What's with all this fake news? And if it were banned, which is impossible, what then of our long history of satire? http://newsthump.com/?

Surely fake news has been around for some time now.

Alas, poor Yorrick, let us travel back to Aesop and The Boy Who Cried Wolf, a fable and perhaps the birth of "fake news." It was not satire. Now, much more recent, we sit at the knee of Mr. Swift and A Modest Proposal; it was certainly satire at its finest, but it would not have been considered news, even in the days it was initially read, except by those who were ill-informed. And there, as Horatio might say, lies the rub: if we are well-informed, we survive fake news with no bother, and we relish in a good piece of satire. Peace.

Hi som just don't like the truth being aired.

Fake news is not Satire. Satire is making fun of the real news like as in political cartoons. The most famous example of Satire is in the magazine Private Eye and the previous Punch and the 60s BBC program "That was the week that was"

Fake news can do a great deal of trouble.

The problem with fake news is that the fake-news = symptom, a lack of individual-responsibility, and critical thinking is the problem.

The problem with that though = critical thinking isn't a desired quality in the Free-Market, under-qualified drones(as in people who will replace common sense for other peoples demands, opinions, and suggestions) is literally the 'ideal' for commercial interests in the Western Economies.

So we're hollowing out our own progress, fake-news is just the latest symptom of that.