What The New Facebook Tool Misses

Facebook’s latest mea culpa in the Russian manipulation debacle is another example of missing the true potency of social media and focusing on the easy-to-track-but-minorly-important data.

According to an article in USA Today, Facebook’s new tool will “show you if you liked or followed fake Russian accounts spreading falsehoods during the 2016 presidential election on Facebook or Instagram.”

However, so many more people saw that content than liked or followed those pages or accounts. And the tool will not show if that content appeared in your newsfeed because it was liked, shared, or commented on by a friend.

Social media is an amazing way to get your ideas into the world. But since it seems like more and more people are reading without clicking, there is no good way to track how many people your posts resonate with. Likes and followers are a very small part of the picture.

This tool suggests Facebook is doing the minimum to placate the government and/or they have no idea how potent their platform really is.