The role of fake news in the 2016 election
Is Hillary Clinton a murderer? My fundie acquaintances on Facebook sure think so. They cite a Wikileaks email released just before the election, in which two employees of Stratfor discuss Clinton. I won't link to it here, but one employee says, "I thought Vince Foster was the only person the Clinton’s killed. How naive I was." I took his tone to be joking, but the irony-challenged take it at face value as evidence.
There's no way to know if these releases have been doctored, seeded with little falsehoods in otherwise legit documents, but they could easily be complete fabrications.
Funny how Vince Foster's Wikipedia page maintains he died by suicide, citing five federal investigations. You'd think that if there were evidence, someone would update that page.
Anyone can make a meme and post it to social media. Just yesterday I saw one that said Trump won the popular vote. I asked the poster for the source of the numbers, and he didn't respond.
I see a lot of good points being raised here about what went wrong, but I haven't seen much discussion of fake news. We're in an age where truth doesn't matter. All that matters is how you smear your opponent. I hate it when our side exaggerates, but I see FAR more outright lies coming from the right.
Fortunately, Twitter and Facebook have started to crack down on fake news sites. That would've helped a couple of weeks ago. At this point, it's going to be like Whack-A-Mole, with new fake sites popping up for each one we quash. So good luck with that.
http://gizmodo.com/facebooks-fight-against-fake-news-was-undercut-by-fear-1788808204?utm_medium=sharefromsite&utm_source=Gizmodo_twitter
What has your experience been with fake news?
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