Harrop: Taking leave of Facebooks fake news, echo chambers [View all]

Dear Facebook friends:

If you don’t see me gushing over the pix of your Thanksgiving pies, take no offense. It’s not that your pie is a bore (though, frankly, it is). And it’s not because I unfriended you. It’s because Facebook has become a platform for the sort of fake news stories that helped elect Donald Trump. In doing so, Facebook undermines our civic culture — its creepy smile floating overhead.

I’m so out of there. I’ve wanted to quit for a long time, having wearied of friends’ pictorials of their idyllic family and personal lives. I know for a fact that some of the most glowing portrayals come (mostly) from women who couldn’t make it to noon without a fistful of meds. I still love them, and if they wish to connect, they have my number.

Though hyper-partisan fake news stories have come from both the left and the right, Facebook entrepreneurs know that the money is in plowing the Trumpian fields. And for all the patriotic memes, foreigners are behind much of the manipulation of the American public.

Kids in a town in Macedonia (that’s near Greece) created more than 100 pro-Trump websites, spreading phony reports such as FBI plans to indict Hillary Clinton. The Make America Great page outsources the writing of fraudulent news to a couple in the Philippines.

http://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/harrop-taking-leave-of-facebooks-fake-news-echo-chambers/

I tend to concur with this editorial. Since the election I doubt I've spent more than ten minutes a day on Facebook