Some might try to claim that it doesn’t matter that much anyway because "Facebook is a dying platform with an aging user base" and, yes, that's true to a point. But it’s still the world’s biggest social media platform with over 2 billion daily active users, which is more than YouTube, and three times as many as the wreckage Elon Musk has made of Twitter/X. So, it’s really concerning that the world’s biggest social media site is washing its hands of responsibility and essentially telling political liars that they’re now free to whip up hate on its platform. Fact-checking is difficult. It’s much more complicated to produce content that’s well researched and evidence-based than to just write whatever you want regardless of the truth. And it’s even more complicated to try to differentiate between reliable and deceptive content when people are uploading literally millions of posts per hour to your site. However the answer to such complications isn’t just to give up and let liars pollute political discourse with dangerous misinformation because it’s too complicated and expensive to take responsibility. That’s the same pathetically sickening approach taken by the private water companies, pumping billions of litres of raw sewage into our rivers and coastal waters because it’s easier and more profitable to release it into the environment than to invest in the infrastructure required to treat it. Allowing misinformation to spread unchecked isn’t just bad because it erodes the boundaries between truth and lies, it’s also dangerous. The summer riots in England last year were fuelled by a barrage of social media lies that sought to pin the blame on Muslims and immigrants for the Southport killings. Lies that were deliberately amplified on the toxic mess Elon Musk has turned Twitter into. Musk and other high-profile accounts on his site deliberately exacerbated the riots by amplifying lies about the Southport killings and the sentencing of rioters, and in recent weeks Musk has been busy trying to further destabilise British politics by amplifying hundreds of posts attacking the government, misrepresenting the meaning of parliamentary legislation, and slamming the British justice system. Facebook itself has been implicated in the spread of hate-mongering lies, from their role in amplifying the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar to their decision to continue allowing the Britain First hate mob to spread lies and glorify extreme-right terrorism on Facebook for years. Those of us who care about honesty and decency in public discourse are well aware that the problem goes a lot deeper than social media too. Consider the constant barrage of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and extreme-right politics that is GB News. It masquerades as a "news" channel, but it’s actually just the propaganda plaything of a handful of extreme-right billionaires who are happy to spend tens of millions per year on their project to debase and destabilise British political debate. There are other examples too. Scottish independence supporters will remember the BBC’s campaign of misinformation during the 2014 Independence referendum; human rights supporters will be all too aware of the British media’s slavish adherence to Israeli propaganda narratives over their brutal genocide in Gaza; and traditional Labour Party supporters will never forget the extraordinary campaign of lies and misinformation aimed at Jeremy Corbyn during his leadership of the party (Czech spy, Putin crony, dancing at the cenotaph, supporting terrorism, plotting a second Holocaust …etc, etc). 
If broadcasters and
traditional media can’t be trusted, and social media platforms like Facebook
and Twitter can’t be trusted, who can we turn to? It’s a dispiriting thing to admit, but we’re basically on our own. Social
media companies are either washing their hands of responsibility (like
Facebook) or deliberately amplifying the lies (like Twitter); standards in
broadcasting and traditional media are so low that biased propaganda and
outright lies are the norm. 1. Consider what are your most trusted sources of political commentary and support them, either through small donations, or by sharing their work. 2. Avoid sharing online misinformation, even if it’s to critique it, because as far as social media algorithms are concerned "a share is a share". Even if you’re sharing it to say how awful and dishonest it is, you’re still amplifying it. If you do insist on critiquing misinformation, use screenshots, don’t create even more links to the sources of the misinformation. 3. "Don't feed the trolls". Sometimes it's very tempting to respond to something outrageous. More often than not, it's pointless and achieves absolutely nothing. Maintain your equanimity and rise above it. 3. Use the block button to eliminate the sources of political lies from your online environments. From our Facebook/Twitter feeds to Google Chrome’s suggested links, there’s a constant effort to force feed us the output of extreme-right agitators and disreputable sources like GB News. 4. Don’t vote for political liars. 5. Consider diversifying your online environments by trying out new platforms (Substack and Bluesky seem to be 'rising stars') and try to spend time in the places where you’re fed less extreme-right bullshit and lies. 6. From a scientific, journalistic perspective, my advice is: ‘read the original sources of information’. Yes, it takes time and effort but we live in times where you have to go searching for the truth. 7. The days of altruism are gone and everything is transactional.To quote another old adage ‘follow the money’. Who is paying? Why are they paying? What are they hoping to gain? 8. Unsubscribe. I left Twitter/X as soon as Musk took over and I'm slowly disengaging myself from Facebook. I'm not yet ready to quit Facebook entirely but I'm having a severe prune of the sites I follow. But one day, I will flick the 'off' switch.  |
