>To what extent, then, is fake news culpable?

Definitions first, fake news is not bad headlines, or bad reporting.

Fake news is specifically the creation of websites that look like legitimate news sites, with what look like legitimate articles, in order to generate click and ad revenue.

SO a concrete example is the creation of a site called "Mercury Sun reviewer", with articles talking about how Hillary is about to be indicted.

Its not really news, its fiction presented with a Headline and a byline.

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For India, we've not really been dealing with Fake news in this manner, aside from maybe whatsapp forwards and propaganda.

The creation of masses of website just in order to convert people to click bots, doesnt happen. Internet penetration isnt high enough to afford it.

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So fake news IS an issue, BECAUSE people will believe it without checking. Its a monetization scheme which callously targets politics and power.

The definition has been bent out of shape since it got mainstream.

I think for the HN crowd, this definition should work and stick

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And I think I know those forums.

So, according to this definition, standard news sites are incapable of ever producing fake news since their website also serve as legitimate news site?

That does little more then raising the costs of implementing manipulative falsehoods by making the traditional news a gatekeeper.

No, a legitimate new site can also fall for the temptation to fabricate news in order to raise revenue or political favor (and for the person in charge, get a promotion/raise). The definition of fake news include intent, and the knowledge that the information is false. If you take away either of those two parts you don't get fake news.

Legitimate news organizations make mistakes or might be taken in by reporters with bad intentions, but as an organization, their intent and purpose isn't to produce fake news.

But if their intent is to profit, reguardless of ethics and facts? Sure 'real' news will be included, but mixed with questionable content. This is the real problem and situation.

Yes. Bang on.

Manipulation of truth - normal business as usual by news sites or bias. (Old news?)

Fake prose with headlines for click farms (and now, political gain) - Fake news.

essentially We've got an additional problem to deal with.

If a news site decides to fabricate an article - thats fraud/libel and also fake news

> Fake news is specifically the creation of websites that look like legitimate news sites, with what look like legitimate articles, in order to generate click and ad revenue.

So CNN, NYT, WashPo, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, etc.

Also known as sponsored content.

You're right. The problem was never really fake news it was more that a significant chunk of the population has abandoned consensus reality. This is not a US problem either. I travel a lot and everywhere -- Europe, Japan, Australia, India, and the US -- you see the same exact pattern played over and over. Right-wing partisans lose all trust in the established media[1] after decades of right-wing politicians insisting that journalists can't be trusted. Right-wing partisans deliberately constructing their own parallel knowledge community and this enables right-wing politicians to speak, completely unchallenged, about events that never happened and facts that aren't facts[2]. The end-game, where right-wing voters, having isolated themselves completely, begin to insist on more and more outlandish conspiracies[3] until we're talking about secret pedophilia rings and the Pope conspiring with Hollywood Jews and millions of fake voters voting in the most closely watched election in the history of the planet.

The interesting thing about this process is how deliberate and effective it is -- and I think, if you spend time on these right-wing forums, like yourself, you start to realize that nobody has been "duped," these people aren't fools, they are eager and willing participants in engineering a state of mass delusion. This was very apparent to Deleuze who grasped this very clearly:

  Reich is at his profoundest as a thinker when he refuses to accept ignorance or illusion on the part of the masses as an explanation of fascism, and demands an explanation that will take their desire into account, an explanation formulated in terms of desire: no, the masses were not innocent dupes; at a certain point, under a certain set of conditions, they wanted fascism, and it is this perversion of the desire of the masses that needs to be accounted for. (Deleuze and Guattari 1977: 29)

Like the war on drugs it is nonsensical to focus on the supply when the demand is so great. A population addicted to fake news, a population that wants to be propagandized, a population that will gather online in forums and message boards and self-propagandize, is going to find and consume fake news and generate conspiracy theories no matter what.

And I think a liberal society has to let this happen. It's not like China, the State is not going to deploy its own highly-trained, well-paid "media operatives" to find and destroy this alternative media ecosystem while lavishly funding the official media ecosystem. The whole point of liberal society is that desire is allowed to run its course.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/19/as-hyper-conservative-medi...

[2] http://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-st...

[3] https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became...

This is almost entirely what I too hold as the best intersection of facts which explain the current scenario.

I'm spending a lot more of my time looking at community behaviors online, moderation and moderation evolution, and any papers which cover this area.

This stuff is virulent.

I think we might be headed into a dead cat bounce period in the near future - a lot of people have become aware of this now, and the idea is obviously disseminating a lot more.

(3-4 years ago, I never saw this idea summarized and shared in a single piece, vs multiple times in the last 3 months.)

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The fundamental motor, the gameplay loop which drives this is the degradation and competition in the media sector.

Competition for ads, consolidation, along with management targets would force magazines/papers to move towards language which would grab a larger audience and more attention.

And then you have the partisan right wing groups, created because they kept saying that the entire media is a liberal conspiracy.

> Like the war on drugs it is nonsensical to focus on the supply when the demand is so great. A population addicted to fake news, a population that wants to be propagandized, a population that will gather online in forums and message boards and self-propagandize, is going to find and consume fake news and generate conspiracy theories no matter what.

Interesting. And like drugs, people reach for fake news because they don't like reality.

So maybe the real question becomes: Why is reality so unsatisfying for so many people? It seems like there's an emotional gap that people try to fill with drugs, and a somewhat-emotional-and-somewhat-cognitive gap that people try to fill with fake news.

This reminds me of "Escape From Reason" by Francis Schaeffer.

I am fairly right of center but nothing in your narrative is anything I have considered worthy of attention.

There's plenty of good healthy center to right news. The garbage, left and right, is for consumption by the foolish. It also serves as inflammatory material to be used by extremists of the opposite ilk.

Don't fall into the trap of believing that, simply because a news source (no matter how loud) is present that any particular group of people takes it seriously.