Facebook’s Fake News Tool Only Solves Half the Problem
Warning: If you hate reading long things, you’ll hate this. It’s over 2,000 words. Perfect read if you’re on the loo though.
As we’ve all learned, fake news on Facebook and other social networks played a pretty big role in the 2016 presidential election. Don’t believe me? Just have a quick read up on the #Pizzagate scandal (or non-scandal depending on how you look at it) to see why. In the wake of the fallout, Facebook acted (after the election ended) to implement a way for users to flag fake news. While Zuckerberg’s move is a step in the right direction, sadly, it’s not enough because thanks to the Facebook algorithm and echo chambers, the rift in political discourse will persist.
A pub I used to go to in college had three rules: No politics, no religion and no smoking. The smoking had been added in handwriting much later, after the laws changed. Back in the day, before digital media infiltrated our lives for better or worse, people had discussions — political or otherwise — in person. They read the newspaper. The watched a handful of news PROGRAMS (not channels). They LISTENED to the radio. ’Twas a simpler time indeed. But also more direct.
You’ve likely recognized by now, you can’t argue with ignorance (or smugness or arrogance or insert justification here) and so echo chambers became the digital solution to messy confrontations. Instead of punching you at a bar because we disagree, I can achieve the same result by blocking you from my Facebook feed. The difference is that with a black eye you might wander home and think about (or at the very least travel with a physical memento of) that discussion and try to reason. Whereas today, you can move past the discomfort of the argument and settle in with hundreds of people who share your view, all within a minute (and without the black eye).
Facebook Algorithm & Echo Chambers
What’s the Facebook algorithm you ask? It’s basically what Facebook controls to alter the content that appears in your newsfeed and there have been several changes to it over the years. Once upon a time, when Facebook was small and marketers/publishers didn’t see it as a vehicle for making money or driving traffic, you used to see just about everything from friends in your newsfeed. As Facebook became a public company, grew and morphed, marketers and publishers flocked to the platform with a lot of cash in tow. No longer was Facebook a place to chat with your friends or post drunk pictures (you can still do both those things), but also a space where brands could sell, market their latest products and where publishers (facing a decline in readership via email or print) could grab digital eyeballs. The game officially changed and users complained that their newsfeeds were cluttered with nonsense they didn’t care for. The tinkering continued and so did the cash injections as Facebook introduced paid tools for advertisers and publishers to gain placement in your newsfeed.
Fast forward to April 2015 (how’s that for timing?) when Facebook made an update that enabled you to tailor what content you saw in your feed from your friends or others. Suddenly, you could tell Facebook what you liked or didn’t like — manually or just over the course of time since the algorithm would adjust based on posts, videos and links you liked and the friends you most frequently engaged with or responded to. Facebook also allowed you to hide or unfollow friends (without deleting them or ending your digital friendship) or brands whose content you didn’t like. At least everyone reading this unfollowed one (or more) Trump, Stein, Bernie or Clinton supporter during the election. So it came to pass that echo chambers across the world were born.
As much as I love Pantsuit Nation and other pro-Hillary Facebook groups and communities I belong to, I must admit that they’re no different from anti-Hillary or Pro-Trump Facebook groups. The reason being is that the people who occupy them largely see things from the same perspective already. Do you go to those spaces to change minds or challenge beliefs? Probably not. That’s not to say they aren’t useful for giving people a safe space to vent, argue, communicate (or commiserate) digitally, because they are but the tradeoff is that they are also largely non-confrontational spaces which affirm your existing beliefs.
I missed this piece from Christopher Hooten way back on November 10th (!! not that I was in any state to consume anything then), but he’s spot on. He observes that, “We retreated to our echo chambers, where we bellow our opinions at people who are already in agreement and enjoy having them repeated back to us. Our prismatic view of public opinion through tailored social media feeds not only hid from us the confused, angry people we needed to try and reason with, but it gave us a warped view of their motives.”
Trump “Supporters”
Now, I don’t know how much discourse I could have for someone, who as Hooten also points out, voted for Donald Trump despite being “fully aware he is sexist and xenophobic” because “they just don’t care.” BUT that’s where we’re at. And I know that to change that, we’ve got to either convince a number of people that they’ve been duped and voted for a charlatan OR reach a new group of people entirely. I’m starting to believe it’s a combination of both…
According to The Independent and exit polls, these people are Trump Supporters:
- White men and white women
- White men and women with degrees
- White men and women without degrees
- White men and women with more than $50,000
I’d add two groups of people or (subcategories for the above), based on what i’ve read and what i’ve seen:
- White people who hadn’t necessarily voted before (or recently) but were tired of the “Washington establishment” otherwise known as disaffected white people
- Racist and/or xenophobic white people
I don’t think you can reach racist or xenophobic white people and I don’t think I need to get into the why on this one. Simply put, this isn’t some Hollywood movie and i’m not going to walk into a dinner full of KKK members and convince them why Trump’s wrong for them mostly because they don’t care and because I’d also be dead. These people are not great to interact with online or in person. There’s not one conversation you’ll have that will prove meaningful, so why waste your effort trying? Don’t.
I’m also going to go out on a limb and say that if college educated white men and women or those who make over $50,000 knew EXACTLY what they were doing by voting for Trump. They’re also likely unreachable though to a lesser degree than the first group. If you went to school for MORE than eight years, you understand the larger implications of a Trump presidency. Their motives, while perhaps not racist (hey, let’s give people the benefit of the doubt here) are such that they enabled them to willfully vote for a man with no government experience and a terrible business record. Perhaps though, that decision lies in the fact that their lives will not be negatively affected by any of Trump’s decisions OR that they stand to gain more than they would lose from his policies.
If you try engaging any of these people online (or not even, they have a propensity to find you), they’ll call you a baby, tell you to get over it and reinforce the notion that they have “won.” Trump’s victory is a point of pride for them (in the political game where the prize beyond “beating that (bad word) Hillary” remains to be seen) and no amount of conversation will dissuade them of this notion. But remember, ignorance is bliss and with a dreadful president, we’re all losers. I say leave them be.
I do think you can reach disaffected white voters, non-college educated white people and those who earn less than 50K a year because these are some of the people I believe voted for Trump in search of a better life and more opportunity despite evidence to the contrary. No, you don’t need to tell me that Trump and the GOP are already enacting plans to strip Medicare and potentially repeal and/or replace Obamacare which would negatively affect these people’s health insurance and benefits. Yes, of course they will recognize they were duped because their lives will be the ones directly impacted. Timing will be key in engaging these folks because I imagine it will take a MINUTE for them to come around to the idea (if Trump’s victory rallies are anything to go by) once the rot sets in.
What happens when people are duped? When they realize they’ve bought a surplus of oil from the snake oil salesman? I bet they won’t like or want to admit they’ve fallen for a conman and so they might become disaffected voters, cycling back into the larger group of people who hate the “Washington establishment” and think they’re all useless and lie or that politics and thus democracy achieves nothing. Then maybe they become part of the the country who decides that since voting is useless, they stop participating in democracy altogether.
Why Bother Voting Anyway?
41.4% of the country who didn’t vote. That’s a lot of people. But when you look closely, it’s a lot more complicated.
“The demographic data suggests there’s a lot more to low voter turnout than apathy…Simply getting to the polls is a problem for some — particularly black Americans. In the Census Bureau data, 6% of black Americans said they didn’t vote because of “transportation problems” compared with 3% of white Americans. Once you have eliminated the responses “not interested”, “forgot to vote”, “didn’t like candidates or campaign issues” and (possibly ungenerously) “too busy” from the list of reasons, the remaining responses show that 49% of Americans didn’t vote because they believed they couldn’t vote or would face serious obstacles.”
Let’s explore “too busy” though since 19% of people didn’t vote because they had a conflicting schedule. To me, that’s worth digging into. Is it that people in America are unable to take off from work to go vote? Or that someone might be working two jobs, have kids and other responsibilities which make voting so difficult? Especially when you conflate the issue of long lines, and limited poll locations — it can be impossible for some people to vote. The government can and should fix that. Several countries across the world hold elections on Holidays or weekends (France, Belgium, Germany, India, etc.), why not America?
Why is voter registration so hard in states like Virginia or North Carolina but virtually seamless in a state like Oregon? Why are states able to restrict poll hours or the number of polls that are open in any given district? Why do we accept racial gerrymandering? Why do we accept that this is just the way it was so this is just the way it is?
The Future
We don’t want to talk about it much because we don’t want to admit we’ve been had but Trump gamed the system and he played a bunch of people to do so. He turned it into a reality TV contest of “Us vs. Them” instead of focusing on actual issues, keying in on signature phrases instead while Hillary Clinton focused on sending a message of unity (which I strongly believe) that we’re “Stronger Together.” The only person addressing this in any form seems to be Trevor Noah. Kudos to him. Trump re-wrote the Sothern Strategy for 2016. I’ll be shocked to learn Republicans aren’t drawing up plans to leverage Trump-like tactics for the mid-terms and beyond already.
How do you beat that? Well, in short you need a lot of people working together if you ever want to prevent the rise of a candidate like Trump. All the political parties are fractured (even though the Republicans have come out on top) and there are rifts everywhere you turn. Racism, i’m afraid, is here to stay. I can’t write a diatribe on race in America at the moment but I believe there is no cure for it beyond true equality. You cannot sing koombayah and convert racists — whether they’re overt in their racism or not. So stop trying to convert racists or people who are colorblind. It’s willful and quite frankly a waste of time.
America is at a political crossroads (but maybe it has been for some time and I’m just now grasping that fact.) Does America want to further embrace an oligarchy wherein it is ruled by a handful of very rich people or does it want to get back to being a democracy where it’s ruled by many people? (Real talk, like it or not: Bernie was on to something with the TOP ONE PERCENT OF THE ONE PERCENT thing…)
If Democrats even stand a chance in 2018 or 2020, I think it’s past time they got to the root of a big problem in the country: state and local control over voter participation and the administration of elections. Because the above figures paint an ugly picture of reality which is that that a great deal of Americans are missing from the “democracy of many”. Get rid of the electoral college while you’re at it — one vote, one person, end of story.
Disconnect. The internet has been helpful for organizing and networking but at some point you’ll realize these fights and/or discussions can’t be waged online solely, they require direct action and participation in government at the state and local levels in conjunction with widespread voter education. If this election cycle gave us ANYTHING — it’s a blueprint for victory in the form of the Moral Mondays movement which was instrumental in beating Pat McCrory in North Carolina. Civil disobedience with purpose and widespread voter education made an impact.
Listen, Trump may prove to be more corrupt than Richard Nixon or the most simple president since George W. Bush but one thing’s certain: You’re stuck with him — until he’s impeached or steps down because he made enough money or found something better to do. I’m sure, that in the end Trump’s nightmare of an administration, public and foreign policy will be his own undoing. When he fails to move any of his companies manufacturing goods abroad back to the US, create jobs for those who need them most or deliver on building a wall (he’s already turned back on a promise to lock Hillary Clinton up), his supporters will see the light.
And if not, it’s on the Democratic party (and Democrats) to shine that light and show them, that we — women, LGBTQ individuals, people of color, poor people, disabled people, minorities — are Stronger Together. To do that though, you have to be able to listen and respond — to actually talk.
