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> Facebook targets yet another segment

Facebook doesn't target a different population segment or a different political segment of the US, or even the US. It wants everybody to be on Facebook (if they're over the age of 13). That's how it got to $1.65bn users.

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As a conduit of political news dissemination, it services a different segment: namely, the segment of people who predominantly get news online.

But that's a self-selecting audience. Facebook users can either look at tending news or ignore it. It's not a political demographic, or if it is, that's incidental.

It's a segment of the populus who have thus far been uniquely positioned to make up their own mind. That has political implications in a democracy that relies on media to shape the electorate's consensus. As Milo Yiannopoulous recently commented on the 2016 primaries: "If the lying mainstream media ever had the power to shape elections, those days are gone." Will that baton be simply picked up by the new media?

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