[sobkas]

> "How do we stop people from sharing (what I deem to be) fake news?" is the wrong question. The right question is "How do we give people the tools to identify fake news?" If you give people the tools and they still spread what you deem to be fake news, then you've done what you can. Tough cookies for you.

When you teach people to recognise fake news they will be able to recognise your fake news. What you want is to cut people from enemy fake news (or truth, they are enemy, it doesn't matter) so they will believe everything you say while enemy can't influence them.

[throwaway115]

I don't want that, but I see your point. I would rather our population have a healthy immune system where bad ideas just don't survive, than to have us live as Bubble Boy, cut off from the rest of the world forever.

[atmavatar]

Alas, I fear even if we had a perfect utopia where it was easy to give everyone the choice between fake news that reinforces their beliefs and unopinionated, factual news, it won't turn out any different than placing a bunch of hungry children in a room where there's a table of sweets and a table of nutritious vegetables.

Hell, even if it was adults given some training for self-control, the vast majority of them will dip into the sweets table from time to time.

People are really good at rationalization, such that even if they know up-front which choice was fake news and which was not, I bet you'd similarly observe a significant fraction (if not majority or super majority) of people choosing the fake news to feel better.

Sadly, I'm unaware of any real solutions to the fake news problem that don't make things even worse.

[thriftwy]

The Internet was created with the implicit idea that everybody brings their stuff (including news) to the table and then the best one wins. Back then the US/Free World ones were clearly the best.

If you want nobody in your country to read any news procured by China/Russia, this kind of defeats the original idea. You've now built something else entirely - like a glorified teletext or minitel.

[rightbyte]

Ye I think this is the underlying problem.

The Man® want us to only read his fake news to be able to get away with whatever they wanna push.

One fundamental precondition for a functional democracy is the right to be wrong, since that is judged arbitrary anyways.

The problem with manipulation stems from algorithmic ad feeds anyways. E.g. chronological 'my friends only' feeds did not have that problem.