Facebook's role in Brexit-- and the threat to Democracy: A TED talk/book esp for British Youth

[hlthe2b]

Link to tweet

In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalladr digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK's super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Tracking the result to a barrage of misleading Facebook ads targeted at vulnerable Brexit swing voters -- and linking the same players and tactics to the 2016 US presidential election -- Cadwalladr calls out the "gods of Silicon Valley" for being on the wrong side of history and asks: Are free and fair elections a thing of the past?

This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. And an interesting TED talk about how to combat the personalized lies on Facebook

Claire Wardle is the founder of First Draft News, a charity that fights misinformation. She recently set up the Coalition to Integrate Values into the Information Commons (Civic). It aims to build new infrastructure for quality information, something she described as a "Wikipedia of trust".

At TED, she asked "citizens of the internet" - whether everyday users, journalists, educators or software developers - to take part in the project, which will build a depository of the rumours, memes and propaganda circulating online. It will attempt to throw light on where they came from and suggest ways to filter such content in future.
...
It was not good enough for Facebook and Google to have their own fact checkers, or even for governments to regulate the web. Such viral content needed to be gathered, stored and analysed in an open database, she said.

It is also time to stop using the term "fake news", which itself has become a false narrative.

"Fake news covers lies, rumours, conspiracy theories but it is also used as a term by politicians around the world to attack a free and independent press," she said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47983756

I can't find the TED talk itself online yet; here she is a couple of years ago:

A Wired writeup: https://www.wired.com/story/claire-wardle-ted-2019-crowdsource-against-misinformation/