TL;DR: There is real evidence that facebook (all social media) helped deliver the Presidency to Trump. That makes me incredibly sad. What I’m doing personally to stop this virus from spreading, at least from me.
Articles I’ve shared:
To read: Articles on how fake news, quizzes, and bots have corrupted any semblance of informed and rational debate.
Videos – 1) The Dancing Bear which will blow you away (seriously) 2) Amazon’s new ad.
Resources – Google is putting mobile friendly sites first; SEO for 2017; and social media tracking on four networks.
After election day I’ve been devastated, like many people, that my candidate lost the election.
What has also been devastating is to realize that everything that I have based my life’s work upon – technology, openness, transparency, the internet, and social media – could have been one of the primary reasons why the “ALT-Right” and Trump won the election.
Without a foundation of facts and basic “truths”, how can a nation like the USA hold elections that have any basis in reality?
It is now clear to me that the internet is simply a tool or a platform to do with it what you will. The internet is not, by definition, right or wrong. Only the people who use it can define the outcomes.
For the first time in my lifetime, “fake” news overwhelmed FACT BASED news and information so much so that fake news became real news for millions and millions of voters.
There is now a call for facebook and social media platforms to somehow get rid of fake news sites. What this call ignores is that the foundation of a democracy must be an educated voter and citizen.
It is the voter that must be able to distinguish between real and fake news. Facebook can not do it for us. Twitter can not do it for us.
We must do it ourselves.
So, it starts with me. Here is what I’ve done.
BS Detector installed in Chrome: I installed a chrome extension that notifies me when an article I see on facebook could be considered fake news. It is called “BS Detector.”
Unfollowed and blocked all known fake news sites from liberal leaning sites. Here is a list to start.
Calling out friends who share fake news. If my friends and family are sharing fake news, I’m letting them know. Nicely.
My hope is that while social media (Twitter specifically) created Trump and the ALT-Right, those same forces will take him down, eventually.
“Facebook doesn’t want to challenge you, they don’t want to upset you, because they know that if you’re challenged on their platform, you.. would leave.”
Are your social media marketing efforts working? Discover which key performance indicators (KPIs) to track for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
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