Why do Americans share so much fake news? One big reason is they aren’t paying | Hacker News Reader

Why do Americans share so much fake news? One big reason is they aren’t paying

niemanlab.org

14 pointsrustoo16 comments

The part of the title that "they aren't paying attention" is kind of important.

Yeah, OP should've removed other portions of the headline to fit in the length limit. Just lopping it off like this is bad.

Or, the OP thought people weren't paying attention.

If I paste it into the submit page, it tells me it's 8 characters too long. I'm assuming good faith until given reason to think otherwise.

I'm not implying maliciousness but the possibility of turning the subject of the article towards the audience as a meta-method.

I agree. The submit page didnt allow me to add the full title. So I thought... why not :)

Attention is expensive, and outrage is a 'cheap' moral desert or perhaps a scapegoat from our problems. In a world where there is pressure for and fro everything, we end up trying min-max our life, either subconsciously or not, and it makes sense that people fall for it.

Indeed. Outrage and prejudice are coping strategies for dealing with a complex and nuanced reality when we have cognitive budget limitations.

The article is about Paying Attention, not paying. This is radically misleading (and a little ironic). Also FWIW, the cited nature paper can be found here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03344-2#author-in...

The American news media is tabloid level fake news themselves. As long as they keep breathlessly reporting anonymous sources as breaking news and pushing hoaxes With institutional backing I'm not in the least bit surprised that people will turn to any other alternative, regardless of veracity. As for myself, I've mostly completely tuned out (and generally ignore things like this on HN). Going a month without any "news" or social media is an easy way to see that it adds no value whatsoever to my life.

Headline truncation inadvertently tells truth...

OP, when sharing this, definitely wasn't paying

Sure, we are the home of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX News, but do Americans actually share so much fake news as compared to the rest of the world? Citation needed on that.

Lmao awful HN headline

I think people simply don't have the timeframes, we're working with here, in mind.

Smartphones led the masses into the Internet just ten years ago.

They have to learn.

out of all the words, why is 'attention' is being cut off...

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