes yet.)

I think it's interesting that this article is something that supports facebook's interests in appearing to care about fake news. Even articles against fake news are influenced by the same forces!

This outcome was inevitable given the incentives of an advertising-based internet economy.

Perhaps it's time to start talking about a ban on online advertising altogether?

When customers pay for things, capitalism works.

> When customers pay for things, capitalism works.

For some definition of works that probably not everybody will share -- for instance, people living in 3rd world countries or customers who paid for an "eco-friendly" diesel car.

The article is by “Winston Wordsworth” and to see (or write) comments on Medium you have to be a paid member of Medium.

Hummmmm

Burgess Meredith's character in The Twilight Zone episode where he portrayed a literate dissident in a totalitarian regime was named Wordsworth.

It's no wonder that single person shows are popular on YouTube and the alternative media. An individual can be trusted in a way an institution never can be.

An individual can be trusted in a way an institution never can be.

Alex Jones is somewhat less reputable than the New York Times.

For me, longevity is a leading sign that a source is doing something right.

Not every individuals, but there are people that are trustworthy. Institutions rarely are because they are only as trustworthy as the people on top who change every once in a while

what if this editorial itself is fake news?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com