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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.

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It’s been a while since I’ve posted here, and since I posted my views on the Electoral College. TL;DR is that I think with state representation handled in the Senate and proportional representation represented in the House, that the Presidential election should be based only on the popular vote, and since the Electoral College just repeats proportional representation with a little added weight to less-populated states, the College should be abolished. To do so would require a Constitutional Amendment, not likely to pass so-called “Red States”.

I learned earlier this week that there is in fact a movement, called the “National Popular Vote Compact”, which does not require an amendment to the U.S. Constitution amendment, but rather is down to the states to amend their own constitutions to pledge all their Electoral College delegates to the winner of the popular vote, which would be a de facto end to the Electoral College. And it is a fair ways to completion – 18 states have already passed the measure, representing 209 electoral votes.

The compact would not actually be enforced until at least 270 electoral votes are represented, which would represent the majority of the college and therefore choose the winner of the election. So 61 more electoral votes are needed, at which point the popular vote winner would be elected president, regardless of the remaining states. Until then, the old rules remain in effect.

Nevada is close to passing, but the measure still needs to pass both houses again before it can go to the voters, no sooner than 2026. They represent 6 votes. All the other perpetual “battleground” states have either passed it in one of their houses, or are at least discussing it, representing 87 votes. More than enough, but there is still a long way to go before they could potentially join the compact.

So many problems would be solved – no worries about faithless electors, or constitutional crises over certifications and challenges to the votes, or legal challenges seeking to delay the certifications forcing the election out of the hands of the people completely.

Let’s get ‘er done.

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