![]() ![]() They use the platform to generate traffic to their sites, and typically monetize through Google ads. In particular, they used A/B testing techniques on a huge scale, delivering thousands of targeted messages to its so-called Project Alamo database of 220 million voters culled from voter rolls, purchase databases, and small donors acquired through its web sites.įake news sources don’t typically use Facebook audience targeting like political campaigns do. The Trump presidential campaign used Facebook to great effect (Opens in a new window) in 2016, building a loyal base of supporters that they continue to cultivate with specific messaging unfiltered by traditional media outlets. While this targeting is not fake news in and of itself, political campaigns-on both sides-often manipulate news to build their narrative. This methodology is also what political campaigns use to target specific voters with messages that will motivate them. This is what advertisers use to create those ads, which sometimes seem like they know more about you than you know yourself. The platform provides the ability to finely slice and dice audiences, and create messages that can resonate personally and cause strong reactions. Moreover, if you have your own list of followers for a website, you can upload your list and match the names with their personal Facebook profiles. Facebook tools can use this information to generate custom audiences (Opens in a new window), for whom particular messages can be crafted. The platform's 2 billion monthly active users generate a trove of information that can be used to target audiences–what they share on timelines, what ads they click, what they like and dislike, which devices they use, specific demographics, locations visited and travel profiles, and more. ![]() The technology that supports it is the same technology that has propelled Facebook to be the fastest growing advertising platform of the past several years.įacebook has a vast and rich array of information that has enabled advertisers to reach specific audiences in far more cost-effective ways than ever before. But the fake news that would have kept Huxley and Postman up at night is the kind that has been widely employed on Facebook and Twitter, the dominant social network platforms. The term is being used by our current president to engender distrust among his supporters for mainstream media organizations, such as CNN and The New York Times, when he disagrees with their reporting. To some, it simply means news that doesn’t agree with their world view or perception of reality. The term “fake news” has now entered the public lexicon, and it has different meanings to different people. But they both understood the implications of modern technology’s ability to cloud fact from truth, and what people’s perception of the truth is. Huxley and Postman might not have imagined the technology that enabled social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture. In 1985, Neil Postman, in his now-prescient social commentary Amusing Ourselves to Death, compared the dystopian visions of George Orwell’s 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World:
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