Ok, good reason to avoid this term. Indeed here it's happening as well... instead of understanding that the point is always to verify the information and their sources, "fake news" is becoming a quick way to dismiss what other people are saying, without actually bringing any more source.

Its actually getting pretty hard to write anything these days without someone getting offended (witness the message you are replying to).

In a lot of ways, I really don't blame the current political climate, because the US has seen way worse (read up on the US 1800 Presidential Election). I actually blame poor applications of algorithms to what folks view. The bias caused not only by the beliefs of the person training the box and the professional poster's ability to learn how to manipulate the results (the next generation of SEO) has increasingly made twitter and facebook painful to use. Add a large bit of tribalism that is baked right into humanity and you have a lot of fun. Further strain through the idea that a lot of companies won't even just let the users pick accounts they always want to see regardless of the beliefs of the provider, and you get a added bit of helpless feeling in the populace.

Which makes writing a pain. I've seen some folks take offense at grant applications that are basically some of the most dry reading you will find. It once was a don't use this era's forbidden words (e.g. the word "empower" had a very strange evolution in grants). Now its memes.

And in removing the reference, he removed any association to "sides" in US politics.. don't really need that especially when dealing with a PR issue such as this.

Yup — and in fact I recall that it was used very shortly after the 2016 presidential election as the Left, stunned at its loss, was searching for reasons why the election didn't go their way, and latched on to the idea that it was 'fake news,' basically people confusing Onion stories for real life (well, not just Onion-level satire but also carefully-crafted non-satirical false-fact sites). I think the term was then picked up by the Administration shortly after the inauguration. I think at the moment it tends to be used mostly by the Administration, but the term itself seems to have some currency in industry as well, although it may be dying a bit at this point.

Regardless, the term 'fake news' is IMHO itself kinda fake news.