COLUMN: Hail, Fakebook!

Sholeh Patrick is 100 percent correct when she said “people are news lazy” in her Tuesday column. News has been reduced to the latest picture with some jaded, even libelous headline tattooed on it (often known as a ‘meme’). Yet people are binging on social media to complain about the somewhat fact-check accountable TV or print news media when (according to Pew research) 44 percent of Americans only get their news from Facebook? That’s right. Facebook. Or is it Fakebook?

Even though only 2 in 10 read any newspaper, Facebook has a much looser relationship with the truth. At fake news, make your own reality, repost it rah rah go to. Facebook and Reddit have too often become chronic dust clouds of false nonsense with zero fact-checking. People get to lie with reckless abandon. A platform for propaganda.

Like the story this week of FBI Director Comey dying in a murder-suicide with a tight lipped picture of Hillary next to the body bag. Or the recent death of Clint Eastwood.

And Facebook has used logarithms that will feed similar stories into one’s news feed, essentially creating one’s own reality. We have all seen news about what was on some mass shooter’s Facebook feeds to be deeply disturbing.

Since the news media has been bypassed for social media, shouldn’t such power come with responsibility?

Or do we get to keep posting falsities enough times that they become true? Even King Solomon said, “Any story sounds true until someone sets the record straight.” But what if we’re too lazy for straight? Should Facebook focus on the truth while idiot-proofing posts? All these questions…

Meanwhile, Fakebook rocks!

MIKE RENO

Post Falls