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Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook (nymag.com) 499

Max Read makes his case via New York Magazine for how Facebook was the reason for Donald Trump's surprise victory on November 8th. Though, to be fair, "Facebook" is called out specifically due to its large online presence, but in reality all the "large and influential boards and social-media platforms where Americans now congregate to discuss politics" are to blame. The main reason why has to do with Facebook's "inability (or refusal) to address the problem of hoax or fake news" that is spread rampantly and effortlessly across the platform: Fake news is not a problem unique to Facebook, but Facebook's enormous audience, and the mechanisms of distribution on which the site relies -- i.e., the emotionally charged activity of sharing, and the show-me-more-like-this feedback loop of the news feed algorithm -- makes it the only site to support a genuinely lucrative market in which shady publishers arbitrage traffic by enticing people off of Facebook and onto ad-festooned websites, using stories that are alternately made up, incorrect, exaggerated beyond all relationship to truth, or all three. Many got hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of shares, likes, and comments; enough people clicked through to the posts to generate significant profits for their creators. The valiant efforts of Snopes and other debunking organizations were insufficient; Facebook's labyrinthine sharing and privacy settings mean that fact-checks get lost in the shuffle. Often, no one would even need to click on and read the story for the headline itself to become a widely distributed talking point, repeated elsewhere online, or, sometimes, in real life. When roughly 170 million people in North America use Facebook every day and nearly forty-four percent of all adults in the U.S. say they get news from Facebook, the spread of "fake news" is all the more detrimental. The problem is that Facebook seems "insecure about its power, unsure of its purpose, and unclear about what its responsibilities really are." Earlier this year, Facebook acted on what was right and wrong by censoring the iconic "napalm girl" photograph, later issuing a statement saying "These are difficult decisions and we don't always get it right." Of course, lies and exaggerations have always been central to real political campaigns; Facebook has simply made them easier to spread, and discovered that it suffers no particular market punishment for doing so -- humans seem to have a strong bias toward news that confirms their beliefs, and environments where those beliefs are unlikely to be challenged.
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Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook

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  • by turkeydance ( 1266624 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:08PM (#53251927)
    that's why. it couldn't be the candidate or the policies that lost.
    • that's why. it couldn't be the candidate or the policies that lost.

      Trump won because of facebook?

      I've lost track of the rationalizations, the reasons why Trump won.

      Anyone have a list?

      • Yes, let's have a list.. so that we can count thing things that he said he would do as he does them. Hey, if he actually does what he said he would do, all of America will be a happy place. I will believe it when I see it.
        • Here's your list (Score:2, Interesting)

          Here's a list [npr.org] of the things Trump has promised to do in the first 100 days.

          Of particular note is this item in the 3rd grouping:

          Additionally, on the first day, I will take the following five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law:

          * FIRST, cancel every unconstitutional executive action, memorandum and order issued by President Obama(*)

          That is something the president can do on his own, without getting permission from congress. That alone is probably worth the price of admission.

          Additionally, Ben Carson said he's willing to help Trump find a replacement for Obamacare [breitbart.com].

          Dr. Carson is smart and has first-hand knowledge of the healthcare system. He's not a career politician, and would make a good HHS secretary or surgeo

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            Dr. Carson is smart and has first-hand knowledge of the healthcare system.

            Unfortunately he is also insane.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by ColdWetDog ( 752185 )

            Carson is a retired pediatric neurosurgeon. He knows as much about the business side of healthcare as a cow knows about the inside of a church. That was distressingly obvious during his brief 'campaign'.

            And it seems that age is catching up to him. He didn't sound or act like anybody I would want operating on me.

        • by skids ( 119237 )

          I'm sure there will be a Trumpmeter like this [politifact.com], but I'm also sure that since a brietbart news site told them politifact was biased and run by Jews, they will ignore it.

          • Wait, it's run by Jews?
            • by skids ( 119237 )

              Maybe I dunno. Could be Jews today and Muslims come next election. Or lizard people with Ted Cruz as the overlord. Whatever they can be made to believe.

      • by JWW ( 79176 )

        Sorry, not buying that we need to "fact check" (read: censor) Facebook to save us....

      • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:40PM (#53252297) Homepage Journal

        Anyone have a list?

        1. 1. Russians
        2. 2. whatever

        Just go from there. Whatever you do, though, you cannot mention the Pied Piper [wikileaks.org] strategy. Because, well, see #1.

      • by Xenographic ( 557057 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:45PM (#53252349) Journal

        > I've lost track of the rationalizations, the reasons why Trump won.

        Some humorous reasons, in no particular order:

        * The Putin bromance helped Trump win the gay vote
        * Russian deplorables prevented Syria from being annexed
        * The details of Harambe's assassination got leaked by Seth Rich
        * Flyover country problems
        * The Secret Service tossed Hillary Clinton into the van like a plate of tendies and accidentally dropped her
        * Pepe turned racist for the dank memes
        * Bill lost his frequent flier gold status with Epstein
        * Tod & Claire had to pack up shop after being found out for copyright infringement
        * Vile Rat's guild took silent revenge for his loss in Benghazi
        * Hillary accidentally deleted the email with the leaked debate questions before Kaine's debate, then forgot about it
        * The 400 lbs hacker 4chan tipped the public off to Podesta & co.'s #spiritcooking in the secret basement of Comet Ping Pong Pizza with Jay-Z
        * Bill & Obama's disowned relatives showed up
        * Correct the Record's self-described "nerd virgins" were distracted by Melliana porn
        * The Artist Formerly Known as Prince died, so he couldn't return Hillary's lost shoe at midnight and thus she turned into a pumpkin

    • by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:12PM (#53251975)

      ...that Trump won because the media could not control the narrative despite their best efforts.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ClickOnThis ( 137803 )

        ...that Trump won because the media could not fact-check the narrative despite their best efforts.

        FTFY

        • ...that Trump won because the media could not control the narrative despite their best efforts.

          FTFY

          FTFY

        • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:50PM (#53252405) Journal

          Same thing: the media abandoned truth for truthiness years ago. If it fits the narrative, it's a "fact" - every paper will tell you so. If it's inconvenient, it's not a fact, and all the papers agree.

          "Fact-checking" is just weasel words for "control the narrative." Politicians lie. Voters understand that fact.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:13PM (#53252001)

      Democrats can't face they lost because they ran Hillary

      • by skids ( 119237 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @09:01PM (#53252533) Homepage

        No, plenty of us knew Hillary was a bad candidate -- better than Trump, and not as bad as the media and the opposition made her out to be, but despite much of the baggage being verifiable bunk, it still weighed a lot.

        BTW, we don't like much of the media either. Especially TV. They did plenty to keep the conversation off real issues. Especially going apeshit over the ridiculous email thing. Hillary could do a whole speech on issues and they'd literally only turn the sound up when "oh, she's going t hit trump on the Access Hollywood tape now."

        Sure, the newspaper endorsements came down on our side (editorial boards tend to have people of good sense on them) but they never counted for crap.

    • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:51PM (#53252423)
      Facebook is part of the problem. It only shows you what you want to see, which means you're only ever getting at most one half of any story. And your friends / community get the same stories because FB networks you together. So it creates this polarized effect where nobody can even imagine someone voting for the other candidate, even though clearly half of the country did.

      When I was a kid, everybody got the same news. People didn't hate the other side, they respectfully disagreed. So yeah, Facebook is cancer.
  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:12PM (#53251989)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Please idiot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:13PM (#53252009)

    Please stop living in a bubble and you will realize why it could have never been anyone else. How many established Republicans ran against him? Dozens, he slaughtered them for the same reason he destroyed Hillary. If you are looking around for a reason why he beat your establishment crook, don't look at Facebook, try the mirror.

  • Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:15PM (#53252029)
    Hoaxes were always there.

    Trump won because Hillary lost. She lost it because she mistakenly took SJW outrage for actually what people think. Turns out, there was/is silent majority and they don't care one bit about SJW issues but do care about corruption, warmongering, foundation profiteering, and DNC machine rigging.
  • blah blah TRUMP wheeze cry pout mean baad man baad man sniff momma
    People are asking, what happened? Has everyone gone crazy?
    Trump supporters have been watching people go crazy for awhile now. We could draw you a map.
    Hope 'yall come back, time to fix things.

  • As funny as NPR (Score:4, Insightful)

    by taustin ( 171655 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:18PM (#53252051) Homepage Journal

    this morning, trying to figure out why Hillary lost. It was because the same party candidate after a two President usually loses. It was because she was a woman. It was because the current President is black. Now it was because of Facebook.

    Absolutely any possible reason except that the voting public do not like and do not trust Hillary Clinton. She lost because Trump was less distasteful.

    (And because he beat her at her own game, on her home turn. Her whole political career has been based on being so vicious and nasty that no one would dare cross her. And it turns out Trump was even more vicious and nasty. And Americans love that shit.)

    • He beat her because (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:30PM (#53252177)

      she and the Democrats abandoned the Rust Belt. Michael Moore described election night back in July [huffingtonpost.com]: Donald Trump was going to take Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, plus the Romney states, and win. That's pretty much what happened, except Trump also got Florida. Hillary conceded Ohio, paid only a little attention to Pennsylvania, took Michigan and Wisconsin completely for granted, and lost.

    • Re:As funny as NPR (Score:4, Interesting)

      by techno-vampire ( 666512 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:55PM (#53252463) Homepage
      ... the voting public do not like and do not trust Hillary Clinton.

      That's part of it. There's also the fact that she made it very plain that she planned to give us four more years of the failed, ineffectual policies of O'bama, and rural America stood up and said, "Enough is enough!" and voted for Trump. If you look at a map that shows voting patterns county by county, you'll see that for the most part, only the big cities went Blue, and the rest of the state (even in places like California) went Red. In California, the Blue enclave on the coast had enough voters to drag the rest of the state into Hillary's camp, but in many of the battleground states, the rural voters who often sit out things like this made their strength show and dragged their states into Trump's camp.
    • by lgw ( 121541 )

      (And because he beat her at her own game, on her home turn. Her whole political career has been based on being so vicious and nasty that no one would dare cross her. And it turns out Trump was even more vicious and nasty. And Americans love that shit.)

      That was a pretty big part of it IMO. Hillary and Trump battled it out in the arena of reality TV. Turns out Trump is good at that. Seems a bad way to run elections, but it's the way we have for now.

    • by fnj ( 64210 )

      Absolutely any possible reason except that the voting public do not like and do not trust Hillary Clinton.

      Almost exactly half of them hate her and almost exactly half of them exalt her. But you have to specify which Hillary. The Hillary I saw give her exit address today was gracious, generous, caring, and not abrasive at all. And she made sense. The screeching, grimacing owl with talons slashing who I saw all during the campaign and the run-up to it was something else.

  • So it is all Facebook's fault, nothing to do with decades of politicians ignoring the the people. Telling them what they should be doing instead of listening to what is important to them. Likely few people actually voted for Trump because they thought he was the best that America could offer, but rather in protest for not bing listened to for such a long time. We are living in interesting times.
  • Reddit would like to disagree with this, considering all of the work done uncovering Hillary's crookedness done there. They definitely cost her a great deal of votes.
  • Without him, and if Johnson voters had gone for Clinton, that would have flipped MI, WI, PA and FL.
    • if Johnson voters had gone for Clinton

      The only Clinton voters who went for Johnson were those who were unable to ethically vote for Clinton. In that situation, you had potential non-voters who went for Johnson instead of staying home.

    • by XxtraLarGe ( 551297 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:54PM (#53252459) Journal

      Without him, and if Johnson voters had gone for Clinton, that would have flipped MI, WI, PA and FL.

      So basically what you're saying is that if all of the Clinton voters had voted for Johnson, he would have won. Clinton cost Johnson the election, now we're stuck with Trump!

    • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @09:07PM (#53252575)

      There were a large number of younger Bernie supporters that went anywhere but Clinton.

      I know a few that went Johnson. Some Stein. Some just stayed home.

      Bernie won Michigan (against all polls) and Wisconsin. Stein voters alone would have put Clinton over the top in Wisconsin or Michigan. They assumed wrong which way the fallout from the primaries would fall. The DNC got exactly what it wanted after throwing a lot of people under the bus along the way.

      I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people just checked out of the political process after the DNC this year. Not changing to Republican but not turning out to vote for the Democrats.

  • by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:28PM (#53252157)
    Trump won because Americans don't trust the government to consider their best interests any more. I mean, I see it in your comments here all the time. Clinton didn't do enough to separate herself from the institution, I mean, did she even try at all? Trump took it because it's America's attempt to fight fire with fire. You feel betrayed, so send in the betrayer, a bull dog.
    • Trump won because Americans don't trust the government to consider their best interests any more.

      And I think, perhaps, right or wrong, with or without good reason, some people care more about "me" than "us". I extend this to cover not just the people, but the politicians as well.

  • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:35PM (#53252251)

    Or actually the LACK of the Donald's access to his Twitter feed for that last month...

    Think about it. Every time he got into a Twitter war at 3AM over some foolishness that irked him, it got out of hand and he fell in the polls. So that last month where he stopped being stupid on Twitter is what cost Clinton the election.... Well, that and the fact that she had some serious flaws to overcome....

    So, the next election cycle we make all the candidates debate on Twitter. Either side can initiate a debate on a question by posting it with a given tag. Points are given for the wittiest come back with difficulty points for quick responses before they can be fully vetted and focus grouped, as well as a bonus given for the time of day. All responses MUST be posted by the candidate themselves and they must personally craft every answer without outside help.... It will be a blast, trust me, and Trump will LOOSE BIGLY for sure.

    The problem wasn't Facebook... It was Twitter...

    sarc off

  • Of course, lies and exaggerations have always been central to real political campaigns; ...

    ... "lies" shouldn't be acceptable. People running for and in political offices should be held to a higher standard.

  • Everyone knows it was /pol/, r/the_donald, and the magic of Pepe memes.

  • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:54PM (#53252445)

    The DNC had a strong foothold online behind Bernie. Large amounts of youth waited in lines for hours to vote for Bernie, do you think they did the same for Hillary? Trump had the bored, young, white, male demographic if for no reason other than it pissed off someone they knew.

    And that demographic hangs out on Facebook, Reddit and 4Chan. Tada, you now 'control' online.

    Meanwhile when Bernie voters logged into facebook they were told they weren't wanted in the DNC or in November [imgur.com] from a few people there to correct the record.

  • by jasnw ( 1913892 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @08:55PM (#53252467)

    Dealing with this problem that the news most people get these days hasn’t been carefully vetted as it was (or at least they tried) back in the days of Uncle Walter Cronkite is important. The Internet, with it’s ability to spread unfounded rumor at a wildfire pace, has broken America. I’m not talking about this current election, this has been going on for some time now. The question comes down to how does an organization like Facebook help keep down the levels of total bullshit without censorship problems. And I’m talking both sides of the political spectrum here. One way might be to take on a vetting responsibility in which bullshit posts aren’t removed but are edited by adding a statement something along the lines of “this statement is the most puro of bullshit” along with a link to something like Snopes where the issue is explained.

    This won’t fix this problem, but it might help people see that there’s more to a story than what their good buddies or BFFs are posting on Facebook. And no, it’s not perfect, but it’s also not censorship. You can post whatever nonsense you feel like, but the owner of the site has the right AND THE OBLIGATION to watch for and flag nonsense. It would be nice if everyone had a working bullshitometer, but the newer models of People seem to have dropped that module.

  • ... did what was posted on Facebook qualify as 'news'?

  • ... for foreign powers to influence the elections, which the Kremlin now admitted: http://www.mobypicture.com/use... [mobypicture.com]

  • Transparent call for censorship is transparent.
  • by pubwvj ( 1045960 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @09:22PM (#53252685)

    the "large and influential boards and social-media platforms where Americans now congregate to discuss politics" are to blame.

    Sounds to me like they should be crediting Facebook and other forums with helping people become more involved in the process. For decades voter apathy was bemoaned. Now we have people taking an interest. That's a good thing. Unless you're a loser...

  • Does this mean Sheryl Sandberg will get a seat on Trump's cabinet?

  • by Pfhorrest ( 545131 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @09:59PM (#53252963) Homepage Journal

    I had a thought earlier today: The internet is the primary vector for the worst epidemic of mental disease ever to strike humanity, on par with the Old World plagues that wiped out New World peoples upon first contact. Here's what I wrote about it elsewhere:

    Fuck 4chan. They're responsible for this Trump victory. Actually, fuck the internet in general as it is today, but 4chan is where that shit first gained a foothold.

    Trump winning this election happened because of the continuous shitfest of frothing-at-the-mouth rabid drivel that now circulates around 24/7 nonstop. The internet is what lead my dad to turn into a crazy conspiracy theorist who thinks that 9/11 was a coverup for the then-recently-revealed existence of extraterrestrial life awaiting our spiritual awakening ever since the fall of Atlantis at the end of the Pleistocene. It's also what's convinced my original-generation-hippy, lifelong-Democrat, now-disabled mom, who survives entirely off of social programs likely to be cut under Trump, that Obama is a Muslim building a Mosque at Ground Zero, and that Hillary is part of the Illuminati who apparently worship Satan on some hill in Oregon (according to the obviously doctored photos someone posted online), and made her vote Trump for her first Republican president ever.

    Once upon a time I was under this blissful delusion that instant worldwide communication would lead to a new enlightenment for the populace in general, but it's become abundantly clear that the only thing keeping an echochamber of the worst, craziest, lowest-common-denominator "truthy" bullshit from drowning what few braincells most people have to rub together was the physical difficulty in that kind of craziness spreading.

    I think there's an analogue to be made with biological disease here. Back in the days before modern medicine, cities were about the least healthy places you could live, because being in close physical proximity to so many other people (and animals) made it so much easier for disease to spread; you weren't air-gapped from most people like you would be in the country. I think the same is true of what I guess we'd call "memetic" diseases of the mind: nasty, destructive, viral ideas spread and mutate far more quickly now that everyone is plugged into the internet 24/7, than they could back in the day when they would be contained to whoever Joe McNutbar was ranting to at the local pub.

    A further hypothesis: When the Old World first met the New World, the New World people died of Old World plagues but not vice-versa because the Old World had lots of previous exposure to plagues, having had lots of big dense cities for a long time and developing strong immune systems piecemeal over time enough that those plagues could just be everywhere in the Old World and most people were unaffected by them, while New World peoples with their sparser populations had no history of plagues (none that had any survivors to adapt to them at least) and so had both no resistance to the European ones and none to offer in return. I wonder if the earliest netizens, those of us who remember when UseNet was the happening place, are like the Europeans in that analogy. Those of us who grew up with trolls and flamewars and the kinds of crazy that the internet could breed... we got inoculated to it. That crazy was always still around but you know, don't feed the trolls and you'll be fine. We grew up knowing not to believe everything you read because the internet is full of lies.

    But now the whole goddamn world is very suddenly connected to that cesspool of lies and madness, and they have no defense against it, so it's spreading like wildfire, mutating into ever-more virulent strains, and wiping out (the minds of) the population at large.

    I just hope there are survivors enough to adapt a herd immunity to it some day.

  • by anarcobra ( 1551067 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @10:11PM (#53253049)
    Next your going to blame the onion.
    The people who believe whatever shit they read on facebook would otherwise have believed whatever crap their neighbors told them about something they heard from a friend of a friend.
    Donald Trump won because of Clinton. There is no way around that.
    If a person with decades of experience runs against someone who has no experience in politics and has no organized campaign (according to the media at least), and still loses, there is no one else to blame.
     
  • by Proudrooster ( 580120 ) on Wednesday November 09, 2016 @11:13PM (#53253433) Homepage

    Donald Trump won for the following reasons.

    1. The Mainstream media (MSM) kept telling everyone HRC was going to win, so everyone in rural America and flyover country made 100% sure their vote counted, and wow, did it!

    2. The MSM would repeat anything and everything Donald tweeted or posted to Facebook for ratings and the hopes of discrediting him as a clown. This only gave him free press and brought things that were previously politically correct to the forefront for discussion.

    3. Trump won, not because everyone wanted Trump, but because the people are collectively sick of the Federal Government constantly intruding in everything from small business to healthcare to trans-gendered high school locker-rooms. The people are sick of being called racist, biggoted, hatemongers or worse anytime they exercise their right to free speech and speak out against the never ending Federal Government Mandates. Trump won because he talked about all the unpopular things like illegal immigration, unfair trade deals, and the collapse of the middle class. Trump and Pence visited rural America and flyover country. They spent time there campaigning, yelling, screaming, brawling, and listening. Trump spent the last hours of election eve in Grand Rapids, Michigan a city with little political power and one that barely matters due to it's geographic proximity to rural northern michigan.

    That is why Trump won. It is not because of Facebook.

    Just like the UK, it was a full out revolt. This is how a democracy is supposed to work when they feel they aren't being heard. "The People" of the United States were heard this election.

    It's all going to be ok. Trump will not destroy America. There is no need to move to Canada. The president is not king and only has a limited amount of power. The pendulum will swing back the other way for awhile and it will either work and benefit the USA or it won't.

    In any case, it is time to stop fighting, yelling, screaming and come together to run the country again for the benefit of all. It will all be ok.

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