# What's so bad about fake news sites? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 15, 2016, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092 "2016-11-15T20:46:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/21 "2016-11-23T10:31:34Z")
I don’t think facebook and google should block stories. What I’d appreciate, is just if the software flagged particular lines or stories as disputed or dubious. This is something easier for their software to recognize and doesn’t have any freedom of speech issues. I could conceivably be misled by a factoid sandwiched between objectively true facts. But a squiggly orange line underneath it reminds me that part maybe needs to be verified. Of course some people would immediately turn off this feature, since all their favorite pages would be teeming with such tags. But I think those people, who are _so_ wilfully ignorant, can’t really be helped at this time. The feature is for everyone else. > [@aldiboronti](#): > > I have a nasty suspicion that the only fake news sites in the crosshairs of Google and Facebook will be conservative ones, and that should worry you whether you’re on the left or the right Well apparently most of the fake news stories _are_ conservative ones. With the case of the Macedonian group, they started out writing stories to cater for both sides of the political spectrum. But they found the pro-trump anti-clinton+obama stories got the most clicks, and therefore made the most money. So that’s where they focused their attention. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/22 "2016-11-23T13:10:10Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > [Facebook, Google, crack down on fake news](http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-google-crack-down-fake-news-advertising-n684101) > > So what’s the problem here? Fake news has been a staple of the internet for years, with The Onion turning it into a goldmine. Sometimes people are fooled into thinking it’s real, as has happened memorably with a few Onion stories. But you can’t protect fools from themselves. I have a nasty suspicion that the only fake news sites in the crosshairs of Google and Facebook will be conservative ones, and that should worry you whether you’re on the left or the right. It doesn’t. I’m fine with Google and Facebook refusing to provide a conduit for the right’s poisoning of the public discourse. > [@](#): > > And, yes, I know The Onion is hilarious and most of the other sites suck at humor, but that can’t be a criterion either for killing ads on some sites and not on others. I don’t think lack of humour is the criterion here. Some of the things right-wingers claim (waterboarding isn’t torture, global warming is a hoax by the Chinese, Hillary Clinton is History’s Greatest Monster ™) are amusing. Disgusting, but amusing. Like Aunt Ida in John Waters’ ‘Female Trouble’. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/23 "2016-11-23T13:20:49Z")
> [@The\_Tooth](#): > > It doesn’t. I’m fine with Google and Facebook refusing to provide a conduit for the right’s poisoning of the public discourse. > > I don’t think lack of humour is the criterion here. Some of the things right-wingers claim (waterboarding isn’t torture, global warming is a hoax by the Chinese, Hillary Clinton is History’s Greatest Monster ™) are amusing. Disgusting, but amusing. Like Aunt Ida in John Waters’ ‘Female Trouble’. You’ve made my point for me. If they’re amusing then there’s no material difference between those sites and the Onion other than their politics. In which case Facebook and Google are banning them for political reasons. Which is fine, they are after all private companies but they could at least be honest - they are unacceptable because the humor (such as it is) is skewed right rather than left. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/24 "2016-11-23T13:40:35Z")
I agree. Not being willing to provide a conduit for right-wing lies is fine. And there is a difference you missed; as has been pointed out already, the Onion is meant to amuse whereas right-wing lies (“fake news”) are meant to deceive. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/25 "2016-11-23T13:52:08Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > There are conservative fake news sites? Do they jokingly report on how Obama founded ISIS? If so, political reality has made them obsolete. John Stewart to Tucker Carlson - “You’re on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls. What’s wrong with you?” ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/26 "2016-11-23T15:24:27Z")
There’s a pizzeria in DC that was the subject of a fake news story: something about the Clintons using it as the headquarters for a child sex ring. As a result of this fake news article, workers at the restaurant are being threatened, musicians who play gigs there are being harassed, and the reputation of the business is being threatened by idiots posting negative reviews on Yelp and whatnot. [https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/fact-check-this-pizzeria-is-not-a-child-trafficking-site.amp.html](https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/fact-check-this-pizzeria-is-not-a-child-trafficking-site.amp.html) Besides the fact that the Onion is clearly satire, that type of humor isn’t spurring people to go out and cause harm to others. The BS fake news that’s circulating now clearly is, and it is clear to me at least that this is part of the intent of the fake news stories: to hurt others. I seriously hope people start getting arrested or sued, as appropriate, for the malicious acts they are perpetrating in relation to this unfortunate phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![Randolph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Randolph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randolph)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/27 "2016-11-23T16:36:53Z")
So then where _do_ the Clintons headquarter their child sex ring? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/28 "2016-11-23T16:49:47Z")
> [@Randolph](#): > > So then where _do_ the Clintons headquarter their child sex ring? It’s at the paint store, three doors down. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2016, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/29 "2016-11-23T17:35:36Z")
The fake news sites are awful. Why, just in the past few years fake news sites told us that ‘mattress girl’ had been raped, that one in four women will be raped or sexually assaulted on campus, that there was a campus rape crisis, that women only make 74 cents on the dollar for doing the same job as men, that the Benghazi attack was triggered by a video. I remember one televised fake news site where all the people on a panel raised their arms up in the air in sympathy with the fake ‘hands up - don’t shoot’ meme. There’s certainly a lot of fake news out there. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2016, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/30 "2016-11-25T21:52:42Z")
NPR has a good article about a professional purveyor of fake news. He claims he’s doing it as an exercise to study the phenomenon, but the interesting thing is that though they’ve tried writing fake news from both a liberal and a conservative slant, liberals generally won’t take the bait, and it’s conservative extremists of the Trumpist variety who slaver over it like rabid wolves over red meat and help to promulgate it and sway more moderate voters. What’s wrong with fake news sites? They got Trump elected, that’s what. They did it by legitimizing his carnival-show hucksterism and promoting his lies. There’s not a lot of point in legitimate media responsibly publishing facts when these idiots get all their news from their Facebook feeds which have no accountability to anyone, least of all to the truth. During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. “It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they’re about to get served,” Coler says. “It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election.” Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait. > **[We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator In The Suburbs. Here's What We Learned](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs)** > > "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right," says Jestin Coler, whose company, Disinfomedia, is behind some fake news sites. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2016, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/31 "2016-11-25T23:11:55Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The fake news sites are awful. Why, just in the past few years fake news sites told us that ‘mattress girl’ had been raped, that one in four women will be raped or sexually assaulted on campus, that there was a campus rape crisis, that women only make 74 cents on the dollar for doing the same job as men, that the Benghazi attack was triggered by a video. I remember one televised fake news site where all the people on a panel raised their arms up in the air in sympathy with the fake ‘hands up - don’t shoot’ meme. > > There’s certainly a lot of fake news out there. Virtually all of the ones you mention there had corrections made by the originators, no such luck is to be expected from the right wing ones that usually do not bother to correct their info ever, but to even celebrate and remunerate the creators of fake news. > **[PolitiFact Sheet: The Gender Pay Gap](https://www.politifact.com/article/2015/jul/15/politifact-sheet-gender-pay-gap/)** > > It has been one of the consistent cries, mainly of Democrats, over the past seven years. It goes something like: Women e ---
**Author:** ![Ale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f19dbf/32.png) [@Ale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ale)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/32 "2016-11-26T03:54:51Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > NPR has a good article about a professional purveyor of fake news. He claims he’s doing it as an exercise to study the phenomenon, but the interesting thing is that though they’ve tried writing fake news from both a liberal and a conservative slant, liberals generally won’t take the bait, and it’s conservative extremists of the Trumpist variety who slaver over it like rabid wolves over red meat and help to promulgate it and sway more moderate voters. > > What’s wrong with fake news sites? They got Trump elected, that’s what. They did it by legitimizing his carnival-show hucksterism and promoting his lies. There’s not a lot of point in legitimate media responsibly publishing facts when these idiots get all their news from their Facebook feeds which have no accountability to anyone, least of all to the truth. > During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. “It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they’re about to get served,” Coler says. “It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election.” > > Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait. > [http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs](http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503146770/npr-finds-the-head-of-a-covert-fake-news-operation-in-the-suburbs) Before people get on their high horses: - “Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn’t think fake news swayed the election.”\* Who is the bad person, the conman or the conned? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/33 "2016-11-26T04:22:10Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Before people get on their high horses: > > - > > “Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn’t think fake news swayed the election.”\* > > Who is the bad person, the conman or the conned? I don’t feel the need to label anyone a “bad person”, but yeah the person spreading lies is at fault and people believing, and forwarding, information because it pings their outrage meter, and never bother to check such news, are also at fault. The latter seems to be something that, at this time, the american right engages in a lot more than the left (cue Fox News with some “War on Christmas” nonsense). Staying on my high horse. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2016, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/34 "2016-11-26T04:49:58Z")
> [@Ale](#): > > Before people get on their high horses: > > - > > “Coler, a registered Democrat, says he has no regrets about his fake news empire. He doesn’t think fake news swayed the election.”\* > > Who is the bad person, the conman or the conned? Not sure what your point is, but if it’s something like “the guy who published all those fake news stories and showed what a tremendously viral phenomenon they were says ‘don’t blame me’ and ‘they didn’t change the election’”, then it’s a pretty lame argument. He also showed what we all already knew – that fake news is almost exclusively the domain of the right, and it’s the right-wing types who eat this stuff up and spread it around. If these beliefs constitute being on a high horse, then I guess I’m riding one, and I’ll stay right on it, thanks. I’d be willing to bet any money that if you took a random selection of Trump supporters and asked them a dozen basic factual questions pertinent to the election, they either wouldn’t know the answer or would confidently claim something that was completely wrong – namely, the stuff that Trump was constantly spewing that was about three-quarters total garbage, and endlessly repeated in junk news sites. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/35 "2016-12-05T01:32:43Z")
This afternoon, a North Carolina man with an assault rifle went into the pizza restaurant I mentioned a few posts ago. Patrons fled, and the man fired a few shots. Eyewitnesses said he was looking for the tunnels where children were being tortured by friends of Hillary Clinton. What. The. Fuck. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/36 "2016-12-05T01:52:08Z")
“What’s so bad about fake news sites?” ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2016, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/37 "2016-12-05T05:34:23Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > This afternoon, a North Carolina man with an assault rifle went into the pizza restaurant I mentioned a few posts ago. Patrons fled, and the man fired a few shots. Eyewitnesses said he was looking for the tunnels where children were being tortured by friends of Hillary Clinton. > > What. The. Fuck. What is worse is that it was not just the usual fake medium that spreads the fake news, but that Trump and also members of the new administration are the ones spreading it and many others. > **[Trump's national security adviser has promoted tweets alleging Hillary...](https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-flynn-tweets-hillary-clinton-2016-11)** > > That's according to social media postings made by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn — just named national security advisor to President-elect Donald Trump. > [@](#): > > The retired general whom President-elect Donald Trump tapped to advise him on matters of national security has promoted stories involving conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton. > > … > > On November 2, the general tweeted a link to a website called True Pundit, which claimed to have spoken with “NYPD sources” involved in the investigation of Anthony Weiner. Flynn called it a “must read” — which many supporters likely did, since it was favorited and retweeted more than 12,000 times. > > The fabricated news story originated on a number of right-wing blogs that were reporting little more than anonymous postings on internet message boards. As PolitiFact pointed out, the conspiracy theory that implicated Clinton in a “political pedophile sex ring” being investigated by the NYPD and FBI had no basis in fact. > > Spokesmen for both agencies denied any investigation, according to PolitiFact. It has to be noted that this item is not much related to the Pizza location, but it was also a fake news item and many mis informers out there jumbled both items together to keep the sick narrative going. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/38 "2016-12-06T18:01:17Z")
Sorry, but you’re always going to have “fake” news sites when the mainstream media ignore legitimate stories. Like, how many people know that we Pharma shills are [planning to strike for better pay](http://thesciencepost.com/pharma-shills-threatening-to-strike/)? ---
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/39 "2016-12-06T21:42:09Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > Sorry, but you’re always going to have “fake” news sites when the mainstream media ignore legitimate stories. You seem to be saying that any online source of news is “fake” if it’s not identified as being part of the mainstream media. But that’s not what people mean by “fake”–they don’t mean ‘less well-known’ (as with those sites carrying news about the proposed strike). Instead, they mean ‘sites that present made-up stuff,’ and conspiracy theories. Presenting news that’s not being covered by the mainstream is perfectly legitimate, as long as that news is genuine. That’s not “fake news.” ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2016, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092/40 "2016-12-06T23:49:22Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > I do take the point that The Onion is trying to make people laugh, and it’s very good at that. It takes potshots at both sides but it can’t be denied that it has a liberal bias. My worry is that conservative humor sites which deal in fake news (and believe it or not there are some) will be targeted along with right-wing clickbait sites. I guess we shall see. You’ve yet to prove these exist. And seeing as the only result will be that they won’t show up when looking for actual news, I don’t see the problem. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-so-bad-about-fake-news-sites/772092.md?page=3)