Facebook was accused of influencing the decision of Americans in voting for the next US President. Before the election, fake news about both Presidential candidates went viral and was posted on Facebook. This viral fake news spread like a virus that caused reactions and comments from people around the globe.
While Trump and his supporters rejoice in victory when he defeated rival Hillary Clinton, this question was then raised: "How did Trump win the election?" This question became the most asked question on different social media sites and TV programs. However, Facebook did not escape the anger and accusations from the anti-Trump community. Now, people believed that Facebook had a big role in the election results due to the fake news that was posted online.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg cleared all accusations against his company during an interview with David Kirkpatrick at the Techonomy conference in Half Moon Bay, California. Zuckerberg believes that there is a certain "profound lack of empathy" in saying that that the only reason why someone of the voters had voted the way they did is because they saw some fake news on the social media website.
As Zuckerberg strongly and clearly denied that Facebook manipulated people's decisions and has no role in the recent election result that made Donald Trump the winner, there could have been something that these accusations against Facebook are based from.
The Pew Research Center found recently that 44 percent of Americans get at least some of their news from Facebook. And just recently, Buzzfeed releases a recent analysis shows that of more than 1,000 posts shared on Facebook from several news sites showed that 38 percent of the posts on hyper-right wing sites were either partly or entirely false, as well as 19 percent of those on hyper-left wing pages. And in contrast, 99.3 percent of the posts on mainstream sites that Buzzfeed analyzed were partly or entirely truthful.
However, Facebook did has nothing to do with the election results, but it was used as a medium to spread False News that directly caught people's attention. Though this news posted were false, people have the tendency on believing it and will likely share it with others using Facebook.
The Facebook false news was just half of the ingredients that made Trump win. According to CNN Politics, Trump channeled the fury of average Americans against Washington. He tapped into their anxiety about the present and the fear of the future, spoke of the pain they felt about working hard and getting left behind. And in doing so, he eviscerated every convention about politics. Thus, it was clear that Trump won because of his unorthodox political style.
Whether People hate or like Donald Trump, and whether Facebook is to be blame or not, one thing is sure: Donald Trump is the newly-elected US President.
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