Unsocial Media

An issue from the 2016 election which will be an issue again is the amount of fake and slanderous information on social media.

In 2016 we saw a concerted effort by at least one foreign player to influence the public.  To what extent it succeeded is hard to gauge, but much of it was pretty obvious at the time, unless of course you believed it.

Social media has become for any the on-line place they visit.  They see messages from family and friends and suddenly, perhaps even forwarded by one of them they see an outrageous claim about a candidate or candidates in general.

You can't salute the flag, they have sex slaves, they are denying veterans health care, they want to promote (add any abhorrent activity here).

You of course shouldn't believe these things, and many don't, but like a message that a judge tells a jury to disregard you still saw it.

And you may see it over and over again, until it just seems like it must be true.

There are places where you can check the veracity of these statement but most don't.

The repetition is pervasive and you are encouraged to forward the outrageous claim, if you are a patriot or care about (enter cause here).

The more people do that, the more credibility it takes on.

There is pressure on social media to control some of this and some steps have been taken.  However they can't act until its been sent and by then it already doing its damage.

It up to us to recognize the bad messaging  but that's not likely.

I don't have high hopes that social media can fix this without doing something even worse.

Well have to see.