A Social Media Problem

Social Media is one of the most powerful inventions in recent memory, having given billions of people access to instant global communication for free.  It has given voices to people who until now would have gone unnoticed by anyone outside of their direct social circle.  With that said social media has quite a bit of work to do to make it a more reliable and productive asset to society.  

The biggest issue I'd like to see resolved  is the technology's tendency to perpetuate false or misleading information.  We are inundated with breaking news so frequently that we do not wait for those pesky things called facts before drawing a conclusion anymore.  Twitter's ability to relay information to a global audience in a matter of seconds is amazing and great for so many reasons.  Like all great power though it's propensity for good can also be used just as unproductively.  In some cases it has tipped  public opinion regarding an event or person, presuming them guilty until proven innocent.  In this respect that social media has the potential to seriously detract from a well functioning democracy.  Because of this issue I have serious concerns about citizen journalists, who are all most likely working off of second hand information and partial facts.  The upside to this issue is that I, and I suspect others, have begun to appreciate investigative journalism for the first time.   

I'm not sure if the solution to this problem will be technical or societal.  That is, either someone will create a company that's goal is to solve this problem, or society as a whole will reach a tipping point and begin to treat the quality of content we find on Twitter/Facebook/etc. differently.