American Feature Posts

A decade ago, the greed and carelessness of the financial industry dealt a serious blow to the global economy when financial products no one but their creators understood, imploded. The resulting economic collapse unleashed a wave of financial regulatory reform worldwide. Now the tech industry — while making some things more convenient, has made serious mistakes of its own. It has abused privacy, squeezed the competition, undermined quality journalism, casually spread hate (e.g. the recent...

Introduction This article contends that the increasing spread of “fake news” is a direct result of the rise of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. These companies have undermined traditional, fact-based newspapers, and have encouraged the growth of web-based, fake news sites in the following ways. They have undermined the business model of fact-based, quality journalism by garnering the lion’s share of digital advertising at a time when print-based advertising was collapsing;...