Giving Compass' Take:

• Media Impact Funders discusses how recent revelations about Facebook's aggressive tactics against critics could be an opportunity for philanthropists to generate social media projects that help the greater good.

• Should nonprofits still be wary of devoting too much energy into Facebook, Twitter and other platforms plagued by "fake news" in the past? In what ways might higher social media engagement align with philanthropic missions?

• Here's more on how to use social media for positive change.

Today, the radical howl of a mad prophet has become the implied mission statement of every cable-news host, as well as every blogger and social-media personality on the planet, seeking fame and glory and advertising dollars. Unfortunately the constant drone of rage and vitriol obscures sound and factual information needed to conduct thoughtful public-policy debates.

What can philanthropy do to counter this unhealthy social dynamic? Perhaps it’s time for foundations to support social-media projects and platforms that will enlighten and inform users without regard to the interest of advertisers and investors.

Recent revelations that Facebook adopted aggressive tactics to counter critics like philanthropist George Soros and civil-rights advocates at Color of Change have raised questions about the ethics of the company. This episode only further damages the reputation of a company that is increasingly shown to have undermined democracy and auctioned off the privacy rights of its users to advertisers and nefarious political players on a massive scale. And this is just the latest controversy in a year when big social-media companies — Twitter and Facebook — have come under fire for harboring domestic hate groups and foreign interests seeking to disrupt our political system.

But beyond the current concern over the bare-knuckle public-relations tactics that Facebook has pursued against its critics, perhaps the larger question for philanthropy is how foundations can help create social-media platforms and services that serve the public interest if large commercial platforms are organized in a way that is fundamentally detrimental to individual users and the community as a whole.

Read the full article about philanthropy fixing social media problems by Vince Stehle at Media Impact Funders.