Fake News or not, the future belongs to Facebook
Summary
Fake news became a massive talking point during the and in the aftermath of the US Presidential Election. In this week, when fake news furore went legacy - viral Facebook bought full page print ad's in national daily papers detailing '10 tips for spotting "false news".' (Tip 9: "Is the story a joke?"). Then last week BBC Panorama aired a Facebook programme full of warnings reporting that Facebook had been a game changer for both Brexit and Trump. Facebook could apparently help to target and delude individual voters. Fakery can be an excuse for failure in defeat and a digital strategists inflated reason for success. Legislators looking for work hate finding an area of operation so big and as the head of the Commons culture committee says "totally unregulated". Stir these elements into the pot of fakery: strands of fear, self interest and bravado this shows that this isn't a plot, it's a situation. They do not, however mean that the furore of fake news will fade or that answers will be found. With this in mind, if forecasters are right that print will soon seize to exist completely and social media domination continues then the question posed is what will the 2042 general election look like. Social media with its reach ever more complete and its algorithms ever more sophisticated will be the dominator.
Key Statistics
- Newspapers see Facebook and Google eating what's left of their future as digital giants devour 90% if advertising growth.
- Through all the fake news controversy, adding 3,000 more monitors to try to keep up its act, Facebook has only added more paying adherents.
My Opinion
With the way technological advancements are progressing I definitely agree with forecasters that soon print will die out completely and digital giants are going to dominate what they do not already. Social media is going to soon be the new BBC and News Corp but some digital giants will survive against each other while others such as Snapchat will not; it already feeds on itself as it grows. However, how are the dominating sites like Facebook going to be regulated, with everyone using them it will be even harder to regulate posts than it is now, which still prove to be difficult for Facebook. If the sites are even harder to regulate isn't the world of fakery just going to keep growing, I think that if we are moving towards a time where we are going to completely rely upon social media sites namely Facebook to provide us with the news then they need to be properly regulated as when this happens forecasters believe that the likes of the BBC will not exist which will mean that we will not have anywhere to turn to check the viability of the source.
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