Since Trump’s election, misinformation a growing problem

There was the Arab Spring. There were stories of LGBTQ teens from small towns finding support online. At the same time, of course, the companies were racing to build the largest audiences possible, slice and dice their user data and make big profits by turning that information into lucrative targeted advertisements.

“They scaled, they built, they wanted to drive revenue as well as user base,” said technology analyst Tim Bajarin, president of consultancy Creative Strategies. “That was priority one and controlling content was priori- ty two. It should have been the other way around.”

That all got dicier once the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in November 2016 focused new attention on fake news and organized misinformation campaigns — not to mention the fact that some of the people grabbing these new social-media megaphones were wild conspiracy spinners who falsely call mass shootings a hoax, white nationalists who organize violent rallies and men who threaten women with rape and murder.

While the platforms may not have anticipated the influx of hate speech and meddling from foreign powers like Russia, North Korea and China, Bajarin said, they should have acted more quickly once they found it. “The fact is we’re dealing with a brave new world that they’ve allowed to happen, and they need to take more control to keep it from spreading,” he said.