Friday, November 11, 2016

The sins of Facebook in the victory Trump – Wired.it

trump1you Continue to define yourself as a technology platform, not a media company, but I do apologise for not having done enough in the chaos of the misinformation trumpiana. That’s what happened yesterday , when Adam Mosseri, the big boss of everything that happens on the News Feed of the social network, explained to TechCrunch that "there is much still to be done to identify the misinformation". The statement is longer but, like all the statement of Menlo Park, is constituted at 90% by the copy-paste of the Standard of the community. Therefore, the null interest.

However, the idea that Facebook felt forced to intervene – after a deal of controversy raised by the different commentators on their own responsibilities in the triumph of Donald Trump is a signal rather contradictory. First of all, for a reason: who evaluates, in the context of an election campaign, if the content put into circulation constitutes misinformation? When that control and those efforts of which he speaks Mosseri were placed in the field, how would intervene in the propaganda of the social one or the other candidate? Perhaps in the way in which they managed the Trending Topic in the United States, after the scandal of the journalists entrusted to the algorithms and nevertheless often deceptive even in that case?

this All is tossed well beyond the discussion on the role of social networks in a victory for Trump, on the doping of the bot policy (think for example to the investigation of BuzzFeed on central of sites, pro-Donald in Macedonia), or on the possibility that these platforms will influence the choices and behaviors of our friends. At the bottom, as well as the network under the care of Barack Obama was not the magic wand that all told, while in the course of an election campaign, ruthless and nauseating can not be become the cause of every evil.

in Short, the thesis that Trump has won because buffalo and cock and bull stories have been circulating freely on Facebook and Twitter a little rain. Beyond that, if thrown down in a manner so incomplete, senseless. However, I do not think that this dynamic go underrated: the social networks have replaced almost the entire informed public debate, and I am wary of who cuts and scours their audience with certainty, which does not have ("The white males of the state of Iowa does not follow the social", for instance). Not to mention that certain types of narrative nonsense, semplicismi and mystifications attecchiranno always been among a certain audience, whatever the macroeconomic framework, the level of salaries or the management of immigration.

But some stop at this reason – that, therefore, the bubble social inflated by the buffaloes left to freely graze from social – you might as well try to identify a puzzle of a thousand pieces from a single piece.

There is, rather, to return to place on the table the contradictory nature of Facebook, the media company of the de facto that is not willing to take responsibility, does not want to take sides and continues tignosamente to consider himself a mere channel of transmission and of connection of the people. Then, however, the problem arises of the disinformation policy, the phenomenon that only a journalistic logic in the narrow sense can afford the time to disassemble and try to disprove. the Maybe wrong. But, taking all the responsibility towards the public.

The algorithms and control systems can not be a veil behind which to hide, for the simple reason that the information it consists of two lungs: the content, of course, and spreading. If on the first face of the direct liability may not be attributable to the platform, the second is about an authentic revolution that has provided to different types of content (those junk ones concocted in order not to appear such, which promote visions distorted, false, or antiscientifiche) into the limelight, non-existent. the How to manage that flow is a problem that is eminently editorial. Whoever you are, you are in fact doing information.

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