The Three Steps Are All the Same Step

In late 2016, fake news became the explanation for everything: Trump’s win, Brexit, the far right gaining ground across Europe. Someone shared something false, and it spread, and now the world was different. The response was predictably scattered—platform regulation, criminal penalties for misinformation, strongly worded open letters to Mark Zuckerberg. The assumption underlying all of it was that Facebook was a neutral infrastructure that had been misused, rather than a machine specifically engineered to maximize engagement with content that provokes strong feelings, which is precisely the kind of content that tends not to be true.

My three steps for solving the fake news problem on Facebook: delete your account. That’s all three. The problem and the platform are the same object, and one of them you actually control.