Fake News: The Ultimate Psyop
Scientia potentia est - Knowledge is Power
Fake news is a product of disinformation used by the media and press to cause confusion and to ensure you do not trust anyone but the major media outlets. I will be speaking of this from a United States perspective as it is the one I am most familiar with. This, however, is a global psyop that is taking place right under our noses. We are witnessing the war of information and the war for influence. I will be using the current Pizzagate as the main example as it seems to be the main spark for all of this. Sparks cause fires. As of the past two days there is also the tactic of the United States media to target Russia and blame it as the main aggregator of fake news on social media. Let us begin.
I am not sure of the demographic on Steemit, which is a good thing, but I am sure many of you have heard the buzzterm "Fake News" and its newest use in the description of Pizzagate. Whether Pizzagate be real or not (there is a substantial amount of evidence supporting it) it should not be labeled fake news. Fake news implies that thorough research be done into an article, story, etc. and there is substantial evidence against the claims being made. However, this is not what we have now in our modern globalized media. It starts with Pizzagate and the label can now be shifted to any piece of damning evidence that does not go along with the current narrative.
Fake news is nothing new but it has never happened on a global scale before where the majority of the population with access to news is being manipulated by it. Obviously news sources are biased to the country they and hosted in and by who owns them. Yet now any opposing rhetoric will be labelled as fake news and be completely disregarded. The majority of the population will buy into this and agree with something being fake news rather than researching it for themselves. This year, especially with the election in the United States, has been a scary one for the media.
How to guide yourself away from disinformation:
- Read stories from multiple media outlets
- Break the story down from each outlet and see what bias they are pushing
- Compare how the outlets differ
- Do personal research into the topic itself
- Make an educated opinion for yourself
The last step is the most important and the key to all of this. Do things for yourself. Do not let the talking heads and people in power dictate how you think or feel. If you have a different opinion than that of the mainstream, let it be known. Do your research, use multiple sources, gather the information for yourself.
This post has been ranked within the top 10 most undervalued posts in the first half of Apr 17. We estimate that this post is undervalued by $1.83 as compared to a scenario in which every voter had an equal say.
See the full rankings and details in The Daily Tribune: Apr 17 - Part I. You can also read about some of our methodology, data analysis and technical details in our initial post.
If you are the author and would prefer not to receive these comments, simply reply "Stop" to this comment.
https://steemit.com/fakenews/@lifeworship/censorship-failure-the-real-fake-news-is-going-down
OUCH! That is one big fire @lifeworship!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR4u63gQXU0
Ha ha! Just what I needed for a Monday morning - Beavis and Butthead :)
i guess that i need to clarify every news with more detail from now on...fake news??we'll have wrong opinion abt smething coz we dont know the truth
Don't believe the truth. Simple :)
well ill gather more information abt it
The wiser @fajaragamaza :)
if i dont believe truth shuld i believe lies??? funny principle my friend
The fake truths I mean - not the real ones obviously - your much too clever for that ;)
i know it man...and abt clever..hmm..may be i am clever...lol
Your as clever as you wish to be :)
i think u're rght man :)
@mindhunter is always right - well kinda! ;)
ok mr always right never left hahaha
:-)
P.S. And today's fake news is: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/north-korean-missiles-mocked-fake-10239532
Sometimes I've thought N. Korea is fake, but I know people who've been there.
Imagine N.Korea is The Truman show. Who is inside and who is outside? Interesting!
It reminds me of the guy who wanted to put the whole world in prison so he built a very high fence around his house.
I think it would work both ways. It appears N. Korea is allowed to continue, so the rest of us can be convinced that we are free.
That last paragraph of yours is super interesting :))
It's like we're all living in a global panopticon, and N. Korea is the solitary confinement cells, but they're constructed of two way mirrors, so the occupants can't see out, but the rest of us can see how much it sucks for them. That way, the rest of us can always find a reason to think the status quo is great.
I don't know who I feel most sorry for ... us or them?!
The N. Koreans have it bad, but they don't know any better. We do know better, but most of us choose to ignore it. I feel most sorry for the ones of us who are in willful denial. They spend their lives trying desperately to not be who and what they are.
If knowledge is power, then is fake news... fake power?
I think the reason this is becoming such a problem in today's world is that most people can't be bothered to perform due diligence by going through all the "guide yourself away from disinformation" steps outlined above. Attention spans are short and there is already an overload of competing interests vying for our limited free time. People just want to have information handed to them and trust the "experts" to know what they're talking about. The so-called "experts" realize this and that puts them in a position to manipulate events to their liking.
Fake news leads to fake power over the brains of those with synthetic common sense!
Fake news is deliberately disempowering its target audience. So yes. Deliberately created 'fake news' (i.e. Public Relations or what used to be called Propaganda) deliberately disempowers those that buy into it, or rather convinces them to loan their power behind a cause or demagogue they believe will align with their interests. But not all news that is wrong is fake. Sometimes the creators believe their own bullshit. Then the news is not so much 'fake' as 'poorly researched opinionated nonsense'. Then there is nonsense news generated by AI designed to get hits for online advertising with no ideological agenda other than making a profit.
I stop posting or commenting on facebook about politics in the Philippines. Many Catholics voted for the present leader because they believed in fabricated news which ruined the reputation of a good candidate. I didn't vote for Duterte because he is a bad example to be a leader. He is tough but a confessed killer even before he became president. He has no respect even for women, the dead, the Pope. He killed people without due process especially the innocent and poor children to lessen up the poverty as his own policy. He said, he hated corruption but he released the drug lords, the plunderer former president Arroyo, ordered the killing of witnesses who were against him. It's hard to convince people who were blinded with their wrong beliefs.
Hi @marifa - thanks for your Philippines geo-political update. Yes! I'm glad you following some of my points on fake news and not believing all that Duterte bullshit! :)