It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The third and underlying root reason for fake news was the question of the Marxist View of Journalism (马克思主义新闻观). A number of news workers have not defined their own role in terms of the propaganda work of the Party, but rather have defined themselves as journalism professionals, and this is a fundamentally erroneous role definition. Strengthening education in the Marxist View of Journalism and raising the quality and character of news teams is not just very necessary, it is a matter of extreme urgency.
... fake news and false reports (失实报道) not only damage the reputation of news journalists and the credibility of the media, but they also hamper, interfere with and destroy guidance of public opinion, damaging social order and economic order and seriously and even directly impacting social stability. For the media, winning the trust of the people is a project that will take years and years, built up through report after report. But the emergence of a single false report can extinguish everything that has been gained.
...the first and foremost social responsibility [of journalists] is to serve well as a mouthpiece tool (当好喉舌工具). This is the most core content of the Marxist View of Journalism, and it is the most fundamental of principles.
originally posted by: ManFromEurope
So.. I take from this thread and its topic that Fake News is Good News, because Fake News is Bad News to Marxist Social Order (which in itself is so very, very obviously Bad)?
Oh, you want that famous and never seen Free Speach?
How about some common sense? You do not need to apply censorship to everything. Using common sense, obvious and verfiable lies should always stay punishable by law.
By “nationalizing Facebook,” I mean public ownership and at least a majority share at first. When nationalizing the company restores the public trust, that controlling interest could be reduced. There are three very good reasons for this drastic step: It could fix the company’s woeful privacy practices, allow the social network to fulfill its true potential for providing social good, and force it to put its valuable data to work on significant social problems.
It would be better to have a national privacy commissioner with real authority, some stringent privacy standards set at the federal level, and programs for making good use of some of the socially valuable data mining that firms like Facebook do. But in the United States, such sweeping innovations are probably too difficult to actually pull off, and nationalization would almost get us there. Facebook would have to rise to First Amendment standards rather than their own terms of service. The company could be regulated the way public utilities often are.
Many academics are finding that big social network data sets can generate surprising and valuable information for addressing social problems—for instance, public health and national security. Researchers are working on ways to use social networking patterns to predict the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. We could even use Facebook data to analyze criminal networks in the United States or terrorist networks around the world. We'd want to be careful about the circumstances under which our security services had access to Facebook data, but if the firm had been nationalized, at least there could be some reasonable public oversight. And while academics have to meet ethical standards for protecting the people they study, Facebook has no such guidelines. Nationalization could allow us to review the ethical implications of their management decisions.
They are correct in that fake news undermines the credibility of the MSM Journalism and by so doing, undermines "Democracy". We all know that at this point in US History, the general public has no faith whatsoever in the Media, Congress, the Executive branch and the Judicial system. If something isn't done to shore up the Media's credibility, this country is going to spin out of control as everyone comes to believe that its all fake news.
There's another reality at work here as well that suggests a far greater need for regulations that strengthen media credibility. The fact of the matter is that going forward, the US society is moving ever closer to a more Marxist like society. The "hive mind" effect is spreading over the land like a grey cloud and that's probably a normal evolution. This isn't the days of the wild west; there's no shared value system and this culture is rapidly abandoning the ideals of self reliance. Every day, more and more people expect the government to protect them from all manner of threats, perceived or real. This fact coupled with the continuous and rapid dumbing down of the general population means that the best and ultimately only way to maintain some semblance of order is a gradual shift to a more Marxist type State apparatus which plays to the hive mind values system inculcated into the youth by the Education system which has, for better or worse, become the chief architect of the value system of the Uber culture of the useless eater class.
Put another way, the "People of Walmart" don't need more freedom of speech. They have nothing of value to say; they don't "think" anything of any value. As far as their concerned, all they need is more Twinkies! Their offspring come home talking about how awful Global Warming is and how scared they are of White Privilege and scared of people with scary guns and how Donald Trump is a racist because..................that's all they hear in school. They can't reason and can barely process enough thought to make their way to grab another bag of chips before going to their filthy rooms to play Xbox.
When viewed from this perspective, Macron and Trudeau are drop dead correct! You really don't want the People of Walmart reading trash news on the internet as "truth"! They can't discern the real from the fake! Spread enough fake stories on the Internet that Candidate X wants to round up all the fat people and kill them and the People of Walmart will believe it! And that is a real threat to Democracy, (which in fact isn't really anymore the political system in place).
I see this best developing as sort of a three tiered system.
The top tier is the Politician and Corporate class that actually "controls" stuff and has the money to pay for "real" news and true information.
The second tier is the NPR class; the elites that promulgate the belief systems for the plebes and who guides and orchestrates the necessary educational materials to spin out the propaganda to the third tier, the Plebian tier, telling them what they need to think and believe. The NPR tier is essential in creating and maintaining order by managing consensus about what is right and wrong, about acceptable priorities. Fake news entirely undermines this effort and could ultimately lead to a complete breakdown in social order.
The third tier is obvious. The Plebian class; the people of Walmart, almost entirely informed by "Social Media" and/or the NPR class if they're still in school. You really don't want them racing about the parking lots of Walmart on their scooter carts in sheer panic and mayhem. As a result, social media needs to be heavily regulated and controlled and as I've suggested before, I'd argue that Facebook should be Nationalized.
A strong argument for Nationalizing Facebook is made at:
www.slate.com...
And at:
theweek.com...
originally posted by: ManFromEurope
Using common sense, obvious and verfiable lies should always stay punishable by law.
CHAPTER I: ORGANIZING CHAOS
THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
It is further disconcerting that other western nations have threatened government intervention into Facebook—a service reportedly used by nearly one-third of the planet—using “fake news” as the common rallying cry. Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau threatened strict government regulation. French President Emmanuel Macron promised the same, suggesting to ban it during election time. A new law in Germany, pushed by Merkel, took effect on January 1st, threatening social media companies with vast penalties if they did not censor illegal opinions. Twitter has already moved to block the posts of members of opposition parties in that country, lest they pay the price. All of this based on the shifty, untenable claim that fake news is a threat to our liberal democracies.
Consider for a moment that the Chinese are quite correct in their language:
"fake news and false reports (失实报道) not only damage the reputation of news journalists and the credibility of the media, but they also hamper, interfere with and destroy guidance of public opinion, damaging social order and economic order and seriously and even directly impacting social stability. For the media, winning the trust of the people is a project that will take years and years, built up through report after report. But the emergence of a single false report can extinguish everything that has been gained. "
They are correct in that fake news undermines the credibility of the MSM Journalism and by so doing, undermines "Democracy". We all know that at this point in US History, the general public has no faith whatsoever in the Media, Congress, the Executive branch and the Judicial system. If something isn't done to shore up the Media's credibility, this country is going to spin out of control as everyone comes to believe that its all fake news.
During an interview broadcast on Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s “AC360,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that he isn’t sure that Facebook shouldn’t be regulated and that he would “love to see” regulations on ad transparency.
Fake news is the result of liberty and democracy, not a threat to it.
It should always be up to the individual to determine truth from falsity, and eventually the free market will sort them out.
I’ll tell you one thing, the market is ripe for an unbiased, factual and ethical news agency.
originally posted by: UKTruth
OP - I am not surprised you've spotted the agenda.
For those of you not paying attention, the Zuckerberg interview last night might wake you up.
During an interview broadcast on Wednesday’s edition of CNN’s “AC360,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that he isn’t sure that Facebook shouldn’t be regulated and that he would “love to see” regulations on ad transparency.
The Cambridge Analytica saga is staged. What has been going on for years in terms of data mining was turned into a big scary story, then up pops Zuckerberg to fall on his sword and start the ball rolling on regulations to determine what you can read.