If you want to crack down on fake news - be careful what you ask for - with the new administration it may come back to bite real free speech.
I absolutely agree there is a lot of fake bullshit masquerading as legitimate news (e.g that protestors were plants, the pope endorsement etc.) and fake news very likely swung the election... but how to deal with it will be difficult.
While most people say FAKE news is a bad thing™ -- a lot of those people don't agree on what fake is.
(If you are quite certain you "know it when you see it" that phrase alone should give you pause -- we all know mostly sane family members (or acquaintances) who absolutely believe and repeat "the truth" of things you know are false.)
Even if you are sophisticated in understanding falsification and analytic proofs (and if you’re really sophisticated you might want to avoid Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem… just sayin’) But even if you understand the challenge of false premise and can point out apriori objective criteria to validate whether true or false… it won’t matter. Few people will understand… most don't care... but all of them resent you for making them feel stupid... “that’s just like you elitists — you never listen and don’t understand” (otherwise — they assume — you would agree with them)
Pointing out tautological reasoning does not mean anything to them…(seriously, they do not know what it means) They’ll just point out they won the election so they are right (they also don’t care if the electoral college is skewed in their favor and they don’t believe Hillary got more votes — fake news tells them you’re lying)
The problem clearly is not just people supplying fake news... there is also a big demand for it.
There are lots of cognitive reasons people prefer fake news, and sadly, they are not mal-adaptive (that is the gene pool does not weed them out… and a new one is "born every minute")... our brains have evolved to embrace confirmation bias and our perceptual filters adapt to feed us things the way we expect them (it saves neural energy, reduces uncertainty and enables faster response)
Frankly narrow-mindedness can make you very successful.
(In Trumps case, his personal bubble also required inheriting a major fortune to overcome many many many bad decisions, but the man could afford the best bubble... a that prevents feedback and denies every mistake… so no possibility of learning)
And on the supply side, fake news will continue as long as it's profitable
The underlying profit model for our economy depends on attention — on manipulating information (“puffery”) and providing affirmation of our choices (“ooo what great taste you have — tell your friends! like us on Facebook!”). Our technology enables state-of-the-art algorithms, coupled to the most detailed social behavior data to ensure that you see and hear what you want to see and hear.
Think about it -- not only do you stay in a bubble of your own expectations, while in there, it does not take much to tip or trigger your emotions. When you are only used to affirmation, it is much easier to focus fear or anger or spite or vengeance because variations — threats — to your norms feel magnified.
In an information economy, trust is an "externality", something freely available but used in the economic process -- like air or water in a manufacturing economy. If you can freely dump lies into the air and water, it does not cost you explicitly -- but everyone will pay for it with less trust in common sources. In economics, if you don't properly price externalities the market cannot self-correct or function efficiently.
While news does not sound like a "market" -- keep in mind that a democracy depends on free speech. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes described "the marketplace of ideas" in his "Abrams" dissent — the idea that from rigorous exposure to differing ideas, truth will win out. And of course most of the founding father assumed “the will of the people” was the synthesis of rational discourse between "men of reason".
Unfortunately, none of them had evidence from cognitive research and functional MRI's which suggest that, left to their own device, people prefer bubbles over complexity or uncertainty.
From inside the bubble the mainstream media is irrelevant -- ironically, the strained efforts of "both sides do it" actually annoys bubble dwellers because if means the mainstream media is uncertain, whereas they are quite sure what is real and what is fake. Unjustified confidence is the hallmark of bubble dwellers.
The problem is, they trust their sources and they don't trust yours...
So while fake news is a very real problem -- any solutions or progress will be complicated. And it is not self-correcting - ignoring it is not an option… okay, actually ignorance of alternative views IS the problem — you just have to figure out how. Whether the enlightened self-interest of giant tech firms may make some difference on the supply side, it won't stop the demand side
That's the real challenge
I’m anticipating the upcoming administration will decide they need to crack down on "fake news" -- and that should be a huge red flag! Bannon is a master at it and Trump is a yuge consumer (and re-tweeter) of it. Most conservatives hate what they call fake news (y'know, under Obama where “more people are insured” or “unemployment is falling” or “the stock market keeps rising”)
To them, that was “fake”
First, they’ll choose a name like "net neutrality", then comes the disinformation through compliant "both sides" media and “think tanks” such as “Heritage Foundation” or “American Enterprise Institute” (private bubble channels) all the while making sure what they say is not what you meant.
We need to be proactive in trying to define the narrative — and that means finding ways to reach inside the bubble. (Avoid head on confrontation, that seals off access) Finding common likes and more often, dislikes, create a way to plant an idea… on the plus side, people inside bubbles have no problem with objectively contradictory beliefs as long as each suits their purpose. On the down side, their brains go to great lengths to stick with what was. Perhaps consider framing strategies that fit their narratives but alter roles slightly or subtly introduce new characters?
How should we respond to government efforts to curb fake news? (Especially if the proposals sound reasonable on their face... just imagine how they would be interpreted by, say Jeff Sessions, or validated by Alito or Thomas clones?)
After all, China, Russia, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia and Egypt all have laws against "fake news"…
So what could go wrong?