It’s unfortunate that the real fake news (and no, I don’t mean Fox News.. i mean, the real, original fake news.. fake news *sites*) is not surfacing to the public attention anymore, because it’s been suspected to be one of the factors leading up to 45*’s election.
It would be unfortunate that just because we have a biased right wing media, and Dems are picking up on the incorrect adoption of the term to attack Fox News, we give this issue a blind eye when fake news sites are alive and well:
- Websites created with the sole purpose of generating clicks and ad revenue (a link farm on steroids, if you will)
- Masquerading as news sites with some fancy name
- Existing across the political spectrum, but with an overwhelming majority with headlines biased in favor of Trump, because let’s face it, everyone is dumb to an extent but Trump supporters are a special kind of stupid. The progressive base’s ROI with fake news sites can’t ever hope to compete with the i’m-swimming-in-cash level ROI with Trump.
- Where the header is 90% of the content, with the remaining article body being either arbitrarily cut & pasted from other sources, or seemingly procedurally generated from click-baity content formats
- Prospers from an internet culture where users don’t read the article they see from a friend, but simply re-share it in their timeline to make a political statement (usually in the form of “I hate Clinton”)
- Is initially “seeded” by the site creators, but later acquires a life of its own after going viral
- With 99% of traffic being generated from social media link shares, and having its biggest client in Facebook. And Facebook is suspected to have let it fester, because it still meant more business for Facebook in terms of user engagement
Mid-term elections season is approaching – are we going to do anything about this?
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