Facebook And Steve Bannon Hacked The Media. And They Won't Stop.

[pecosbob]

Let’s talk about Steve Bannon—I’d like to say “one last time” but who are we kidding? Regardless of the election outcome, we know that America’s political and media ecosystem has been inexorably changed by a racist novel-loving, dual collar-wearing media entrepreneur from Norfolk, Virginia. And if you thought the Bannon story was over after he got booted from the White House, or after he got pushed out of Breitbart News, or after his arrest by Postal Service agents this summer—you were wrong. Like a bad penny, Bannon keeps coming back, and in the closing weeks of this high-stakes election, he has been hauling out all of his old tricks to accomplish one simple goal: Sow chaos and confusion about Joe Biden, by any means necessary.

It was Bannon who shopped dubious material, supposedly off a Hunter Biden laptop, to the New York Post and other news outlets. It was people in Bannon’s circles who have been desperately trying to “pizzagate” Biden with baseless rumors. It is Bannon and Rudy Giuliani who, as my colleagues David Corn and Dan Friedman have comprehensively reported, keep pushing ever thinner and more loathsome allegations to every right-wing outlet site around. And while mainstream media are not being hoodwinked as much as they were in the past, it doesn’t matter as much anymore because it’s easier—and more profitable—than ever to pump propaganda directly into America’s political bloodstream.

Facebook made Bannon and Breitbart, and it’s clear that it will enable the next Bannon, the next Breitbart, and the next Trump. It will continue to allow users to be drenched with lies that separate them from their loved ones, their savings, and their own political best interests. It will permit the disinformation machines to keep going, and going.

Unless we break those machines—by building a better model for news. One where stories inspire action, not outrage and hate; where investigations enlighten instead of obfuscating; where opinion pieces advance ideas instead of cementing prejudice. And where publishers approach their audience not as “eyeballs” to be monetized, but as partners.

read more at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/facebook-bannon-trump/

[callous taoboy]

1. Interesting and disturbing. This story which was linked inside the one you posted

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/qanon-families-friends
resonates deeply with me as I feel like I have lost my two brothers to the FB algorithm sewage pit, and has resulted in the separation of my wonderful SIL from my irreparably brain-washed brother. This is a surreal dilemma we've all been drawn into thanks to hucksters like Bannon.

[pecosbob]

2. I had to rescue my little brother who had become a dittohead while I was away in the Navy

I can sympathize. It took several years and a degree in history for him to see more clearly. Now he teaches American Literature and has become an authority on Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass'. The book I made him read when I first came back was Howard Zinn's 'A People History of the United States.' But this was decades ago...it's more difficult now with misinformation displacing information. Scary stuff.

[callous taoboy]

3. I need to reread People's History. I don't think

my brothers will get pulled back to reality. One of them seems willing to sacrifice 46 years of marriage to a wonderful person.