A little less fake news in the world now

[Rufus21]

There will be a little less fake news in the world now. Paul Horner has passed away at the age of 38.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/ar ... r-dead-38/

Horner was infamous for circulating internet hoaxes that often went viral on Facebook and deceived thousands of people. In one of his infamous stories, Horner falsely claimed that protesters were being paid thousands of dollars to demonstrate at Trump's campaign rallies.

Horner said he could make thousands of dollars per month writing fake news posts. Trump’s supporters were easy to fool, he said. "His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist,� he said. Trump himself repeated the claim about paid protesters at a rally.

"I just wanted to make fun of that insane belief, but it took off. They actually believed it." He added, “I didn’t think it was possible for him to get elected president. I thought I was messing with the campaign, maybe I wasn’t messing them up as much as I wanted — but I never thought he’d actually get elected.�

In 2013 he wrote a NationalReport.net story about President Barack Obama starting a "nationwide Muslim outreach program". A 2014 statement on NationalReport.net saying President Barack Obama was running for a third term. In 2015, a NewsExaminer.net story said that a Vermont pastor got a year in prison for refusing to marry a gay couple. There also was a 2016 NewsExaminer.net story that a Secret Service agent revealed Obama was a gay Muslim. And more recently, a 2017 link on St.GeorgeGazette.com said Trump was resigning.

[JP Cusick]

There will be a little less fake news in the world now. Paul Horner has passed away at the age of 38.

It does seem like a reason to celebrate when another nasty person bites the dust, but he was really just another fool and another deceived person and another person being exploited.

Other people cheered on this fool, and other people empowered his ignorance, and those other people will seek out new victims to exploit and to sacrifice to their evil Gods of greed and lust and violence.

That man deserves our pity - but it is hard to give to such a nasty person.

Only God can truly love the lowest of sinners.

[Rufus21]

That man deserves our pity - but it is hard to give to such a nasty person.

It is really fair to blame him? Should we blame the person who wrote satirical jokes? Should we blame the people who blindly believed them and passed them on as facts? Blaming the former will only prohibit free speech. Blaming the latter could help prevent incidents like this:

"The rally -- called 'Stop Islamization of Texas' -- was called and promoted by a Facebook page called Heart of Texas, which had wrongly alleged that the Islamic library had received public funding. But the Heart of Texas page listed no contacts in the Lone Star state. In fact, it was operated by a 'Troll Factory' called the Internet Research Agency thousands of miles away in St Petersburg Russia, CNN has learned."

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/05/polit ... index.html

This is truly embarrassing. If we could encourage people to use a little more common sense, perhaps they would not be attending protests set up by the Russian government.