Not trying to speak for the original poster, but what I took away from the argument is that when FB is "truly social", involving real issues, the potential rewards are sufficiently high that misinformation becomes valuable, thus dangerous. When it sticks to birthdays and cat pictures, there's no incentive to go hostile. Think of it as being somewhat similar to the arguments about the Flash Crash regarding HFT and liquidity: that HFT is great for liquidity until you need it, at which point it goes away[1].
I agree with others that detecting misinformation in the general case likely requires a theory of mind, and so something approaching "real" AI. I also agree that FB has a serious problem on their hands. And I'm so very glad I don't use it.
[1] I advance no comment here about the correctness of that; just a comparison to illustrate what seems like an overlooked point.
This is the same as reddit. As social platforms get larger they starts diverging from their original userbase (programmers/geeks for reddit, college students for facebook) to apply to a wider and wider audience. Eventually the wider audience starts to look a whole lot like the demographics of a whole country (or maybe the world), and it becomes a platform with as many arguments as society in general.
The solution to not becoming a battleground which is inherantly destabilizing to the platform is to not grow, or only grow in a single direction. State up front what your targeted user base is and keep to them. NeoGAF as a "gamers only" forum will survive a very long time, for instance.
Facebook has sidestepped it by becoming a personal community for each user, but whenever they try to connect that personal community to the wider world through "shared" news, "shared" trends etc that are not personalized it causes a big ruckus.
I agree with others that detecting misinformation in the general case likely requires a theory of mind, and so something approaching "real" AI. I also agree that FB has a serious problem on their hands. And I'm so very glad I don't use it.
[1] I advance no comment here about the correctness of that; just a comparison to illustrate what seems like an overlooked point.