Facebook to CNN: InfoWars offers “opinion and analysis,” will stay on platform | Hacker News Reader

Facebook to CNN: InfoWars offers “opinion and analysis,” will stay on platform

mercurynews.com

12 pointsdredmorbius11 comments

Alex Jones admitted he was playing a character in court, so they aren't offering genuine opinion and analysis.

I guess Facebook should have kept all of the Russian fake accounts playing characters and offering opinions and analysis.

Does the Onion offer opinion and analysis? Further, InfoWars has a team of writers and sometimes publishes true news. A policy that blocked InfoWars could block a true post from a website on the grounds that a previous, satirical post was disliked by the staff.

The Onion makes no claims about being anything other than satire. The fact that Infowars publishes true news occasionally is no more significant than the fact that sometimes Onion stories end up happenening in real life.

Sowing doubt in the distrustful is simple and Infowars exploits that tendency in people while offering some signs of legitimacy by sometimes reporting on events like traditional news. Mix in enough BS and it becomes hard to tell what’s real, nothing new or special about that idea.

If the majority of what you publish is unsupported by evidence then you should not be considered news, commentary or entertainment sure, but not news.

Including some factual information is what makes lies believable.

I guess if you post real news often enough, it cancels out the bad stuff you actually did.

CNN, the guardian, and the Washington Post could also work under that principle after all the misinformation and falsehoods they have published this year.

What bad stuff? Their opinions? Their caricatures?

Not liking something isn't a good enough reason to characterize something as "bad".

In fact, doing so has a name: Libel.

It's amazing to me how some people are so keen on silencing anyone they disagree with, as if accuracy in new reporting were somehow more important than free speech. They're ready to hate facebook and government as authoritarian and evil but just as ready to insist facebook and government take a more active role censoring speech they don't like.

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