Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-super-spreader-election-misinformation-1543306

by doener • 6 years ago

173 146 6 years ago

unmdplyr2• 6 years ago

When a Utah county accidentally sent out 13,000 absentee ballots without a signature line, the NewsGuard Red-rated site LawEnforcementToday.com called this a "cheat-by-mail scheme."

This isn't a Facebook problem as such. It's just sensationalistic journalism. Just that Facebook as a platform helps amplfiy it. Just my 2 cents.

arkitaip• 6 years ago

The algorithm is designed to propagate misinformation like crazy because that's what drives engagement and improves Facebook's metrics.

im3w1l• 6 years ago

Come on, you know it's not true that it's designed to propagate misinformation. The algorithm can't even tell whether it's misinformation or not.

ElectronShak• 6 years ago

More accurately, algorithm simply responds to initial user engagement on the article. It is not designed to "propagate misinformation".

ricardo81• 6 years ago

It's symptomatic of all platforms who rely on UGC at scale, and the business model goes on the assumption that it can't be moderated. I mean, it goes without saying how much copyrighted content sits on YouTube, Facebook et al.

The fact the platform(s) generates revenue from this situation doesn't sit well with me.

I'd agree it's not a problem exclusive to Facebook, but a handful of platforms.

mrkeen• 6 years ago

Yeah, it was just sensationalistic journalism, or "election misinformation". And Facebook just helped amplify or "spread" it.

D0nMalte• 6 years ago

They could be more open to solutions like the optical highlighting that twitter has implemented, even if it just says "caution" it could be a big game changer

eloisius5• 6 years ago

And Facebook has changed the landscape of journalism to favor drive-by clickbait journalism. Does the riverbed guide the river or did the river carve out the riverbed?

op03• 6 years ago

The EPA has something called a Dose-Response Curve.

Depending on what's being dumped in the river the polluter can be thrown in jail, the govt can be sued, the river can be closed off etc etc

But what helps in determining damage is the curve. On all kinds of chemicals.

Right now when Facebook allows ppl to swim in info sewage no one knows what the dose - response is.

There is no EPA.

bbrree66• 6 years ago

It's all about incentives! They make money on ads, the more the better.

smaryjerry3• 6 years ago

This is the perfect description. Facebook amplifies your communication and I find that a perfect purpose for Facebook. No one should blame Facebook for what someone posts there for “allowing” it to be said. Facebook has had live streamed murders, that actually helps catch a killer. When Google bans a website doing illegal things, all it does it keep that website from being noticed but the activity continues. Maybe you think it limits the spread of something bad but no it just hides it. People who want to do bad things still do them. The only people who need to be protected from content are children, adults have the ability to critically think about a topic. Amplification of a message is only good. It is an argument about transparency.The phase the best disinfectant is sunlight is great because once it reaches a wide enough audience the people who can dispute the claim will appear rather than just an echo chamber.

eloisius5• 6 years ago

I agree about sunlight being the best disinfectant, but I think social media like Facebook is a little more insidious than just "increased exposure." Facebook is designed for targeted messaging to people who are likely to engage with it. We've known about filter bubbles for at least a decade now. Amplifying disinformation specifically to an audience that is vulnerable to it is different than airing it on TV and increasing awareness.

That's exactly what algorithmically curated content feeds like Facebook and YouTube recommendations do. They amplify messages to certain people who are susceptible, and there's little awareness until somebody shoots up a mosque and then suddenly we realize there's a whole subculture of people that have semi-willingly brainwashed themselves with conspiracies floating around about white people being "replaced" and think Shariah law is being implemented in Western countries.

I don't think censorship of the content is the right answer. Short of calling for violence, people should obviously be free to propagate conspiracies, alternative history, whatever. The component that I am wary of is the algorithmic curation. It seems to tend towards "you like that? How about this slightly more extreme piece of related content?"

bleepblorp• 6 years ago

See also [0], for some reporting on how Facebook delivers disinformation to the largest, most gullible voting bloc: the elderly.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24932881

It's amazing how links I post to other HN subs always wind up with -1 karma; never positive, never zero, never -2. Always -1. I'm sure that's totally and completely organic.

cryptica5• 6 years ago

Facebook needs to be nationalized and regulated as a public utility. It's outrageous that this hasn't already happened. How much more election meddling do they need to get away with before everyone understands that this is necessary?

At this stage, all remaining Facebook investors are deeply immoral individuals. All the reasonable moral individuals have already cashed out. The government should just screw over the remaining shareholders. They deserve it.

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

Facebook needs to be nationalized and regulated as a public utility

It is outrageous that the history and effects of arbitrary nationalisation is so uncommonly understood.

cryptica5• 6 years ago

Railways and telecoms worked out just fine. Sure, in many countries, train tickets have been getting overly expensive under government control but high costs are not such a huge concern in the grand scheme of things. On the other hand, the break up of AT&T in the US had huge benefits for consumers in terms of lowering costs.

If Facebook is nationalized, at least they will not manipulate people to serve corporate interests (that is the main threat).

Sure, in the worst case, under government ownership, social media might be used to manipulate elections to give preference to the incumbent party over the other, but that is infinitely better than manipulating elections based on the financial interests of a tiny minority and allow it to drive an increase in surveillance and restrictions of public freedoms. Eventually, even the tiny minority of shareholders (the smaller ones) will end up being harmed at the expense of the bigger shareholders. It's not going to stop at non-shareholders.

the-smug-one• 6 years ago

You got any specific examples or texts that one should know of?

pjc508• 6 years ago

The BBC, our nationalised TV producer, has now been explicitly politicised by the government. It's very hard to have a state-owned media enterprise that doesn't end up propping up the status quo.

bananaface2• 6 years ago

I would say the BBC is biased towards people holding long-term political office, i.e. the bureaucratic class, not the incumbent party. They're pretty good at bringing the hammer down on representatives.

They were explicitly anti-Brexit, and arguably anti-Corbyn. They're fairly anti-Boris. The common factor is bias against threats to the bureaucracy. It always puzzled me that they could get away with criticizing the people who held power over them, but I think it's just that MPs don't hold much power over them. They're more worried about the branches of government that don't change between elections.

kapuasuite3• 6 years ago

We should do that right after nationalizing every cellphone provider for letting their customers call each other and lie.

heresie-dabord• 6 years ago

Facebook needs to be nationalized and regulated as a public utility.

That is the wrong solution. The threat to _democracy_ because of _advertising_ is a US phenomenon.

It says something about social values if journalism and public education/discourse, which are essential to democracy, depend for their survival on _advertising_.

sgdesign• 6 years ago

One thing I still don’t quite understand is how a system like this one can develop when the people developing it almost certainly are completely opposed to these ideas on a personal political level.

I almost feel like it was an excess of idealism and belief in “the free market of ideas” -as well as the idea that Facebook should remain a neutral party at all cost- that led to overcompensating in the wrong direction, and the current situation.

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

how a system like this one can develop when the people developing it almost certainly are completely opposed to these ideas on a personal political level

Facebook pays well.

scandox• 6 years ago

Most people's political beliefs and ideas are simply something they wear, like a piece of clothing. If you asked them to change into different clothes for a specific purpose they will usually gladly do so without a moment's hesitation, if the purpose makes sense to them. The daily context of our lives and what we need to be getting on with is vastly more powerful than anything else.

ahartmetz• 6 years ago

Because of the kind of content that drives engagement, optimizing for engagement is not being a neutral party. And censoring content costs money. So Facebook has at least two financial motives.

beagle34• 6 years ago

It is hard for a person to understand something, when their salary depends on not understanding it. —-Upton Sinclair

cheschire• 6 years ago

Seems like you understand the situation perfectly, based on your second line.

islon• 6 years ago

It is difficult to get a man to keep his moral compass, when his salary depends upon his not keeping it

irjustin• 6 years ago

I think the top comment has it right.

The result is actually an emergent property of "increase attention/engagement to the max".

This is actually an algorithmic result that was just one of many possibilities.

So, I don't blame the developers 100%. Forest/trees problem.

What I do blame is Zuckerberg & the Board's decision to not 180' on the algorithm and lower engagement now that we know this is the result - money & power.

fakedang2• 6 years ago

Let's be honest here. Facebook for Zuckerberg is just a political tool for him now. Earlier, he wanted to run for President, which is obviously at severe conflict with the FB board's stated vision. Now he has realized that he can just twist any nation into his image. Money and power, at the end of the day.

cblconfederate• 6 years ago

I m sure they have performed their experiments.

They know they can't lower engagement, these are positive feedback loops, and attention is a zero-sum economy. If they give up even a tiny bit, they 'll lose out to competitors.

Subjects must remain fixated until the end.

truculent• 6 years ago

The people at the top believe in these ideas and our ability to organise and exercise our collective power is so withered and atrophied that people feel incapable of doing anything except going along with it

tester34• 6 years ago

I think professionals should be able to separate work and their private life.

raxxorrax4• 6 years ago

I don't think so. We didn't have the free market of ideas. Instead we had engagement optimized content. These approaches are completely different. Most other platforms and forums had a free market of ideas and it didn't lead to problems.

edit: Also, the demographic might be relevant.

throw0101a3• 6 years ago

One thing I still don’t quite understand is how a system like this one can develop when the people developing it almost certainly are completely opposed to these ideas on a personal political level.

$$$

Does it have to be more complicated than that?

Jommi2• 6 years ago

Seems like pretty bad long term $$$ move if it results in FB getting dismantled or regulated to hell.

cat199• 6 years ago

“the free market of ideas” -as well as the idea that Facebook should remain a neutral party at all cost

were abandoned by facebook the moment non-customizable feed algorithms replaced chronology, not after the resulting system lost whatever 'objectivity' remained.

this, and not the resultant 'gaming' of the implicitly-clickbait-biased platform, are the root cause 'that led to overcompensating in the wrong direction, and the current situation.'

gusfoo• 6 years ago

One thing I still don’t quite understand is how a system like this one can develop when the people developing it almost certainly are completely opposed to these ideas on a personal political level.

It is, as they say, giving people what they want. People get genuine pleasure from the feeling of outrage and, better still, righteous anger. And creators of content get paid by the ad industry more from outraging people than drily informing them of the fact of the matter.

harwoodleon• 6 years ago

It’s baked into the business model. Attention is the main material of the business, however it is gotten.

It can’t change. Facebook couldn’t afford for it to change.

throwaway7281• 6 years ago

That's the money line. Easy to understand, if you understand it.

sveme2• 6 years ago

That's actually always a good guidance: What's the business model/the aim of a company? Does it align with my own aims and wishes?

It's the basic difference between Google/Facebook and Apple. Google/Facebook sells ads, Apple sells hardware. Google/Facebook need to know as much as possible about you to sell more ads. Apple does not.

Obviously, these things can change.

izacus• 6 years ago

If that's true, why did Apple ads start showing in iOS? There's now a promotion for Apples services in iOS 14 settings, we're getting notifications about Apple arcade things, the Apple Ads tracking setting is ON by default and split from 3rd party ad tracking settings...

Not to mention their actions like political censorship (just from today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24939717 )

Your narrative fits Apple marketing, but not their actions anymore.

wdr1• 6 years ago

Apple sells hardware

That's a very limited view of Apple.

nkozyra2• 6 years ago

That's self evident but Facebook could afford not incentivizing political engagement.

It's only fairly recently that this threat vector was exploited. Facebook grew for years without being a disinformation channel.

pjc508• 6 years ago

As we found out when HN tried to ban politics, everything is political.

Yuioup• 6 years ago

Facebook should be taken offline a week before the election.

Broken_Hippo• 6 years ago

So... I shouldn't talk to family overseas during this time or find another way to do it?

Or everyone not living in the US should not have facebook before an American election?

It would seem to be more prudent to disallow political ads the week before. Or make it a crime to, say, spread wrong information about voting. And so on.

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

I shouldn't talk to family overseas during this time or find another way to do it?

A speed bump on posts (not messages or comments) isn’t a bad idea.

One month before an election, there is a fifteen-minute cooldown on posts. One week before, a one-hour cooldown. One day before, three. This lets people keep talking. But it slows the reproduction rate and gives people a shot, even if a long shot, at fact checking.

beagle34• 6 years ago

You are facebook’s product. It’s ok to say “Facebook cannot sell any products for a few days” for some reasons. Lockdowns slowed covid. Facebook limits will Possibly slow riots.

Ask for your money back if you are inconvenienced.

ako• 6 years ago

Since when is your ability to talk to your family depending on facebook. What about email, phone calls, or a zoom call?

thrwyoilarticle• 6 years ago

Every election or just yours?

pjc508• 6 years ago

Which election?

dilap• 6 years ago

Every election. We can look to North Korea as an inspirational example of this innovative method of combatting fake news.

afarviral• 6 years ago

No, thats still overcomplicating it. It should just be switched off for good, and best to take twitter down too, for good.

Dansvidania4• 6 years ago

People spread misinformation on Facebook. Arguably, it's not Facebook's responsibility to fact-check anything.

Facebook is not a publishing house (at least not the Facebook social media platform as such) and mandating that they fact check and curate their ads and content is tricky business. It requires a legal definition of truth, which is a matter complex enough to justify the existence of the whole judiciary system.

Expecting that a condensation of such a system be applied to the publishing of information on any platform is wishful thinking at best.

Edit: Corrected typos

SideburnsOfDoom• 6 years ago

People spread misinformation on Facebook.

That is misinformation. Most of it is pushed by Facebook's paying customers, not the users.

JumpCrisscross5• 6 years ago

Facebook is not a publishing house

Social media is a sufficiently different form of media that it will require its own form of regulation. Pointing to the publisher-editor delineation is anachronistic. Publishers never had the reach, insidiousness and information velocity that Facebook does.

raxxorrax4• 6 years ago

What concrete problem did Facebook cause on that matter?

I don't use facebook, just passively through contacts, but that is very limited. There are opinions that are wrong. But where did it lead to a real problem?

LarvaFX• 6 years ago

Thank you for this insight.

crispyporkbites• 6 years ago

Ads are different to the things people post on social media. Facebook can’t moderate and fact check ads? Why not? Because it would cost them too much of their 17billion dollar revenue? Boohoo

Dansvidania4• 6 years ago

Because that allows the people in charge to censorship ads with the excuse of fact checking, for one.

pjc508• 6 years ago

People spread viruses at bars. The bars themselves don't spread viruses. Yet they're shut in quite a lot of countries, to their severe financial detriment, because that's where the spread happens.

Yes, it's asymptotically hard to assign truth values to every single thing that crosses our feeds, but there are degrees to this stuff, and at least two conservative "news" organizations have made court depositions to the effect that nobody should mistake their entertainment for facts.

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-yor...

cm2187• 6 years ago

Particularly given that most of the exemples cited by the article are approximations, the sort that mainstream newspapers do routinely to push a narrative.

beagle34• 6 years ago

Facebook selects and controls what users see.

Facebook chooses to promote disinformation over your friend’s cat pictures because it drives more engagements and thus more money.

They are totally responsible for that content, even if this is an emergent property of optimizing for money algorithmically aNd no explicit editorializing takes place.

Their users may be dumb f&cks[0] but Facebook is not a dumb pipe.

[0] Zuckerberg’s words, not mine.

Dansvidania4• 6 years ago

I also do not like the fact that Facebook "optimizes" the content shown to users, and would rather just have no Algorithm at all, but that seems to me like a different (although possibly related) problem.

Maarten88• 6 years ago

Facebook is not a publishing house (at least not the Facebook social media platform as such) and mandating that they fact check and curate their ads and content is tricky business.

This is not by force of nature; this is the result of laws and policies that people created and that can be changed. The safe harbor provisions that exempts internet service providers from liability for user generated content created the circumstances that led to the creation and growth of huge companies like Facebook. But it doesn't have to be that way: in another world where all publishers (internet or other) would be liable for all content on their platform, companies like Facebook would never have existed, we'd probably have many smaller and more local publishers, economically less efficient but having much less of the current disinformation problems.

code_sloth• 6 years ago

In the "old" days, people had to actively look for or click through to get misinformation on platforms. Facebook's algorithm now shoves posts into user's feed, which is optimized for engagement. We're all seeing now where that has led, and it's not going to get any better if nothing changes.

Facebook keeps hiding behind the claim that they are a neutral platform when their own man made algorithm optimizes user feeds for ad/content delivery to maximize profit. Whether the developers meant to or not, that algorithm has actively spread and amplified misinformation, even polarizing entire nations.

If facebook cannot tame (identifying "truth") what they have made (their algorithmic feed), they should kill it. It does not matter if this taming is possible or not, because they do have the ability to terminate the algorithm.

MrMan• 6 years ago

Facebook is strictly a tool for social control, run for profit.

albertTJames3• 6 years ago

Mercer/Bannon/Trump and co. are super spreaders of misinformation. They happen to also use facebook, but I dont remember any issues of "fake news" in elections pre-2016/brexit. So no, its not inherent to the platform, only to the bad actors on it.

jackric2• 6 years ago

It was there pre 2016 it just didn't have this catchy term "fake news" yet. Ever heard of Gell-Mann Amnesia?

albertTJames3• 6 years ago

Do you have any example ?

jokethrowaway• 6 years ago

The term wasn't there but the phenomenon was.

Obama was probably the first candidate to win thanks to social media and facebook groups. Partisan Facebook groups post a lot and it's 50% your party's interpretation of reality, 45% outrageous claims, 5% pure fake news. I don't even think the fake news spreading is done maliciously, the groups are probably maintained by radicalised individuals who believe whatever news fit their narrative.

Trump (who often retweets fake news and even retweeted a website similar to the onion, once) equally calls fake news on opposing publications.

Still, I think fake news is a vastly overblown problem. Fake news is merely the scapegoat left wing media use to explain why Trump/Brexit won, even if it's represented so poorly in media. You can call it populism or far right extremism or Nazi, but outside of the rich tech community bubble, outside of universities, poor people want less government not more. The socialist message is lost on them, that's why Trump and Brexit won, despite the media coverage.

If we look at similar cases, like Berlusconi in Italy 30 years ago, it's just a matter of time before Trump understands fixing the government is hard, if not impossible and get caught in some corruption case himself.

The parasitical nature of the state just allow for the state to grow larger until it destroys its host. Spending in the USA is still at record highs.

rendall3• 6 years ago

Frustrating. At the same time, I all too often see claims of "fake news" or "disinformation" that which is simply embarrassing or inconvenient for one party or the other. I'm not sure that there is a way to solve this problem that will not cause worse problems, like censorship of good but unpopular notions, or notions that are true but annoy the powerful

cloverich3• 6 years ago

Its not fake news if its true but inconvenient, so there's a pretty firm line there. There are plenty of recent examples of legitimately fake and (intentionally) misleading content that has been propagated on Facebook, I assume anyone with any right wing friends has been inundated with it. But in addition to that, the simple protection against censoring true notions that annoy the powerful is transparency. Complete transparency with when and why and how things are blocked would be a start. Blocking clearly fake content, banning people who (repeatedly) post it, and being transparent about the reasons seems like a fair progress with a fairly clean line between it and proposed dystopian outcomes.

rendall3• 6 years ago

"Its not fake news if its true but inconvenient, so there's a pretty firm line there."

I agree that truth is a pretty firm line, but discerning that truth and agreeing on it is a very, very squishy line. Discerning what's true is arguably the most difficult task we can face, philosophically speaking

No matter how many well-meaning people agree that some assertion A is false, if they are wrong and have the authority to suppress it, then they have committed the injustice of censorship.

Even with the scientific method, which I believe is the best method ever invented for discerning truth, there have been many, many times that the scientific consensus has been, not only wrong, but egregiously, arrogantly wrong. Any time throughout history that authorities have been allowed to suppress what they believed to be false - and they often had excellent reasons for believing so - they invariably and inevitably suppress ideas that turn out to be true.

Throwing AI at the problem is just adding another layer of misdirection. It's not going to be better this time in spite of all of the other times just because an AI decides it

No, personally speaking, I think we will have a much, much healthier society if we can just learn to live with the fact that people believe stupid things and they will always believe stupid things even when you try to hide the stupid things from them. I know that I believe things that are both wrong and stupid, I just don't know which things. If everyone could acknowledge that they probably hold at least some wrong and stupid ideas, we would all be a little bit more humble about banishing other peoples' wrong and stupid ideas.

justinzollars• 6 years ago

"The people most responsible for destruction of the internet, as well those most blind about the destruction they’re wreaking are the journalists and activists who spent years begging Silicon Valley to regulate discourse."

And the fruits of their labor?

https://twitter.com/palinfoen/status/1321141294807322624

nathias• 6 years ago

I'm not sure why everyone seems to be so pleased with the idea that FB yields to the US partisan politics and starts curating ...

tonyedgecombe• 6 years ago

They are curating now, in favour of US partisan politics.

engineer_22• 6 years ago

Nationalize Facebook.

acje• 6 years ago

'Super Spreader' hardly describes Facebooks reach. It's an entire (miss)information pandemic in its own right.

NLMichel• 6 years ago

And don't think it stops at the US border, this is a segment from the Dutch TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLoR2Spftwg Funny thing they just copy/paste the US conspiracies on Dutch politicians.

russellbeattie• 6 years ago

They made $22 billion in revenue this past quarter helping destroy the country. Every Facebook employee is laughing their asses off at you personally right now. "LOL! Look, HN is complaining about Facebook again! Hysterical!" They're emailing the link above with laughing emojis and dollar signs, while they customize their new Tesla order in another window.

The fact is, they will all lose money if Trump isn't reelected. Every single FB employee knows this, and does their part to keep the rage machine working. No conspiracy theory needed here, it's all part of the job.

If this wasn't the case, we would have a simple setting on the home feed to exclude shared links and news. One click and no more Fox News hatred from your crazy uncle. But we don't have that option. Why? All I want from Facebook is to see updates of distant relatives on vacation, or graduation photos, etc. But they don't make money if there's no anger, so oh well.

5423542342355• 6 years ago

The fact is, they will all lose money if Trump isn't reelected. Every single FB employee knows this, and does their part to keep the rage machine working.

I don’t understand what you mean here. Why does Trump need to be reelected? There is always outrage to be generated for clicks. There was no shortage of outrage during Obama’s term. Even things that were objective non issues, like the tan suit, was whipped into a viral attention storm. “Obama's tan suit shocks social media”. It seems like social media is just designed to promote outrage, since outrage produces virality, but not that it needs Trump specifically. Is there something I’m not getting relating specifically to Trump and Facebook?

cloverich3• 6 years ago

Why does Trump need to be reelected?

The same reason Howard Stern was allegedly so popular. People who hate him listened even longer than people who liked him.

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

People spread this stuff. Organised funded groups from Fox news down to your local corporate or office push it. Facebook is just where they do it. At worst, Facebook encourages people stay on Facebook, but it doesn't care whether they're sharing trump memes or kittens.

This is like blaming parks because people deal drugs in parks sometimes.

jen20• 6 years ago

In many cities, parks close at dusk in part because people deal drugs there, so this argument is not remotely convincing.

LatteLazy2• 6 years ago

Because people never deal drugs during the day or because people never go into parks at night when they're shut!?

grep_name• 6 years ago

I don't doubt that facebook's algorithm results in disinformation through their quest for engagement, but does anyone know a good resource that talks about the specifics of what ideas are most spread in this way with some numbers?

My issue is that I read about this often (and care about these issues), but I have not used facebook since 2010 and so I have no experience with what everyone's talking about. I feel like in order to understand I need some data to work with that is more specific than 'flagged false', because facebook is just not part of my experience right now and I don't know what people are actually saying on the platform

mensetmanusman• 6 years ago

If we are going to fix this, we need real suggestions instead of just complaining about it. For example

Policy proposal:

Maximize the amount of people that can see a given post / news article. People would have to resubmit in substantially their own words any information they glean that should be passed on beyond that limit. E.g. someone posts a news article that reaches 10,000 people. The 10,001st gets an error saying it has already reached maximum views.

One of the initial 10,000 couldn’t just copy paste what they saw, but would have to generate unique content to reinitiate an information node that would also have a 10,000 view maximum.

This would not be great for national news sites, but it would reinvigorate local news, because that would be the only way for the information to spread.

Decentralization is key.

basicexploit• 6 years ago

Not only Facebook is a super spreader of internet but the whole internet. There are so much misinformation going on that people dont even take the time to check is that true or not.

RickJWagner• 6 years ago

Everything is a Super Spreader of Election Misinformation.

I remember when Trump won in 2016, CNN immediately turned it's theme black and ran gloomy headlines that continue until this very day.

Likewise, other news sources went into spin mode, seemingly faster than they did pre-Trump. Actors and athletes became media stars not for their area of expertise but for their political opinions (which should be worth exactly the same as the bartender's but the bartender doesn't make the news for some reason.)

I agree that Facebook is a huge platform for politics. The difference is that you can post your own views and you can indicate if you like or dislike someone else's opinions.

I think it's actually progress.

Facebook Is a 'Super Spreader' of Election Misinformation

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