The Patriot Post® · Facebook's Transformation to 'Fakebook'
It has been nearly a month since the election and most mainstream media outlets are still in angst over Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton. As the election result proved, most Americans didn’t buy into the grossly leftist bias of main stream media — what we have long called “dezinformatsiya,” or deliberate misinformation — and many Americans chose to get their news from alternative sources via the Internet. In fact, Facebook became the go-to news source this election year. This has caused a new level of concern for leftist thought police. In fact, they have stooped to a new low, decrying the high volume of “fake news” that populated the pages of Facebook users’ news feeds during the election, and now Facebook intends to make some changes.
Earlier this year, Facebook came under fire for de-emphasizing news from conservative sources in its “trending” section, choosing instead to push news sources that Facebook wanted users to read. Conservatives were rightly upset with this revelation, but of course, Facebook, as a private company, has the freedom to push whatever news stories it wants to be “trending.” Equally, however, Facebook users have the freedom to deactivate their account or simply look to other news sources.
Leftists always seek to suppress and discredit conservative news and thought, so it should come as no surprise that Facebook would choose to push stories from media outlets it favors.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been hammered by leftists over the past several weeks for not doing a more thorough job of censoring “fake news” that supposedly helped propel Donald Trump to victory over Hillary Clinton. In other words, Leftmedia news outlets deem any news — especially conservative news — that is outside of the leftwing, socialist umbrella as unworthy to read.
But as National Review’s Jim Geraghty quips, “[I]t’s a little rich to hear the sudden media-wide panic over "fake news.” Just ask Dan Rather about those memos. Or ask Brian Williams about his war stories. Or ask Rolling Stone about those ritualistic gang rapes on the University of Virginia’s campus.“ And the list goes on.
What to do to counter this pressure? Facebook is now gearing up to change how it pushes news to users. The company that was built by millions of Americans and billions of people worldwide is looking to use a tool that allows it to push curated articles from "valid sources” to the news feed of its users. The aim of this new tool is to cut back on the “fake news” in order to provide its users with “reliable and valuable content.”
Zuckerberg, who days after the election commented that he didn’t think “fake news” contributed to Trump’s success, has since changed his tune. He announced that there will be new policies coming forth to “help identify and crack down on the spread of fake news, including writing algorithms that can automatically detect false content, placing warning labels on news that may be fake, and allowing users to flag content they find suspicious on their own.”
Facebook’s new feature is called “Collections” and it will function similar to Snapchat’s Discover section, which “showcases” news stories, videos and other content by handpicked media outlets.
These handpicked outlets are of course full of leftist drivel, and they hope to use Facebook as a means of pushing their content and their content only. Advertising on users’ news feeds will no doubt increase as well, which will in turn bring revenues to both Facebook and the major media outlets.
So instead of making any attempt to implement objective journalism that reports the facts, major media will be pimping social media to help spew propaganda. As discouraging as this may be to many readers who enjoy using Facebook and other social media, the reality is that the leftist propaganda machines are simply taking things to the next level. Meanwhile, we in our humble shop and those who fight on our side will continue to relentlessly counter this horrible ideology with the message of Liberty.