This article about how Macedonian high school students are behind a lot of the fake news is worth reading:
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became...
Edited to add: /s
With communication enabling faster communication with greater reach, there might be more noise, but is it worse in terms of percentage of communication?
Yeah, but they were never shrugged off. Even the worst charlatans insisted they speak the truth; they didn't just go "meh, maybe it's not true after all, what is truth anyway".
In the past news sources had a reputation to protect, so crazy stories were confined to tabloids and some radio shows. Now all these stories just pop up in peoples streams, without anything to distinguish them from stories from reliable sources.
Couple that with the fact that, even with trustworthy sources, you can paint an inaccurate picture just by editing which stories you present (which Facebook is incentivised to do and actually does), and I think the problem is much worse now.
I envy your optimism.
Buckle up!
http://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=9969
Saves Medicare for current and future generations, with no disruptions for those in and near retirement.
For younger workers, when they become eligible, Medicare will provide a premium-support payment and a list of guaranteed coverage options – including a traditional fee-for-service option – from which recipients can choose a plan that best suits their needs.
I'm thinking TRyancare.
That's the frightening part. The financial incentives in the system are all screwed up. These kids are doing it purely for the easy dollars; they don't even care about the politics at all.
It's like schoolyard taunts, except the kids are getting paid for who can come up with the most viral rumour. Something seems deeply, deeply broken about this at a systemic level that's different than say, people spreading misinformation to others they know by word-of-mouth.
The only difference is that you need to pay lots of untrained people to lie on Facebook, while you needed to pay just a couple of highly trained people to lie on a newspaper.