I think many sane people can agree that the news media did not do their f-cking jobs in the lead up to Donald Trump becoming president. They treated him as a viable candidate, as a sensible person, as someone who has has not done and said the horrible things that come out of his mouth and which are on his Twitter feed constantly. They focused on Hillary’s minor errors of not using the right technology instead of Trump willfully screwing over just about every person with the misfortune of doing business with him, harassing and groping women, and lying repeatedly and openly. It’s maddening to think how this happened and where our country could be heading and there’s plenty of blame to spread around. Should some of that blame fall on Facebook though?
Facebook, as you know, is an echo chamber full of misinformation. Fake news often gets spread on Facebook, I’ve seen it on my friend’s feeds. It’s easier to read a headline, click “like” and assume it’s true than to read the article and figure out whether it’s misinformation, a parody, or simply misleading. Facebook has been blamed for the proliferation of clickbait slideshow-type websites with annoying popup ads and news that’s either untrue or an exaggeration. You won’t believe what happened next! People claimed that Facebook is responsible for Trump’s win. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that’s crazy though:
Mark Zuckerberg is forcefully pushing back against mounting criticism that Facebook enabled the Republican’s rise by failing to police an explosion of fake, pro-Trump news stories that went viral on the social network. “Personally,” he said onstage at a conference Thursday, “I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way—I think is a pretty crazy idea. Voters make decisions based on their lived experience.” He added: “Why would you think there would be fake news on one side and not the other?”
Yet it is not “crazy” to argue that the inability or refusal of Facebook, now the single largest media platform in the world, to contain the growth of hoax news posts may have aided Trump’s victory. Earlier this year, a BuzzFeed News investigation found that the most hyper-partisan right-wing publications’ Facebook pages published misinformation 38 percent of the time, while hyper-partisan left-wing publications published misinformation 20 percent of the time. These numbers would be less alarming if the least accurate pages studied by BuzzFeed weren’t also generating high numbers of shares and likes, outpacing mainstream political news sites’ Facebook pages. A host of hoax news sites sprung up over the past several months to capitalize on the phenomenon, making millions of dollars on the surge in election-year traffic.
I don’t think you can blame Facebook, but you can also say that they should have done more to stop these sites from growing and capitalizing on their platform. Facebook is supposedly working to weed out clickbait sites with a new algorithm that buries misleading headlines. They should also try to punish sites with untrue headlines, scant content buried under slideshows and ads which are impossible to tell apart from content.
People who voted for Trump are not skilled at critical thinking, at understanding the consequences of their actions or at seeing the world beyond their myopic viewpoints. They shared news stories which confirmed their bias, as most of us do on Facebook. A Trump victory is a victory for ignorance, racism, fascism, bigotry, misogyny, xenophobia and bullying. Either those people are willfully ignorant or they’re actually ignorant, but it shakes out to the same thing. Trump would have won the electoral vote whether or not Facebook existed and whether or not Facebook worked to weed out fake news. The media should have gone much harder on Trump, the entire public narrative around him should have been skeptical and reality-based, but that’s a different issue.
I disagree with him. I think it was a major problem. So much fake news on social media.
I think social media in general makes it easier for people to disseminate misinformation and for that misinformation to propagate. However, as CB said, it’s people’s willingness to accept what they see on the internet as gospel rather than making the choice to actually become INFORMED. Willful or actual ignorance, but it says a great deal about our citizenship.
I think you can blame Facebook. They constructed algorithms that shaped the news people received. People can no longer tell fact from fiction, and if a site suggests what they want to hear, often enough, it will be taken for truth.
If anyone votes or makes other serious life decisions based on what’s in their FB feed, that’s pretty much their own fault, and a sad indictment of society in general. I think there’s a tendency to place too much responsibility on social media sites. Blaming FB isn’t even scratching the surface in terms of solving the actual problem. It’s not a site for disseminating news, and it doesn’t claim to be.
I know it seems as though I’m a FB apologist, but I’m far from it. I don’t have a FB page, and actually detest FB and just about everything it stands for.
To a certain point it influenced both sides. I know an absurd amount of trump supporters who don’t even have a fb account though so we can’t give them all the credit.
totally disagree. it was shown to be true. if it had an influence on an individual voter to any extent, it had an influence on the election.
44% of Americans now say that social media is their primary source of news. So no, Mark Zuckerberg, you can’t say that Facebook isn’t complicit in electing Donald Trump. We all see the amount of b.s. streaming on the site, and while you may not think of Facebook as a media company, that’s one of it’s functions now. So deal with it in an honest way.
Also, Zuckerberg is an enabler of Peter Thiel, a billionaire backer of Trump who is being named as having a possible transition role in the Trump administration. Thiel is on the board of Facebook, was responsible for the bankruptcy of Gawker Media, and has written about how unfortunate it is that women received the right to vote since we tend to vote in more liberal ways.
RIch, entitled white men. Ugh.
I totally agree. Imagine on your 30min lunch break, where do you log in most of the time? Facebook. Even I was surprised when I saw what I thought were my educated friends posting absolute lies about Hillary such as the rape case where she supposedly laughed at the victim or comparing Trump to Hillary. It would just take me a minute to google and debunk these stories yet they still posted these lies on their newsfeed because it was click bait or they loved sensationalism
I guess we are still in the pointing fingers stage of grieving.
No, ultimately, Facebook, nor Mark Z. are responsible for Trump winning. That solely lays on the idiots who read or listened to the article/video and did no other research for themselves. To the idiots who trust that whatever their friend, wife or uncle/aunt says is one hundred percent true because that is how they were taught. The videos were saying things that they wanted to hear and they did not want/ did not think the needed to look anywhere else.
To be honest, a lot of us on the left are guilty of doing this as well. The difference between most of us and them is that what we want is more freedom for everyone and they only want more things for themselves.
This. Facebook is not a nanny or a mother or anything more than social media. Nor is it their responsibility to spoon feed people information. If someone chooses to believe everything they see on Facebook without researching the validity of the information, then that is solely their problem. I am so tired of people looking to blame anything or anyone other than themselves for not being educated on the issues. Enough. Stop. You ( the collective you) are the ONLY one responsibility for educating yourself and acting accordingly. If you want to just blindly digest everything you see on social media as the gospel, well then go for it. And don’t be surprised by the results.
RedOn–but FB DOES spoon-feed information. That’s how their algorithms work. So yes, not vetting sites and accepting money to promote misinformation while creating a vacuum of accurate, nonpartisan journalism for millions of people DOES carry some weight of responsibility. Honestly, they know it’s true–they are working on fixing it as noted above. Just too little, too late.
I think that in this election postmortem, we’re still missing the point that was made with Trump’s election. The people that voted for him KNOW that he’s a racist, that he’s completely unqualified, that he’s a sham. But they still voted for him in spite of that, because they still felt he was the better option compared to Clinton and he promised to blow up the system. We ignored that people are screaming for change in a broken system. The Facebook stuff didn’t change people’s minds, but instead told us what people were thinking, and yet we still ignored that. We Dems blew it, but we’re still pointing fingers at everyone but ourselves. And we need to figure this out NOW so this doesn’t happen again.
I agree. Think if Elizabeth Warren had run or Biden ??? I think they would have won.
I don’t. Look the fact is that that Democrats barely won anything. We’re doing ourselves no favors by pretending that this wasn’t a massive message as to how people feel about minorities and women. And about how our media has chosen to treat Progressives vs. Conservatives.
Elizabeth Warren was a Republican until the 90’s. Many so called male progressives have long used that against her to discredit her current positions.
Joe Biden is the Vice President, aka about as “establishment” as it gets and again, many people really hate him. Actually, a lot of anti-Obama liberals spent years in fear that he would run and promised to vote against him.
Hillary won the most votes. We need to work on taking a second look at our electoral college first before anything. This wasn’t Brexit. If we had the same voting system as they do in the U.K. Hillary would have won.
If anything we need to STOP blaming ourselves and grow some balls like the Thugs have. Let’s call this shit out for once.
@bridget
Maybe biden could have just about edged Trump.But warren is a woman so no. America is racist and sexist and thats what decided this election.
I really don’t know. I know that Joe Biden is awesome and I really love him, but I really don’t know that he would have been a slam dunk.
Ultimately, we’ve missed the entire point. When Dems are criticized for being “liberal elites” we keep focusing on the “liberal” and miss what people are saying with “elite”. We lost touch. For goodness sake, Obama was elected under the auspice of sweeping change, and yet we still didn’t take that to heart. Until we figure out how to bridge that gap, this is going to repeat.
Again, I think people are missing the big picture when we write off every Trump voter as a misogynistic racist. He promised that he was going to go in and change our broken system. He promised people in the Midwest/rust belt/
South that he saw them and was going to get them jobs. Do you even know why anti-immigrant rhetoric was so big? Jobs and safety. We didn’t give a real answer for those things, and we blew it. Because guess what? We need those voters. We will lose again if we cannot figure out a way to bridge this gap. So how about instead of doubling down on the exact thing we were doing earlier, we figure out something that works?
Here here, Bridget. The middle class workers in the rust belt were left to rot the past 8 years while democrats focused all of their energy elsewhere. Hillary barely campaigned in these regions where people are out of work in the coal, steel, and automotive industries- just to name a few. These people are now coined as racists and sexists for casting a vote for a man who at least pretended to care about them. Yeah, he’s a blowhard cheeto, but he knew that the Obama administration had labeled them gun toting bible thumpers and not worth his time, and he told them they weren’t forgotten. That’s literally all they needed to hear, and he got their vote. The rust belt, as we know, swung the election. There is no one to blame but Hilary for not seeing them or hearing their calls for help and change. Hindsight is 20/20. And boy do I wish she were out in rural Pa, Michigan or Wisconsin rather than dancing on stage with Katy Perry the last weeks of the election.
@OriginalTessa – HRC did the “I care about you” speak just as much as any typical politician who is trying to cover all the bases to get votes … maybe you just weren’t listening and yes, saying and doing are two different things. You seem to think that a loud and egotistical ‘win at all costs’ bully has more legitimacy? Also, Obama did not label them as gun toting bible thumpers. Yes, he made a statement based on actual data correlating a weak economy with an increase in gun purchases and faith based activities. You have the right wing narrative down though. You state that the rust belt was left to rot for the past 8 years … why don’t you add for the past 16 years because George W. Bush didn’t do much for them either.
Judging by my Trump-y aquaintances, it was a big factor. That and fox blaring lies all day long
I don’t think it’s fair or true to label all trump supporters as somehow unable to think critically. In fact it does us all a disservice to fail to recognise that some Trump supporters (just like some Hilary supporters) are very clever and skilled at manipulating content to serve a purpose. We are shooting out selves in the foot by assuming that everyone who voted for Trump is an uneducated dummy.
OTOH, Facebook was a significant outlet for indie news sources. Everything from Daily Kos to The Nation put news and analysis out there on a daily basis during the election . . and after.
What? Of course it has an influence. That’s part of its purpose, isn’t it? Advertisers use it to influence consumers, and now, the political machine uses it to influence voters. Red vs. Blue, East vs. West, Oceana vs. Eurasia vs Eastasia 4eva!
It is the role of the news media to report facts. Not to make the news, be the news or be celebrities, nor to in any way attempt to influence…but to accurately and without bias INFORM of facts Facebook isn’t the news media. Maybe it aspires to be, but if it does….then it comes with a whole new set of obligations. (The exact same thing is applicable to this site by the way).
We have all been failed by the news media for a very long time. But it’s not their role to police or judge …..but to inform,
We have not been failed by media at all. We have have failed media. Every time you did not pay for that news article online, every time u did not give any shite about backing up your favorite real journalist. That is what made media what it is today. **Us all** Media is people who need to be paid to do their job properly. This media shite has been going on for years and years now. And it has not been going down quietly. Media themselves have been warning us for years- about cost cutting, merges, take overs. So before you point fingers, check how many newspapers have you paid for or subscribed to. Between pirating and youtube and google news, I doubt many!
This is exactly why Trump won; we are constantly blaming others for our mistakes or things that happen to us. Instead of actually taking the time to see if something is true, people believe it. Some people are too lazy to take the time to see if something is true or just misinformation. Some would rather just revel in their own hate than move forward and make their own lives better; it’s easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility. Facebook is not a reliable source of news and should not have to police people. I truly believed we lived in a better country than this; this election has brought out the absolute worst in people. We have to be better than this.
A coalescence of reasons brought Trump a victory (and Brexit a victory), I think we all have to agree on that. Most of those reasons weren’t nice reasons.
Facebook didn’t win for Trump and especially not all by itself. That’s just silly.
However, Facebook does have some questions to answer about its insistence on the wisdom of the crowd. Because the wisdom of the crowd isn’t that far from rule by the mob. As we are currently realising in a very painful way. If Google can write algorithms factoring in source authority and quality, so can Facebook. And Zuckerberg needs to face up to that fact and do something about it.
That said, I think the mainstream media also need to reflect on how they use their platforms. They should not normalise extreme positions. They should also realise that negative, monstering coverage of the type they eventually got around to once they realised Trump was an actual contender, doesn’t work. Blanket coverage, even of the negative variety, acts as a BOOST for extremists, if those extremists have already got some popular traction. Presumably, as a reality TV star, Trump knew that.
Do I think it contributed? Sure. But baby boomers and the elderly had plenty to do with this man getting into office, and they aren’t the demographic that would use Facebook as their sole source of information. It takes two seconds to Google a story and get all of the facts. The reality is that people create their own narrative and support everything that goes with it.
Within the next 4 years, when Ryan privatizes Medicare in favor of a voucher system, these same idiots will be saying “WAIT! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO TAKE AWAY THEIR STUFF,NOT MINE!”.
No they won’t. Because they’ve been fed the narrative so long that entitlements are only bad when minorities receive them, because minorities just want a hand out, while they themselves are somehow more hardworking and deserving. This mess didn’t start with Obama or Hillary ignoring these people. And even if they hadn’t, I doubt it would have made a difference, especially in the last eight years to now, because they only want to see liberal= elite and anti working man.
I do think Facebook contributed to this mess, not directly, but just in that it’s a platform that has made it easier than ever before to share misinformation with the masses. It’s easy to tailor it to your own liking, whichever side you happen to be on. From observing my own feed, conservatives are more likely than liberals to share false news and memes (how many times did I have to see that stupid Hillary laughing at a sexual assault victim bs… Ugh.) Could be because I know more conservatives, could be because they are, for whatever reason, less likely to research something and fact check. Could be because Facebook is the perfect storm of echo chamber, vacuum, and cognitive dissonance. And fear and hatred are an epidemic that has been bolstered by this same lack of reasoning and thinking, and spread with ease via a simple click.
of course lots happened on facebook but if it hadnt happened there it would have happened elsewhere. its not like fox news would have had factual reports. i hate facebook and i do not have an account but i dont blame them for this and not only because people are obviously to blame themselves.
but its not like Trump had a surge of voters that were all mobilized through that. an insane number of people didnt even vote.
At the end of the day, it’s each individual person’s sole responsibility for whom they voted. The sad thing is that so many people are misinformed and don’t care or don’t know…I’m not sure which. I do think society through social media/news outlets should do their job of informing people of the FACTS. But we are in the age of reality TV ( The Kardashian age if you will)…which we all know is fake as hell and scripted and highlights the absolute worst in us. It’s dumb and offers no real purpose and it has drug us down into an abyss. Watching adults actually physically fight and argue and tear eachother down (Real Housewives, Jersey Shore, The Bachelor) We soak it up. This is entertaining to us. And now we have a reality show buffoon leading our country. Setting us back to the dark ages. I know my thoughts are kind of all over but I guess the point I’m trying to make is that we obviously think more of people then they deserve. I remember President Obama saying something like he has faith in Americans that we would never elect that orange pig. But he was wrong, as a lot of us were.
I am sorry to say, but the media will always choose to pursue ratings rather than reporting worthwhile news and people. Donald Trump was great ratings for them with his outrageous rhetorics. Making money will almost always trump decency.
While not being a media outlet in itself, Facebook does provide the platform for media, legitimate or otherwise. Certainly, there is a group of users who are influenced by what they see is a trending topic, whether the content of the topic is sourced or not. However minor/major Facebook impacted this election is not the reason Trump won. Many factors played out in the election – truly the perfect sh*tstorm.
Having said that, let’s not forget Facebook is an information mining tool, operating under the guise of a inclusive community that empowers its user with the ability to friend/unfriend. To actively police Facebook would hit Zuckerberg in his wallet.
Thank you to all the writers on Celebitchy — you have done a superior job with your postings over the past months. Keep at it!
I think FB had a lot to do with Trump winning. My nephew in Louisiana came home from school (2nd grade) and said that he heard that HRC killed a baby – that she stabbed the mom and let the baby die. This is what FB was spreading and this is what people in the red states saw and believed. Educated people would have dismissed that or googled it to find any proof of this. Most Trump voters are not well educated and the ones that are get off on these sick stories so they let them go.
facebook cultivates, promotes, and monetizes hive mentality.
the fact they introduced adding anything to a personal feed decided by an algorithm to make money was disgusting and insidious.
facebook actively pursued adding “news” to its platform, information its users did not ask for. if it wasn’t forced into your feed you would have to find it somewhere else if you were indeed trying to find it.
repeated exposure to a contagion is not a positive thing, especially if you are already susceptible.
facebook is not the sole factor as to why this election played the way it did but to deny ANY impact is irresponsible and his response to any and all criticism is typical. he’s a creepy megalomaniac.
The day after, I just kept thinking: “Who are these people?” Then I went to work and discovered they were the people I work with. Most of whom are Jewish. I asked if they’d missed the part that he was anti-semitic, and yep, they had. His son-in-law is Jewish, how could he be? They didn’t see that last ad, aren’t up on his tweets, don’t know details — or much of anything — about either platform. All they know is that X is worse now than it used to be, and it can be tiny — their health care plan, for example — and they blame it on the current president, whoever that is, without any critical thinking whatsoever. They’ve definitely bought into the “they’re all corrupt, it doesn’t matter” theme too. So they voted directly against their own interests and our organization’s.
The good news is, the pendulum will swing back with the next president. We’ve always switched back and forth every few years; in a way, I think it was inevitable the country would go Rep., just because we’d had 2 terms of a Dem.
I’ve been unable to comment since the results because I’m shocked and heartbroken over it. I can not believe this is now the reality we are forced to live in. A vote for trump was a vote for hate and division and I can not believe that so many would have so much hate in their hearts to let this happen. I’m genuinely scared for Americas future. I’m an American whose been overseas for the last year and I’m seriously considering starting the immigration process to stay here permanently. I’m scared for what’s to come. I mean seriously the KKK, a group that operates in the shadows, is now openly marching again?! What’s going to happen when he’s sworn in? When he starts to further divide the country? I can’t deal with this. All the progress we had mad as a nation, just being washed away. I’m terrified.
And now we have a fake president, so I guess that settles that then…
I disagree, Mark. I will admit that it wasn’t just the fake news posted on Facebook that did the job, it was all of the fake news that comes from internet memes, Fox News, Brietbart, etc. that did the job. I would challenge my friends who were posting pro-Trump or anti-Hillary messages, and I found out that these people believed fictional claims to be fact. Not just a few, all of them believed at least one untruth about Hillary.
And no, it wasn’t both sides that did it. You can find exceptions to every rule, but for the most part, it was only right wing media outlets that were blatant liars.
Frankly, you’re part of the problem. People are ignorant of what is happening and that allow Fox News and the rest to get away with such blatant lying. There are no real repercussions for them. Then millions of Americans end up making decisions in the voting booth based on false info.