Breaking news: Internet erupts as Hillary Clinton confesses: "I am the mother of an extraterrestrial love child."

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2025, 10:26 PM - Edit history (6)

Source: https://imgflip.com/i/51bvvc

DU is getting to be a hotbed of things that never happened. It's not enough that DUers are beginning to post AI-generated deepfake videos. Worse, DU is being overrun with stories invented by the odious clickbait site Rawstory about a few influencers tweeting back and forth. Rawstory treats this as an earthshaking event, and online it goes.

For examples of the "Internet erupts" theme at DU, see: https://duckduckgo.com/?sites=democraticunderground.com&q=internet+erupts&ia=web

Sun Dec 28, 2025: 'Weird': Internet erupts after Karoline Leavitt's apparent admission of pregnancy faux pas
Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/karoline-leavitt-2674832565/

Mon Dec 22, 2025: 'Astonishing': Internet erupts after canned '60 Minutes' segment leaked
https://www.rawstory.com/60-minutes-2674823138/

Mon Dec 22, 2025: 'Going full North Korean': Internet erupts after Trump's new battleship announcement
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-battleships-2674822990/

Sun Nov 23, 2025: Internet erupts as MAGA influencers exposed for being based in other countries
Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/maga-foreign-tie-exposed/

Under no circumstances does this constitute news. It never happened that "the internet erupted" upon the occurrence of any of these underlying events. On the bright side, at least it's not a story Rawstory stole from someone else and pretended was one of its own.

Please, may we ban:
1) the use of "Internet erupts ..." in a headline at DU? This should be enforced in particular in Late Breaking News.
2) citing Rawstory as the source of a story in Late Breaking News?
3) pretending that Rawstory is anything other a clickbait site unworthy of trust? If Rawstory said that my mom loved me, I'd find a second source to verify that claim.

I will allow one exception:

Entire planet erupts in joyous celebration at the death of Donald Trump.

That, I'll be fine with.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[jmbar2]

1. How to recognize clickbait in addition to the source...

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2025, 04:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Aggressive words in all caps...
...BOMBSHELL
...HUMILIATES
...CRUSHES
...DESTROYS
...FURIOUS
...MELTS DOWN
...ANNIHILATES

ETC

[Sneederbunk]

4. I see "melt down" a lot.

[jmbar2]

5. Good one

Adding to the list

[jmbar2]

15. another good one

adding

[TheRickles]

6. I regulate my YouTube search algorithm by banning those words, but unfortunately

good sites like Meidas Touch use awful clickbait headlines. So it's hard to know where to draw the line.

[Lucky Luciano]

18. I've banned meidas touch specifically because of their clickbait titles.

It also severely misleads on how much the country despises fuckface. It almost causes complacency because you are too much inside a bubble where it is inconceivable that anyone could like him as president….yet here we are.

[h2ebits]

41. Thanks. I rarely bother with Meidas Touch. . . .

Mostly I read for my information. I don't like all of the special commentary and interpretations that most of the "specialty news" sites provide ad nauseam with very little actual news included.

I also truly dislike the big arrows with clickbait titles.

[Bengus81]

71. No need to watch FOX news when Meidas is there to do it daily. The guys is obsessed

with that shit network and claims FOX had another "meltdown" about every day.

[stopdiggin]

25. if you're using clickbait tactics .... you're well on the way to being .... Umm, clickbait? .. -(nt)-

STOP emulating your sh*theel neighbor !

[relayerbob]

8. Add "I'm crying ..."

[Ptah]

10. BOMBSHELL!

[jmbar2]

12. That's a big one!

adding

[Beartracks]

29. Right? If Republicans, say, were DESTROYED, then...

... why are they still fucking up the world the very next day?

===================

[JoseBalow]

35. Checkmate!

[SCantiGOP]

60. and I think

we could all name the two or three people most responsible for posting this crap. We need a new alert to get these BS posts taken down and sanction those who keep putting it up.

[eppur_se_muova]

61. "ANNIHILATES" is both exaggerated and overused. nt

[jmbar2]

66. good one - added

[calimary]

67. And if they try to blame Hillary Clinton for any of it.

[Ocelot II]

2. Add to that list videos that feature tendentious headlines

promising a report of some cataclysmic occurrence when all they really are is 20 minutes of some bloviating podcaster angling for clicks and likes along with 20 seconds of totally non-cataclysmic content. "Trump COMPLETELY DESTROYED in shattering interview!" describing an interview in which some reporter asked him a slightly uncomfortable question that he didn't answer; click-seeking videomonger then blathers at tedious length something something something tangential to the video's headline bait.

[stopdiggin]

27. It's tiresome. Infuriating. And the most absolute crass self-promotion

(which should represent disqualification amongst real DU devotees and news seekers. "You're garbaging up our site!&quot

[Srkdqltr]

3. I heartly agree with you. I got busted for calling the lip shot post stupid. Things are not right.

[NewHendoLib]

7. Agreed. China and Russia must be destroyed hundreds of

times over judging from some of the hyperbolic shit being posted here for years

[EarlG]

9. It sounds good in theory

But… you’re essentially asking for a ban on hyperbole. It’s one of those things that is easy to suggest and easy for people to recommend, but how would we go about codifying and enforcing the banning of hyperbole?

Aside from that, I will say that there has been a debate for twenty years over whether Raw Story is an acceptable source. It does its own reporting, but it also repackages other people’s news stories in a more sensationalist way. It has its fans, and its detractors. We could have a discussion about whether it currently belongs in LBN.

As for AI slop, this is going to be a problem for the entire world going forward, now that AI video content is practically indistinguishable from the real thing. One way to handle this would be to ban videos completely on DU, which would basically be the nuclear option. At the moment though, I’d encourage DUers who don’t like videos to simply Trash the Liberal YouTubers and Cable News Clips forums, because that will eliminate the vast majority of them from your view, and will significantly reduce hyperbolic headlines on the Latest page.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

13. "But... you're essentially asking for a ban on hyperbole."

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2025, 08:24 PM - Edit history (3)

BOMBSHELL: my head literally exploded when I read that.

how would we go about codifying and enforcing the banning of hyperbole?

Put it up to a jury vote. Make it one of those things you can click on to have a post come under review.

We could have a discussion about whether [Rawstory] currently belongs in LBN.

It does not. It is not a news source. While we're at it, let's add HuffPost and Crooks and Liars.

LBN is losing ground as a place to find late breaking news. This is especially evident when it comes to developments in the immigration cases, such as Kilmar Garcia's. Legal correspondents or lawyers such as Chris Gender Geidner (thanks, autocorrect), Ken White (aka Popehat), and Anna Bower are posting stories on Bluesky way before the stories can show up at the NYT or WaPo. When I want to know what's going on with those cases, I turn to General Discussion. DU has a few people posting in GD who keep us in the know.

LBN is turning into the forum to read about things that happened two days or two weeks ago that are only now coming to the attention of the Independent or Rawstory. I mean, assuming that they happened at all, and not everything in LBN did.

It is getting to be less likely that a story in LBN is late breaking news. All too often, posts in LBN are retelling things that have been in other DU forums for several days. I see this every day. If the stories have been here for days, how can they be late breaking news? We need to be able to alert on LBN stories that are duplicates of stories that have appeared in other DU forums.

Saaaayyyyy: Why not add a legal news forum? It could handle the latebreaking news about injunctions, orders, appeals, that stuff. Duplicates would be welcome, and we could cite Bluesky skeets and Substack articles. Reasoned analyses of the injunctions, orders, etc. would take time to write, but those analyses would eventually end up in the legal news forum as well.

Off-topic: try to listen to WTMD either online or over the air. They're sounding a lot like WHFS over the holidays.

Merry Christmas, or happy holidays, or whatever.

[EarlG]

24. My head literally exploded too

...and if we had a rule banning hyperbole, which would be enforced by alerts and Jury, that would mean that both your post and mine would be subject to removal. My guess is that in practice, people are not going to want to be subject to Jury removals for posts that commit the crime of over-enthusiasm.

As far as I know, Raw Story does do its own independent reporting, as well as post syndicated articles and repackaged news content. So I'm not sure it should be completely banned from LBN. Perhaps articles which feature Raw Story's own reporting could be allowed, while reposted news could be disallowed. However this might cause problems for other legit news sources when they repost content from, say, AP or Reuters. HuffPost is unlikely to be blocked from LBN. Crooks & Liars is more of an edge case. It provides original editorials -- and of course, editorials are not permitted in LBN, but as far as I know Crooks & Liars does not come up as an LBN source that often anyway.

With regard to the "recency" of articles in LBN, I don't know. If you want things that are posted on social media to immediately show up in LBN, then that's probably not going to happen. They end up in GD first because if they're just coming directly off of social media then there's going to be a delay before they're vetted by a legit news source. I guess I don't really understand why it's a problem that we have a forum where unfiltered news can be posted speedily but with the understanding that the source could be shaky, and then a different forum where news isn't posted as quickly, but the standard is higher and it needs to be vetted by a legitimate source.

Now, if the argument is that certain sources in LBN aren't legit news sources, that's one thing. But if the argument is that unfiltered social media content should be allowed to be posted directly into LBN, that's a different thing -- surely that would lead to more "fake news" being posted on DU, not less. It would also be duplicative of the GD forum, and if that were the case, then why have an LBN forum at all?

With regard to, "All too often, posts in LBN are retelling things that have been in other DU forums for several days. I see this every day." I have the same experience, but maybe this is a perception issue. I probably spend as at least as much time on DU as you do, but not everybody does. We are definitely likely to see stories get reposted because we're here a lot, but something that was posted on Bluesky a day ago and discussed in GD might not be noticed by someone who shows up the next day and catches the LBN version of the story which was reported by CNN an hour earlier.

The bottom line is that there's no perfect way to do this -- as always, we muddle through. I don't disagree that LBN could perhaps use some tweaking in terms of the quality of sources, but I'm generally happy with the way that LBN operates currently.

Edited to add: So you know, I'm not just writing this and then forgetting about the issue. Personally, I am not a fan of clickbait headlines, especially the ones that appear on many of the videos posted on DU. The reason I tend to write lengthy posts like this, that often sound a bit negative, is because there is a vast gulf between coming up with an idea like "DU should get rid of hyperbole and clickbait," and actually trying to make it happen in a way that can be easily understood by posters, Hosts, and Juries. But I do constantly consider these problems and try to think about ways that they can be mitigated. I'm just not always successful at coming up with solutions.

Edited again to add: To give you an idea of the complexity of the problem, as I edit this post, the OP has 84 recs indicating that the concept of getting rid of click-bait/Raw Story-type headlines is quite popular. However, the thread which seemed to initially spur this OP -- Raw Story's "'Weird': Internet erupts after Karoline Leavitt's apparent admission of pregnancy faux pas" -- currently has 52 recs, indicating that it is also quite popular. The confusing part is that multiple members have recommended both threads.

[erronis]

26. Well, I guess we'll have to add DU to the list of "aggregators"

A lot of what I post are excerpts from blogs and emails from people and organizations I follow. I do make sure I give the primary source reference (which RawStory frequently does not.)

And sometimes I'll put a link to a DU post on another site which puts DU in the same light as the others.

And please add medium.com as a huge link collector. It's amazing that they actually charge to see content that they've lifted from other non-paywalled sites.

OK. Now I'm going back to usenet.

[jmbar2]

16. No need to ban

Peer pressure and ridicule works well.

[yardwork]

20. I agree. It's our responsibility as DUers.

We can use our discretion and exert peer pressure. We can stop rewarding clickbaiters.

[LudwigPastorius]

34. Agreed, as long as it is sufficiently humiliating.

[Orrex]

17. How about giving users an option to auto-ignore posts with containing videos?

That reminds me--time to renew.

[QED]

31. Especially those with no summary

[QED]

40. Except those from The Dodo

Love the pet videos.

[EarlG]

52. Funnily enough, exceptions are part of the problem

Even the OP (jokingly) states that he would consider an exception for, "Entire planet erupts in joyous celebration at the death of Donald Trump." But seriously, as my first reply to this I said that these are all good ideas "in theory." The problem comes when you try to enact these ideas in practice, and things that people didn't think would be restricted, or didn't want to see restricted, end up getting restricted because of a policy intended to solve some other problem.

It's quite tricky to navigate all of those personal exceptions and come up with something that is going to satisfy as many people as possible, without simultaneously annoying them through unintended consequences.

[eppur_se_muova]

62. You're saying AI couldn't handle that ?? We still need actual PEOPLE ??

No, you didn't say that. But you spelled out exactly why expecting algorithms to do all our work for us ... will never work, at least not well.

[QED]

63. I understand the problem. But, at the very least, a video post needs a synopsis.

And not just a one sentence repetition of the title. Something to justify the viewer spending ~10 minutes or so for the kicker.

[EarlG]

65. The only way I can think of to handle this would be

to include something in the Statements of Purpose (SOP) in the Cable News Clips forum and in the Liberal YouTubers forum which mandates that a synopsis must be posted.

This would not completely solve the problem since people can post videos anywhere on DU, and I don't want to change the SOP for every forum. But it would likely cut down the problem significantly, since that's where most of the videos on DU are posted -- certainly that's where videos which typically need a synopsis tend to be posted.

There is no way to automatically enforce this though, so that people are *forced* to post a synopsis when posting, or forced to include a substantive synopsis. It would have to be handled after the fact (ie. threads without an appropriate synposis could be locked, per the SOP). Then you start running into issues with "what counts as an appropriate synposis," but I guess that would decided and handled by the video forum hosts.

[OddMom20]

43. Agree with the "in theory" comment...

I think there are some good ideas listed here. But EarlG - you’re the master here - would it help to “re-publish” the current standards/rxpectations for all users, and maybe that will guide further exploration of ideas? As others have mentioned, the internet is a lot weirder and more trash-filled than it used to be. Is there really anything we can do to minimize the leakage of garbage on DU? Might be worthy discussion topic?

[EarlG]

51. The Internet is definitely more trash-filled than it used to be

I'm not sure it is weirder than it used to be. It's always been pretty weird

Part of the issue is simply that people are, in general, susceptible to clickbait and confirmation bias. Clickbait and confirmation bias exist on the left as well as the right, and when sources which seem authoritative come along, they get a lot of play.

Duers have always been drawn to sketchy sources. Twenty years ago, Air America hosts like Lionel and Ed Schultz were very popular on DU -- Ed Schultz switched to supporting Trump before he died, and Lionel is now a Qanon conspiracy theorist. RT used to be an okay source on DU before it became clear that it was a Putin propaganda operation. The Young Turks used to be popular here -- not so much anymore. Hell, back in the very early days, some DUers even used to post content from Infowars.

I would not lump Raw Story into the same category as the above, but there has been a twenty-year battle over whether Raw Story is acceptable source for DU or not. IIRC, some of the Raw Story founders were DUers twenty years ago.

Like pretty much everything else on DU, there is a fuzzy line determining whether and how much of this kind of content is acceptable, and that line changes over time. In the age of social media and YouTubers, content providers like Meidas Touch and the Krassensteins have risen to the top. They certainly appear to be on our side, and they post a lot of pro-Democrat, anti-Trump content. But they are not the Associated Press or Reuters, and they should not be thought of as such by DUers.

All of which is to say that none of this is really new -- we have always had debates over permissible sources at DU. But if a majority of members are concerned that this is currently a big problem, then it's certainly something I'd like to look into further.

[reACTIONary]

70. As far as Raw Story goes....

... when they "make a story" out of someone else's reporting, they generally give some sort of a hint where they sourced it from. Sometimes even a link to the original reporting. I would encourage posters to find the original reporting and post that.

Sometimes the original reporting is behind a paywall, but usually there are other news reports that are more balanced and less bombastic. It takes a bit of effort, but it results in a more, for want of a better word, civil environment.

[question everything]

11. Stop posting comments from unknown people just because they are on someone's site or pod

and will never admit mistakes.

At least using legacy media we know that there will be corrections.

[PatSeg]

14. I remember liking Rawstory over 20 years ago

but now I rarely ever click on a link to that site. It is full of really cheesy ads and tons of distracting pop-ups. It just screams tabloid crap now.

[yardwork]

19. It's embarrassing.

[Jack Valentino]

21. I seem to get news from RawStory faster than from the original sources,

much of the time.....

Yes, their headlines may often be exaggerated,
but it is much more of a left-wing site than right-wing,
so I don't see it as 'ban-worthy'. Sorry.

[stopdiggin]

39. being 'left' does not erase, or counterweight, transgression

although - a lot of sentiment appears to drift in that direction. it's a little worrying ...

[Jack Valentino]

42. 'transgression' ??? Pfffft

LMAO I don't feel 'transgressed' against by them,
as I previously stated, I very often get wind of breaking stories thanks to them,
than from the original source, which is an actual 'service' to me---

but purists may feel otherwise... so be it, but still is not 'ban-worthy'.

[stopdiggin]

53. the 'transgression' is in the (deliberate) crap clickbait methodology

But you're quite right in that that is an individual judgement. You don't feel transgressed by such tactics, totally your right.

And also correct in that there is a ton of stuff that I could go my whole life without seeing - that isn't necessarily deserving of censorship or 'ban'.

It's just annoying, and a drag on the content and community.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

[Jack Valentino]

54. Yeah, I understand 'annoyance'--- personally I'm most annoyed by

videos posted without any personal comment or introduction---
I don't have the patience to watch most videos on a web board
without being told what they are about first---

[stopdiggin]

55. Oh, 100%, definitely! Take 20 seconds out of your precious day! Give me a REASON .. !

[FakeNoose]

22. Thank you my friend - I have personally trashed these silly videos

I would like to see them taken off of DU altogether.

For anyone who doesn't know: it's possible to TRASH an entire Forum or Thread, and if we all do that, then it might be discontinued from DU. For starters, trash the forum "Liberal You-Tubers." Use your own judgment about other useless stuff.

It's also possible to IGNORE certain DUers (maybe their posts and comments get on your nerves?) by putting them on your "Ignore" list. You can find it in your "My DU" tab and there's a sub-tab called "Ignore List." If a DU member lands on your Ignore list, it means you'll never see their posts or comments, even ones that are made directly to you.

[hunter]

74. That's what works for me. I'm entirely intolerant of news and opinion videos...

... even those by television personalities of the major television networks.

Many DU members who obsessively post these kinds of videos without any thoughtful comment are on my ignore list.

Beyond that, I probably have 95% of the modern internet blacklisted. If I couldn't do that I'd probably abandon the world wide web entirely. Unfiltered, the world wide web is just too damned noisy.

[infullview]

23. You are so right. YouTube is becoming a cesspool

You have to work hard to find anything that qualifies as real, and as news.

[milestogo]

28. "CALL CONGRESS RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!!!!"

I always liked that one.

[LudwigPastorius]

30. "mahatmakanejeeves DESTROYS clickbait posters in BRUTAL TAKEDOWN!!"

[jmbar2]

33. You win

[stopdiggin]

32. best post (and thread) of the day ... and the next ... and quite possibly ... - -(nt)-

[Scrivener7]

36. Your issue is with rawstory. Those are their headlines.

[Jack Valentino]

37. (and Hillary's extra-terrestrial love child will ONE DAY be elected President of the U.S.,

and be a vast improvement over the false prophet we are attempting to live through right now!)

[ChicagoTeamster]

38. You think maybe it's Freepers or MAGAs registering nd then posting misinfo to make DU look like another nutjob site?

To turn away other actual progressives and democrats?

[EarlG]

44. I don't think that's the case

The excessive posting of clickbait is not relegated to one political party. For what it's worth, I don't think there was a golden age of DU when nobody was posting clickbait and then all of a sudden RWers started infiltrating the site. DU members have been posting information from sketchy sources for almost 25 years now. But this being a discussion forum community, if a story comes from a sketchy source and seems unreliable, members will quickly point that out.

I'd say there has been a significant increase in the posting of clickbait videos over the last ten years or so. I think if we are going to make any inroads into the problem (assuming we all agree that there is a problem), that's the area I would start looking at first.

[usonian]

45. Now, for the REST of the stories.

[MorbidButterflyTat]

64. Those are hilarious!

Years ago I'd buy a copy of Weekly World News to read out loud to friends and we'd all crack up. It stopped being funny since discovering there are people who actually believe this garbage and apparently can't separate fiction - or bullshit - from reality.

[Zelda_Orchid]

46. Is this the Weekly World News?

[Martin68]

47. Some posters are more interested in generating clickbait headlines than providing relevant and useful infiormation.

[BidenRocks]

48. A face and a shocking headline.

Danger Will Robinson!

I watched one from George Will. It sounded legit until he (AI) mispronounced an easy word.

They got me. The content was good, just the lack of an AI Warning, like Albums were forced to carry.

I do want to consider the source. Maybe not banning, but a page listing the content providers which are sketchy.

That would grow quickly. I really thought George Will was legit.

[flashman13]

49. Another give away is to look at the video length. Good reports are in the 5 to max 10 minute range.

Admittedly there are deep dive videos which contain detailed information (Rick Wilson's, By the Numbers), but generally anything over 10 minutes is almost always just time killing bloviating (I'm talking to you Meidas Touch).

[Jilly_in_VA]

50. There was a time

when Raw Story was a halfway decent site. Those days, alas, are long gone. Now it's all clickbait.

[snowybirdie]

56. I tried to say this last week here

And got blasted for it. You've said it so much better. I concur with your post.

[TygrBright]

57. When browsing the Videos forum I automatically skip the ones with big yellow letters.

The big yellow letters scream apocalyptically and the videos themselves invariably consist of self-important talking heads exercising their self-importance about nothing very much, doing their best to make mountains of molehills to generate clicks.

I have noticed the number of these increasing, but it's not really very surprising.

I have also started avoiding posts with clickbait-y titles, in favor of those written like old-style news heads - a quick summary of the post's content, rather than an attempt to manipulate potential readers.

There is enough horror in the actual, verifiable news every day, and enough hope and joy in verifiable chronicles of resistance and action, that I don't feel a need to participate in the running in circles, screaming and shouting aspects of the Internet.

Including DU, where, in my experience, we still have some commitment to preventing this kind of sloppy egotistical clickbaity dreck from overwhelming real content by real people interested in sharing real information.

determinedly,
Bright

[Initech]

58. BREAKING!!!

I'm so sick of the word "BREAKING" in front of every damn headline I'm going to throw my monitor out the window.

[niyad]

59. As a gentle suggestion, since I am not going to give myself a headache

over this, one can simply ignore hyperbolic OP's, as I do with anything meidas touch and a few others. Saves wear and tear on the nerves. I am not in favour of what we used to call "net nannies" since we are, for the most part, adults here (although I have my doubts about SOME!!! ) .

[A_Steel_Magnolia]

68. Thank you, mahatmakanejeeves

Yes, click bait is a major problem, especially on youtube. I have seen conservative columnist George Will and and even Steve Schmitt make "announcements" that were highly questionable in form and content. Each referred to trumpy as a political candidate rather than the current pResident with other minor errors of space and time, but also containing some kernels of truth. Schmitt's voice was altered. A small notice appears at the beginning for about 5 seconds indicating the posts contains altered or Artificial Intelligent (AI) generated content.

These posts are far more subtle and the comments section indicates that people are falling for them (a few of us are pointing them out as fake). This stuff is dangerous because people can easily be misled. Check the description on these youtube posts where you will find the origins and AI info if applicable. I certainly hope folks won't post AI generated posts here on DU. We need to build trust, not destroy it.

[Aussie105]

69. Clickbait is easy to identify and ignore.

And any videos on a topic that could be covered in 2 minutes but is padded out to 30 minutes with talking heads, gets junked after the first 30 seconds.

AI generated videos of people and animals doing impossible things? They get sneered at.

[onenote]

72. I love this post!!

[DownriverDem]

73. No matter what some folks say above

MeitasTouch is the best. They are my go to news site. I don't get those that think otherwise.