Well, you’ve got ANOTHER one.
I know, “Don’t believe what you read on the Internet.” And especially true for social media in general. However, Facebook is “special”. Facebook is actively promoting patently false stories into people’s timelines, and from the comments, people are buying it.
This is especially evident on so-called “fan” pages. They get into your timeline because you like the team they “report” on, or you watch a show they provide “news” on.
It started with “engagement whoring”, as I call it. They post generally interesting info, getting people to engage. Most of the time its just regurgitated info from older posts, but it got engagements before so they post it again, word for word, including pictures – occasionally different but related pictures – and get more engagements. More engagements tickle the algorithms to push their posts into more people’s timelines, and get more engagements, lather, rinse, repeat the post again. I saw three “RIP” posts today for people who have been dead for years, but they were worded as if it happened yesterday.
Now, AI has entered the chat. These “fan” pages are posting AI-generated articles that sound interesting, have some “Just In” or “Breaking News”, may even take some real info, but create a completely fake article around it.
Right before the Super Bowl, a bunch of these fake articles started popping up on various Patriots “fan” pages. I won’t link to these pages as I don’t want to give them traffic. But I’ve seen that Tom Brady bought a stake in the Patriots right before the Super Bowl (he didn’t – he’s a minority owner of the Raiders); Patriots’ punter Bryce Baringer’s police officer brother was killed on traffic duty outside Levi Stadium right after the Super Bowl (ZERO news, not even sure he has a brother); and the one that REALLY pissed me off – a “New England” firefighter died of a stroke after working a ton of time “preparing” for the Super Bowl at Levi Stadium…the thing here is, the firefighter they mentioned was real, and did in fact tragically die a few days ago…but he wasn’t a New England firefighter, he was from Colorado, and wouldn’t have been working at a stadium in San Francisco. But they “wrote” and article and how the city of “New England” woke up in mourning, blah, blah, blah.
Meta/Facebook…you’re really trying to push AI. How about using that AI for some good? Detect this bullshit that your algorithms are pushing down unsuspecting user’s throats.
Oh, yeah, that’s right…you don’t care, as long as people click on your garbage regardless.
