Social-news platforms like Facebook and YouTube are automated media machines, without the checks and balances of a people heavy news media company. In tradition

Social-news platforms like Facebook and YouTube are automated media machines, without the checks and balances of a people heavy news media company. In traditional news, employees maintain stronger consciences because they deliver the news manually day after day, they are not separated from that news by automation unlike the engineers working on social-news platforms. Because of this, social-news platforms are more free to recommend stories to users that promote anything, as long as the user clicks it's a win. With this anything goes approach to news, we get sensational stories, conspiracy stories and hate stories because people click on them. Obviously the consumers are also responsible, but being perhaps accustomed to journalistic standards, maybe they are culturally unprepared for the level of bullshit-dressed-as-news that we are seeing online. I also notice the problem is compounded by the aggressive evolution of head-faking in media. For example it's becoming really hard to know what is real news vs what is marketing-dressed-as-news. How many commenters are real people? Basically I think algorithm-driven-news and marketing is outpacing traditional society and creating something new, time will tell what but it might be a monster...