Facebook doesn’t know satire from lies, and your crazy uncle is confused

You may have noticed there’s an awful lot of fake stuff floating around on social media lately, especially on Facebook. If you haven’t noticed it, you might be one of the millions of gullible folks who believe anything.

Even Donald Trump, that guardian of all that is true and holy, recently shared a post on his Truth Social account claiming that his opponent (whom he hilariously calls names like Kamabla) had a rally at an airport where “nobody” showed up and that her campaign created an AI image falsely showing thousands of people there. Again, he insisted “nobody” was there.

That came as a shock to the thousands of nobodies who attended the event, not to mention the news media’s video cameras and Associated Press photographers and such. But Trump knows that lies get six times the clicks on Facebook compared to factual items. I imagine that number might be even higher on Truth Social. 

It’s only going to get worse as Harris keeps climbing in the polls while Trump rambles for an hour and a half about crowd sizes, “fake” polls and sharks — I mean real sharks, not folks like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone.

Facebook is not helping. They’ll let anything slide on there so long as you identify in the comments or something that the lie you are spreading is “satire.” Unfortunately, Facebook doesn’t know what satire is. A blatant lie designed to get clicks or misinform is not satire. The use of wit, irony or sarcasm to shed light on vice or ridiculousness would be satire. A false meme claiming Kid Rock is drawing more fans to his concerts than Taylor Swift is not funny or sarcastic and is dang sure not satire.

But Facebook lets it slide, and your crazy uncle who only watches Newsmax and the pillow dude’s podcasts because he thinks Fox News is too liberal believes it and shares it. And when Trump claims the election was rigged on November 6, he’s gonna stick that Kid Rock CD in his pickup truck and head straight to D.C. to avenge Trump once and for all.

I have friends — well Facebook “friends” anyway — who believe “nobody” was at that Kamala rally and that the photo is AI because Trump said so. And Trump’s sycophants agreed and shared it, too, including your crazy Uncle Bubba Joe. Of course, Facebook understands what a “friend” is about as much as they do what satire is.

I also have friends who are suspicious of fact-checkers and fact-checking sites. “Yeah, well, who’s fact-checking the fact-checkers? HUH?!” So, if I start a website that fact-checks the fact-checkers who rely on verifiably sourced references, y’all are gonna believe that? I seriously doubt it.

Anyway, this is just your regular reminder that not everything you see on Facebook or elsewhere on social media is correct. Here’s a sampling of falsehoods I’ve seen recently, including some from friends on the left. Granted, they don’t share as many fakes as my friends on the right, but some are giving it the old college try: