To take a page from history, I am not now, nor have I ever been a
member of Face Book.
Sometimes it's the silliest thing that turns me off...or on. In the
case of Face Book, it's that cute little two word statement, "Like
Me!" Like me? Like my ass! Are we really accepting baby talk as our
new level of expressing ourselves? Twitter? Tweet? Like Me? Well
Tooty Booty on you, Face Book. And a Twink my Dink to Twitter.
I'll admit, for the purpose of full disclosure, that I have never
looked at a Face Book page. But I have talked with friends and family
members who are deep into this strange world. Is it me, or is this
the ultimate of self centered behavior? My sister tells me that this
is how she shares with her children and a few friends the stuff that
is happening in her life. But some of the entries in her Page are
embarrassing. "I woke up at 7:32 this morning." Really important
stuff. "Sat around watching TV until lunch." I don't know how folks
survive without that important news.
So along with dumbing down our language, we are dulling down our brains.
And as far as Face Book influencing people's vote? Of course it does.
In bringing out the Stupid in us, we are set up to believe just about
any crap posted. Remember the words of Will Rogers? "I read it in the
newspaper, so it must be true!"
That's not so funny anymore.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/17/16, Richard Driscoll <llocsirdsr@att.net> wrote:
> All:
>
> It begins to appear that my general policy of not contributing to and
> not subscribing to the various social communication systems has been a
> good one and mentally non-contaminating.
>
> Richard
>
>
> On 11/17/2016 6:41 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
>> What has disturbed me is that everyone, including Truthdig and
>> Democracy Now, use Face Book in order to communicate with listeners
>> because it is popular. The rule should have been that the news media
>> stay away and make clear that it is solely for personal, subjective
>> communications.
>> Miriam
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org
>> [mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@freelists.org] *On Behalf Of *Bob Hachey
>> *Sent:* Thursday, November 17, 2016 2:04 AM
>> *To:* blind-democracy@freelists.org
>> *Subject:* [blind-democracy] Real News or Fake FaceBook
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have heard it said that over 40 percent of Americans get their news
>> from FaceBook. IF true, this is very disturbing. I've never cared much
>> for FaceBook. The website is not designed well for screen reader users
>> and I have found Facebook to be rather plastic. Seems my gut reaction
>> to Facebook was and still is accurate.
>>
>> Bob Hachey
>>
>> Viral Fake Election News Outperformed Real News On Facebook In Final
>> Months Of The US Election
>>
>> A BuzzFeed News analysis found that top fake election news stories
>> generated more total engagement on Facebook than top election stories
>> from 19 major
>>
>> news outlets combined.
>>
>> posted on Nov. 16, 2016, at 5:15 p.m.
>>
>> Craig Silverman
>>
>> BuzzFeed Founding Editor, Canada
>>
>> In the final three months of the US presidential campaign, the
>> top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more
>> engagement than the
>>
>> top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times,
>> Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News, and others, a BuzzFeed
>> News analysis has found.
>>
>> During these critical months of the campaign, 20 top-performing false
>> election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs generated
>> 8,711,000 shares,
>>
>> reactions, and comments on Facebook.
>>
>> Within the same time period, the 20 best-performing election stories
>> from 19 major news websites generated a total of 7,367,000 shares,
>> reactions, and
>>
>> comments on Facebook. (This analysis focused on the top performing
>> link posts for both groups of publishers, and not on total site
>> engagement on Facebook.
>>
>> For details on how we identified and analyzed the content, see the
>> bottom of this post. View our data
>>
>> here.)
>>
>> Up until those last three months of the campaign, the top election
>> content from major outlets had easily outpaced that of fake election
>> news on Facebook.
>>
>> Then, as the election drew closer, engagement for fake content on
>> Facebook skyrocketed and surpassed that of the content from major news
>> outlets.
>>
>> BuzzFeed News
>>
>> "I'm troubled that Facebook is doing so little to combat fake news," said
>>
>> Brendan Nyhan,
>>
>> a professor of political science at Dartmouth College who researches
>> political misinformation and fact-checking. "Even if they did not
>> swing the election,
>>
>> the evidence is clear that bogus stories have incredible reach on the
>> network. Facebook should be fighting misinformation, not amplifying it."
>>
>> A Facebook spokesman told BuzzFeed News that the top stories don't
>> reflect overall engagement on the platform.
>>
>> "There is a long tail of stories on Facebook," the spokesman said. "It
>> may seem like the top stories get a lot of traction, but they
>> represent a tiny fraction
>>
>> of the total."
>>
>> He also said that
>>
>> native video,
>>
>> live content, and
>>
>> image posts
>>
>> from major news outlets saw significant engagement on Facebook.
>>
>> Of the 20 top-performing false election stories identified in the
>> analysis, all but three were overtly pro-Donald Trump or anti-Hillary
>> Clinton. Two of
>>
>> the biggest false hits were a story claiming
>>
>> Clinton sold weapons to ISIS
>>
>> and a hoax claiming the pope
>>
>> endorsed
>>
>> Trump. The only viral false stories during the final three months that
>> were arguably against Trump's interests were a
>>
>> false quote
>>
>> from Mike Pence about Michelle Obama, a false
>>
>> report
>>
>> that Ireland was accepting American "refugees" fleeing Trump, and a hoax
>>
>> claiming
>>
>> RuPaul said he was groped by Trump.
>>
>> BuzzFeed News
>>
>> BuzzFeed News
>>
>> This new data illustrates the power of fake election news on Facebook,
>> and comes as the social network deals with criticism that it allowed
>> false content
>>
>> to run rampant during the 2016 presidential campaign. CEO Mark Zuckerberg
>>
>> said recently
>>
>> it was "a pretty crazy idea" to suggest that fake news on Facebook
>> helped sway the election. He later published a
>>
>> post
>>
>> saying, "We have already launched work enabling our community to flag
>> hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here."
>>
>> This week
>>
>> BuzzFeed News reported
>>
>> that a group of Facebook employees have formed a task force to tackle
>> the issue, with one saying that "fake news ran wild on our platform
>> during the entire
>>
>> campaign season." The Wall Street Journal also
>>
>> reported
>>
>> that Google would begin barring fake news websites from its AdSense
>> advertising program. Facebook
>>
>> soon
>>
>> followed suit.
>>
>> These developments follow
>>
>> a study by BuzzFeed News
>>
>> that revealed hyperpartisan Facebook pages and their websites were
>> publishing false or misleading content at an alarming rate — and
>> generating significant
>>
>> Facebook engagement in the process. The same was true for the
>>
>> more than 100 US politics websites
>>
>> BuzzFeed News found being run out of the Former Yugoslav Republic of
>> Macedonia.
>>
>> This new analysis of election content found two false election stories
>> from a Macedonian sites that made the top-10 list in terms of Facebook
>> engagement
>>
>> int he final three months. Conservative State published
>>
>> a story
>>
>> that falsely quoted Hillary Clinton as saying, "I would like to see
>> people like Donald Trump run for office; they're honest and can't be
>> bought." The
>>
>> story generated over 481,000 engagements on Facebook. A second false
>>
>> story
>>
>> from a Macedonia site falsely claimed that Clinton was about to be
>> indicted. It received 149,000 engagements on Facebook.
>>
>> All the false news stories identified in BuzzFeed News' analysis came
>> from either fake news websites that only publish hoaxes or from
>> hyperpartisan websites
>>
>> that present themselves as publishing real news. The research turned
>> up only one viral false election story from a hyperpartisan left-wing
>> site. The
>>
>> story
>>
>> from Winning Democrats claimed Ireland was accepting anti-Trump
>> "refugees" from the US. It received over 810,000 Facebook engagements,
>> and was
>>
>> debunked
>>
>> by an Irish publication. (There was also one
>>
>> post
>>
>> from an LGBTQ site that used a false quote from Trump in its headline.)
>>
>> The other false viral election stories from hyperpartisan sites came
>> from right-wing publishers, according to the analysis.
>>
>> Ending the Fed
>>
>> One example is the remarkably successful, utterly untrustworthy site
>>
>> Ending the Fed.
>>
>> It was responsible for four of the top 10 false election stories
>> identified in the analysis: Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump,
>> Hilary Clinton selling
>>
>> weapons to ISIS, Hillary Clinton being disqualified from holding
>> federal office, and the FBI director receiving millions from the
>> Clinton Foundation. These
>>
>> four stories racked up a total of roughly 2,953,000 Facebook
>> engagements in the three months leading up to Election Day.
>>
>> Ending the Fed gained notoriety in August
>>
>> when Facebook promoted its story about Megyn Kelly being fired by Fox
>> News
>>
>> as a top trending item. The strong engagement the site has seen on
>> Facebook may help explain how one of its stories was featured in the
>> Trending box.
>>
>> The site, which does not publicly list an owner or editor, did not
>> respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.
>>
>> Like several other hyperpartisan right-wing sites that scored big
>> Facebook hits this election season, Ending the Fed is a relatively new
>> website. The domain
>>
>> endingthefed.com was only
>>
>> registered
>>
>> in in March. Yet according to BuzzFeed News' analysis, its top
>> election content received more Facebook engagement than stories from
>> the Washington Post
>>
>> and New York Times. For example, the top four election stories from
>> the Post generated roughly 2,774,000 Facebook engagements — nearly
>> 180,000 fewer than
>>
>> Ending the Fed's top four false posts.
>>
>> A look at Ending the Fed's traffic chart from Alexa also gives an
>> indication of the massive growth it experienced as the election drew
>> close:
>>
>> Alexa / Via
>>
>> alexa.com
>>
>> A similar spike occurred for Conservative State, a site that was only
>> registered in September. It saw a remarkable traffic spike almost
>> instantly:
>>
>> Alexa / Via
>>
>> alexa.com
>>
>> Alexa estimates that nearly 30% of Conservative State's traffic comes
>> from Facebook, with 10% coming from Google.
>>
>> Along with unreliable hyperpartisan blogs, fake news sites also
>> received a big election traffic bump in line with their Facebook
>> success. The Burrard Street
>>
>> Journal scored nearly 380,000 Facebook engagements for
>>
>> a fake story
>>
>> about Obama saying he will not leave office if Trump is elected. It
>> was published in September, right around the time Alexa notched a
>> noticeable uptick
>>
>> in its traffic:
>>
>> Alexa / Via
>>
>> alexa.com
>>
>> That site was only
>>
>> registered
>>
>> in April of this year. Its publisher disputes the idea that its
>> content is aimed at misleading readers. "The BS Journal is a satire
>> news publication and
>>
>> makes absolutely no secret of that or any attempt to purposely mislead
>> our readers," he told BuzzFeed News.
>>
>> Large news sites also generated strong Facebook engagement for links
>> to their election stories. But to truly find the biggest election hits
>> from these
>>
>> 19 major sites, it's necessary to go back to early 2016.
>>
>> The three biggest election hits for these outlets came back in
>> February, led by a contributor
>>
>> post
>>
>> on the Huffington Post's blog about Donald Trump that received
>> 2,200,000 engagements on Facebook. The
>>
>> top-performing election news story
>>
>> on Facebook for the 19 outlets analyzed was also published that month
>> by CBS News. It generated an impressive 1.7 million shares,
>> engagements, and comments
>>
>> on Facebook. Overall, a significant number of the top-performing posts
>> on Facebook from major outlets were opinion pieces, rather than news
>> stories.
>>
>> The biggest mainstream hit in the three months prior to the election
>>
>> came from
>>
>> the Washington Post and had 876,000 engagements. Yet somehow Ending
>> the Fed — a site launched just months earlier with no history on
>> Facebook and likely
>>
>> a very small group of people running it — managed to get more
>> engagement for a
>>
>> false story
>>
>> during that same period.
>>
>> "People know there are concerned employees who are seeing something
>> here which they consider a big problem," a Facebook manager
>>
>> told
>>
>> BuzzFeed News this week. "And it doesn't feel like the people making
>> decisions are taking the concerns seriously."
>>
>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> How We Gathered the Data
>>
>> BuzzFeed News used the content analysis tool BuzzSumo, which enables
>> users to search for content by keyword, URL, time range, and social
>> share counts.
>>
>> BuzzFeed News searched in BuzzSumo using keywords such as "Hillary
>> Clinton" and "Donald Trump," as well as combinations such as "Trump
>> and election" or
>>
>> "Clinton and emails" to see the top stories about these topics
>> according to Facebook engagement. We also searched for known viral
>> lies such as "Soros and
>>
>> voting machine."
>>
>> In addition, created lists of the URLs of known fake news websites, of
>> hyperpartisan sites on the right and on the left, and of the more than
>> 100 pro-Trump
>>
>> sites run from Macedonia that were previously identified in BuzzFeed
>> News reporting. We then looked for the top performing content on
>> Facebook across all
>>
>> of these sites to find false stories about the election.
>>
>> We conducted our searches in three-month segments beginning 9 months
>> from election day. This broke down as February to April, May to July,
>> and August to
>>
>> election day.
>>
>> Even with the above approaches, it's entirely possible that we missed
>> other big hits from fake news websites and hyperpartisan blogs.
>>
>> To examine the performance of election content from mainstream sites,
>> we created a list that included the websites of the New York Times,
>> Washington Post,
>>
>> NBC News, USA Today, Politico, CNN, Wall Street Journal, CBS News, ABC
>> News, New York Daily News, New York Post, BuzzFeed, Los Angeles Times,
>> NPR, The
>>
>> Guardian, Vox, Business Insider, Huffington Post, and Fox News. We
>> then searched for their top-performing election content in the same
>> three-month segments
>>
>> as above.
>>
>> It's important to note that Facebook engagement does not necessarily
>> translate into traffic. This analysis was focused on how the
>> best-performing fake
>>
>> news about the election compared with real news from major outlets on
>> Facebook. It's entirely possible — and likely — that the mainstream
>> sites received
>>
>> more traffic to their top-performing Facebook content than the fake
>> news sites did. As as the Facebook spokesman noted, large news sites
>> overall see more
>>
>> engagement on Facebook than fake news sites.
>>
>> Craig Silverman is the founding editor for BuzzFeed Canada and is
>> based in Toronto.
>>
>> Contact Craig Silverman at
>>
>> craig.silverman@buzzfeed.com.
>>
>> https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/viral-fake-election-news-outperformed-real-news-on-facebook?utm_term=.drrx31brW#.bl4DJ2Qvw
>>
>
>
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