A non-official task force comprised of Facebook employees is said to be looking into the role of the company in promoting fake news following the shocking results of the 2016 US presidential election according to the Independent.
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This month, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive dismissed the role played by Facebook in the results of the election , saying it was an “pretty crazy idea” to think that Facebook could have influenced the results by allowing fake news spread on its website.
His announcement came in the wake of many allegations that false stories posted on social media contributed to Donald Trump to achieve victory.
Despite Zuckerberg’s assurances employees from all over the company have been secretly coming together to address the issue, as per the report from Buzzfeed.
“It’s not a crazy concept. What’s crazy is to let him publicly deny it in that way knowing and we within the company are aware, that fake news was prevalent on our platform throughout the entire time of the campaign,” one Facebook employee told me.
The statement was made following many allegations that false information posted on social media assisted Donald Trump to achieve victory.
Despite Zuckerberg’s assurances employees from all over the company have been secretly coming together to tackle the issue, as per an article by Buzzfeed.
“It’s not an insane idea. What’s crazy is to let him be able to dismiss the idea in this manner even though he is aware that, as do we within the company are aware, that fake news was a constant presence on our platform throughout the entire election season,” one Facebook employee told me.
Facebook did not respond to the report.
Google on Monday stated that it will do more to stop fake news websites from making money from advertising. A few hours later, Facebook made explicit a similar restriction regarding how it uses its advertising network.
Zuckerberg this week stated that more than 99 percent of the information shared on Facebook could be verified, but acknowledged that more could be done to identify false stories that have been disproved.
The goal of the fake stories, news and pictures seems to be to influence the political debate however, some could be designed to earn more money.
Over 100 US websites for politics were discovered as being registered within a tiny town in Macedonia known as Veles According to Buzzfeed.
In publishing stories that are outrageous and are frequently shared on Facebook The site’s creators stated that they were able to earn money through pay-per click ads on their site.
As a result of the demands of Facebook to be rebranded as media-related company its leaders have declared that it is a tech platform that is not accountable for the content that is uploaded to the platform from its members.
Facebook is not the only one getting a slap for fake information.
Google has announced that it was making changes to its policy to stop websites that lie about information from using its AdSense marketing network.
The company didn’t provide any details on the process it will use to apply or enforce the new policy.
