Study: Ad-tech use shines light on fringe, fake news sites

I think it would be great for people to figure out what fake news is by themselves. Start demanding more of lazy journalists and news sites. Click on stories that are reasonable rather than those that appeal to your reptile brain.

Learning math and using it on a regular basis would be a huge first step.

So, the lesser competition for ad space on a site indicates that the site is less 'real', and has nothing to do with, say, the site being less popular with advertisers or secondary links because it tells facts that make those advertisers, or clickers, uncomfortable. BTW, which do you think is more expensive, filling a site (or paper) with rewrites of corporately produced 'publicity handouts' and PR firms 'suggested stories', plus the 'reportage' of government sponsored 'independent groups', or, you know, doing actual research, sending actual reporters, for stories that don't fit the popular narrative?

Basing what is real or "fake" news on the sophistication of the way its advertising is set up is just stupid. This just reinforces the "big corporate" news over smaller independent sources that - yes - may be fake, but these days may also include more accurate sources than the big players. The problem with mainstream media (and I don't use this term in the right-wing slander sense of anything that doesn't have a huge bias to the right - so I include organisations such as FOX in this) is that they've found it easier and cheaper to substitute real news for opinion. Why pay an actual journalist to investigate and research an issue fully and then present it clearly to the public when you can put an idiot in a bow-tie on the screen and get him to sprout nonsense on the topic based on their own personal opinion. This is the source of the problem here. "Fake" news is ungrounded opinion, and we've been getting that from mainstream news sources for quite a while now.

Unfortunately, there's been so much of it lately that it's hard to see the forest for the trees. news sources need to STOP mixing opinion pieces with proper investigative journalism. Until they do, good journalism is thrown in with all the other opinionated rubbish and no one can tell what's true and what isn't. When that happens, you pick the news that you like the most and that becomes your truth. It's all pretty messed up.

Welcome to the world of competition.

Oldest trick in the book, paint your competitors with negative labels.

But I guess the normal dude on the street is to dumb to know what's "important' and what's "not important" so the self-appointed guardians of "truth" need to to do it for us.

HINT: using the word "fringe" doesn't count if these "fringe" sites are earning more AD REVENUE than you are.

Many fake news sites originate in Eastern Europe. It's operated by only a few people. With such low overheads, the workers can earn more in a month with ads than most local people earn salary in a year. It's quite easy money - it's the new Nigerian scam, except ya can't get arrested for it.