Image Source: Venture Beat
Is Facebook a tech or media company? Whatever your thoughts, Donald Trump’s shock upset over Hillary Clinton in the US presidential election has prompted a searing examination of the role that fake news articles circulating on the platform played in influencing the outcome. But while Mark Zuckerberg has actively resisted characterizations of Facebook as a media entity, he has still acknowledged the problem to a certain extent by outlining plans to tackle it.
In a post to Facebook over the weekend, Zuckerberg talked about steps Facebook is taking to limit the proliferation of fake news and erroneous reports. Reports had emerged in the wake of Trump’s election that Facebook employees were forming an “unofficial” task force to solve the problem, and Zuckerberg’s announcement is probably just a summary of these efforts.
This includes things like new and better systems to detect misinformation, which will be able to identify false news before users even flag it as such. It will also become easier for people to report fake stories (Facebook is considering displaying warning labels for stories flagged as false as well).
In addition, Facebook will work with journalists, the news industry, and “respected fact checking organizations” to learn more about how they verify information.
Zuckerberg also talked about disrupting the economics of fake news by updating Facebook’s ad policies to discourage spam sites. This means banning sites that spread fake news from using its advertising network, a move that Google has pulled as well.
This isn’t the first time that Facebook has had trouble grappling with the news that lives on its site. There was the furor over an active bias against conservative news sites among Facebook’s editorial staff, which indirectly led to the team’s firing in favor of an algorithm that would help curate trending topics. Unfortunately, this surfaced false content as well, underscoring the unreliability of automated systems.
Facebook is walking a very fine line here. On the one hand, it wants to clamp down on misleading information. On the other, it needs to do so without appearing to silence certain viewpoints and remain an open platform for all voices.
Source: Mark Zuckerberg
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