Unreality Bytes

“Mr. Tucker’s post was shared at least 16,000 times on Twitter and more than 350,000 times on Facebook. The problem is that Mr. Tucker got it wrong.” We know there is a lot of fake news. But how does a little rumor turn into a widespread belief? The NYT’s excellent Sapna Maheshwari examines one story to provide a case study: How Fake News Goes Viral.

+ “Six months ago, Wade and his business partner, Ben Goldman, were unemployed restaurant workers. Now they’re at the helm of a website that gained 300,000 Facebook followers in October alone and say they are making so much money that they feel uncomfortable talking about it because they don’t want people to start asking for loans.” It’s a good time to be in the fake news business.

+ The viral photo of the Obama’s hug “was a triumph for Twitter, a rare occasion when the little bird out-sang its big blue brother. At Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, it was an alarm bell ringing loudly in the middle of the night, a call to action.” Alex Kantrowitz on what happened next and how the 2016 election blew up in Facebook’s face.

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