Fake news is not the real problem
I&#x27;ve been thinking about this a lot as news articles like this one[1] come up in my feed.<p>This whole anti-tech Russian backlash has me so down trodden. Like <i>who cares</i> if Russia bought ads? <i>Who cares</i> if Russia uses those sites and tweets or shares a photo or whatever. I learned long ago to tune out ads and not trust anything I read on the internet, or at least read with a hefty helping of salt.<p>I wish the outcome of all these revelations about how Russia (and I&#x27;m sure other countries or random people or corporations with various interests) was using facebook, twitter, instagram, etc, was for people to go, &quot;oh, that&#x27;s good to know. I guess I should believe whatever random posts I come across less.&quot; Not, &quot;Uh oh! These services and ads are only for our certain, pre-approved uses, and we need to make laws enforcing that.&quot;<p>We could have used these as a nice ol&#x27; inoculation in the meme war and improved ordinary people&#x27;s understanding of just how the internet works (and doesn&#x27;t work).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;raju&#x2F;status&#x2F;965023245459214336?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=&amp;stream=top-stories" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;raju&#x2F;status&#x2F;965023245459214336?utm_sourc...</a>