alt Hacker NewsHow is this any different than traditional media? Cable news creates fake problems and controversy constantly, and pay their news anchors well to do so.
In return, many companies that rely on these problems, turn around and advertise on these networks.
Social media is just following the same strategy.
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Social media has been protected by the Safe Harbour rules because they had millions of users creating content which was difficult to monitor and moderate.
If they start producing their own content they might get considered like a news organisation with a whole different set of rules being applied to them and Safe Harbour being inapplicable.
With social media you can spend small amounts of money , create media and target people half across the globe from you.
ruzzian troll farm employee cannot call into fox news and say “create 100 John Does impersonating MAGA texans (or whatever), present them as real and I will pay you 5$ for that”. Such troll can automate all this and present media somewhat realistically on FB.
> How is this any different than traditional media?
Scale, lower entry bar, lack of regulation.
Sure, and Ebola and influenza share traits too. I’m not sure that makes them interchangeable though.
>> How is this any different than traditional media?
Facebook is global. Traditional media is much more heavily regulated in some countries and while it may not be perfect, it's not comparable to the shit show that is social media.
What are you trying to say? That Facebook should be excused because others also behave badly?
Otherwise, we can dislike both things and it adds nothing to say "but why aren't your talking about the other thing instead". And for what it's worth, there is a pretty clear difference between the journalistic standards of FB bait and of the legacy media.