Saturday, April 15, 2017

Fake News?

What the hell is fake news? There was always either the news or lies. Now we hear the term fake news all the time because of the power of unwatched internet social media printing whatever they feel like all the time for profit or revenge on whomever they dislike. It is communication on a whole different level and it is damaging to anyone’s reputation and knowledge of the true facts. It goes back to a new generation of people who do not possess any ethics but crave fame or fortune as their only guide in life. This past election was deluged with fake news on both sides. There are special software to get any message they want out there quickly and to thousands of people on their various news feeds. Messages uncensored or researched for accuracy or truth to facts.
People react to outrageous fake stories and believe that the statements are real. They are so outraged that they react in violent ways or with real threats. There is a particularly outrageous website called Danger & Play that regularly posts inflammatory fake statements for attention and views. They made up, “Clinton’s inner circle includes child traffickers, pedophiles and now members of a sex cult”. They even posted that children were being held in a Washington D.C. Pizza place; then Edgar Welch, a disgruntled man tried to save the children and   opened fire with an automatic weapon and of course there were no children being abused there. The man believed the lies. The thousands of posts made people send death threats to the Pizza place. People are being terrified for no reason.
Outrageous stories like this one has no basis in facts but they are being circulated. The author of that statement reaches 82 million Twitter users like Donald Trump every month. Sometimes he reaches 150 million per month. This site is just one of hundreds just making up things to write. Some fake news authors use bots to get their messages more places like on Facebook. Bots are fake social media accounts that are programed to automatically re-tweet or be circulated on common social media accounts. Consultants that help advertisers to be circulated everywhere know all about Bots. They are Twitter accounts masquerading as real people by the millions. You can buy thousands of Bots on a Russian website called BuyAccs.com for just a few hundred dollars. Within minutes your Tweet can reach thousands and then millions when they re-tweet. It gets passed around faster than viruses. The damage is done before the real facts can be explained.
Are we going to have revolutions and wars begun this way? Our President regards his Twitter account with more respect than the 16 spy agencies taxpayers pay to protect us and research predators in our country. He has believed lies and spoke publicly about them as truth. Most of the problem lies with Facebook and Twitter because they choose items to publish based on how popular they are whereas news organizations that have been around for a hundred years base their news on truth and research with sources to back up their statements to the public. This practice makes Facebook and Twitter very irresponsible yet they are so popular. Two fake news sites are Denverguardian and National Report that has made the owner millions of dollars in advertising money writing fiction as fact.

During the election there was posted the same amount of fake news as real news. Never before in history has more information been available to more people. Too bad there is so much greed and fame mongers out there destroying the whole purpose of spreading the news. Never before in history has more bad news been circulated. Must good vs. evil always fight everywhere at any time? 

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