Pizzagate is such a mess. Years ago, conspiracy theories were mostly held to their little corners and they usually stayed there for the most part but it seems these days with places such as InfoWars being popular, more and more people are willing to believe these sources even when their claims are dubious. Everyone wants to be "anti-establishment" in their own way but no one wants to really critically think about the things presented. People are really thinking, "As long as its against the norm, let's just go for it no matter how dumb it may look."
I have taken to explaining some of the crazier shit my family asks me about as "the Internet has leaked into the real world. I'm sorry. We tried to contain it but they wouldn't give us the tools." My breaking point was when a 20-year-old "head mod" told me that Kevin Drum would stay banned by /r/politics because he was "a spammer."
I, too, self-investigate with an assault rifle. sarcasm
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/05/504404675/man-fires-rifle-inside-d-c-pizzeria-cites-fictitious-conspiracy-theories http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2016/12/04/man-arrested-with-gun-at-comet-ping-pong-washington-eatery-subject-of-fake-news-hoax/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/04/politics/gun-incident-fake-news/
Out of curiosity, what do you think are the best news sorurces out there these days? What would you least likely to suspect as fake news?
Can you elaborate? What do you mean with the quotes around fake news?
Could have sworn that the version of the story I read had a line saying that infowars and sites like it are the source of the problem. Unfortunately I cant find an archived version that contains that line so I guess I either misread it or it wasn't up for very long. Here is the initial Wa post article where WA-PO went on a tirade against fake news sites and legitimized a bullshit list that implicates a bunch of sites as being Russian props.
I only became aware of the WaPo "blacklist" article in question when I read Matt Taibbi's response, specifically about the shortcuts the paper took in publishing it. On the face of it, seems very shady. You think the paper ought to be extinguished because of it?
Do you think fake news isn't an issue, or just that the PropOrNot list is too aggressive? I've only just started worrying about fake news as a real issue after NYT posted an article today on a fake news article Flynn tweeted. The article doesn't make any claims that are easy to fact check. They claim to have received their information directly from NYPD. But their domain was only registered in March, and they've chosen to use domainsbyproxy to hide their identities. The only contact information I can find for them is their News Tips page, which is just an email contact form, and a map showing they are located in Philadelphia, but no specific address. It seems really unlikely to me that NYPD would choose to send this information exclusively to this brand new Philadelphia website with no contact information It's so much effort to debunk these articles. Do you think that evidence is even convincing enough?