Should paper manufacturers be responsible for the content that’s printed? Should ink manufacturers be held liable for what people do with it? Should the post office be held liable for messages being mailed? Remember — Facebook is voluntary. Nobody is forced to be there and if there are uncomfortable messages to which you are being exposed, turn it off. Sign out. Quit using it.

You seem to have an almost hysterical reaction to this story. Why are you so sensitive? Did Nazis and violence and Red Brigade terrorists and Communists and racists and Islamic extremists not spread their messages effectively before Facebook? Has the rate of violence from these groups increased since Facebook?

I don’t have stats in front of me, but I would argue that violence, terrorism and hate has decreased since Facebook. Sure we hear more about it now, but that’s a result of media penetration and not an actual increase in incidents. I would invite data that suggests otherwise.

One might argue that awareness of hate groups has increased because of Facebook thus leading to increased marginalization of their ideas.

Blaming the medium for the message is fascinating. The disease of hate and totalitarianism spread quite effectively before Facebook. We might argue that Facebook has actually reduced such things because it provides a marketplace where ideas can be evaluated and either accepted or shunned much more efficiently.

Banning the communication of ideas doesn’t stop the communication of ideas. We learned that from Solzhenitsyn. We should encourage more openness, less censorship. Sunlight disinfects.

You make some good points. It's curious to see people attacking Facebook so vehemently, as if using it were somehow obligatory. I don't see much appeal in Facebook myself, but I don't feel the need to force my views on others. Is the Overton window shifting toward outright censorship? It's an interesting question.

Your comment was downvoted a lot though. Must've hit a nerve :-)

> Should paper manufacturers be responsible for the content that’s printed

No, but publishers should be, and they are. FB is a publisher, a distributor of content. They are not the creator of electrons or LED displays via which your content is distributed, which would be the closest analogy to your paper and ink manufacturer.

No, the real publisher is that dumbass Facebook friend of mine, who shared a "fake news" story. And that dumbass Facebook friend of yours who saw the post of my dumbass friend and reshared it further.

That's the writer, the publisher is the entity providing the means of distribution. That's FB.

I don't see how they can do that. There is little qualitative difference between what you probably mean by "fake news" and the stuff that mainstream news outlet put out. To stay safe, Facebook would either have to refuse allowing any news content on their site, or else turn into a world's leading intelligence agency / think tank to validate all of it.

The qualitative difference is that traditional news outlets are held accountable for their "fake news". The New York Times tries not to publish untrue claims, and if it does, it will retract them and issue a correction or apology. If it won't do that, there are libel laws and other legal remedies.

Fake news on social media is subject to none of these controls. Facebook is a multiplier of some of the worst tendencies of human beings, and it lacks the institutions that the rest of society has evolved over centuries to contain those tendencies.

Facebook is not a publisher like the New York Times is, and it's very disingenuous to suggest otherwise.

I don't think it matters really. If Facebook's current practices cause, enable, or magnify harm to society, then there are levers that should be pulled to minimize that harm.

Facebook is, in part, a tool for distributing misleading information on a massive scale. We control tools that cause harm even if those tools are inert or even beneficial if they're not used by malicious people. Facebook has no institutional or economic reason to reduce the harm it causes, and it's the role of government to reduce harm when the market has failed to do so.