The social panic and media hysteria over fake news continues unabated. And once again, Facebook's reaction is all wrong.
The left's intense focus on false news stories exploded in the wake
of what seemed like an inexplicable Republican victory in the 2016
election, with Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton despite an avalanche
of bad press directed at the former, especially in the final weeks of
the campaign. The GOP also unexpectedly retained control of the Senate,
winning surprise victories in Wisconsin and Indiana to confound the
Democratic Party's advantage in incumbent seats and normal
presidential-cycle turnout models.
Attention quickly focused on a BuzzFeed story
about traffic generated by stories on Facebook, and how much more
popular fake news was over real news. The analysis had significant
flaws, however, beginning with the fact that there was no evidence of
correlation between Facebook traffic and voting behavior, let alone
causation. Furthermore, the top five "real news" articles in the
analysis turned out to be four opinion essays opposing Trump and the New York Post's story on Melania Trump's suggestive modeling pictures from two decades earlier.
Nonetheless, much of the left and the mainstream media stuck with the
fake news narrative to explain the election outcome, and have continued
to pressure Facebook to take action against it. Read More
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