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Comment by crdoconnor | Hacker News Reader

"Fake news" (along with Russia-panic) started its life as part of a propaganda offensive by the DNC and DNC affiliated media (CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) to justify why Hillary lost that didn't involve blaming her.

I think it was mainly targeted at Democrats/Hillary supporters rather than Trump supporters (they obviously didn't need to hear an excuse for why she lost).

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No, fake news started long ago. You are very confused if you think these mainstream media companies are lieing to avoid talking about why hillary lost. They give lots of reasons that appear to be valid, like that she didn't pay enough attention to those important three states, and that she had no widely publicized plan to deal with the people that lots their local factories and jobs. I think this latter case was really important, and HRC really missed out on this area. A lot of trump supporters seem to believe that billionaire and job exporter trump will somehow get their factory jobs back to their town. This idea has been widely discussed.

Sure, some people also wrote about how trump won because of fake news (i.e. blog posts about things that aren't true, like the comet pizza thing), and that must have contributed, but that is just one of many things.

"fake news" as a phrase only started showing up regularly after Hillary started doing badly.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=Fake%20news

>No, fake news started long ago.

Like I said two comments down.

>You are very confused

I don't think so.

>"Fake news" (along with Russia-panic) started ... to justify why Hillary lost that didn't involve blaming her.

>fake news started long ago

you can only pick one.

That is why I used "quotation marks" to indicate that I was referring to the moral panic about fake news that was suddenly plastered over the Dem-linked media (NYTimes, Washpost, CNN, CNBC, etc.) starting November 10th which led to the search spike which can be very clearly seen here:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=fake%20news

Edit: oh look you downvoted the comment below after I pointed it out. how cute.

i cant even downvote you because you responded to me? but you can blame me if you want.

anyways, even the fake news phenomena that is being discussed today has been around for quite a while, so you are still incorrect in your assertion that its a recent phenomena started by the DNC and hillarys campaign

snopes even did a write up about fake news sites in january of 2016[1]

[1]http://www.snopes.com/2016/01/14/fake-news-sites/

Fake news started with the Tea Party, "shock jocks" and other right-wing conservative attempts to discredit reality-based news media. Blaming the DNC is a good example of fake news lies in action.

Fake news started hundreds if not thousands of years ago. The recent hysteria about fake news started roughly 48 hours after the Presidential election results.

Fake news was abundant enough that it became a meme in 2005 as "truthiness".

That you took offense to it only after November 10, 2016 is inconsequential.

The media's sudden obsession starting Nov 10th is graphed here:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=fake%20news

Spikes like that don't happen by accident.

No, they don't. In this case, on your link, the top "related topic" is Donald Trump and the top three "related queries" are "trump", "trump fake news" and "trump news".

This is what happens when you get a pathological liar running for president. Trump "defended" his lies with more lies, such as calling honest news sources "fake news".

You're looking at a specific term that has caught on, of course there is a spike. The ancestral comments are talking about the idea of disinformation, which I'm guessing has been around as long as humans started talking to each other (hell maybe even before that).

Also the term 'filter-bubble' which acts as if conservatives are simply not exposed to liberal viewpoints.

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