Use social media? You've been thrown to the wolves
The truth no longer matters
Facebook may be a wonderful way to stay in touch with family or college friends, but if you rely on it for anything more than that, owner Mark Zuckerberg has just thrown you to the wolves.
In the latest example of “obeying in advance”, Zuckerberg announced yesterday that he is ending most fact-checking on Facebook. More than one wag in my Facebook feed weighed in with, “Wait. Facebook had fact checkers?”
Indeed they did. The fact-checking team was added to combat falsehoods spread on social media during the last few presidential elections as well as the dangerous misinformation spread on social media during the Covid pandemic.
But those fact checkers angered conservatives, who felt their views were being squelched on social media, conveniently forgetting that the vast majority of lies in the political world have been told by Donald Trump and his enablers. Remember the VP debate when Tim Walz asked J.D. Vance if he would state for the record that Joe Biden won the 2020 election? Vance responded with a nonsense answer about Kamala Harris supporting censorship of Republican views on social media, or something like that. It had nothing to do with Walz’s question, and it was a totally BS answer. But now that Vance and Trump are about to assume office, Mark Zuckerberg has decided maybe they were right all along.
Zuckerberg’s solution for future fact checking on Facebook? Well, go take a look in the mirror, because it is you. That’s right, Zuckerberg is firing most of his content moderation team and leaving it up to other social media users to add a comment to a post that is wrong. That oughta work just great! “You’re wrong!” “No, YOU’RE wrong!” “I’m not wrong because you’re an idiot!”
Trump’s not the only guy happy about this
This makes Donald Trump very happy. Now his MAGA trolls can post just about anything they want, no matter how inaccurate, without worrying about some tech worker taking down the post because it’s filled with lies. And if that wasn’t enough bootlicking by Zuckerberg, he also contributed $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
You know who else this makes happy? Vladimir Putin, who can turn his Russian disinformation farms lose to spread lies and divisive comments right onto Americans’ cellphones, without much interference from anyone who cares about facts.
A disappointing experience with user comments
I have some personal experience with content moderation. At the newsroom where I worked, we were excited in the early days of the web to allow readers to comment on each news story. We thought it would be a great way to interact with real people, and a great way for real people to express themselves about the day’s news stories.
It very quickly turned into a disaster, not only on our website but on every other news website that allowed user comments. Discussions quickly dissolved into a series of nasty, insulting, inaccurate arguments between users. I used to think a troll was a creature in a children’s book who hid under a bridge. I soon learned that trolls exist online – not to scare children, but to scare adults by starting arguments, creating chaos and doing everything possible to gain attention for themselves.
As the newsroom manager, I would be aghast reading user comments. It made me want to poke my eyes out with a fork. And sometimes, it was dangerous. I recall one story where police in an Iowa town were trying to identify someone who had committed a heinous crime against a child. People in that town read the story on our website, and then added comments naming other people in town who, in their view, might be capable of such a crime. Talk about a legal problem! We had folks being accused of crimes against children right on our news website, long before police had made any arrests or even figured out who the bad guy was.
That episode pushed me over the edge, and we killed user comments from that point forward. It just wasn’t worth it. It was ugly, it was painful, and it was dangerous. In an ideal world, we would have hired a big staff to moderate the comments but that wasn’t in the budget. And what an awful job that would be to spend all day immersed in the muck of warring online trolls.
What to do about it
So now Facebook and other social media sites are leaving it to you to figure out fact from fiction. The discerning news consumers who read this column already know this, but do not depend on social media for any news. There has been way too much disinformation in the past, and it’s going to get much worse. Find a few journalism outlets you trust and PAY them to hire real journalists who are trained and who care about telling the truth to the best of their ability.
Want to share the latest picture of your cat or your cute kid? Go for it on Facebook. But if you want the facts about this dangerous period in American democracy, you should read a good newspaper, listen to a reliable podcast, watch a quality newscast, and/or subscribe to a blogger or Substacker you trust. They exist. Many of them are struggling financially and need your support.
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I have never had a FB account and find even less reason now. The tech world is being bullied into financial submission with contributions to the inaugural and the Trump Library (which require no accountability-how convenient). My friends and family know how to send me a few travel photos. Leave FB unless you are hooked on this social medium.
Thank you for this Dave Busiek. I'd like to delete FB totally, but I like to see my friends' travel photos. For news, I read the NY Times (with a grain of salt), listen to NPR (both national and IPR), read columns like yours and those of other IWC members, plus historian Heather Cox Richardson and recently-discovered Steady, from Dan Rather. Oh, and I subscribe to The Week, an excellent (though expensive) magazine that does a fair job of including viewpoints from both right- and left-leaning legitimate news media.