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Amazing.
Jestin Coler is a cancer and his actions should be made illegal. It seems possible such a law could be narrowly applied such that it would prove constitutional. Judicial review could weigh the value to society of false speech, or lying, against the erosion of integrity in the free press. One example of a false speech review was the stolen valor act. Lot of doors left open here; http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/…
SNL would have been charged just this week.
Its almost like the people who put free speech protections in place educated themselves on power, history and law and then thought about it for a bit.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as we're making up fantasy laws to solve this problem, why don't we just outlaw being lazy, stupid, and gullible?
Playing devil's advocate here, but why don't we? It's not the worst idea anyone has ever hand. I sort of think epistemological pollution is an externality of being stupid/gullible that we should make people liable for. Laziness is pretty difficult to operationalize, but if you were literally too lazy to feed your children that would be a form of criminal negligence. So we do, to an extent, already do this.
Depending on who's judging, this comment could get you in some legal trouble if those laws existed.
Flawed people adjudicate and enforce laws. Because they are people. Forgetting that is dangerous.
Seems obvious to me, he started with that intent, thought that obviously the stories would be discredited and the people who bought it would be shamed.
It sometimes happens to organizations that promote an Onion article as real. It does a lot of damage to their reputations.
Then that didn't happen and he made a lot of money. He was disgusted by how stupid everyone is, liked the money and justified it to himself that he's conning money from gullible rubes who are bad people.
I don't know this guy, but I know more than one person just like him.
This was the most interesting part for me... -------- He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right. "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler…
We live in a world where the Daily Mail is the most-visited English language news web site and people are using fucking toasters to launch DDOS attacks.
The internet has gone to hell. We've already lost.
If we've learned anything from the twentieth century its that corrupting the public discourse like this can lead to the slaughter of millions and the downfall of whole societies. This man and those like him deserve harsh punishment.
There's a similar interview here, with another left-winger who claims to be making "satire" and is more outwardly racked with guilt than this man, but who is also still cashing the adsense checks:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11...
This is utterly offensive and this man is utterly corrupt. He claims to be doing this to discredit his foes, but there's no evidence that he's done any of the "public denouncing" which he gives as his justification for polluting the public sphere with his lies. He does however admit to coining it to the tune of six figures. If we've learned anything from the twentieth century its that corrupting the public discourse…
Also, slaughtering millions in the 20th century was usually the job of a big government in a big country and I have difficulty recalling that "fake news believers" or any kind of people actually voted for a war or went on the streets in favor of a war.
And practically always before and during these wars the governments regularly shouted "fake news" on everything that didn't fit their narrative.
This was the most interesting part for me... -------- He says he got into fake news around 2013 to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right. "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," Coler…
I don't believe his narrative for a second. He's in this for the money, period. He peddles lies for a living, and also is lying about "publicly denouncing" anything.
Vox even did an article on conspiracies and why they flourish on the right more than the left.[0] Essentially it's low trust, highly engaged people versus lesser engaged people. If you don't trust anything, and you're consuming "knowledge", you're going to latch on to conspiracies.[1]
[0] http://www.vox.com/2015/12/10/9886222/conspiracy-theories-ri... [1] Or at least, that's what they want you to think.[2] [2] FNORD
This story is fascinating to me. I also run a couple of these "wordpress" informational type sites, but never in my dream did I thought about publishing fake news to make money. Too bad I was not smart enough to get into this business. I wish he would be more honest about it. I am pretty sure he's just doing it for the money. I don't blame him. That's good money. The moral and ethical dilemma of it is kinda murky. Is…