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The Media Facebook Social Networks The Internet

Crowdsourced Volunteers Search For Solutions To Fake News (wired.co.uk) 270

Posted by EditorDavid from the help-me-hive-mind dept.
Upworthy co-founder Eli Pariser is leading a group of online volunteers hunting for ways to respond to the spread of fake news. An anonymous reader quotes Wired UK: Inside a Google Doc, volunteers are gathering ideas and approaches to get a grip on the untruthful news stories. It is part analysis, part brainstorming, with those involved being encouraged to read widely around the topic before contributing. "This is a massive endeavour but well worth it," they say...

At present, the group is coming up with a list of potential solutions and approaches. Possible methods the group is looking at include: more human editors, fingerprinting viral stories then training algorithms on confirmed fakes, domain checking, the blockchain, a reliability algorithm, sentiment analysis, a Wikipedia for news sources, and more.
The article also suggests this effort may one day spawn fake news-fighting tech startups.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Crowdsourced Volunteers Search For Solutions To Fake News More

Crowdsourced Volunteers Search For Solutions To Fake News

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  • Pretty dumb because all news are fake. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So you are going to close down MSNBC and CNN as well?

    • When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

      No news is perfectly accurate, but some moreso than others.

    • An algorithmic detector won't consider the source, only the contents. Problem solved.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      And what about "The Onion"???

      When is it parody, when is it fake news and what about cases when the channel contains some truth and some lies, where do we draw the line?

      • You should look up that word... I do not think it means what you think it means.

        Also words like "story", "fable", "imagined", "prose", "satire", "novel"...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      No. They make mistakes and could certainly do better, but not all news is fake. There is true news it there and if you read multiple reputable sources and do some basic checks on things that seem unlikely you won't go wrong.

      Take your post-truth bullshit elsewhere, AC.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tuxgeek ( 872962 )

      Best place to start is with Fox News as they do the worst damage spreading their brand of hate and misinformation dressed up all cute and friendly like. Very deceiving group there.

      Then again, the problem would be null if we spent less time finger pointing and blaming everyone but ourselves for our problems.

  • Well you could start by not falling for it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Crashmarik ( 635988 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @04:46AM (#53370219)

    https://theintercept.com/2016/... [theintercept.com]

    Seeing as the Fake News idea is being promoted by people who won't even come out into the open.

    In other words, the individuals behind this newly created group are publicly branding journalists and news outlets as tools of Russian propaganda – even calling on the FBI to investigate them for espionage – while cowardly hiding their own identities.

    The credentials of this supposed group of experts are impossible to verify, as none is provided either by the Post or by the group itself. The Intercept contacted PropOrNot and asked numerous questions about about its team, but received only this reply: “We’re getting a lot of requests for comment and can get back to you today =) [smiley face emoticon].” The group added: “We’re over 30 people, organized into teams, and we cannot confirm or deny anyone’s involvement.”

    And if you really want to stop fake news, you can ask questions. A good one to start with, is where is the proof that Russia did any of this ?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And if you really want to stop fake news, you can ask questions. A good one to start with, is where is the proof that Russia did any of this ?

      The fact that Putin has replaced Donald J Trump with a surgically altered body double Russian agent should give you a clue, if you are seriously asking that question.

    • What I want to know is... which of the stages of grief does this focus on fake news represent? I'm thinking maybe "bargaining".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      A good one to start with, is where is the proof that Russia did any of this ?

      Does it matter?
      As an aside the Chinese English language media outlets are a hilarious example of fake news that's worth looking at for a laugh. The story from former insiders is that a combination of very tight deadlines, a need to fill a lot of space per writer plus having to follow the Party line to an extreme results in a collection of bullshit, puff pieces, hilarious typos and recycled rants against anyone that they have heard

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guises ( 2423402 )

      Seeing as the Fake News idea is being promoted by people who won't even come out into the open.

      You seem to be conflating two different things. This blacklist is being promoted by people who won't com out into the open, the "fake news idea" is a very broad one promoted by lots of people, many of whom are out in the open.

      I hope you're not trying to imply that fake news doesn't exist, anyone with eyes and a modest ability to think critically has seen blatantly false stories being passed off as gospel.

      • I hope you're not trying to imply that fake news doesn't exist, anyone with eyes and a modest ability to think critically has seen blatantly false stories being passed off as gospel.

        Its just deflection and misdirection. A time honored technique.

        "What about this Video of your candidate screwing a chicken?"

        "Well what about all of the persimmon workers who were cost their jobs by martians coming to earth for abortions?"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msauve ( 701917 )
      So, fake news is itself fake news. News at 11!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sycodon ( 149926 )

      Wikileaks just outed [ohnoohyes.org] the folks behind the Fake News bullshit.

    • russia is doing this all over europe. they need to be smacked, hard.

  • Go back to make it illegal. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nyder ( 754090 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @04:48AM (#53370227) Journal

    In 2013 Obama signed a bill which part of allows the use of propaganda in the USA legal again (made illegal in 1947). Which is why we have so much fake news now, media sources aren't required to fact check since that would expose the government backed fake news.

    So how about we make this sort of shit illegal again?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Modern art was CIA 'weapon' (22 October 1995)
      http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
      "... set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. "
      Its interesting reading about the past of many US projects with terms like:
      "Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media" (Friday 18 March 2011)
      https://www.theguardian.com/te... [theguardian.com]
      "... none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      In 2013 Obama signed a bill which part of allows the use of propaganda in the USA legal again (made illegal in 1947). Which is why we have so much fake news now, media sources aren't required to fact check since that would expose the government backed fake news.

      Not to mention it would cost money. That's why there's so much celebrity "news" in the news now, most of it is cheap fashion commentary or theories and supposition on their private lives (which can be as wild as they want, since it's not being reported as opinion).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by SeaFox ( 739806 )

        That's why there's so much celebrity "news" in the news now, most of it is cheap fashion commentary or theories and supposition on their private lives (which can be as wild as they want, since it's not being reported as opinion).

        Meh. It is being reported only as opinion/theory, I meant. Not as fact.

    • What's even scarier than fake news is when news is blacked out. Fake news is not something one would never expect, even if we did not live in a society in which the mainstream media is controlled to an extremely high degree.

      I remember at least a couple major incidents of GMO contamination which literally made headlines across the rest of the world and which were almost completely blacked out of all US media. When you witness this kind of blanket blackout a few times you realize just how extensively MSM is

    • Re:Go back to make it illegal. (Score:5, Informative)

      by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @12:41PM (#53371589)

      In 2013 Obama signed a bill

      If you want to attach name(s) to legislation please disclose all the names and parties of the people who proposed the legislation, the majority parties who passed it, and the name of the president that signed it. In this case, the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012 was proposed by Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), and it passed a Republican majority in the House and Senate, and was finally signed by Obama (D). Disclosing this information gives people a fuller picture of who is to praise/blame, especially when both parties are responsible for its passage.

  • Would This System Flag... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BlueStrat ( 756137 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @04:59AM (#53370251)

    Would this system flag fake news like the Michael Brown "Hands up, don't shoot" fake news that falsely claimed he had his hands up and was not charging at the police officer after already attacking him and attempting to take the officer's sidearm?

    I have doubts that such a system will flag false/fake stories that nevertheless fit certain agendas and narratives.

    I believe there's a lot of fake news about "fake news" in order to lay the groundwork for "officially-sanctioned news and facts" a la "MiniTruth", and systematic suppression of independent news sources that don't fit certain narratives and agendas. I think HRC's election loss and all the independent news sources that published/posted/outed inconvenient facts about her has scared TPTB, and they are now attempting to marginalize, discredit, and destroy those who publicize that which they prefer be kept from the public.

    Strat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The system doesn't have to be perfect or handle difficult cases that it took the State Department months to get to the bottom of. It just has to flag up the really obvious click-bait that drives guys like our own Masahiki into a little fantasy world of hatred and anger. Just flag the easily debunked stories, like the pizza place paedophile ring nonsense.

      Of course it won't work for everyone, the alt-right will just reject it as leftist propaganda without actually checking the sources cited. It doesn't really

    • Fake news is announcing intentionally something which never happened with the intent of hoaxing the reader. Do you confuse bad-quality-news which do not go for your narrative, with fake news. Fake news would be that the policeman killing brown was a KKK honcho for the region. That's fake with the intention of hoaxing the person.

      • Re: That is not fake news (Score:4, Insightful)

        by kenai_alpenglow ( 2709587 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @06:21PM (#53373307)
        Like claiming the riot was due to a badly produced Mohammed video on YouTube.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ranton ( 36917 )

      Would this system flag fake news like the Michael Brown "Hands up, don't shoot" fake news that falsely claimed he had his hands up and was not charging at the police officer after already attacking him and attempting to take the officer's sidearm?

      Hopefully yes it would. Ideally such a system would not only focus on the vast majority of fake news pushing a conservative agenda, but also the fake news pushing a liberal one.

      It isn't like liberal partisans aren't as willing as conservative ones to use propaganda, it just doesn't work as well for them. Even the fake news networks admit fake news just doesn't work on liberals very well [npr.org]. As the owner of one of these fake news sites stated:

      We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

  • Does the net need more teams of SJW? (Score:3)

    by AHuxley ( 892839 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @05:09AM (#53370277) Journal
    The internet is about finding news, sites, forums, chats, people, fun, enjoying social media or adding a comment.
    If a user does not like a site, don't use it, dont return to it. Making it not easy to search for results or delisting terms won't change reality.
    If the site is in the USA, having freedom of speech is protected. Having freedom after speech is protected from gov staff.
    Freedom from a gov or mil, a political party or theocracy or cult is what sets the USA apart from the rest of the world.
    If a company does or does not want to host material, find results or comments, thats ok too.
    Just make it clear that your products or services are not going to get good results as teams have restricted all expected functionality.
    Users then have the freedom to start their own sites or select from much better competing services that have embraced freedom.
    Freedom does not go away after one company bans it. Freedom and fun then moves to better sites who support free speech.
    If a brand wants to support SJW, governments, theocracies, cults, contractors and be a huge safe space thats their option.
    In a free market of ideas and so many other great brands supporting freedom of speech to become a very boring brand is not really the best marketing position.
    Censorship as branding might be great for some faiths or nations but freedom sells globally.

  • Two Types Of Propaganda (Score:3)

    by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @05:20AM (#53370303) Homepage

    The interesting thing about all this fake news and propaganda, is there are actually two distinct types of propaganda. The first everyone knows about and that is the stuff propagandists target at majority, the regular marketing lies told for what ever purpose. The second kind of propaganda is entirely different, now that propaganda is actually targeted at the propagandists.

    Propagandists are bound to react to what the perceive as their target audience reactions and especially careful to protect their lies whilst hiding the truth. This makes them very reactive, they are forced to listen in case they are being exposed, or they are not selling their lies. There are really powerful emotions at play, greed, fear of being exposed for the crimes, fear of no longer being able to hide who they really, with very serious consequences, not only losing the proceeds of their crime but extended custodial sentences. This makes them very vulnerable to propaganda targeted at them, they must react or fail and suffer severe penalties.

    The reactive nature allows them to be manipulated into over reacting or reacting in the wrong manner and traps them into doing things like pushing into more and more extreme propaganda which becomes harder and harder to sell or propaganda that undermines their own propaganda or even propaganda that foolishly exposes more secrets than it should.

    Fix fake news, I would say break up the big main stream media organisation but if hardly seems worth the effort any more, they have already been tricked into destroying themselves by over reacting and whoops they can't take it back now, just going to dig themselves deeper and deeper. Simply legislate 'News' as a licensed profession and those practising are bound by the truth, fail to prove the truth they claim in court, then they do the prison time. Now if you want to tell stories and do no claim to be a licensed news practitioner, then not a problem, do want you want as long as it is within the regular laws. Once you claim to be a licensed news professional than you expose yourself to criminal penalties for lying (this is something that main stream media organisations will oppose maybe 80% of the market, about 20% will support it because they report the truth and the News licence and there honour and integrity would see them with a worth while professions).

  • Tech won't fix society (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @05:33AM (#53370327) Journal

    "Fake news" is a social problem. And social problems, generally speaking, don't have technological solutions.

    For example, all these suggestions for better and smarter algorithms to detect fake news. But why? It's not like fake news are hard to tell apart in general. Filter out anything that uses ALL CAPS anywhere in the title (acronyms excepted), and you've already solved 90% of the problem. And there are numerous guides already on the Internet that go over all these basics... the problem is that people who do read and spread those fake news don't believe that they're fake. And just because it's an algorithm in their browser or Facebook telling them that it's fake, they're not going to suddenly start believing it, regardless of how perfect it is. They'll just say, "Whoever implemented this is biased, and they're just trying to censor my trusted sources - fuck them", disable or ignore the feature (or switch to a product that doesn't have it - and there will be one if this becomes a thing; free market will always fill a niche), and move on.

    So the real problem is, "How do you convince most people who currently believe that those news are real, that they're actually fake." And that is entirely a social problem, which tech cannot and will not solve.

    • The problem is not those instances where fake news is easy to detect. "aliens are controlling your minds", well duh.
      It's about those instances where the fake news is plausible. Like the claims that Russia carried out the DNC hack. I've read so many claims and counterclaims that I don't know what's what anymore, and given the discussions here on /., neither do many others.

      • hit 'Submit' too soon.

        Also those instances where real news is claimed by people to be fake because they don't like what it says .

      • The problem are all instances that people believe in.

        And vast majority of them are only slightly more plausible than "aliens are controlling your minds". It's stuff like "Obama is secretly a Muslim who's plotting to have US occupied by UN". And I personally know some people who genuinely believe this, and will happily reshare any news from e.g. InfoWars that will support and reinforce that belief.

    • So the real problem is, "How do you convince most people who currently believe that those news are real, that they're actually fake." And that is entirely a social problem, which tech cannot and will not solve.

      The very long-term solution is to educate the citizens of the Republic in the skill of thinking critically.

      I absolutely agree that we are dealing with a social problem, not a technological one. And one that isn't really amenable to a quick technical fix.

      It is easy to distinguish "fake" news, propaganda, and out-and-out bullshit if you don't have a dog in the fight. Go watch "Reefer Madness" for one hilarious example. Old WWII newsreels seem similarly mawkish today. And reading *Tass* articles from the 7

  • 2013 - Head of Xinhua says Western media pushing revolution in China [reuters.com]

    Western media organizations are trying to demonize China and promote revolution and national disintegration as they hate seeing the country prosper...
    ...reminding state media of its responsibility to promote a "correct political direction"
    China also needed to combat the distorted view the Western media...
    Li called on mainstream Chinese media to refute "untruthful reports"...

    July 5, 2016 - ‘Fake’ News From Social Media Now Banned in China [theepochtimes.com]

    The use of social media as a source of news has become a fixture in the United States—scrolling Twitter feeds appear next to news anchors, and tips from Facebook regularly result in television coverage. But not in China.
    The Chinese Communist Party has recently created a new regulation that describes information from social media as “fake news” and “rumors,” effectively banning its use as a source of information, lest serious consequences follow.

    Jul 4, 2016 - China To Crack Down On Fake News From Social Media Amid Rumor-Mongering [ibtimes.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Will the SJW in the west try a ranking system within their own brand?
      China 'social credit': Beijing sets up huge system (26 October 2015)
      http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... [bbc.com]
      If a SJW does not like a site and they delist it could they get some reward points?
      The more sites they report and ban the more glorious and exclusive the company rewards for heroic efforts?
      Some sort of GUI to track their reward points?
  • The fact that "fake news" is such an issue this week is - fake news.

    • Part of the problem with fake news is that half of the population, such as yourself, seems to have forgotten what "fake" means. Here's a tip: it doesn't mean "anything I think shouldn't be in the news" or "anything that makes my tribe look bad" or "something that challenges opinions which I have an unreasonably strong emotional attachment to". It means fake, as in not real, you know fake.

      The election was rife with fake news, that is lies masquerading as news stories.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dunbal ( 464142 ) *

        It means fake, as in not real, you know fake.

        Exactly. Like when someone is pushing an agenda across multiple "news" sites. Like the sudden outbreak of stories about "fake news" stories.

  • The thought police from 1984 called, they want their ideas back!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      A SJW totally removes a site from their brands search results.
      Then contacts other SJW teams at a few archive sites to remove any other versions that might have been kept over the years.
      Then alters the search position of any site that linked to the now delisted site.
      Got to make sure the memory hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] is proactive for any linked sites. What about .edu sites that used the site in publications?
      What if the site is mentioned in an academic setting or quoted in parts? A search

  • What is truth, what is fact, and when? (Score:3)

    by ray-auch ( 454705 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @06:05AM (#53370397)

    One problem is that much that is disputed is also time-sensitive, what is "fact" changes over time, sometimes because more "facts" become known, sometimes because they turn out to be false. You can try and check that something was factual _when_ it was published, but on the web publications can be trivially updated.

    Take this: https://www.facebook.com/thein... [facebook.com]

    Lovely video on fact-checking, except that it doesn't fact-check itself, the google search shown in the video turns up loads of results that are reporting the story as news (and about an equal number reporting it as fake), the video claims a google search will not find the story, maybe it didn't when the video was made, but the video is _now_ demonstrably false itself.

    At the end of the day whether you use Google, Snopes or Upworthy for fact checking, you are still trusting someone else to curate your news and therefore are subject to their biases and agendas.

  • Easy (Score:3)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Sunday November 27, 2016 @06:14AM (#53370441)

    Just read the National Enquirer and The Onion, to learn what fake news are.

    If you read about a giant underwater crystal pyramid, found in the depths of the Bermuda triangle and you think this could be true, you are too stupid to vote.

  • There's only one solution to fake news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SlovakWakko ( 1025878 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @06:19AM (#53370465)
    There's only one solution to fake news, and that is for people to take interest in the world around them, to be informed about politics outside of the 3 final months of the US presidential race and to have enough information to be able to weigh the probability that a source is trustworthy and that a story is plausible. Implausible, sensational stories and stories from unknown sources have to be verified. Either do this, or be lazy, stay dumb, do not participate and let others decide how you'll live. An easy first step - don't get your news from facebook and twitter!
    • unless you're going to mandate it (e.g. by compulsory voting). You massively underestimate just how little time people have. Most have 2 jobs (or work equivalent hours) and multiple children.

      A better (though longer term) solution would be to pump up the liberal arts in college. It's the only chance people have to learn critical thinking. That's 'learn critical thinking', not 'be genetically predisposed to it'. When it comes to the sciences all but a handful of geniuses are just memorizing things. That's
      • Yep, you're right. I also agree with you that people need to be educated in ways of maintaining democracy, but I think college is too late - and too important for your financial prospects to waste it on liberal arts as you pointed out. It has to be done in middle school + high school. But it's quite difficult to push through any political establishment an education in navigating the lies, propaganda, corruption, appeals to our baser instincts, emotional blackmail and empty promises of said political establi

  • Use Web Annotation Tools (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mandrel ( 765308 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @06:22AM (#53370471)

    There are tools like Genius [genius.com] that allow web pages to be annotated beyond the control of the publisher (attaching comments to highlighted text), allowing lies to be challenged in-situ, before their sharing reaches critical mass.

    But for this to make a difference, you'd have to ensure that the annotations are widely seen. An annotation system should come with the default install of web browsers (including the Facebook internal one), and if not enabled by default, the user should be asked whether they want it enabled.

    But this wouldn't fix the problem of fake articles being popular simply because they tell people something shocking that panders to what they want to hear. Readers sometimes don't care about the truth. They want the entertainment, smugness, and social bonding of an interesting and validating lie. The National Enquirer problem. So it's acceptable if annotations just damp the problem down, rather than eliminate it.

  • fake startups (Score:3)

    by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @06:47AM (#53370551)

    >The article also suggests this effort may one day spawn fake news-fighting tech startups.

    I love it! Fake tech startups that fight news! How do I get in on the ground floor? Fund me! Oooh ooh! Fund me!

  • It's not fake news they're hunting, it's the truth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sethstorm ( 512897 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @07:07AM (#53370603) Homepage

    To the left, "fake news" is a smear given to anything that doesn't fit their narrative.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      To the alt-right, fake news is the excuse for ignoring anything that contradicts their narrative.

      In fact, it's the foundation if their fantasy world.

    • And to the right, fake news is the current MSM. What's the difference?

      I would say bringing back journalistic integrity and not provide opinions would be a good start.

    • To the left, "fake news" is a smear given to anything that doesn't fit their narrative.

      I have noticed that the things that alt right nutjobs screech most loudly that "the left" do seem to be much more common among those same nutjobs than among the left. It's almost as if you believe that by yelling and screaming louder than anyone you can alter reality.

      Also, about 99.6% of the time "narrative" appears in a post that's not about fiction, it's an indication that the person using it is an idiot.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PJ6 ( 1151747 )

      To the left, "fake news" is a smear given to anything that doesn't fit their narrative.

      How did this get modded +4 Insightful?

      Slashdot's been flawed for years, but this up-modding of obvious trolls seems to be new.

      And this whole left versus right bullshit is getting quite old.

  • News, like democracy, need mature people (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @08:11AM (#53370713)

    The nice thing about having a free press is that they can report just how it is and needn't toe the party line. Unfortunately people equated "can tell the truth" with "do tell the truth".

    You can actually see that very well in the development of the former East Bloc. Back in the day of the Iron Curtain, the people in the former East Bloc were pretty good at spotting bullshit news. Why? They knew that most of what they read, hear and see as news IS bullshit. And yes, that ability deteriorated quickly after their media became "free".

    The problem is that the same still applies. Most of what is reported as news is bullshit. Fake. Blended with opinion (to the point of being more opinion than information). At the very least distorted by omission. But people never learned to notice that. Because they were used to having "free" media, and they trusted them for the reasons mentioned above: They equated "can say the truth" with "do say the truth".

    This has to change. "Filtering" fake news at some higher level will not work. Because the fakers will just cry censorship and find enough idiots to fight their fight. You need an informed population that is able and willing to invest the time necessary to tell fake from real themselves.

    And no, I don't think either that this is possible. At best you can do it for yourself and at least keep yourself from falling for the next news item that belongs into Weekly World News rather than some reputable news outlet.

  • It is rare that an early internet meme is perfectly applicable. Yet here we are. And still no one has posted the obvious.... so here it goes:

    They are proposing a massive system to become the final arbiter of truth.

      What could possibly go wrong?

  • Is going to be here soon. IPFS, ZeroNet, Maidsafe, plus decentralized DNS through Namecoin is going to take hold and these people won't be able to censor anything. Everyone needs to be playing with these technologies right now. They are going to try and silence us and retake control of your information stream.
  • This "fake news" narrative is bollocks. People seek out news and information that confirms their preexisting prejudices. If people are believing "fake news" it's an issue for the education system to deal with - i.e. stop pumping out unthinking drones lacking in a broad general knowledge. Algorithms and people tagging stories as fake is extremely sinister.

  • Will be more difficult than stopping spam.

    Any solution will result in litigation with claims of discrimination or rights voilatiions

  • There is no Real News (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Attila Dimedici ( 1036002 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @02:12PM (#53372099)
    To whatever degree that fake news was successful, its success was a result of traditional news sources being unreliable. If the Washington Post, the New York Times, et al had not completely committed themselves to getting Hillary elected, no matter what lies they needed to tell to do so, people would have been able to spot the fake news. Unfortunately, "real news" no more reflected the facts than "fake news".

  • What about all the fake news from MSM? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Sunday November 27, 2016 @05:31PM (#53373073)

    Is the mass media responsible for fabricating stories and inciting riots? Seems to me the media routinely fans the flames of racial division by releasing false information.

    Remember the Charlotte riots? The media first reported that Keith Scott was unarmed. This was a major factor that led to the riots. Turns out, Keith Scott was armed. Is this a case of media fabrications causing riots?
    In the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, the media first reported that Brown was on his knees with his hands up. Turns out, that was another media fabrication which also led to riots.

    In the Ahmed Mohamed clock incident, the media first reported that Ahmed was just building a clock, as a project for his electronics class, but the principal called the police because Ahmed was a Muslim. Turns out, that was another media fabrication. Ahmed used a clock that he bought at a department store, along with a briefcase and other props, to make a fake bomb. In a post-Columbine world, what should the principal have done? What if it had been a bomb? BTW: although he was richly rewarded for this stunt, Ahmed has been posting extremely anti-American rants: he called the 9/11 attacks self defense, he supports BLM, and much more.

    When George Michael Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, the media first posted photos of an 11 year old Trayvon. Months after the incident, some people still believed that Zimmerman attacked a small child, which was not the case. Trayvon was an athletic 5'11" and 160 lbs. and was beating the snot out of Zimmerman. Maybe Zimmerman was not justified in shooting Trayvon, but Trayvon was not an 11 year child, and the media tried to insinuate.

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