“many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them.”.“the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories,” and. “62 percent of US adults get news on social media,”.Hunt Allcott and Matthew Gentzkow’s recent study “Social Media and Fakes News in the 2016 Election” noted three things: What is unprecedented is the speed at which massive misinformation, from deliberate propaganda and fake news to trolling to inadvertent misunderstanding, flows around the world like “digital wildfire,” thanks to social media. Fake news is sometimes hard to recognize for what it is, constantly evolving to fit seamlessly into the community spaces many of us feel safe and comfortable in, those social places and platforms where we share stories and connect with people we’re inclined to trust: our friends, families, and colleagues (rather than the once widely respected gatekeepers of reliable information, the traditional press). Zuckerberg’s strange reluctance to ban or fact-check certain paid political propaganda that employs the long, global reach of Facebook to intentionally broadcast lies to an unsuspecting public is yet another facet of how powerfully language in the information age can be weaponized by those with the means to do so.Īlthough the tricks of persuasion may be as old as time, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry. Cynics among us might point out that this is really nothing new, and newsflash, fake news is just a kind of propaganda, which has long lived on the dark side of the printed word. Many, like Zuckerberg, may not be motivated to see these little words on a page as a major problem. Although the tricks of persuasion may be as old as time, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry.
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