Welcome to our sad, new, distorted reality -- the explosion of fake: fake videos, fake people on Face

[riversedge]

It's a no wonder that people get discouraged and not listen to the news.



Sara Fischer, Mike Allen8 hours ago



We live in a "fake" world


https://www.axios.com/fake-world-f9bd030e-8638-4278-8c8e-2a518dab018b.html
Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Welcome to our sad, new, distorted reality — the explosion of fake: fake videos, fake people on Facebook, and daily cries of "fake news."

Driving the 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 Nancy 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.

Why it matters: This is just a small taste of our unfiltered future. It's only going to get easier to generate fake audio, fake videos and even fake people — and to spread them instantly and virally.

Fake polls, fake experts, fake fundraisers and even fake think tanks are proliferating.

More than half of internet traffic comes from bots, not people, in this astonishing tour of our fake world: ...............

[sinkingfeeling]

2. 'Social media' has created a fake world and is actively destroying democratic

countries in the mame of making $billions.

[marylandblue]

6. This is bigger than Facebook.

There are other sources than Facebook. There are fake newspaper sites. There's reddit, 4chan and Breitbart. There are private websites hosted in unfriendly countries. Plus the bots and video fakes are getting better.

So pretty soon you are going to have your trusted sources and all others will automatically be suspect. Except we will all have different sources and therefore we will have alternative facts with no way to reach someone who uses different sources. Can't run a democracy this way.

[marylandblue]

8. Facebook is the premier offender for now.

If there were no Facebook, some other source of disinformation would take it's place. What would stop an alternative platform from starting up with servers in Russia or China? How much of this stuff already spreads unseen by outsiders through texts, email or on the dark web?

I've been around since the early days of the Internet. In those days it was minor rumors or old conspiracy theories spread by emails and message boards. That was just a taste of what we have now. Which is just the beginning of what we are about to face.

[sinkingfeeling]

10. Yes, that's why I said social media.

[marylandblue]

4. In the Middle Ages, most news was fake.

Everything spread by word of mouth and there was no good way to verify anything. If there was a rumor that your neighbor was a witch, you believed it because everyone said so. Now we are going back to that, except the rumors come with videos.

[NRaleighLiberal]

5. A whole lotta people don't want "truth" - they want that which fits into their paradigm.

Not sure how we will get out of the current mess we are in.