Facebook’s fake war on fake news
In August, Facebook announced it would ban pages that post hoax stories from being allowed to advertise on the social network. This precluded a bombshell. In September, everyone who’d been trying to ring the alarm about fake news, despite Facebook’s denials and downplaying, all found out just how right they were.
This was the month Facebook finally admitted — under congressional questioning — that a Russian propaganda mill used the social-media giant’s ad service for political operation around the 2016 campaign. This came out when sources revealed to The Washington Post that Facebook was grilled by 2016 Russia-Trump congressional investigators behind closed doors.
In 2000, the Supreme Court stole the election. In 2004, it was Ohio and electronic voting machines. In 2016, it was Russians on Twitter and Facebook . In other words, when the left loses, it’s always a right-wing conspiracy. Had Hillary won in 2016 I guarantee there would not have been a peep by the left about Russians and Facebook threatening democracy. When the left says democracy is threatened by Facebook, why they means is their ability to propagate their narratives with impunity is threatened.
Maybe the reason why ‘fake news’ succeeds is because it’s actually better than the real news, which has the pretense of impartiality and usefulness but is often just as bad as fake news, except less entertaining. The ‘real news’ said that the economy would fail if Trump won. ‘Real news’ reports white-on-black crime and shootings committed by whites, but ignores black-on-white crime. The real news gives credence to rape hoaxes. The real news said there were WMDs in Iraq. The real news said that the 2008 recession would become the next ‘great depression’, which it didn’t. The real news hyped the threat of Russia in 2014, which proved non-existent. The real news hyped the housing market in 2004-2006. It hyped Bitcoin between November-January when it was at $13-20k, and now it’s at $10k.
I’m not just singling out left-wing news; right-wing news can also be equally bad and wrong, such as those awful gold and ‘survival seeds’ ads that were very popular on Alex Jones, Drudge, and Fox News between 2009-2013; but also incorrect predictions of hyperinflation, recession, and crisis. If you knew how much Alex Jones earned in the past decade promoting his doom and gloom nonsense0, you would realize he is very much as part of the ‘system’ as the liberal media is. The media isn’t going to promote someone who threatens their survival, which he doesn’t. Right-wing misdirection is as every bit as valuable to the New World Order as left-wing misdirection. The goal of the media is to deceive–to spread fer and anxiety at your emotional but also financial expense, because that is how they make money. Real or fake, the news is mostly a waste of time and little good comes from it.