Fake News Persistent at Facebook
I was reading an item on cnet.com regarding the continuing fake news found on Facebook.Shareholders of Facebook are speaking out regarding this continuing problem with 'fake' news ... must have a lot of feed straight from CNN — or perhaps the LA or NY Times.
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Having viewed the environment over at Mom's ... yes I haven't been able to get her to boycott that drivel ... I was impressed with the "feeds" which consist primarily of various subtle to not so subtle nothings.
The most alarming aspect of the experience are the little "questionnaires" designed to advise you regarding things like your IQ and other unqualified tidbits that the users seem to suck up like a golfball through a garden hose in — well, just whose mouth isn't important anymore.
While not fake "news" per se, it remains fakery at a higher and more insidious level giving participants some false notion of their intellectual functioning ... or personality traits ... or any one of numerous other facets of their existence which are figments of the imaginations of the writer of the spam. In return they harvest personal account information and gain permission to install modules on the accessing machine.
The sophistication of the user is typically their in. This leaves many open to any manner of exploit; the least of which is gaining some false notion of themselves.
The crux of the issue are both reliability and integrity. Something CNN lost long ago as the main stream media follow merrily down the same path of yellow journalistic influence peddling devoid of objectivity ... which has become the primary thrust of entirely too many news outlets anymore.
Zuck says that it's primarily a function of money grubbing spammers and I certainly can accept that up to a point. Where we diverge is the organizations inability to control the spammers with extreme prejudice.
He says they're just making money. I say they're the scourge of the internet and should be taken to the beach and turned over to Isis or something equally horrid.
All in all I seem to have been left with the notion that this fake news problem will be persistent over time. I attribute this to a lack of effort on the part of the company.
Be all this as it may that fodder which it is should not be taken as seriously as some do. I for one am skeptical until I fact check it across multiple news venues then again on the conservative side and those outlets I trust.
Too much is taken for granted in an information age where too much of the information is contrived by some dirt bag out to make a buck.
Boo !