Fake news and social media

More than a year ago I ditched my old Facebook account - it simply isn't helpful knowing what people and their children think, and I realised that I had become deeply ungracious towards what seemed like stupidity and worse.

But.

A few people we care about communicate almost exclusively through facebook, and eventually I gave in just to keep in touch, restarting under a pseudonym. :p

Now here's the odd thing. I normally browse using ad blockers, and in the time away FB managed to find a way around them. That's fine - no amount of ads on FB will make a difference and I pretty much screen them out anyway. But this time the ads were different. Instead of fashion items it started out with ads offering to help me meet 'singles' who were, from the pictures, all US based and pneumatic to a degree that defies population distribution and normal physiology. Then I started seeing adverts telling me that famous people had died despite them still being very much alive.

For example:

It seems that fake news isn't just about politicians. I can understand about businessmen like Richard Branson (his 'death' was reported many times) for potential profit, but why actors, musicians or scientists?

It seems to me that there is a determined effort going on to undermine the concept of truth and how reality is perceived through the media, and it's not restricted to elections. I wonder what this is building up to (other than the next step on from post-modernist relativism). And yes, I do blame post-modern thinking for softening society to the point where it now accepts blatant untruths as real.

*edit* 24.04.2017

And another one.