We Must Move On/The Internet Must Evolve (News/Civic Activism)

I wrote the following last week:

"As with many Americans, I woke up today to the news that Donald Trump was declared President-elect of the United States of America. If you know me, you know where I stand. If you would like to discuss it with me, I would be more than happy to.

As I walked through downtown Boston, there was a massive protest near the Massachusetts State House. I stopped and watched them walk by yelling their emotional chants. Then, I thought about what their objective was. Donald Trump was elected through Constitutional means; we must acknowledge him as the next President of the United States. 

We must increase our participation in the political process. Voting every two (or four) years isn't often. We should be knowledgeable about what is going on; we should tell our Senators and Representatives where we stand on issues.

I hope he continues the poise he showed during his victory speech throughout his presidential term."

In my previous post before election day, I wrote that the internet needs to evolve in how we differentiate reliability of information. The result of the election made this issue prominent (Not sure if the result was different, we would be hearing about it as much). It's not hard to see that Facebook and Twitter affected the election dramatically.

If Facebook wants to stay relevant, the company must address this issue of fake or out-of-context news. Looking at my newsfeed, these misinformed articles (from both sides) are well over the 1% Mark Zuckerberg claimed it to be. Unfortunately, these articles seem to have the most shares and activity, making them even more prominent on the social network. Again, we need to evaluate how we look at sources of information; it is our responsibility as it is Facebook's.

There is also another aspect of the internet we need to focus on: civic activism on the internet. There are very active protests on Trump's choices for his cabinet and staff (Steve Bannon in particular). There are movements to write and call to their representatives in Congress about how they feel, which is a positive thing. And we hope they will listen.

But will there be a certain point where this fear and uncertainty fades and our desire for normalcy dissolves the activism?

We must remain active in the political process; maybe more now than ever before. But the current tools to do so are poor. We need better ways of communicating with our officials on the hill. The organization of messages is poor. We shouldn't need Facebook and Twitter posts with representative numbers on them. Shouldn't there be a single resource that an average citizen can go to and see where all of their representatives (from all levels of government) stand on every issue?

This is certainly not going to be simple. There are issues of bias of expression since people tend to be more outspoken when it is negative (at least in politics). Bills are often complex and evaluating various aspects of the bill can be difficult to convey for the representatives. While this won't be easy, we need it to improve our communication with our government.