That applies to the main stream media too. They too stoke fear and hysteria and undoubtedly are far more powerful and influential.
Here is a good summary : http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/10/26/john-stossel-rulin...
In India we have a media company whose singular objective is to expose fraudulent news on main stream media. http://www.opindia.com/ A blogger dedicated to media exposure is a big twitter celebrity http://www.mediacrooks.com/
These fake news writers are small fish...
The people reading and commenting on their articles aren't doing anything more than reinforcing their current beliefs.
We are building tools that take power away from entrenched interests and give that power to just about anyone. I think that's a good thing on balance. But just how good or bad it is depends heavily on the details. And as an engineer or a designer or a product person of any kind, we get to decide which people we use as the prototypical user that we keep in our head and use in testing to get our services up and running.
If we just skip that, and throw the tools out there and see what happens, we get, among others, people like those in this article.
I think it's very valuable to think about what kind of journalists we do want to enable, and take the time to go see how they are doing. Is my tool working for the kind of people it is supposed to? Are there little things I can do to make sure they are effective?
Too many engineers and designers act like they're just putting a product on the shelves and their decisions aren't political, but every decision is political. It's just a question of whether you take the time to understand the political effects.
Well the "entrenched interests" knew at least that putting a demagogue sexual predator in power would be a bad thing. That's a win in their column off the bat. Perhaps having elites preserve the status quo in Washington, while not ideal, at least leverages their knowledge of history that not all voters have and keeps us from driving off a cliff.
Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton can only work towards their own self-interest within the boundaries of staying accountable to voters and preserving the power (and reputation) of their respective parties. The nihilistic short-term profit-seeking of fake news is not accountable to anyone.
I feel as though the tech industry is collectively to blame for the global power grab that is taking place right now. I've devoted a significant amount of my time to trying to correct this, but it is so far beyond the capabilities of any single person or group at this point.. like a wildfire burning out of control and all I can do is sit and stare as it consumes everything around me
Makes you wonder what the point of actually doing researching or writing interesting stuff is nowadays. Why bother when actual work doesn't make money and flat out lying to people does?
But hey, I guess that's what the world wants now. Content that merely backs up their own beliefs, regardless of how true/accurate it actually is.
I can dream?
What are the best sites / forums these days for keeping up to date on content publishing and monetization? (No, not interested in "fake news," but I do have interest in publishing). I know there were some prominent forums back when I was publishing 10 years ago but where should I begin to get caught up?
Since they're scumbags, and since it hilariously pops up "You are not allowed to copy content or view source" when pressing CTRL+U, I won't link to their site here, but this instead:
view-source:http://www.libertywritersnews.comIt looks like they are running the same click bait article ads that everyone else is.
Has nobody seen what ESPN has become because it's the exact same thing: opinion pieces with no real content because that's what gets more views as it adheres to the lowest common denominator and is much cheaper to produce.
It's also analogous to reality TV taking over television.
However, would you not agree that most media has been regressing towards the lowest common denominator with the least amount of effort put into it?
It flows like a single sentence.
Humanity will destroy itself via social media.
Social Media has caused more harm than nuclear weapons ever will.
It surprises me people read fake news on FB knowing it's false but upvote or share it because of crowd effect-lot of shares & likes must mean it's legitimate.
This is a major loss of confidence in Facebook, at first dow right denying the existence of fake news, now announcing half measures to kill their own user engagement. It boggles my mind such company is somehow more valuable than incumbent tech giants with more cash than facebook will ever earn in it's lifetime.
presented as "BREAKING: FEC Rocks Donald Trump With BIG Fraudulent Donation Scandal (DETAILS)"
you can find loads of this shit from both sides, see http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/
Leaving aside "youngs", (the submitter probably has English as a second language, but it looks silly and should have been corrected), "These [certain group] are making [big money figure] doing [unusual thing]" is itself textbook clickbait style.