, Columnist
Maybe Facebook Is Broken
How can you stop people from sharing biased and misleading stuff?
Exploiting the vulnerable.
Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThis article is for subscribers only.
Revelations about Russia's use of Facebook, Google and Twitter to sow discord in the U.S. have led to a lot of discussion about how to keep propaganda out of our social media feeds. Proposals include abandoning "likes," making people use their real names, and regulating, altering or even eliminating the algorithms the companies use to decide who sees what.
But what if the problem of propaganda in social media has no solution? I, for one, am beginning to think that it might be endemic.