In media news, Facebook is coming under fire from critics who say the social media giant helped swing the election for Donald Trump by failing to crack down on an epidemic of fake news articles targeting Hillary Clinton. Such articles drew millions of clicks and featured such phony headlines as “FBI agent suspected in Hillary Clinton email leaks found dead in apparent murder-suicide.” Facebook said this week it will stop allowing advertisements to fake news sites, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has denied the practice played a role in Trump’s victory, and Facebook has not targeted fake news stories posted to users’ news feeds. One member of Facebook’s board of directors, Peter Thiel, supported Trump’s campaign with a $1.25 million donation. Speaking via videostream at a conference in Oakland this week, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that Silicon Valley companies like Facebook have become too powerful.
Edward Snowden: “To have one company that has enough power to reshape the way we think, well, I don’t think I have to describe how dangerous that is.”
