It would be understandable to associate fake news and fake tan. Some prominent politicians have a soft spot for both, after all. But they are fake in very different ways. And understanding how they are different can help us realise just how dangerous fake news is.
When is something fake? What is the difference between an authentic Vermeer painting and a forgery? And what is the difference between a human heart and a pacemaker? Real tan and fake tan? Maybe surprisingly, biologists and philosophers of biology have a lot to say about this. They use three different criteria to individuate biological traits or organs. The question is what makes, say, hearts different from non-hearts. To simplify a bit, biologists use three different criteria:
(A) a heart is whatever has the (evolutionary) history of a heart
(B) a heart is whatever has the structure and anatomy of a heart
(C) a heart is whatever functions as a heart
(A) How the heart got here. (B) What the heart is. (C) What the heart does.
A pacemaker functions just like a heart. And a Vermeer forgery functions (triggers the kind of visual experience) as an authentic Vermeer. Ditto for fake tan and real tan. The real and the fake, in these cases, differ in (A) and (B), but work the same way in terms of (C). It would be tempting to apply this lesson to fake news: fake news presents false information, but it functions the same way as real news.
This way of thinking about fake news seriously underestimates the power and importance of fake news. Fake news does not function in the way real news does. It is designed to trigger a very different kind of reaction. The aim is not to confront the reader or viewer with hard facts. It is to cater to their emotional needs. Fake news is not just news that happens to be untrue. It works differently from fake news and we can’t fight against it if we don’t know how it differs from real news.