The Stream is a weird place. Your Facebook feed, for example, is a series of posts by various people that in some ways resembles a forum, but in other ways it’s not at all like a forum.  When you post something to Facebook, there’s not an explicit prompt you are responding to, which seems non-problematic… Continue reading

Let’s continue to look at how Facebook has harmed public discourse, because I’m getting increasingly worried that once Facebook blocks fake news people will say problem solved. And really, the problem is not even close to solved. One of Facebook’s oldest features is the “wall” although we seldom call it that anymore. The wall in Facebook… Continue reading

TechCrunch has a story seemingly sympathetic to Facebook’s plight, which has this graf in it: Because Facebook and some other platforms reward engagement, news outlets are incentivized to frame stories as sensationally as possible. While long-running partisan outlets may be held accountable for exaggeration, newer outlets built specifically to take advantage of virality on networks… Continue reading

So Facebook will ban fake news sites from their ads network, as will Google, which shows you exactly how hard it would have been to do this six months ago. But in any case, problem solved, right? Unfortunately, no. Fake sites that get traffic can get on other ad networks, or go the malware route, or… Continue reading

BGR graciously linked my post from the weekend, a post showing that the scale at which fake news stories trend on Facebook can dwarf traditional news in terms of shares. (Thanks, BGR!) However, they end with this paragraph, which I’d like to reply to: On a related note, it stands to reason that most individuals prone… Continue reading

Kevin Drum points out that if you search on Google to find out whether Hillary won the popular vote (she did) that one of the top results lies, right in the headline. How does 70news, a right wing site fond of claiming Trump protests are being funded by prominent Jewish banker George Soros, get to… Continue reading

(An investigation in which we decide to use Facebook’s social graph API to see whether fake news or real news is more viral). UPDATE: Since posting, there has been some discussion about this post’s use of the phrase “top stories from local newspapers”.  A clarification on how that phrase is used has been appended at… Continue reading

You  know, I’ve always complained about the use of “broke” when applied to things like democracy. How simple, right? But over the past few days I’ve not been in my normal nuanced mood. I’ve said, in fifteen different ways over the past year, that our stream-based model of social media was making us dumber. But… Continue reading

I could not sleep last night at all. So I organized my notes I’ve been taking over the last year on the problem of doing politics in advertising funded stream-based systems. I know this election was about so much more than that (so much more), and our problems are so much deeper. But I remain… Continue reading

I’ve decided to write a book before the year is out. I’ve decided this because I think the most pressing current issue for Open Pedagogy practitioners in the U.S. right now is how we address a social media environment that seems to be bringing out many of our worst demons, and I think several years… Continue reading