Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook (nymag.com)

Max Read makes his case via New York Magazine for how Facebook was the reason for Donald Trump's surprise victory on November 8th. Though, to be fair, "Facebook" is called out specifically due to its large online presence, but in reality all the "large and influential boards and social-media platforms where Americans now congregate to discuss politics" are to blame. The main reason why has to do with Facebook's "inability (or refusal) to address the problem of hoax or fake news" that is spread rampantly and effortlessly across the platform: Fake news is not a problem unique to Facebook, but Facebook's enormous audience, and the mechanisms of distribution on which the site relies -- i.e., the emotionally charged activity of sharing, and the show-me-more-like-this feedback loop of the news feed algorithm -- makes it the only site to support a genuinely lucrative market in which shady publishers arbitrage traffic by enticing people off of Facebook and onto ad-festooned websites, using stories that are alternately made up, incorrect, exaggerated beyond all relationship to truth, or all three. Many got hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of shares, likes, and comments; enough people clicked through to the posts to generate significant profits for their creators. The valiant efforts of Snopes and other debunking organizations were insufficient; Facebook's labyrinthine sharing and privacy settings mean that fact-checks get lost in the shuffle. Often, no one would even need to click on and read the story for the headline itself to become a widely distributed talking point, repeated elsewhere online, or, sometimes, in real life. When roughly 170 million people in North America use Facebook every day and nearly forty-four percent of all adults in the U.S. say they get news from Facebook, the spread of "fake news" is all the more detrimental. The problem is that Facebook seems "insecure about its power, unsure of its purpose, and unclear about what its responsibilities really are." Earlier this year, Facebook acted on what was right and wrong by censoring the iconic "napalm girl" photograph, later issuing a statement saying "These are difficult decisions and we don't always get it right." Of course, lies and exaggerations have always been central to real political campaigns; Facebook has simply made them easier to spread, and discovered that it suffers no particular market punishment for doing so -- humans seem to have a strong bias toward news that confirms their beliefs, and environments where those beliefs are unlikely to be challenged.

Comments

Re:Deplorable critical thinking skills

[Xenographic]

Okay, so I think the "kill list" really is pretty bogus, but the problem is you're using that to invalidate some real scandals.

Hillary really did work to evade the Presidential Records Act, then lied to Congress about it (see also: 18 U.S. Code 1001). Here's what the FBI found. Why didn't they charge her? Because she's was the Democratic presidential candidate and the charges go up to a Democratic-controlled DoJ. Guess what they'd do with the charges? Oh, right.

If you don't like that summary clip, you can watch this 3 hour hearing.

Here's her and Colin Powell discussing how to cheat the act. Kinda puts a new spin on why Powell endorsed Hillary, huh? Feel free to prosecute them both, it's only fair.

Source (click 'view original PDF')

C06125520 UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2016-11013 Doc No. C06125520 Date: 09/08/2016

Re: Question
From: Colin Powell [redacted] [RELEASE IN PART B6]
To: Hillary Clinton hr15@att.blackberry.net B6
Subject: Re: Question

I didn't have a BlackBerry. What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. I did the same thing on the road in hotels.

Now, the real issue had to do with PDAs, as we called them a few years ago before BlackBerry became a noun. And the issue was DS would not allow them into the secure spaces, especially up your way. When I asked why not they gave me all kinds of nonsense about how they gave out signals that could be read by spies, etc. Same reason they tried to keep mobile phones out of the suite. I had numerous meetings with them. We even opened one up for them to try to explain to me why it was more dangerous than say, a remote control for one of the many tvs in the suite. Or something embedded in my shoe heel. They never satisfied me and NSA/CIA wouldn't back off. So, we just went about our business and stopped asking. I had an ancient version of a PDA and used it. In general, the suite was so sealed that it is hard to get signals in or out wirelessly.

However, there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it is governmend and your are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law. Readingi about the President's BB rules this morning, it sounds like it won't be as useful as it used to be. Be very careful. I got around it all by not saaying much and not using systems that captured the data.

You will find DS driving you crazy if you let them. They had Maddy tied up in knots. I refused to let them live in my house or build a place on my property. They found an empty garage half a block away. On weekends, I drove my beloved cars around town without them following me. I promised I would have a phone and not be gone more than an hour or two at Tysons or the hardware store. They hated it and asked me to sign a letter relieving them of responsibility if I got whacked while doing that. I gladly did. Spontaneity was my security. They wanted to have two to three guys follow me around the building all the time. I said if they were doing their job guarding the place, they didn't need to follow me. I relented and let one guy follow me one

[REVIEW AUTHORITY: Geoffrey Chapman, Senior Reviewer]

UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2016-11013 Doc No. C06125520 Date: 09/08/2016

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C006122520 SIFIE UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2016-11013 Doc No. C06125520 Date: 09