Facebook has been marked with numerous posts of false news, spreading misinformation throughout the social media site. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and founder of the popular social media network, has finally stepped forward to address these problems.
Posting on Facebook he announced: "Historically, we have relied on our community to help us understand what is fake and what is not. Anyone on Facebook can report any link as false, and we use signals from those reports along with a number of others - like people sharing links to myth-busting sites such as Snopes - to understand which stories we can confidently classify as misinformation."
Zuckerberg further stated that he and his team understood that a lot of users get their news and information from Facebook. To this end, he explained that people expect to get the most accurate information as possible, but this goal is being obstructed by the spread of false news.
He stated that one of the biggest hurdles in cutting down false information was the fact that they want people to have their own voice on the Internet. People are allowed to post what they want whenever possible, and sometimes, not all of the shared content will be factually accurate.
Yahoo! also reported that there appears to be some form of bias in terms of which people are targeted by false news. An experiment was conducted where two new Facebook profiles were made. Both are for adult white males, but one was designed for a Republican and the other for a Democrat.
The report reveals that the Republican Facebook page was later filled with false news, such as Michael Moore allegedly leading a coup d'etat against President Trump.
Forbes also reported that the impact of false news will affect Facebook and its stocks by the first quarter of 2017. It is uncertain at this point, however, if the impact will be big enough to cause Facebook any long-lasting damage.
