Facebook should have a thumbs-up, thumbs-down and crossed-fingers button for all the times it has offered something to advertisers, publishers and users that was either short-lived or not true in the last 10 years. So permit me to wonder if the bogus engagement metric wasn't just the latest example of what card players refer to as "sharp play."

As the proprietor of this feature, I have only two responsibilities -- typing and opening email. Twice a year the latter yields the former -- and, sigh, it is never pretty.

People get stupid ideas in their heads, they share them, and irrational fears get triggered. The clowns, for example, were the month's second-dumbest social media freakout. The first was the spasm of righteous indignation in reaction to YouTube's clarification of its ad-friendliness standards

If you want some light reading for eternity, Google the question "is the media biased." The question is a staple of both the political right and the socialist left.