Oceans away, we the unenlightened masses of a repressive nation observe the US election drama with morbid curiosity and befuddlement. An egotistical, deceitful, pugnacious buffoon is crowned ‘leader’ of the ‘free world’, and somehow Facebook is to blame.
Now that’s a universal problem: that which is popular is assumed and accepted to be true. Humans aren’t very good at second-guessing the wisdom of acquaintances. We seek to confirm and conform.
But when a moron rams his car into a school bus, do you blame the road? Do you blame the car? Or do you blame the person behind the wheels? When false information is disguised and propagated as news, do you blame the liars, or is the conduit of information at fault?
I’m not saying Facebook is 100% blameless – it benefits from a model that rewards high traffic. Information that is subversive of expectations attract high traffic. In the absence of an impartial and reliable monitor, enterprising individuals are clearly incentivized to make up headlines. Clickbaits bait clicks. I find it implausible that the inventors of social media is oblivious to this. In fact I would not be surprised if there had been intentional efforts to promote meme-worthy material.
Herein lies the dilemma. Should Facebook fact-check every piece of information that flows through its website to filter what ends up in front of you? Should we even endow it with that power?
I live in a country where the media is notoriously unreliable, where the mere notion of journalistic integrity incites bitter laughter. Truth is the providence of government, media is in the business of distraction, reporters have been relegated to gossip.
Front page of news sites are unseemly to behold. International Section: The nation praises our glorious leaders for their moral authority and diplomatic prowess. Economic reforms has made delightful (albeit imperceptible) strides. Our friends in the developing world has repudiated the decadent West. Domestic News: whimsical local stories. Buzzword. Buzzword. Buy this crap. Buzzword. Something sexual. Buzzword.
So we don’t have a choice in this matter. There is one gatekeeper for the truth, everyone else simply regurgitates whatever part of the truth the keeper finds fit to reveal. Worse still, it has created a media without credibility. When we read something that disagrees with us, we assume it’s clickbait or propaganda to brainwash us. When we read something that fits perfectly into our worldview, it’s probably a scam to deceive us. What use is our faculties and reason when facts and truth are curated, everything else are therefore invariably false or incomplete? So we shared only the most contrived, inane, trivial and lurid, we succumb to frivolity. We wallow in it. We live in the total annihilation of trust.
How baffling and saddening it is then, to see unshackled minds go to waste? You don’t need a VPN to Google. Facts and figures are available at your finger tips.
Presumably we all know that Nigerian princes aren’t actually emailing us. If we accept everything else laid before us to be true, then do we not have ourselves to blame for our gullibility?
#00117F 