
The Year Silicon Valley Went Morally Bankrupt - harto
https://newrepublic.com/article/139147/year-silicon-valley-went-morally-bankrupt
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gloriousduke
> The consequences of Zuckerberg’s inaction are now clear. On December 4, a
> North Carolina man brought a loaded weapon into Washington, D.C.’s Comet
> Ping Pong to investigate a conspiracy theory called #Pizzagate in which
> Comet is the hub of a child-trafficking ring organized by Democratic Party
> operatives. The story was popularized by fake news.

In the days after the election, I too believed in social media's major role
the unexpected results. However, after more reflection, the problem seems far
beyond facile dissemination of fake news: a large portion of the population
are either post-truth thinkers, or, simply never learned how to fact check
their news sources. If someone is going to be swayed to elect a different
candidate because of a story that popped up in their news feed, there's not a
whole lot we can do besides ensure that the next generation is better educated
in healthy skepticism and critical thinking.

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sharemywin
I'm not sure how you "fix" the problem of fake news. most of the people that
believe that CNN is "fake news" also believe the fact checking sites are
biased too.

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jstewartmobile
So, they tear Zuckerberg a new one for not policing fake news hard enough,
then end the article with: "Algorithms can’t solve everything."

And this was written by "Sarah Jones [...] the social media editor at The New
Republic."

Sarah needs to take a forest-level view of her life. There is a striking
contradiction in the way she has played her cards.

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sharemywin
I have a hard enough time with Facebook algorithms choosing what people see
without some sort of dashboard to control it as it is. The first amendment
still exists and people have a right to consume any garbage they want.

