Fake new has been a popular topic for a while, and with a General Election now looming in the UK, I’m sure it’s going to become an even more pressing issue. There’s now a failure of consensus on what’s fact; never mind what’s right or wrong.
Don’t expect Facebook and Google to do anything truly useful about it. While it’s good for business, it will go unchecked. In Hitler’s Germany, big business largely went with the flow. Hitler was good for business, so business was good to Hitler. The market will never sort this out -- but just as technology can erode social capital and social trust, it can also build it.
eBay and even Amazon use technology to build trust, Facebook is using technology to destroy it. So let’s support the places that are building trust.