# Social Media Gave Birth to Fake News Take Facebook as an example. **The ==problem== with Facebook ==ensued when it graduated from being a walled-off social platform== where college kids exchanged drunk photos for laughs** (back then you actually had to have a university e-mail address to sign up), **==to being a place where people inform themselves about the daily events and politics==. At that point ==Facebook turned from a social platform to a mass media==, and ‘fake news’ was born simply because Facebook ==couldn't compete with the editorial integrity of== its elders (==TV, print==, etc.)**.[^1] [^1]: Although one would entirely be justified in questioning that integrity to being with. See [[The Road to Damascus]]. That integrity is due to two things. One is simply the fact that all of the other mass media have matured and Facebook hasn't had the time to, although they may be getting there (see [Facebook Unveils Details of its Content Oversight Board](https://www.economist.com/business/2020/01/30/facebook-unveils-details-of-its-content-oversight-board)). The other is that **==in all the other mass media the role of opinion leaders was reserved for the elite. Now every kid on YouTube can become one==** (see [[Two-Step Flow]] and [[Enlightenment and the Righteous Mind Steven Pinker & Jonathan Haidt]] which also covers this). In discussing this topic with DeAnna, she introduced me to two pertinent mass communications concepts: the [[Two-Step Flow]] and the [[Uses and Gratifications Theory]]. ## See Also - [[Rise of Social Media Could Be Linked to The Rise of Populism]] - [[Enlightenment and the Righteous Mind Steven Pinker & Jonathan Haidt]] which also covers this topic. [[Jonathan Haidt]] raises the integrity point through the declining age of content creators. - [[291 – Jonathan Haidt The Case Against Social Media]] - A recent study has shown that fake news is indeed more prevalent among the far-right, than in all other partisan groups. See [[The Far-Right is Much More Susceptible to Fake News]].