Comment by iamthepieman

The article is reasonably written but I believe the author makes his main points through false claims. Don't take my word for it; see for yourself.

    The upshot of all this is to say that a 1–2% 
    difference in election results based on the assault of 
    the <1% of fake news articles on Facebook is an entirely
    plausible outcome. We can’t know for sure, of course, 
    but there is real, hard science to back up this theory.

There isn't real hard science to back up that Facebook had a 1-2% difference in election results. There's real, hard science that long-running general marketing campaigns can sway consumers of popular brands (at least that's what he says in the previous paragraph)

    Moving to news, then, let’s state the obvious. Saying
    you’re 99% accurate in the news is a complete failure. 
    Can you imagine the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,
    CNN or, hell, even Breitbart saying “hey, only 1% or so
    of our stories are wrong.” Even one incorrect news story
    is a terrible tragedy

Does the author read news? Reporters and news organizations are not injection molders. They don't churn out the same story over and over where the inputs are all clearly defined and subject to their own quality control. Actually, that's more true of the type of fake news the author is criticizing here. A 1% error rate would be amazing in a news organization.

And the real kicker of the whole thing

     Thus far, all of your proposed solutions to these
     very real problems are predicated upon a still-unproven
     hypothesis: That communities at scale can police 
    themselves ... This is not true, and has never been true.

Well, I guess every democratic nation on earth is well and truly fucked. Get out the big black markers, fire up the government presses, turn back the clock 300 years[0].

[0]http://www.nycourts.gov/history/legal-history-new-york/legal...

EDIT: Less derogatory initial sentence.