Does anyone else find the whole Facebook ads / fake news "scandal" moronic?

I deactivated my account recently, not out of any security concerns. I just find it a complete time waste where I'd go on it and read pointless articles and end up getting nothing done. Plus the upcoming referendum is going to a sh1tshow on it and I've no interest in reading about it everyday for the next few months or having people on it harangue me to vote one way or another. As long as I know that the people I like are all still alive, that's enough for me. I don't really need to know the daily minutiae of their lives.

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

But you'd be fine with your side doing it?

Well it's a bit different when citizens are funding that campaign
You can choose not to donate to the democrats or republicans or labour (exception being union members) Vs conservatives, you can't choose that none of your tax goes to the EU and is then allocated to a PR dept

Richard Hillman wrote: »

Facebook has become far to powerful for its own good and Mr Zuckerberg needs a Morgan Freeman beside him to say "this is too much power for one man". Unfortunately Mr Zuckerberg doesn't have the moral compass of Batman.

Let's get one thing straight though, the only reason why there is media outrage is because the wrong team won. If Hillary Clinton won that election, there would be the Obama response "intelligently using social media". It took the Donald winning the election to sort this out.

Back to Mr Zuckerberg, what's worrying is that he could extend his power to choose who he wants to win an Election, and as I said this is far too much power for one man.

To be fair, both sides were at it.

http://time.com/4560707/donald-trump-election-loss-rigged/

Trump was banging on about both a rigged election AND the possibility of impeachment if Hillary won.

He was dismissed, of course.

Then almost immediately after his win the opposition are losing their minds over the possibility that the election was rigged and taking bets on how quickly Trump will be impeached.

Both sides have obviously been considering these "angles" before the votes were even counted.

Fake News is treated the same way offside or penalty decisions are treated in a Man U vs Liverpool match. If the decision is against Us then we are outraged and the referee is a w@nker. If the decision is against Them then that's just the way the game goes boys.

If you're going to state an opinion that I don't like then you're a bot or a troll or both. If you're going to state an opinion that I do like then I'm going to share and retweet.

If a news story looks suspect and I don't agree with their agenda then it's Fake News. If a news story looks suspicious but I feel their on my side then I'm OK with it, it's Real News.

The media on all sides has been leaving out facts, twisting words or outright lying for generations. A little half truth here, a little turn of phrase there.

Is there anyone who didn't know this?

Both sides have been doing it for decades and they are still doing it now, all while pointing at the other side.

It's laughable.

Really, the best we can hope for is that we ride out the 4 years of Trump as US president without these clowns, who can't handle the fact that he won because he was better than Clinton, destroying the usefulness and fun of social media.

As someone living in Ireland who has experienced exactly zero real consequences of Trump being elected I have to say that the whole thing has just sucked the fun out of online interactions.

I'm just going to copy the OP directly. It pisses me off that cool, fun things on the internet might be about to get ruined, regulated or shut down because there are too many morons who aren't capable of understanding the principle that the internet is not necessarily a reliable source of information about current affairs, and that social media is explicitly designed for soapboxing and advertising - not giving an accurate or balanced picture of world events.