DrZoidberg
Contributor
I've completely swung around on this issue. I think fake news is good. I don't think it ruins anything. What it does it highlights the basic problem with explaining stuff. You have to remove information when describing anything, or it'll be an unmanageable mess of facts. All news, or any story, will in some sense or another always be a lie. Because it has filtered out information the speaker doesn't think is important, for whatever reason.
The existence of large amounts of fake news makes us think much more critically about what we are reading. The world is messy and contradictory. It's always been.
It's so easy to think that back in the olden days (pre-Internet news) news was accurate. Nope. It was pretty shit then to. It was just less of it, so we couldn't verify anything.
What has changed is that quality print media is losing revenue so has to turn to churning out small articles with juicy headlines to chase clicks, rather than fewer well researched pieces. But that's not necessarily evil. It's an evolution. For businessmen and investors getting an accurate description of the world is critical. It's a question of survival for them. So they'll always pay for accurate news. So it won't disappear. It'll just be differently packaged. However that packaging ends up looking like.
I think in the long run the existence and spread of fake news will lead to an environment of more good ideas being spread and talked about. Which has always been good in general. The economist Richard Florida has done a lot of research on a culture of tolerance for weird ideas and wealth generation. There's a strong correlation.
I think people who call for regulation of news and wanting some government agency validate it for them is essentially wanting to go back to world of predominantly comforting lies. A world where the mess and chaos of life is hidden. But that's the illusion. That was always the illusion.
Here's my prediction. We'll see the rise of resources like Snopes. They'll be imbedded in our news sources. Just like Google translate asks if you want to translate a web page, we'll get a configurable service to validate a pieces truth value. Some AI will rate it according to an algorithm telling us that something is 89% true and it's up to us to decide if it's good enough.
I think that in the long run the rise of fake news will only be seen as a good thing. A transition to a new and better more well informed world. We'll look back in horror at the deluded 20'th century where even the countries with a free press swallow mostly bullshit all day.
Yay for fake news!
The existence of large amounts of fake news makes us think much more critically about what we are reading. The world is messy and contradictory. It's always been.
It's so easy to think that back in the olden days (pre-Internet news) news was accurate. Nope. It was pretty shit then to. It was just less of it, so we couldn't verify anything.
What has changed is that quality print media is losing revenue so has to turn to churning out small articles with juicy headlines to chase clicks, rather than fewer well researched pieces. But that's not necessarily evil. It's an evolution. For businessmen and investors getting an accurate description of the world is critical. It's a question of survival for them. So they'll always pay for accurate news. So it won't disappear. It'll just be differently packaged. However that packaging ends up looking like.
I think in the long run the existence and spread of fake news will lead to an environment of more good ideas being spread and talked about. Which has always been good in general. The economist Richard Florida has done a lot of research on a culture of tolerance for weird ideas and wealth generation. There's a strong correlation.
I think people who call for regulation of news and wanting some government agency validate it for them is essentially wanting to go back to world of predominantly comforting lies. A world where the mess and chaos of life is hidden. But that's the illusion. That was always the illusion.
Here's my prediction. We'll see the rise of resources like Snopes. They'll be imbedded in our news sources. Just like Google translate asks if you want to translate a web page, we'll get a configurable service to validate a pieces truth value. Some AI will rate it according to an algorithm telling us that something is 89% true and it's up to us to decide if it's good enough.
I think that in the long run the rise of fake news will only be seen as a good thing. A transition to a new and better more well informed world. We'll look back in horror at the deluded 20'th century where even the countries with a free press swallow mostly bullshit all day.
Yay for fake news!