Will History Say, "Was This The Best America Could Come Up With?"

[Marypoza]

(11-10-2016, 12:43 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: You can laugh at one failure I make, and ignore my countless successes all you want, but the reality that you face is this:

As BuzzFeed’s Craig Silverman has documented repeatedly — and as anyone who has spent much time on their relatives’ profile pages can probably attest — Facebook has become a sewer of misinformation. Some of it is driven by ideology, but a lot is driven purely by the economic incentive structure Facebook has created: The fake stuff, when it connects with a Facebook user’s preconceived notions or sense of identity, spreads like wildfire. (And it’s a lot cheaper to make than real news.)

One example: I’m from a small town in south Louisiana. The day before the election, I looked at the Facebook page of the current mayor. Among the items he posted there in the final 48 hours of the campaign: Hillary Clinton Calling for Civil War If Trump Is Elected. Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for President. Barack Obama Admits He Was Born in Kenya. FBI Agent Who Was Suspected Of Leaking Hillary’s Corruption Is Dead.

These are not legit anti-Hillary stories. (There were plenty of those, to be sure, both on his page and in this election cycle.) These are imaginary, made up, frauds. And yet Facebook has built a platform for the active dispersal of these lies — in part because these lies travel really, really well. (The pope’s “endorsement” has over 868,000 Facebook shares. The Snopes piece noting the story is fake has but 33,000.)
http://www.niemanlab.org/2016/11/the-for...get-worse/

You are interested in facts, you say? Prepare to look deep. We live in a culture of lies, and the new Liar in Chief is at its disposal.

--- morever what fb stories float depends on the # of likes they get. The more likes a story gets, the more prominent it is, whether it's real or fake