In particular, there’s a huge cluster of websites in English about health issues because they find that that content does really well.
And if they sign up, for example, for Google AdSense, an ad program, they can get money as people visit their sites and it’s pretty straightforward. So they tried election sites, and over time they all came to realize that the stuff that did the best was pro-Trump stuff. They got the most traffic and most traction.
.. And I think there was an element almost – in some of the people I was speaking to, there was almost an element of pride saying, you know, we’re here in this small country that most Americans probably don’t even think about, and we’re able to, you know, put stuff out and earn money and to run a business. And I think there was a bit of pride in that. One of the people that I spoke to, who was a bit older – he was in his 20s – you know, he said that yeah, I mean, people know that a lot of the content is false. But that’s what works.
.. They all said that when it came down to it, the fake stuff performed better on Facebook. And if you weren’t doing some stuff that was misleading or fake, you were going to get beat by people who were.
.. And then the other type of content that performed really well was, you know, memes, like a photo that just sort – kind of expressed a very partisan opinion. These – you know, they weren’t necessarily factually based, but they really kind of riled up the base. And for the pages that were partisan pages on the right and the left, if you had stuff that really appealed to people’s existing beliefs – really appealed to, you know, a negative perception of Hillary Clinton, a negative perception of Donald Trump – even if it, you know, completely bent the truth, that would perform much better than a sort of purely factual thing.
.. So at the core of this is – there’s two factors that are at play here. So one is a human factor and one is kind of a platform or algorithmic factor. So on the human side, there’s a lot of research out there going back a very long time that looks at sort of how humans deal with information. And one of the things that we love as humans – and this this affects all of us. We shouldn’t think of this as just being something for people who are very partisan. We love to hear things that confirm what we think and what we feel and what we already believe. It’s – it makes us feel good to get information that aligns with what we already believe or what we want to hear.
.. And on the other side of that is when we’re confronted with information that contradicts what we think and what we feel, the reaction isn’t to kind of sit back and consider it. The reaction is often to double down on our existing beliefs. So if you’re feeding people information that basically just tells them what they want to hear, they’re probably going to react strongly to that. And the other layer that these pages are very good at is they bring in emotion into it, anger or hate or surprise or, you know, joy. And so if you combine information that aligns with their beliefs, if you can make it something that strikes an emotion in them, then that gets them to react.
.. And that’s where the kind of platform and algorithms come in. Which is that on Facebook, you know, the more you interact with certain types of content, the more its algorithms are going to feed you more of that content. So if you’re reading stuff that aligns perfectly with your political beliefs, it makes you feel really good and really excited and you share it, Facebook is going to see that as a signal that you want more of that stuff. So that’s why the false misleading stuff does really well is because it’s highly emotion-driven.
.. Whereas when you come in as the debunker, what you’re doing is actively going against information that people are probably already, you know, willing to believe and that gets them emotionally. And to tell somebody I’m sorry that thing you saw and shared is not true is you coming in in a very negative way unfortunately.
And so the reaction is often for people to get defensive and to disagree with you. And just in general you just seem like kind of a spoil sport. You’re ruining the fun or you’re getting in the way of their beliefs. And a lot of times when I put debunkings out there, you know, some of the reactions I get are people saying, well, it might as well be true. You know, he could have said that or that could have happened. Or, of course, you get accusations that, you know, you’re biased. And so the debunkings just don’t appeal as much to us on a psychological level. There’s some emotional resistance to wanting to be wrong. That’s a very natural human thing. And they’re just not as shareable because the emotion there isn’t as real and raw as something that makes you angry, for example.
.. So the one that comes to mind right away, this is a story that was on a website that is made to look like ABC News but its domain is slightly different. And the story that was published, you know, long before the election claimed that a protester had been paid $3,500 to go and protest at Trump rally. And this fed into perceptions that the people who are against Trump were being paid by big interests.
And that story did pretty well on Facebook. It got a fair amount of engagement. But it was tweeted by Eric Trump. It was tweeted by Corey Lewandowski, who was a campaign manager for Donald Trump, and it was tweeted by Kellyanne Conway, who was his campaign manager, not that long before the election. So when you have people in positions of power and influence putting out fake news – and I want to say, you know, there’s no evidence that they knew it was fake and put it out there to fool people. I think in each case they genuinely believed it was true because, as we’ve discussed, I think it fed into the message their campaign wanted to put out.
..
One that was really popular actually was one that falsely claimed he had given a quote to People magazine many years ago basically saying that if I ever ran for president, I would run as a Republican because conservatives are so stupid they’ll believe anything. And this was turned into a meme.
It spread a lot on Facebook. It was debunked so many times. We debunked it at BuzzFeed. Snopes has debunked it. And it just kept going and going and going because this is something I think a lot of Democrats wanted to believe.
.. But – so I think anyone who believes that fake news won Trump the election is wrong. There’s no data to support that. And I say this as somebody who’s been looking at this data in a lot of different ways. There’s no smoking gun. There’s – I don’t think we’ll ever get it.
.. 75 percent of the time, the Americans who were shown a fake news headline and had remembered it from the election believed it to be accurate.
And that’s a really shocking thing. It’s impossible to go the next step and say, well, they voted because of that. But I think one of the things this election has shown is that people will believe fake news, misinformation will spread and people will believe it and it will become part of their worldview.
It’s Chicken or Fish
.. are there a few good elected men or women in the Republican Party who will stand up to the president’s abuse of power as their predecessors did during Watergate?
.. But we already know the answer: No.
The G.O.P. never would have embraced someone like Trump in the first place — an indecent man with a record of multiple bankruptcies, unpaid bills and alleged sexual harassments who lies as he breathes — for the answer to ever be yes.
.. Virtually all the good men and women in this party’s leadership have been purged or silenced; those who are left have either been bought off by lobbies or have cynically decided to take a ride on Trump’s Good Ship Lollipop to exploit it for any number of different agendas.
.. Are there tens of millions of good men and women in America ready to run and vote as Democrats or independents in the 2018 congressional elections and replace the current G.O.P. majority in the House and maybe the Senate?
Nothing else matters — this is now a raw contest of power.
.. they enjoy, exercising raw power against their opponents.
.. Democrats and independents should not be deluded or distracted by marches on Washington, clever tweets or “Saturday Night Live” skits lampooning Trump. They need power.
.. they have power and are not afraid to use it, no matter what the polls say.
.. they will use that power to cut taxes for wealthy people, strip health care from poor people and turn climate policy over to the fossil fuel industry until someone else checks that power
.. The party has lost its moral compass.
.. Just think about that picture of Trump laughing it up with Russia’s foreign minister in the Oval Office, a foreign minister who covered up Syria’s use of poison gas. Trump reportedly shared with him sensitive intelligence on ISIS, and Trump refused to allow any U.S. press in the room. The picture came from Russia’s official photographer. In our White House!
.. it is a threat to the rule of law,
freedom of the press,
ethics in government,
the integrity of our institutions,
the values our kids need to learn from their president and
America’s longstanding role as the respected leader of the free world.
Health Care Fantasyland
Why is the Republican Party having a Groundhog Day experience on health care, with its House leaders continuing to push for a bill only to go through the same cycle of having their own members rebel?
Because top Republicans still aren’t willing to grapple with reality.
They have spent years pretending that it’s easy to fix the health care system and lying about both Obamacare and their own proposals. They’re still doing it.
.. Ryan insisted — with no factual basis — that the new bill would protect the sick.
The Women Who Still Like Trump
their biggest plea is that he remember they elected him to be an unconventional politician.
.. I think that he’s going to do what he thinks is best. He doesn’t care what you think. I’m kind of that way, too, so I can respect that.
.. We got to be able to get birth control if we don’t have money. That was my love of Obama, my birth control was free. We need to care about 50 percent of the population and what they’re going to do. Especially the group of women that don’t have the means to pay for it. Jesus, say you’re working at Walmart and then you have a baby, what are you going to do? You’ve got to have the care.
.. Feminism feels very exclusive — if you don’t vote the same or feel the same on these platform issues like pro-choice, you can’t be part of their club. We have to give women voice and weave them into politics.
.. I’m not delusional to think that terrorist groups won’t send in people with these large groups of refugees here. You have to figure out a good way to fix this and keep America safe as well. Why wasn’t Saudi Arabia on that list? I know why they weren’t. We all know why. There are countries that we don’t want to upset or make angry because we think we need them. I was not a fan of the executive order, the way it was done.
.. I think Trump sometimes exaggerates things, but I don’t think he outright lies.
Most rational people know what he means.