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Comment by mdoms | Hacker News Reader

> One, most of the mainstream news has at least basic editorial processes in place that do a rudimentary check on truthiness.

Come on, man. There are just so many counter examples, from the "paper of record" NYT (1619 Project) to MSNBC (Russia nonsense) to Fox News (literally everything) to Rolling Stone (A Rape on Campus) I could sit here all day listing outright lies and untruths published in the pages of mainstream media outlets in order to push an agenda.

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Agreed. I'll just add, specifically the media's agenda is making money, and just like FB it affects their ethical obligation to society.

The surge in click-bait and outrageous lies is eroding one of the pillars of freedom: the freedom of the press. Now, the press is largely viewed as untrustworthy by 60% of the US population.

Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/321116/americans-remain-distrus...

Both are true. Both the news and social media optimize for clickbait, which bad actors use to slip in misinformation. What's funny is, people use the exact language about the news. They'll say that CNN is just being used by the far left to promote far-left views, or that Fox News is being used by the far-right to promote far-right views. Yet when the medium is Facebook instead of the media, suddenly it's a problem that must be solved with more laws.

Facebook and other internet media have special Section 230 exemptions from libel and other things that print media and media using public airwaves do not.

How about we just remove that so they are all equal? Not special or "more laws," just equal.

I agree, and that's why I said "rudimentary". Still, as content producers and not algorithmic aggregators, both their ability and success at amplifying disinformation is much, much less than Facebook's. Even Breitbart or DailyKOS's impacts -- as outlets who often and purposefully distort the truth -- are not even rounding errors to Facebook's sheer scale.

1619 Project? "The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative"?

I mean, sure, some historians objected (https://web.archive.org/web/20200814135117/https://www.nyboo... [1], https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/historians...). But if "cynicism" is a sin, everyone here on HN (and not the least you) are due for some unpleasant cigars in hell.

[1] I note that I, non-historian that I am, could poke some logical and (from primary sources) historical holes in that speech.

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