Google, Facebook move to restrict ads on fake news sites | Reuters:
I hate click bait.
I hate fake news sites..
But we need to be careful about what we say is fake.. and we also need to frame this debate in an honest way as we step down into the removal of ads from ‘fake sites’..
For prime example, the question to Google “who won the popular vote” has brought people to a site called 70news.wordpress.com, which reported that Trump won the popular vote.. despite losing by 700,000. Their argument was if you discount about three million votes cast by ‘illegals’ then Trump clinched it.. False representation of the truth. Of course. But to say it would be right for Google to pulls its ads from 70news.wordpress.com is also not true—GOOGLE does not permit ads on free WordPress sites to begin with. And 70news when I visited actually has no ads and 521 likes on Facebook.
There are two possible reactions about to occur.. 1) We are going to finally rid social media of nonsense fakery. Or 2) The mainstream is going to use this chance to think big and attack its competitors: Independent publishers and reporters.
We have to think ‘bigly’ about this .. and actually do the intellectually honest thing instead of just going with an emotion…
