Manipulation of the masses.

[Workingman]

Facebook has announced that it is going to promote "trustworthy" news (outlets), how very wonderful! So, it is going to decide what is trustworthy and what is not, eh? It, along with Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp, and others, will no doubt be deleting accounts it does not agree with, as has already happened.

Step forward the Mail, Star, Telegraph, NYT, Washington Post, Herald Tribune, El Pais, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel, Huffington Post and anyone else Facebook thinks is right (correct) thinking; and so the echo chamber is defined.

Don't these idiots understand that this will only drive these "alternative" views underground where they can be even more controversial and persuasive. Censorship does not work and never has. These monsters should have the oxygen of publicity so that they can then be challenged. That is the only way to defeat them.

[cromwell]

It's a battle for influence, isn't it?

By and large the main stream media supported Hilary Clinton. Clinton lost. In the UK the broadcast media supported Remain. Remain lost.

A bit late in the day what you might call "the establishment" have discovered that there are other sources of news besides the BBC and Sky; on line news. Places like Facebook. And the establishment and the MSM are determined to control these sources of news as far as they can, because they don't want any more Brexits or Trumps.

So right wing websites like Breitbart are going to be attacked. Sites like Guido Fawkes are going to be attacked. Organisations like Facebook and Google are going to be warned.

In fact in the UK we are going to go further. We have an organisation called Impress which seeks to control the press. As does the Leveson inquiry part 2, which some MP's are pushing for. Some people connected with Impress have already said that there are newspapers in the UK which they want to close down.

And then of course there are Hate Speech laws, which will be used to intimidate and close down debate on touchy subjects; subjects that politicians don't want to talk about and don't want other people talking about either.

Not a good outlook really.

[Workingman]

What bugs me is that these self-elected arbiters of what we can read, hear, think do and say condemn us as 'ists, 'phobes or purveyors of hate speech/crimes if we do not follow their right way of behaving..

We now find that No 10 is to have a 'fake news' rapid response team to be based in the Cabinet Office to monitor social media for what it calls "misinformation". I wonder if it will be monitoring board rooms, the traditional media and political parties for much the same thing?

It is all very Big Brotherish.