Om Malik, noting some conclusions about the latest news that facebook acknowledging the role of fake profiles and groups supporting Donald Trump:
- Facebook had underestimated the extent of the problem.
- The bot creators got smarter and kept beating Facebook’s checks and balances.
- Facebook willingly ignored the fake and duplicate accounts because it allowed them to show growth and to the Wall Street.
Om suggests it’s a combination of all three. I suspect facebook knows just big an issue this is, so feel like they’re using that to hedge and make themselves seem less culpable. To me, it’s likely a combination of 2 and 3, given that facebook has a history of fighting advertising disclosure rules. Which brings a fourth, and just as likely, concluding: facebook willingly ignored the problem because they were profiting from it.
Given all this, and also that given Republican politicians are being paid large sums of money by the NRA to refuse to take action on regulating access to military-grade weapons, it’s clearer than ever that we need get money out of politics.