These two youngs are making $40k+ a month with fake political news
miamiherald.comThese people are honestly scum, representing the apotheosis of cynicism in politics and media. If Facebook had any shred of credibility left they'd shut them down now after this article.
> These people are honestly scum, representing the apotheosis of cynicism in politics and media.
That applies to the main stream media too. They too stoke fear and hysteria and undoubtedly are far more powerful and influential.
Here is a good summary : http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/10/26/john-stossel-rulin...
In India we have a media company whose singular objective is to expose fraudulent news on main stream media. http://www.opindia.com/ A blogger dedicated to media exposure is a big twitter celebrity http://www.mediacrooks.com/
These fake news writers are small fish...
Funny to see an article complaining about the state of the mainstream media... posted to FOX News. One in a long line of media orgs writing stories about "the media" as if they aren't an integral part of it. Pot, meet kettle.
I am unable to see the logic here. Fox news continues to support diversity of opinion lot more than CNN or ABC. The author in question was a consumer reporter with ABC who was fired once he started changing his own opinions based on evidence.
Imagine if these knuckleheads were not just going for clicks but actively being paid (say by a super PAC) to inflict damage to the other side? At lest right now it seems the damage inflicted is just collateral damage for clicks.
Exactly -- I don't understand why they agreed to be interviewed. People riding a profit wave usually don't announce to the world that they're frauds.
They are giving an audience what they want.
The people reading and commenting on their articles aren't doing anything more than reinforcing their current beliefs.
I think they are so disgusted with the system, they're trying to say "fuck it all" and grab some cash and hopefully hasten the crash and burn of the "modern media".
That was the impression I got as well - after all this has all the hallmarks of some Bennington grad's "social experiment" - but they went about it in the worst way possible. Rather than say satire or even their own reportage, they simply lied and raked in the dough.
Unfortunately the media isn't going anywhere. NYT, who got it so wrong when it mattered the most, added 41k net subs in the week following the election
This is literally the saddest article I have ever read. I really don't know what's worse - how many people believe what these folks say or that we've built the platform that gave them a voice. Did anyone become an engineer to do this to humanity? Sure they aren't the first, but it's just so damn easy, now.
I wish more techno-utopians would take note of this. I says so as a techno-utopian myself.
We are building tools that take power away from entrenched interests and give that power to just about anyone. I think that's a good thing on balance. But just how good or bad it is depends heavily on the details. And as an engineer or a designer or a product person of any kind, we get to decide which people we use as the prototypical user that we keep in our head and use in testing to get our services up and running.
If we just skip that, and throw the tools out there and see what happens, we get, among others, people like those in this article.
I think it's very valuable to think about what kind of journalists we do want to enable, and take the time to go see how they are doing. Is my tool working for the kind of people it is supposed to? Are there little things I can do to make sure they are effective?
Too many engineers and designers act like they're just putting a product on the shelves and their decisions aren't political, but every decision is political. It's just a question of whether you take the time to understand the political effects.
> We are building tools that take power away from entrenched interests and give that power to just about anyone. I think that's a good thing on balance.
Well the "entrenched interests" knew at least that putting a demagogue sexual predator in power would be a bad thing. That's a win in their column off the bat. Perhaps having elites preserve the status quo in Washington, while not ideal, at least leverages their knowledge of history that not all voters have and keeps us from driving off a cliff.
Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton can only work towards their own self-interest within the boundaries of staying accountable to voters and preserving the power (and reputation) of their respective parties. The nihilistic short-term profit-seeking of fake news is not accountable to anyone.
Many of the social media manipulation techniques used to spread disinformation right now, are things I experimented with in the early days of social media that I proudly discussed in public forums widely and were reproduced by others...
I feel as though the tech industry is collectively to blame for the global power grab that is taking place right now. I've devoted a significant amount of my time to trying to correct this, but it is so far beyond the capabilities of any single person or group at this point.. like a wildfire burning out of control and all I can do is sit and stare as it consumes everything around me
The thing about bullshit is that the only thing most people need to continue their belief in it is a single article somewhere on the web that supports that assertion. It's the political version of claiming that your religious belief is true because your religious text of choice affirms it.
Inspiring! Taking the advice of many SV heroes before them, those who disrupted the world with just a computer and savvy entrepreneurship. And they didn't even need venture capital to become succesful! I bet a BTC or two they read Zero to One - wonder what Thiel thinks of them. Probably regrets he didn't give them a fellowship when they were still wasting their potential on university among luddites.
I don't understand the need for such heavy sarcasm.
Fine, it's clever. I'll give them that. They can go fuck off down the river though.
As someone who's seen a lot of journalists and honest news websites struggle to make money (one I frequent makes about $70 a month on Patreon at the most), seeing these scumbags making $40,000+ a month for rushed together articles about lies is just utterly depressing.
Makes you wonder what the point of actually doing researching or writing interesting stuff is nowadays. Why bother when actual work doesn't make money and flat out lying to people does?
But hey, I guess that's what the world wants now. Content that merely backs up their own beliefs, regardless of how true/accurate it actually is.
Imagine when algorithms (something like https://www.narrativescience.com/) start producing these stories instead of slow humans.
There will be a lag period where everyone believes nonsense, and then hopefully everyone will catch on that inflammatory, low-content articles are usually lies, and maybe even start fact checking a little more so as to avoid looking stupid. And the world will be a slightly smarter place.
I can dream?
How are these sites monetizing so well? Is it really just Outbrain type stuff? How do they grab traffic when starting from zero?
What are the best sites / forums these days for keeping up to date on content publishing and monetization? (No, not interested in "fake news," but I do have interest in publishing). I know there were some prominent forums back when I was publishing 10 years ago but where should I begin to get caught up?
The site is linked in the article, just look at what they're doing and how they're doing it.
Since they're scumbags, and since it hilariously pops up "You are not allowed to copy content or view source" when pressing CTRL+U, I won't link to their site here, but this instead:
view-source:http://www.libertywritersnews.comThe $14 rpm quoted in the article is unheard of. I've heard $8 rpm for video ads, but that was from a sales guy pitching his network. I've never heard the major networks quote a number 1/10th that high.
It looks like they are running the same click bait article ads that everyone else is.
I'm surprised so many people are shocked about this.
Has nobody seen what ESPN has become because it's the exact same thing: opinion pieces with no real content because that's what gets more views as it adheres to the lowest common denominator and is much cheaper to produce.
It's also analogous to reality TV taking over television.
ESPN is not the exact same thing. Yes, ESPN has taken a turn to lighter, fluffier content that is simpler to produce. They are not in the business of creating an entire media business dedicated to misleading people.
I'll admit that was an over exaggeration and ESPN is not nearly as bad.
However, would you not agree that most media has been regressing towards the lowest common denominator with the least amount of effort put into it?
Absolutely. Because there's no money in doing anything else. ESPN is behind many, but is facing this reality more and more.
I like the caption: "Liberty Writers News founders Paris Wade, left, and Ben Goldman work at their apartment in Long Beach, Calif., on Nov. 14, 2016. Stuart Palley For The Washington Post"
It flows like a single sentence.
Forget nuclear armageddon.
Humanity will destroy itself via social media.
Social Media has caused more harm than nuclear weapons ever will.
say you are reading an article, what is the best way to gauge the authenticity of the article and how to make the user actually give a shit about it's validity?
It surprises me people read fake news on FB knowing it's false but upvote or share it because of crowd effect-lot of shares & likes must mean it's legitimate.
This is a major loss of confidence in Facebook, at first dow right denying the existence of fake news, now announcing half measures to kill their own user engagement. It boggles my mind such company is somehow more valuable than incumbent tech giants with more cash than facebook will ever earn in it's lifetime.
Just curious, is this exclusive to republicans? Anyone seen the leftist fake news?
http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/11/21/breaking-fec-rocks-do...
presented as "BREAKING: FEC Rocks Donald Trump With BIG Fraudulent Donation Scandal (DETAILS)"
you can find loads of this shit from both sides, see http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/
Visit CNN.com or read Paul Krugman's Columns.
"These two youngs"? "Youngs" is not a word. Please update the title. The title of the article is: "The stories, headlines and bylines are fake. But the money pouring in is very real".
ok, I got downvoted due to excessive snark I guess. However my point still stands, the HN title is not really within the guidelines (not to mention ungrammatical). "Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.".
It deserved upvotes if anything, so I gave it one, and this one, as I think you're quite right.
Leaving aside "youngs", (the submitter probably has English as a second language, but it looks silly and should have been corrected), "These [certain group] are making [big money figure] doing [unusual thing]" is itself textbook clickbait style.