Troll Farming: The Effects On People And Social Media

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Humans desire the truth and nothing but the complete truth. Humans buy into anything if they want to believe it. Fake news and false information is nothing new, but with social media it has become more common and more dangerous. Before the 2016 presidential elections Russia began creating ‘troll farms’ intending to sway americans opinions and create havoc. Troll farming is affecting our society without people even realizing it and social media apps need to improve their efforts on banning these accounts. The effects of troll farms on people and social media is a greater issue than people realize. Mike Snider has been working for USA Today for 28 years. He has written hundreds of articles for the USA Today and a majority of them have been …show more content…

Yes, that would be very simple if Americans would take the time to fact check themselves. But, how many Americans are actually going to fact check something they read? Very little. Eileen Brown is a social business consultant who has been working with collaborative technologies for 20 years. Eileen creates the social business, energises communities and ignites social commerce and social CRM. She develops social business strategy, customer reach and online branding. Eileen understands that businesses need to be honest and should not want to spread false information to their customers. Eileen found several interesting statistics about media postings and fact-checking. “It discovered that 86 percent of Americans who read news articles on social media do not always fact-check the information they read.” (Brown). Only 14 percent of people actually fact check the information they read online, that number is to low to make a difference against fighting these organizations. “.. 61 percent [of people] who read articles on social media sites are likely to like, share, or comment on content shared by a friend.’, ‘ ...Millennials and Gen Z are social news junkies, using social media as their main source of news. They are about three-times more likely to trust most or all of the news from these alternative news sites compared with adults aged from 55 to 64. Thirty-five percent of Americans said that their lack of trust in mainstream media for credible news has caused them to seek alternative news sources online.” (Brown). People are at least realizing they are reading fake news, but how do they know the next online news site they go to is not spreading false information as well? Millennials are the biggest concern, in the 2020 elections they are going to vote and going to learn about these candidates somehow before

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