Re:Wikimedia director on commercial use of Wikipedia
by IAmEveryone on Thursday March 15, 2018 @06:39AM
(#16591658)
You’re stating “the effects were minimal” as a fact, but that’s impossible to prove. Some of these stories featured prominently on reddit, for example. And nobody knows what others’ Facebook feeds look like. It’s not inconceivable that some of these stories may have moved the needle in some regions or communities.
Just look at how much political capital Obama had to spend on countering the “birther” nonsense. That was 8years ago, and it crowded out all sorts of actual policy discussions, arguably gave rise to the Tea Party and everything that followed from it, and probably had effects on every election starting from the 2010 midterms.
Fact: There was a small case of "troll farms" producing totally click bait content. But the effect was minimal. This is what was originally meant by "fake news".
Now fake news can literally be anything, and the resulting moves to counteract anything will be bad. What also concerns me is that most of the voices against whatever fake news is, reside on the left hand side of the political spectrum.
Okay. Now. lets assume that Fake News is responsible for manipulating and influencing stupid people into voting wrongly. The way to counteract that is by education, by a free press, not by counter propaganda and censorship.