The volume has increased exponentially.
With generative AI, there are thousands of “news” sites with landing pages that look better than many real local news organizations.
These sites have agendas and are able to post the same story across the web, written differently each time, to look like events are taking place across the country/world and all being reported on by local news orgs. It’s all astroturf, as far as the eye can see.
And this doesn’t even touch on the amount of bullshit real news orgs publish without proper investigation thanks to the 24 hour news cycle and the rush to be the first to cover a story.
Yeah, there used to be misinformation published by news organizations and people with agendas. But that used to take significant effort. Now, I can set up a fake news website and fill it with stories in an afternoon.
There were tons of misinformation sites in place the moment the web existed. I was there, 6,000 years ago…
Seriously though, Fox News and all the other Murdoch owned media has been a firehouse for decades. Magazines and print media like the Weekly World News as well. On the internet the misinformation spreader set up shop early, and it was mainly the search engines that directed people to the better sources.
The main change is that the people are choosing to consume the firehose of social media.
The volume has increased exponentially. With generative AI, there are thousands of “news” sites with landing pages that look better than many real local news organizations.
These sites have agendas and are able to post the same story across the web, written differently each time, to look like events are taking place across the country/world and all being reported on by local news orgs. It’s all astroturf, as far as the eye can see.
This list from Wikipedia just barely scratches the surface: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fake_news_websites
And this doesn’t even touch on the amount of bullshit real news orgs publish without proper investigation thanks to the 24 hour news cycle and the rush to be the first to cover a story.
Yeah, there used to be misinformation published by news organizations and people with agendas. But that used to take significant effort. Now, I can set up a fake news website and fill it with stories in an afternoon.
There were tons of misinformation sites in place the moment the web existed. I was there, 6,000 years ago…
Seriously though, Fox News and all the other Murdoch owned media has been a firehouse for decades. Magazines and print media like the Weekly World News as well. On the internet the misinformation spreader set up shop early, and it was mainly the search engines that directed people to the better sources.
The main change is that the people are choosing to consume the firehose of social media.