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Just as I was beginning to write this Friday, Facebook's software code confused itself and began declaring its users dead — including its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.

Like so much of what you'll find on Facebook, this was, of course, false.

And while Zuckerberg doesn't deserve to die for his sins, I'm one of a growing number of people who believes there should be some reckoning for creating a platform that rewards fake news and diminishes truth and substance. At the very least, there should be an immediate course correction.

But the rest of us shouldn't sit around and wait for that.

Why pick on Facebook? Because of its success — Facebook reaches about 2 billion users each month and 3 out of 4 are on every day. It has become a second internet — a single destination where its users can do everything from check on the grandkids to buy and sell merchandise to, yes, consume entire news stories — side by side with the posts of 'friends' who give the news of the neighborhood.

When Americans decide how to give their money, when they vote for candidates, when they think about getting involved in civic life in any way, Facebook has been a big part of forming their world view. Although it employs almost no journalists, Facebook dominates the news business.

Just over a week ago, I had an opportunity to ask a small class of college students where they get their news. Almost all of them said 'Facebook.'

They were being honest, and I appreciate that. But I couldn't help pointing out that's a little like me asking where they get their pizza, and them replying 'from a beat-up Hyundai.'

Yes, the pizza arrives in front of your place in a car, but nobody actually thinks pizza comes from a car. It comes from a kitchen, and the ingredients come from farms.

Like the beat-up Hyundai, Facebook is just the delivery driver.

The news itself — the real stuff — still comes from newsrooms, where it is created by professional journalists.

Obviously that matters a lot to me. It's how I make my living. But even if you don't personally know a single journalist, you should care too. Even if you don't use Facebook yourself, you should care because your fellow citizens do.

On Facebook, everything pours in through a single feed with no fact filter. What you see is determined by a computer that does not have any idea whether it's true or false — only that a bunch of complicated calculations predict you'll be interested.

At the same time, Facebook has become one of the most powerful ways for digital publishers to reach an audience (this includes us, of course). Once that audience is reached, the name of the game is to get it to your own site or mobile app and then serve ads to those readers. Sell the ads, and you've got a business.

It's a pretty straightforward plan, but like so many legitimate businesses it can be gamed by frauds.

Enter the purveyors of fake news. I'm not talking about news that's of questionable value, or that's tainted by partisanship. I'm talking about 'news' that's straight-up invented from thin air.

'(The Facebook) news feed optimizes for engagement,' one of its former product designers, Bobby Goodlatte, wrote last week. 'As we've learned in this election, bull---- is highly engaging.'

But it's less a problem of partisanship than profitability.

If I can sit at my computer, make up something completely false that reinforces your belief about the world, and put it on a page with ads, and then link to it from Facebook, I can potentially make a lot of money without very much effort.

Why go to the trouble and expense of employing a bunch of trained journalists just to draw fewer eyeballs?

Much as I hate to say it, the fakes are for the most part protected by the same First Amendment I am. Facebook needs to do its part, but individually none of us should wait for that.

We have moved beyond a world where trusted people help determine what is true and false. In this new world, you have a simple choice: Be your own editor or be a sucker. You either think critically about the sources of your information, or you will be duped and you'll help dupe your friends. You'll be doing it to line the pockets of some character who probably doesn't care one bit about you or your political opinions — just sees you as an easy mark.

Newspapers like ours aren't perfect, but they're produced by journalists who are accountable to their audience. Even the partisan national outlets like Fox News and Huffington Post have some passing relationship to the traditions of journalism — theirs, more often, are crimes of omission, leaving out the stories that don't fit their audience's worldview or overemphasizing those that do.

But it's up to each of us to know the difference. As Mulder said on 'X-Files', the truth is out there. It's just mixed in with a lot of falsehood and some cat videos.

Reach Editor Silas Lyons at 225-2810 or silas.lyons@redding.com. He's on Facebook and Instagram, and on Twitter @silaslyons_RS.

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