<story><title>Free speech cannot be sacrificed to strike fake news</title><url>http://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/381871-free-speech-cannot-be-sacrificed-to-strike-fake-news</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdiddly</author><text>The market will sort out the real from the fake? The market is how we got where we are. The market favors clickbait, not necessarily truth.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, I find all the calls for somebody to &lt;i&gt;do something&lt;/i&gt; (i.e. restrict free speech) equally troublesome.&lt;p&gt;I basically think there&amp;#x27;s no solution. Liars gonna lie.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lr4444lr</author><text>Somehow, the National Enquirer existed for decades alongside the newspapers of record in every town of the United States, and we didn&amp;#x27;t degenerate into a know-nothing lawless society. Tastes changed, and though correlation is not causation, the slippage of America&amp;#x27;s educational performance comparative to other countries&amp;#x27; can&amp;#x27;t be flat out ignored.</text></comment>
<story><title>Free speech cannot be sacrificed to strike fake news</title><url>http://thehill.com/opinion/cybersecurity/381871-free-speech-cannot-be-sacrificed-to-strike-fake-news</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rdiddly</author><text>The market will sort out the real from the fake? The market is how we got where we are. The market favors clickbait, not necessarily truth.&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, I find all the calls for somebody to &lt;i&gt;do something&lt;/i&gt; (i.e. restrict free speech) equally troublesome.&lt;p&gt;I basically think there&amp;#x27;s no solution. Liars gonna lie.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>alexilliamson</author><text>&amp;gt; Liars gonna lie&lt;p&gt;Agreed.  As they always have since humans or our ancestors first stood to gain from deception.  You&amp;#x27;ll never stop it.&lt;p&gt;But I think the solution may still come from market forces.  Not as in tech companies inventing showy systems for flagging and muting fake news.  But I think people are slowly becoming smarter news consumers, more skeptical about what they take as fact.  Who hasn’t become smarter about filtering out BS in the last two years?&lt;p&gt;The problem for Trump and Fox with all their “fake news” tirades is that you can’t &lt;i&gt;partially&lt;/i&gt; open people’s minds to skepticism.  Once they begin questioning one news source, they begin developing general critical reasoning ability.  Tribalism may keep them defending their bad news source for some time, but as they continue to tear apart other sources, they will become increasingly unable to turn a blind eye to their own.  In the long run, Fox making accusations of fake news will cannibalize their own fake news.  Whether that happens in the next 8 years or on a longer horizon?  Who knows…</text></comment>