Getting a crash course on fake news/propaganda circulation via smart phones and social media.

We are SO f*cked.

So far @facebook is emerging as the biggest culprit in circulating political lies. Followed (esp given India) by WhatsApp.

Am beginning to understand WHY people believe the lies

Remember that line from few years ago: Facebook makes you hate the people you know while Twitter makes you love the people you don't know?

The clue is right there. FB has monetised and weaponised this aspect of 'people we know.'

Facebook works of 'friends' or basically an extended circle of people who know eachother (albeit not necessarily directly). Information shared on relationship, children, picnics are trusted. BUT scarily so is information about the wider world.

"I trusted this guy with my life" is something I heard from an army veteran a few months ago (about a fake news discussion).

And this is the key: if you trusted some guy with your life, why would you not trust them with 'news'?

But here is where it gets tricky and much of the press is NOT talking about it:

Much of this 'fake news' originates from seemingly credible news organisations.

So Fox News, Daily Mail, the whole global infotainment complex constantly churns out ideological garbage with little underpinning in fact. It deliberately creates false equivalences, misinforms, misleads, erases, diminishes, ignores....

But here is where the problem gets worse: credible and historically diligent news organisations add to this. So NYT may not have outright pulled a Fox but their 2016 coverage exacerbated the far right propaganda

BBC does not have to lie explicitly in order to give air to Brexiteers more credibility. It just has to air the views repeatedly without contradiction (ah that seeming neutrality/objectivity) to feed the lies

So it kicks off with a 'trusted friend' sharing something baseless from a propaganda outlet. Then another 'trusted friend' chips in. Some may disagree but then the 'credible' news source is cherrypicked to back up the original post. And so on

Now add to this the FB algorithms designed to give more air to people you agree with and render invisible any you disagree with, an almost impenetrable propaganda bubble is created

I mean how the hell do you 'argue' against the 'guy who saved my life'?

You can't

But this is the issue: none of this inevitable. None of this is neutral/automatic/god forbid as we talk tech, 'natural.'

All of this is by design and a result of design. This also means it can be UN-designed, redesigned. For different results.

Remember my point re twitter vs facebook earlier in the thread. Let me return to that: yes, it is possible to create what @jack rather erroneously called an 'echo chamber' here. But it is much harder.

Because you can follow people who may seemingly share your views. But if you diversify your follows (so not just your mates from school, uni, work, social circle), other views will seep in.

But even if you follow just people you find interesting or a range of news sources, you will end getting a broader range of views without even actively trying.

Frankly maintaining an echo chamber on twitter actually takes effort.

I will give you an example: I follow lots of feminists here. A single issue, right? Except it isn't: there is a huge range of views even amongst them. Some I agree with, others I don't.

Just quietly following their debates has meant my views of changed and evolved.

And this is why it's so sad that @jack has no confidence in his own product and has desperately tried to turn it into a facebook: we don't need algorithms deciding which tweets from our follow list we need to see.

We need the ability to mute, block, and see the people we follow in the order they tweet. End of!

PS an edit button would be nice.

But here is the thing: twitter is quick to debunk lies. It's something we have seen over and over again with the hoaxes. Tweeps rarely fall for it but the journalists constantly do!

And that brings us back to the role played by the press in diminishing its own credibility and giving air to propaganda.

News is not entertainment. Information is not easy. And facts are not negotiable.

It isn't hard to follow these basics

So here is the thing: we need tech bros to redesign (and diversify their workforce so they don't stay in this same damn loop).

We needs news organisation to work as news orgs NOT infotainment.

And frankly that oped vs news stance only works when you CLEARLY delineate them.

But WE are not off the hook. We need to learn how to seek information that makes us uncomfortable because it contradicts what we believe or think we know.

None of it is easy. But it is also not impossible. But most of all, it is absolutely urgent and necessary that we do this from all our sides to the best of our capacity.

For our own sakes.

End thread. Thanks for reading.

Am going to go continue hyperventilating at all the details.