Imagine the glee in mainstream news if FB GOOG would mainly surface the news of the NYT, WaPo, FoxNews, etc.
I think an issue we have with getting news from places like FB is that (I think) it will often show news or stories which you probably align with politically or reinforce your views (leading to increased polarization). Compare that to how we used to get our news from papers or the TV were we couldn't control the programming.
It just means that they need to have content that has gone through some editorial process and isn't just made up.
Anyway, I'd rather let adults be adults and not "protected" from bad words and bad ideas. Let the market place of ideas provide a forum for debate.
False information and hate speech should be downgraded, even banned, when it's done to be shared with millions of people and it can lead to actions that are not beneficial to society in general.
Let adults be adults is fine enough, but I don't understand why people should be allowed on disseminate verifiably false information. If it's the state control that bothers you, make a democratic system to flag it. It's sill better than allowing FB and Google to give you what their algorithms say keep you using their service.
Take a look at Walter Lippmann.
As long as entities exist that distribute news and there's a chance of some fuckery the loser (or presumptive loser) will scream foul play. As to whether or not it's happening? I dunno, maybe?
As an example. Some random guy tweets that CNN showed Porn instead of an Anthony Bourdain show. Based on nothing else Daily Mail, Esquire, GQ, Fox News had articles up immediately giving the claim legitimacy and a massive audience in the tens of millions. Of course it never happened. This isn't on some spectrum of different opinions. This is a flat out lie, that was never fact checked by seemingly reputable companies that suddenly became true.
The fact is that because of Twitter and Facebook and the financial importance of being first to the punch the integrity of news is slowly but surely going down the toilet. So yes the fake news epidemic is real, serious and very much a new phenomenon (because media companies rely more and more on internet revenue).
They brought these problems on to themselves by trying to play fast and loose with journalism in the first place, now they get played and are feeling a bit upset and want some payback.
Fake news are created by news spammers and propaganda organizations. These guys do it on purpose, for cynical reasons. They won't stop, so we need to filter them out.
What is needed is a blacklist and a way to collaborate in fact-checking. I often seek Wikipedia for news for this reason - it tends to be more fact checked and complete.
After a news piece has been tested and found fake, then we need to apply machine learning to quickly identify all clones of that news floating around (this is easier that the original problem of detecting if they are fake).
So basically the internet needs an immune system.
The current propaganda over fake news is solely about the Trump election result and attempting to install a form of censorship & control over information either directly (outlaw 'fake news' via political content controls or similar) or indirectly (get FB/Google/Twitter to shut down distribution, which they're thrilled to do) to prevent that from ever happening again.
It is hard not to feel very cynical about the sudden post-election focus that large media outlets are putting on 'fake news'. I think it is mostly an attempt to discredit alternative media and reinforce the establishment / government narrative.