I will come across an article about Facebook and the fake news. How do we combat this? How can we trust a company like this to not censor different viewpoints (you can't)?
The answer is STEEM.
How will this work? Please understand that over the past few weeks, I have come to put a lot of my faith on Steem which is a direct result of your posts and posts of some of the other fellow Steemians. But I am not sure I understand how Steem can be solution to all problems.
Take for example, the problem of fake news. How will Steem control it? It may as well become harder to control it here as there is no single point of truth. A fake news specially on issues which create deep divide among people can blow out of proportions on an unrestrained network like Steem.
What do you think?
Stuff that is fake or outright lies can be downvoted. That is the power of the community network. People decide what is relevant, not the corporate entity or its relationship with some sites.
On here, if something is totally off the mark, people can point that out. While we tend to have "opinion" pieces written now, at some point we might see a lot of serious news articles on here. Some will have perspective while others will have facts (or misfacts). On facebook, one can comment about a "news" story but it stays. On here, if enough people do it, it turns invisible. While still here, when one comes across it, it is harder to read and the comments will be there.
I understand how the system is supposed to work. However, I am doubtful whether it will always work that way especially in cases of politically, religiously or racially motivated posts. There have been many cases on FB itself where FB failed to identify such fake news which created widespread disruptions and rioting. Fake news specifically manufactured to incite violence is extremely hard to control. High SP is no sure guarantee of wisdom and cannot be relied upon to stop the spreading of such news. On the other hand, upvote by a whale can help spread such fake news.
Experience on Steemit of how low quality content by certain whales still make the trending charts shows that it's not always easy to stop spread of undesired content.
Point is, we will actually have to wait and see how this unfolds. It can turn out to be a great control on fake news or can add unnecessary fuel and aid it's spread.