Above, the so-called president fantasizes out loud that if the media reported "good news and not fake news," his approval ratings would be 70 or maybe 75 percent. -- eds.
Axios has a bit in their morning email thingie that made me think about the message of War Games:
(Odd emboldening and enigmatic use of bullets belongs to Axios):
Welcome to our sad, new, distorted reality — the explosion of fake: fake videos, fake people on Facebook, and daily cries of “fake news.”
- This week, we reached a peak fake, with Facebook saying it had deleted 2.2 billion fake accounts in three months … a fake video of Speaker Pelosi going viral … and Trump going on a fresh “fake news” tear.
- A Pew survey last year found that two-thirds of tweeted links to popular websites came from non-human users (bots or other automated accounts), per Axios’ Neal Rothschild.
OK, so what, ‘Grain?
Be smart: Fakes and personas have existed on TV, radio and print for years. But as the N.Y. Times notes: “Legislators have failed to stay on top of social media platforms, with their billions of hard-to-track users from all over the world.”
What’s next: The inevitable result of a fake information universe is real crisis manufactured by fake news.
- Misinformation about vaccines has led to an alarming number of measles outbreaks.
- And fake online pharmacies have led to a spike in deaths.
The phrase real crisis manufactured by fake news is what got me.
One could argue it has already happened (well, maybe not like War Games), but with The Russian Usurper calling for the death penalty for his political enemies based upon his self-generated fake news of being spied upon, we’ve entered a whole, new phase. This is not creeping fascism, we’re already here. This is full-on despotism, our democracy has failed us, and whatever we do next is not a drill. This is NOT a game.
Republished with permission from Mock Paper Scissors
