Right in the centre - Who do you trust anyway?
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- Published on Thursday, February 15, 2018
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner & Press
Social media, and Facebook, in particular has drawn a lot of attention in recent history. Even Facebook has been critical of its own performance as they begin to fathom that they have almost no control over their content. Last year, it is reported that they shut down five million FB sites as the content was inaccurate, illegal or immoral. I would suggest that if they are trying to weed out the sites that are inaccurate, illegal or immoral then they have a long way to go yet.
Unlike locally owned and operated media such as this paper, or local city newspapers and some radio and TV stations, Facebook has almost no control over content. People can, and do post, just about everything that spills out of the mind and mouth with little or no regard for truth or accuracy. As I have said many times, news that can’t be verified is at best useless and, at worst, dangerous. Asking Facebook to get control of its content is akin to asking a volcano to ask its lava flow to form itself into a city.
Unilever, a major company that spends a huge amount of money on web advertising is threatening to pull its advertising from digital platforms that it says have become a “swamp” of fake news, racism, sexism and extremism.
That is quite a statement for a large corporation as they tend to worship at any altar that will spit out cash. It sounds like Unilever doesn’t want to be associated with the raging bull that Facebook has become.
It all comes down to a few basic principles. People want news, entertainment and ad content that is accurate and reliable. They tire easily with lies, outrage and general inaccuracy. They want news they can trust and they want it about things that affect them directly. On the internet, national, international and even local news has little chance of being verifiable.
When it comes to simple entertainment, how many videos of cats playing, dogs sleeping with babies and somebody’s breakfast does a person need in a day?
Facebook has been a huge financial success but that may well plateau or even fall away. More and more, people are asking for accuracy and neither Facebook nor the internet can guarantee that result. Because web based news sources are so open-sourced and subject to manipulation, their ability to be accurate may never be reached. As long as there is no editing and no accountability, web based accuracy will never be reached. With literally millions of anonymous reporters, accuracy and accountability are impossible goals.
Without accurate and accountable news, Facebook will have trouble keeping viewers let alone increasing their numbers and with that Unilever’s decision may be adopted by many other advertisers.
