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Mark Zuckerberg Says Fake News on Facebook Affecting the Election Is a 'Crazy Idea' (fortune.com)
A lot of questions are emerging about Facebook's role in this year's election cycle, especially given the proliferation of sensationalistic and even outright fake news stories, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded. From a report on Fortune: "I think the idea that fake news on Facebook -- of which it's a very small amount of the content -- influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea," he said on Thursday at the Techonomy conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., just two days after Donald Trump was elected president, according to media reports. "There have been hoaxes on the Internet, there were hoaxes before," he said. "We do our best to make it so that people can report that, and as I said before, we can show people the most meaningful content we can."
Not to detract from the rest of your post, but it was Jeff Bezos who bought The Washington Post.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Before someone lazily asks for a citation:
Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News
Facebook Unblocks DNC Email Leak After WikiLeaks Accuses Them of Censorship
just two that I quickly found
"His name was James Damore."
Yes, because you can't beat industrial scale clickbait networks and clickfarms. For every buck made by Google and FB on ads, Russians exploiting the internet advertising networks can make two, and only a small amount of profit for arbitrage goes to the 3rd tier players and guys with captive marketplaces.
This is "The King is Naked" fact of the online ads industry. Ad industry really dislikes people digging in their rigged audit reports. I myself once worked for a private ad marketplace and was made to sign a 15 page NDA.
Does this mean that for every 3 bucks you spend on PPC, PPM, affiliate, and e.t.c. you give 2 of these bucks to Russian clickfarm? YES! And the whole industry was doing that for the last 6 or 7 years.
When I was renting place in a rather expensive coworking in Russia (USD $800 a month), a third of all places were rented out by a clickfarming collective whose guys all drove BMW 7 and M series cars.
I believe that clickfarming industry will soon eclipse carding in Russia. It is way more profitable, plus it's legal (well, not a big thing here).
Hold up a second there, professor. In what way were Trump and his supporters NOT called out by CNN and the rest of the media? Jesus christ, the ENTIRE 6 month run-up to the election was nothing but Trump-bashing, and unabashed Hillary worship. Every time I went to CNN, MSNBC, BBC, or any of the literally hundreds of other political/news/current event sites around, I would see headlines heralding Trump as the second coming of Satan himself.
I voted for Hillary. I don't like Trump. But pretending that somehow the "media" didn't do enough to stop Trump is entirely BULLSHIT. You know who didn't do enough to stop Trump? The Democrats. They took their white, working class voters across the Rust Belt for granted, and ignored them. And they got a giant middle finger from those voters because of it. She also connected to minority voters with all the warmth of a digital rectal exam, and engendered about as much enthusiasm from them. Yes, they "predominantly" voted for her. NO, they did not vote for her at the levels and numbers they voted for Obama - despite the constant drumbeat of negativity telling them that they would be deported, locked up, assaulted, shot, or imprisoned for simply being brown, if Trump were elected.
Don't you DARE blame the media for "not doing enough to stop Trump." The amount of negative coverage of Trump, his views, and his supporters was absolutely monumental in this election, and it still wasn't enough to give Hillary the votes she needed. The reason for that is that the Democrats FUCKED UP, and handed Trump the election. From the coronation of Clinton at the expense of Sanders all the way to election day, they FUCKED. UP. They didn't listen to their base, they didn't energize their base, and that base largely stayed home. Trump got fewer votes than Romney in 2012, McCain in 2008, and Bush in 2004. But he still won. In the past 4 elections (04, 08, 12, 16), this is the voter turnout:
2004 - 60.1%
2008 - 61.6%
2012 - 58.0%
2016 - 56.0%
Trump got less votes than the Republican candidates in all of those other elections. Which means, not that there was some sort of massive "groundswell" for Trump; It means there was a massive "meh, think I'll stay home today instead of voting," in the Democratic party.
THIS IS NOT THE MEDIA'S FAULT. The blame for this rests squarely with the Democrats themselves.