These people are honestly scum, representing the apotheosis of cynicism in politics and media. If Facebook had any shred of credibility left they'd shut them down now after this article.
This is literally the saddest article I have ever read. I really don't know what's worse - how many people believe what these folks say or that we've built the platform that gave them a voice. Did anyone become an engineer to do this to humanity? Sure they aren't the first, but it's just so damn easy, now.
Inspiring! Taking the advice of many SV heroes before them, those who disrupted the world with just a computer and savvy entrepreneurship. And they didn't even need venture capital to become succesful! I bet a BTC or two they read Zero to One - wonder what Thiel thinks of them. Probably regrets he didn't give them a fellowship when they were still wasting their potential on university among luddites.
As someone who's seen a lot of journalists and honest news websites struggle to make money (one I frequent makes about $70 a month on Patreon at the most), seeing these scumbags making $40,000+ a month for rushed together articles about lies is just utterly depressing.<p>Makes you wonder what the point of actually doing researching or writing interesting stuff is nowadays. Why bother when actual work doesn't make money and flat out lying to people does?<p>But hey, I guess that's what the world wants now. Content that merely backs up their own beliefs, regardless of how true/accurate it actually is.
Imagine when algorithms (something like <a href="https://www.narrativescience.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.narrativescience.com/</a>) start producing these stories instead of slow humans.
How are these sites monetizing so well? Is it really just Outbrain type stuff? How do they grab traffic when starting from zero?<p>What are the best sites / forums these days for keeping up to date on content publishing and monetization? (No, not interested in "fake news," but I do have interest in publishing). I know there were some prominent forums back when I was publishing 10 years ago but where should I begin to get caught up?
I'm surprised so many people are shocked about this.<p>Has nobody seen what ESPN has become because it's the exact same thing: opinion pieces with no real content because that's what gets more views as it adheres to the lowest common denominator and is much cheaper to produce.<p>It's also analogous to reality TV taking over television.
I like the caption: "Liberty Writers News founders Paris Wade, left, and Ben Goldman work at their apartment in Long Beach, Calif., on Nov. 14, 2016. Stuart Palley For The Washington Post"<p>It flows like a single sentence.
say you are reading an article, what is the best way to gauge the authenticity of the article and how to make the user actually give a shit about it's validity?<p>It surprises me people read fake news on FB knowing it's false but upvote or share it because of crowd effect-lot of shares & likes must mean it's legitimate.<p>This is a major loss of confidence in Facebook, at first dow right denying the existence of fake news, now announcing half measures to kill their own user engagement. It boggles my mind such company is somehow more valuable than incumbent tech giants with more cash than facebook will ever earn in it's lifetime.
"These two youngs"? "Youngs" is not a word. Please update the title. The title of the article is: "The stories, headlines and bylines are fake. But the money pouring in is very real".