Why Starving Online Lies Doesn't Equal Supporting the Truth
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The Wall Street Journal may or may not be your preferred news source, but its editorial mission is to report quantified facts — a rarity in a “post truth” world. Truth, however, costs money, and because The WSJ relies on a paywall, it can be punished by the click economy.
Lying at scale wasn’t the intent that Google, AOL or Yahoo had in mind when the currency of digital was all about capturing “eyeballs.” That came later. It was Facebook, YouTube and Twitter who perfected the engineering of community outrage. They successfully turned digital rubbernecking into an alternative form of breaking news. That may be the fatal flaw of Web 2.0: We built the greatest communication technology in history, but all of its financial incentives reward B.S. over veracity, and mob action over logical discourse.
We have no one to blame but ourselves, which means we also have an obligation to fix the problem.
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