Cheap journalism and fake news in the crypto sphere

KIK CEO’s blatant misrepresentation for cheap clicks

Any crypto enthusiast is aware of the CCN website, a source for day traders to pick up on signals and quick pump and dump schemes as well as anyone who wants the latest headlines on the whirlwind world of crypto currencies. High brow journalism this is not.

It is click bait, plain and simple. And I’m sure it functions quite well at just that — after all, people lap up click bait like a cat milk.

Ted Livingston, CEO of Kik

In this light, you won’t have missed the ridiculous CCN piece on Ted Livingston (Kik CEO) and main founder behind the Kin cryptocurrency, slated to be integrated into the Kik messenger app later this year. ‘Original’ article can be found here. However, the article is an incredibly cheap aggregation of the actual original piece published a good few days ago by the Canadian publication ‘Financial Post’. It would serve CCN well to read up some tips on how to create original content.

CCN titles the article “Months After Raising a $100 Million ICO Kik Founder Calls Blockchain ‘Unconvincing’ ”. They took a few paragraphs from the original Financial Post piece, and changed ‘is not for everyone’ to ‘is unconvincing’.

The Financial Post piece was titled: “Kik CEO who issued cryptocurrency says blockchain isn’t for everyone”.

Hardly a statement anyone that is even slightly tech savvy or knowledgable about blockchain technology would disagree with. In fact, hardly a headline at all! More a simple statement of fact. But of course, this doesn’t make for good news, or a good headline.

But CCN feels the need to go that bit further and state the ICO and $100 million raised in it and contrasts that with their summary of Ted Livingston’s thoughts at the True North tech conference by stating he calls blockchain ‘unconvincing’. A leading title. How dare he!? Especially after raising $100 million on the back of an ICO. Well, bravo CCN, you have outdone yourself. Online journalism of the finest kind.

Yes, it’s an attention grabbing headline. And plenty of social media upheaval and fall out happened on the back of it. Here’s Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch’ tweet on the topic:

Talk about lack of due diligence. Someone of his caliber in the tech industry should look a bit further than a few paragraphs on CCN and draw a conclusion. But hey, as long as it promotes some clicks, likes and retweets, no one gives a shit.

This seems to be the order of the day in the era of fake news. Polarise your opponent’s position, there is no room for nuance, put people in boxes and then straw-man them into the ground.

Let’s all be a bit more rational than this cheap journalism that is all about click throughs and ad revenue.

To say that blockchain technology is not suitable for most companies is not an exaggeration. It’s a fact.

It definitely has merits in logistics, certain workflow applications and obviously highly usable big volume crypto currency transactions. Most companies using it, jump on the bandwagon, hype up some fairy project and disappear into oblivion.

Luckily, Kin isn’t one of those. You might want to DYOR Michael Arrington.