"Hey, Mark, you encouraged foreign interests to meddle in a Presidential election by creating a super easy interface to lie to America and not vetting at all. You wanna quit doing that?"


"Make me."

This is going to be THE issue of the 21st Century: the regulation of lies, insanity and reprehensible people on the internet. There are people out there arguing that, "It's my right to watch the New Zealand mosque shooting! Banning 8chan for cheering it on is CENSORSHIP!" Yes. Some things we don't need to see, like the deaths of real human beings who did not consent to being broadcast to the world in their final, desperate moments for people to spit on. Or, say, naked and exploited minors. Some things, when you look at them, you farking hurt people.

Again, right now, most media on the internet is set up to feed you engaging content - so you'll keep clicking and view ads. If you have low critical thinking skills and engage with one conspiracy theory, the internet will feed you all the conspiracy theories, and hook you up with some other people who have also been exposed to all the conspiracy theories, so they can shore you up. Same with other fringe beliefs, like white supremacy, anti-vaxx and the incel movement. Social ostracism, which used to be the price for acting a twat, no longer works. The internet will hook you up with a lot of friends who believe anything you'd like to believe. And you can encourage each other to ACT on those beliefs. We have to decide what we're going to do about that, and who's legally liable when one of these net-assisted groups blows up in a public place.

It was always possible for bad people to communicate with each other and form groups, but we now have companies whose business model depends on making that happen. People like Zuck there who make money off making it as easy as possible for anonymous people to lie to you - and other people who are WAY dumber than you and won't vet the clever meme they agree with before they spread it around. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and others have NO incentive to change. The government is the only entity with enough power to make it happen. Which sucks, because have you seen our government lately? Odds are, the Trump Administration is perfectly happy with lies and liars and dangerous actors proliferating unchecked. AND we have an really farking important election coming up.

Are we boned? We may be boned.