> How SV is to blame for fake news? This has nothing to do with either SV or tech in general, it's like blaming car makers for Al Capone because he used them to get away from the police.

I think it's nothing like that. It's more like blaming cars for decades of pollution. It seem like you are trying to make the "post office" argument, but I don't see the relevance in this case. "Fake news" type problems are nothing new and they have been discussed frequently, especially since the Internet became popular. It's just that it doesn't take much to not be aware or not understand the problem.

"While some may treat the news with certain degrees of skepticism, we as a nation depend on a free press to give us a dose of daily facts. We rely on their filters and verification processes to weed out the dubious (or at least label it as such) and blatantly false. That is why an Internet hoax that is picked up and disseminated as fact by reputable news sources should do more than raise an eyebrow. All media are vulnerable to unverified facts, something Internet users need to keep in mind when they evaluate news reports."

Web of Deception: Misinformation on the Internet (2002) https://books.google.se/books?id=uS3p9iDooc8C&lpg=PP1&dq=%22...

"The blogosphere resembles an interconnected set of nested circles. Much of the time bloggers on one site only talk with each other. The conversation often resembles an echo chamber with heavily biased information and misinformation simply reinforcing previous biases At times ideas and information spill over from one circle to another, and the audience gets broader and broader. [...]. 'The average blog isn't that widely read, but it is the ripple effect when a blog catches fire in one news outlet and another at a news outlet, and it sort of mushrooms from there'.

Citizen Democracy: Political Activists in a Cynical Age (2008) https://books.google.se/books?id=2Tji-v7u7O4C&lpg=PA73&pg=PA...

"If the web has opened up possibilities for communication and access to information, schools need to do so, too. They need to learn from the examples the internet sets, both good and bad: of the dangers of creating an environment where misinformation can triumph, of providing new venues that can be used for deceit as well as illumination, of allowng reduction of the level of discussion too often instead of enhancing it. they need ot learn that opening access to information does not itself lead to knowledge. The egalitarianism promoted by our new online environments is all well and good but it is not always sufficient."

Beyond the Blogosphere: Information and Its Children (2011) https://books.google.se/books?id=i02cd-CAIbEC&lpg=PA214&pg=P...

"Like open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, because they enjoy it. Like open source hackers, bloggers compete with people working for money, and often win. The method of ensuring quality is also the same: Darwinian. Companies ensure quality through rules to prevent employees from screwing up. But you don't need that when the audience can communicate with one another. People just produce whatever they want; the good stuff spreads, and the bad gets ignored. And in both cases, feedback from the audience improves the best work."

What Business Can Learn from Open Source (2005) http://paulgraham.com/opensource.html