Mark Zuckerberg and others at Facebook have expressed that the social media site is going to take a hard stand against fake news following the 2016 presidential election. It appears this campaign against fake news is now underway.
If you’ve been on Facebook recently, you might have seen a special tag showing that a certain article is disputed by fact-checking organizations. Here’s an example.
Facebook's war on fake news starts with a pop up window for re-posters of bad info. pic.twitter.com/qpPXZjLL3u
— John Ourand (@Ourand_Puck) March 19, 2017
This policy comes in large part due to many right-wing sites posting fake news. This hasn’t exactly pleased Trump supporters.
The feature is already being criticized by the kinds of Trump supporters who have disdain for the “mainstream media,” which Trump himself regularly calls “fake news.” Search for “Facebook warning” on Twitter and you’ll find many people either asserting that the Irish slave trade was real or criticizing Snopes.com for being a biased, left-wing outlet. (Conservatives in America have for some time been saying that “fact-checking” has a liberal bias.)
The biggest challenge here for Facebook is deciding what is considered “fake news” and who is qualified enough to determine this fact. It will be interesting to see how this goes going forward.
