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Money has been spreading misinformation long before troll farms. Fox News doesn’t care about fact checking. We had birther conspiracies, Obama is a Muslim sympa

• fredley 8y ago
  The difference is that until recently, you saw this stuff on Fox, and other stuff elsewhere. Sure, some people (a lot of people!) only watched Fox and swallowed it all, but a lot of people didn't. They knew that Fox was Fox, etc. Nowadays, in a pile of YouTube comments, or Twitter replies, or Facebook posts, you cannot tell who or what is behind it. You know when a story is broadcast on Fox that it's Fox. When it's a comment, is it a real person? A bot? A troll-farm worker? If one of the latter, where is the money coming from? There's no way of knowing. Add to this group polarization[1] and other known psychological factors, and it's easy to flood out a particular online space with a particular narrative, with no visible accountability. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization
• reaperducer 8y ago
  Money has been spreading misinformation long before troll farms. Fox News doesn’t care about fact checking. It goes back far before that. Even into this nation's early history; and all the way back, at least, to the Protestant Reformation. Check out the Library of Congress image collection. You wouldn't believe some of the fliers (the "memes" of their time) published about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. They make today's trolls and alt-right look like nuns.