There are numerous reports of phony stories posted on social
media that helped Donald Trump win the election. Facebook is the main villain
because it initially denied there was any problem.
Google, without being asked, said it was going to review its
algos to keep phony stories off Google Plus.
Users have complained they are going to use Twitter and
other sites until the problems are fixed.
“Last week Buzzfeed
revealed that a handful of teens in Macedonia, were
responsible for dozens or more of the inaccurate conspiracy theories that had
been getting sometimes hundreds of thousands of likes and shares on Facebook.
Nearly all of these were in favour of Donald Trump. They’d gamed
Facebook’s algorithm, noting that stories aimed at Clinton supporters
didn’t make as many ad dollars as those aimed at Trump supporters,” Forbes
reported.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, said this was “a pretty
crazy idea.”
“A quiet group of rebel Facebook employees have created
a fake-news “task force” to address the issue of hoax news appearing in users’
feeds, BuzzFeed News
reports. “More than dozens” of employees have banded together,
fearing retribution from management and meeting in secret, and plan to come up
with a set of recommendations to deliver to Facebook’s management about how to
fix the fake-news problem. “What’s crazy,” one anonymous Facebook employee
tells BuzzFeed, “is for [Zuckerberg] to come out and dismiss it like that, when
he knows, and those of us at the company know, that fake news ran wild on our
platform during the entire campaign season,” said Vanity Fair.
Gizmodo said Facebook was afraid of a conservative backlash.
“It’s no secret that Facebook has a fake news problem.
Critics have accused the social network of allowing false and hoax news stories
to run rampant, with some
suggesting that Facebook contributed to Donald Trump’s election
by letting hyper-partisan websites spread false and misleading information.
They absolutely have the tools to shut down fake news
“Still, it’s hard to visit Facebook without seeing phony
headlines like “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in
Apparent Murder-Suicide” or “Pope Francis Shocks World, “Endorses Donald Trump
for President, Releases Statement” promoted by no-name news sites like
the Denver
Guardian and Ending The
Fed.”
Google publicly declared it had seen the problem and was
working on it. It was embarrassed by reports it carried by Trump had won the
popular vote. Hillary Clinton has at least one million more votes, perhaps
more.
Westerners were cheered by the April spring several years
ago, when social media brought down Arab dictators. Many tyrants regained
power, and no one in the U.S. expect we would see our own November winter.
Trump took credit for his mastery of social media, declaring
it helped him win. He said he didn’t have the money the Clinton had so he used
social media.
Many users who supported Clinton blocked these hoax news
stories. But they showed up on many Facebook sites. No one realized they were
hoaxes. Some defriended the people posting these false stories. But many were
generated by bots.
Trump has threatened libel against news outlets like the New
York Times which publish articles critical of him. He sent them several tweets.
The Times replied that they would keep reporting all the
truth on trump and he could shove it.
Trump’s latest maneuvers are to try the block his several
trials for federal racketeering charge. The status of a 14-year-old who claims
Trump and a friend raped her. It is in limbo after she has received death
threats.
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