Buzzfeed News ran a piece a few weeks ago(?)(can we start using dates again on the internet?) making the case that the best way to grow a Facebook page is by making up inflammatory nonsense.

Buzzfeed News tells us what we already know:

The best way to attract and grow an audience for political content on the world’s biggest social network is to eschew factual reporting and instead play to partisan biases using false or misleading information that simply tells people what they want to hear.

I know, I know. Shocking.

But to see the evidence they put forth brings it into perspective. Technology companies are going to have to figure out how to solve for their coexistance with really important real world events.

This is going to be hairy business.

Facebook isn’t a media company. Facebook proper is an advertising company. They sell ads that are run against content. They don’t actually make content.

So how much of an editorial role should they play? Is it their business to edit for content or truth? Frankly, given the power they have over what almost everyone sees on a daily basis, getting into the fact checking game could lead down a scary road of its own.

But something has to give.