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Comment by marcosdumay | Hacker News Reader

> It's also useful to corrupt people's belief in the possibility of getting accurate news.

That's why the GP called them a vaccine. To be a vaccine, first it has to be a virus.

There are some odd happening recently that people attribute to fake news (usually with weak evidence, and way too many competing possibilities that they ignore), but I don't think anybody can classify the current world as apocalyptic.

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Funny they should use that analogy, since one of the achievements of "fake news" in the broad sense has been eroding people's belief in vaccination. Perhaps not apocalyptic yet but undoubtedly getting people killed.

Sure, but getting less people killed than ever before.

> one of the achievements of "fake news" in the broad sense has been eroding people's belief in vaccination.

That's an unusual way to describe The Lancet, who are responsible for inflicting Wakefield's bullshit on the world, and taking an eternity to retract it.

Once the facts were known, the Lancet retracted and was contrite. That's a cock-up and apology, not fake news. Fake news would be the news outlets that continued to promulgate the idea.

Yes, ideas are like viruses. Fake news is like a vaccine because it keeps the immune system alert and engaged. That way if a really dangerous, fast-spreading idea comes along one day, society will have sufficiently heterogenous world views to limit its spread.

That's a stretch.

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