When going on Facebook, there is no doubt that your newsfeed will be ridden with a variety of different articles. The big question is: what is the truth? When I look at Facebook articles, I usually look at the sources. Washington Post, The New York Times, Business Insider, and other reputable news sources always get a further glance from me. On the contrary, if the article doesn’t show me any reputable sources then I don’t continue looking at it.
My search continues to check if the link is actually authentic instead of a proxy site that has the same name but is not the actual publication. If I check the link and it isn’t a normal link from the publication and write it off as fake news. International news is a bit more difficult, but I usually stick with sites that end in .org. What’s bad is that not many people take as much care to make sure that their news is real because Facebook is the land of contrived authenticity.
Zuckerberg says that to use Facebook, “your content has to be authentic.” pic.twitter.com/OS6NFafDNK
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 10, 2018
People use Facebook to create a perception of their life that they’d like others to think they have rather than the life they do have. If that contrived authenticity is used in their personal life and people don’t notice the farce about their own friends, then how can people distinguish real news from fake news? It’s hard to distinguish actual news from fake news as a voracious consumer myself. So, what about people who solely get their news from Facebook?
The posts on LinkedIn are getting noticeably BAD with a sharp increase in people begging for clicks.
I guess when everyone left Facebook, they needed a new place to be authentic. 😩 https://t.co/4wpb8TYZ2O
— Molly Cain (@MollyCain) September 5, 2018
Hopefully this fake news phenomenon will slowly ween it’s way off Facebook and away from the susceptible public. To stop the fake news there has to be more reality on a platform whose biggest takeaway is that you can be whoever you want even if that person isn’t you at all. Read more about Facebook’s problem with authenticity here: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-is-killing-your-authenticity-2011-3
You raise a really interesting point regarding Facebook as the land of “contrived authenticity” and I couldn’t agree more! So many of us are too consumed in our own public profiles and perceptions that it makes sense we skim news stories and maintain surface level knowledge of such important topics and breaking news. Looking at the sources and counting on reputable news channels like the ones you mentioned is always the best way to go!
It’s interesting to think about the spread of fake news across different platforms. Normally it’s so associated with FB that we forget it can sneak its way into other prominent sites like LinkedIn. In terms of social media sites that host a lot of information (especially info that is long-form and more in-depth), LinkedIn is definitely up there. I wouldn’t be surprised if LinkedIn upped their security measures in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal to prevent copycats looking for a new source to spread fake news.
Interesting article! I like your approach to analyzing the users of the Facebook platform fundamentally. In my opinion, Facebook should inform its users about serious news sources. I think many people simply lack the knowledge to identify authentic content, regardless of whether they post unauthentic content themselves or not. Regarding that, I would have liked to hear more about Facebook’s duties in this article. Especially when the users themselves contribute to the fact that many unreliable sources circulate on the platform, a company must intervene. However, I liked they way you supported your arguments with humourous tweets. This made it possible to read the blogpost in a much more relaxed way.
Hi Annaya,
I agree with you 100% and while it can be easy to fall for a catchy headlines, you really can’t trust anything that doesn’t come from places like Business Insider, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. This was a great post!
Best,
josh goldberg
Really interesting post to read Annaya! I agree with you that we should pray and hope this fake news phenomenon will soon be an issue of the past. The real question comes with where to we look for more transparency amongst Facebook’s users or the platform itself. I think Facebook can do as much as possible to prevent clickbait and fake news, but at a certain point, users need to be educated on what is authenticity on social media and what clear examples of platform abuse is. You used the perfect tweets to express your tweet and this post reads very directly and makes sense! Great Job!