When fact matters less than cleverly worded fiction.
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency, the Oxford English Dictionary bestowed the title of international word of the year on the word “post-truth.” It could not have been more apt, especially after an election cycle marred by malleable facts and shoot-from-the-hip tweets from the President-elect himself.
This past US election shone a spotlight on the so-called fake news that lives on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Even Google is not immune. Sometime in November, a Google search for “final election numbers” or “final vote count 2016” led to a top result from a dodgy Wordpress blog called 70 News. This site looks to be run by just a single person, and the headline incorrectly blares that Trump took both the popular and electoral college vote.
And if even the top result of a Google search – which one instinctively assumes surfaces real news – can lie, the truth appears even more precarious than before.
What is Facebook?
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