4 ms·

Well it's a matter of degree. Facebook seems to be hundreds of times worse than the awful racist or left wing or fascist newspapers I remember from 15 years ag

Well it's a matter of degree. Facebook seems to be hundreds of times worse than the awful racist or left wing or fascist newspapers I remember from 15 years ago. I'm not saying that it's only Facebook but it is the world's biggest customised bullshit pipe. And it's both ends of the pipe. Facebook has enabled micro publishing that lets anyone make this stuff up and people just believe it. Just to share an anecdote, yesterday I saw link bait content suggesting Obama's daughter was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And if you google that you find comments from people who believe that and think it's proof that the Obama's have stolen money from the government.

linkregister 10y ago
This is little different than people getting together and saying conspiracy theories in person to their social groups. Facebook is by no means the exclusive place to find this behavior; Twitter is even worse. Email is the original vector for this bunk news. If you look back ten years in your email inbox you can find similar bogus forwards at the same frequency, when it was en vogue to send it via email instead of a Facebook post.
- saghm 10y ago
  I think the issue that people have is that Facebook is in a great position to do something about, but instead they've varied between taking the position that the problem doesn't exist or that it isn't their job to fix it. Facebook isn't wrong that it isn't their "job" to fix it, but I can imagine that others besides me find it a bit strange that Zuckerburg decries the current state of divisiveness but doesn't seem that willing to combat it when he clearly has means far beyond the rest of us to do so.
- euyyn 10y ago
  Interestingly, "email news" were eventually just dismissed by everybody on account of the regular news networks not using email for broadcast: "If this email were true, I would have already heard of it in the TV/radio news." But that signal isn't there anymore: the serious news networks publish on Facebook now, and all the bullshitters do too. There's no broadcast license costs, or paper publishing costs, to filter them out.

linkregister 10y ago

This is little different than people getting together and saying conspiracy theories in person to their social groups. Facebook is by no means the exclusive place to find this behavior; Twitter is even worse. Email is the original vector for this bunk news. If you look back ten years in your email inbox you can find similar bogus forwards at the same frequency, when it was en vogue to send it via email instead of a Facebook post.

saghm 10y ago
I think the issue that people have is that Facebook is in a great position to do something about, but instead they've varied between taking the position that the problem doesn't exist or that it isn't their job to fix it. Facebook isn't wrong that it isn't their "job" to fix it, but I can imagine that others besides me find it a bit strange that Zuckerburg decries the current state of divisiveness but doesn't seem that willing to combat it when he clearly has means far beyond the rest of us to do so.
euyyn 10y ago
Interestingly, "email news" were eventually just dismissed by everybody on account of the regular news networks not using email for broadcast: "If this email were true, I would have already heard of it in the TV/radio news." But that signal isn't there anymore: the serious news networks publish on Facebook now, and all the bullshitters do too. There's no broadcast license costs, or paper publishing costs, to filter them out.