Why fake news is almost impossible to kill
It will continue to live on as long as there are people eager to spread it, and people eager to believe it.
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IF we can learn anything from the latest triple-bank-shot of a conspiracy theory coursing through the alt-reality media - this one involving the unsolved murder of a Democratic National Committee staff member named Seth Rich - it's this: Fake news dies hard.
God knows people have tried. In the last few months, journalists, academics, technology experts, civic-minded foundations and well-intentioned politicos have devoted decades of collective brain hours to an all-hands effort to stanch the conspiracy theories and outright falsehoods roiling our democracy.
Facebook and Google have worked up new computer formulas and dispatched dedicated teams of humans to push the corrosive stuff off their platforms or, at the very least, to let readers know when something doesn't look right.
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