Author: Ryan Fairbanks

Please stop giving bad press good engagement. What this means is that when you engage with fake news, dishonest journalism, and “click bait” meant to illicit reaction or feedback, all you’re doing is rewarding bad behavior.

When an article comes out with a heavy bias and you can’t help but react and comment, all you’re doing is encouraging more bad press. In the modern era of social media algorithms, the more time you spend on a post, the more likely you are to bring your followers and friends to that same content. When you interact and comment, the same thing occurs: you drive viewership to the very thing you view. If that content is bad press, even if it is objectively incorrect, the time and attention you give it only spreads the bad. We get false and/or misleading stories written about us all of the time; what we have learned is that the more we interact and react to those stories, the more popular they become. We end up using our influence to direct good people to dishonest content with the small hope that they give our response more weight than the media turned against us, often by malicious actors. Here’s the worst part: Whether the new viewer believes our side of the story or not, we have still helped generate real income for the fake news source and therefore incentivized the reproduction of more bad-faith “news” from these organizations. As hard at it is to leave it alone, the better we’ll all be when we can turn our other cheek to content geared against us.

If it sounds like we’re talking in code, it’s for the same reason. The last thing we should be doing is driving good people, their precious time and attention, to bad press.

Please stop.

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