{"id":21077,"date":"2016-11-17T11:25:59","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T11:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fifteen-staging.fifteen.dev\/blog\/google-and-facebook-to-ban-fun\/"},"modified":"2016-11-17T11:25:59","modified_gmt":"2016-11-17T11:25:59","slug":"google-and-facebook-to-ban-fun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/blog\/google-and-facebook-to-ban-fun\/","title":{"rendered":"Google and Facebook to Ban Fun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Internet giants Google and Facebook have announced that only serious news articles will be allowed on their networks after Donald Trump’s election was blamed on \u2018too much fun\u2019 on the web.<\/p>\n

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said: \u2018People are idiots. Apparently they can\u2019t tell the difference between an obvious joke and the real thing.<\/p>\n

\u2018People were having a laugh sharing satirical stories and memes about Trump and the result is they\u2019ve voted in a joke president!<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s clear that people having fun on the internet has dangerous consequences, so it\u2019s only serious stuff on Facebook from now on!\u2019<\/p>\n

Or at least that’s what you might think if you only read the headlines and the first few paragraphs of stories you see online.<\/p>\n

Or can\u2019t tell the difference between an obvious joke and the real thing.<\/p>\n

Primary purpose<\/h3>\n

However, there is a serious side to Google and Facebook’s recent announcements<\/a> that they would cease allowing sites that publish \u2018fake news\u2019 to profit from their respective advertising networks.<\/p>\n

Google wants to \u2018restrict ad serving on pages that misrepresent, misstate, or conceal information about the publisher, the publisher’s content, or the primary purpose of the web property\u2019 while Facebook have created a ‘taskforce’ to address the issue.<\/p>\n

The intention is to hamstring sites that deliberately spread made-up stories as clickbait, but where does that leave satirical news sites for whom misrepresentation is part of the joke? And who is going to decide what \u2018fake\u2019 actually means?<\/p>\n

Nanny statement<\/h3>\n

Although some are just plain hoaxes<\/a>, many of the \u2018fake\u2019 stories being cited as examples of the misrepresentation Google and Facebook want to clamp down on are in fact genuine events portrayed in a skewed fashion by partisan sources<\/a> (which, more or less, is basically all news everywhere), while others are \u2018incredibly convincing\u2019 spoofs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But in any of these cases, attempts to nanny us by hiding these links would insult the intelligence of users. By having such stories removed from your newsfeeds, you are being told you are stupid to be trusted; too dumb to recognise a hoax, a disreputable source or a satire when you see one; that you\u2019ll believe anything you read without question.<\/p>\n

While nobody wants their newsfeeds cluttered with clickbait, surely the judgement about the value of a news item rests with the reader? One person\u2019s scurrilous conspiracy blog is another person\u2019s vital independent news outlet, while one person’s scandalous tabloid is another’s crusading voice, and so on.<\/p>\n

All news is subjective and assuming that Google and Facebook won\u2019t have the resources to independently fact-check every single story<\/i>, the new policies will amount to arbitrary, pre-emptive rulings of what is worthy to be displayed on a social network.<\/p>\n

Isn’t the point of social networks that we<\/i> are the arbiters?<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t handle the spoof!<\/h3>\n

We don\u2019t yet (and probably never will) know how Google and Facebook will determine what news is \u2018real\u2019 and what is \u2018fake\u2019, but there are naturally concerns that benign satirical sites such as The Onion, The Daily Mash or Southend News Network<\/a> will become collateral damage.<\/p>\n

If these publishers are identified as misrepresenting the purpose of their content – which their plausible headlines and lead paragraphs are entirely designed to do – they will surely be caught out by the \u2018fake filter\u2019 and will be starved of traffic and revenue as a result.<\/p>\n

It would be a great shame if peddling satire on the internet ceases to be a worthwhile exercise because Powers That Be don\u2019t trust us to judge for ourselves what news is real or not. (And that\u2019s without even opening the can of conspiracy worms that says it might be entirely convenient for Google and Facebook to \u2018disappear\u2019 sites that regularly satirise institutions like Google and Facebook.)<\/p>\n

Satire is not simply an excuse for a cheap laugh and some silly made-up names. It is an important part of our culture that dates back centuries – nay, millennia. It is an art form that allows the ridiculous elements of our society to be examined and challenged. It\u2019s no coincidence that the first \u2018satirical\u2019 (named after the satyr of Greek mythology) plays were performed by the same civilisation who invented democracy. Often there is more truth in a deftly observed spoof than a dozen pieces of earnest journalism.<\/p>\n

True believers<\/h3>\n

For as long as there has been satire, there has also been gossip. The spreading of dodgy rumours and urban myths did not begin with the internet, but there was never a power capable of stopping pub bores spinning a spurious yarn. Google and Facebook are acting like nosey landlords, lurking by your table ready to tell you off if your conversation veers into hearsay or parody they don’t reckon much to.<\/p>\n

If Google and Facebook think they are capable of prejudging what news is worthy, they are more na\u00efve than people who share spoof news stories alongside their outraged comments of \u2018You couldn\u2019t make this up!\u2019<\/p>\n

When it comes to the news, a mistruth can spread just as easily from the front pages of widely circulated newspapers as from the bedroom of a malcontent who knows how to knock up a reasonable-looking hoax news page. We shouldn\u2019t be reading anything<\/i> without considering its veracity and the credibility of the source, and this particularly applies to our beloved mainstream media.<\/p>\n

Rather than reducing the amount of \u2018dangerous\u2019 fake or spoof news we see, Google and Facebook will effectively be rubber-stamping the news stories it does allow as \u2018genuine\u2019. Far more dangerous than exposing gullible people to absurd pastiches of current events, creating a stream of officially sanctioned \u2018real\u2019 news will encourage users to take things at face value all the more.<\/p>\n

Google and Facebook may not want to ban fun, but they are edging towards banning critical thinking.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Internet giants Google and Facebook have announced that only serious news articles will be allowed on their networks after Donald Trump’s election was blamed on \u2018too much fun\u2019 on the web. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said: \u2018People are idiots. Apparently they can\u2019t tell the difference between an obvious joke and the real thing. \u2018People were […]","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":21078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGoogle and Facebook to Ban Fun - Fifteen<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Google and Facebook have announced that only serious news articles will be allowed on their networks after Donald Trump's election.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/blog\/google-and-facebook-to-ban-fun\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Google and Facebook to Ban Fun\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Google and Facebook have announced that only serious news articles will be allowed on their networks after Donald Trump's election.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/blog\/google-and-facebook-to-ban-fun\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fifteen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FifteenDesign\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-11-17T11:25:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.fifteendesign.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/FunBan.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1524\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"840\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sam Doyle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sam Doyle\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Google and Facebook to Ban Fun - 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