Google added fact checking: Facebook, it’s your
move now
Posted yesterday by Sarah Perez (@sarahintampa)
from techcrunch,com
Google
yesterday announced it will introduce a fact check tag
on Google News in order to display articles that contain
factual information next to trending news items. Now it’s time for Facebook to
take fact-checking more seriously, too.
Facebook
has stepped into the role of being today’s newspaper: that is, it’s a
single destination where a large selection of news articles are displayed to
those who visit its site. Yes, they appear amidst personal photos, videos,
status updates, and ads, but Facebook is still the place where nearly half of
American adults get their news.
Facebook has a
responsibility to do better, then, when it comes to informing this audience
what is actually news: what is fact-checked, reported, vetted, legitimate news,
as opposed to a rumor, hoax or conspiracy theory.
It’s not okay
that Facebook fired its news editors
in an effort to appear impartial, deferring only to its algorithms to inform
readers what’s trending on the site. Since then, the site has repeatedly
trended fake news stories, according to a Washington Post report released
earlier this week.
The news
organization tracked every news story that trended across four accounts during
the workday from August 31 to September 22, and found that Facebook trended
five stories that were either “indisputably fake” or “profoundly inaccurate.”
It also regularly featured press releases, blog posts, and links to online
stores, like iTunes – in other words, trends that didn’t point to news sites.
Facebook claimed in September
that it would roll out technology that would combat fake stories in its
Trending topics, but clearly that has not yet come to pass – or the technology
isn’t up to the task at hand.
In any event,
Facebook needs to do better.
It’s not enough
for the company to merely reduce the visibility of
obvious hoaxes from its News Feed – not when so much
of the content that circulates on the site is posted by people – your friends
and family – right on their profiles, which you visit directly.
Plus, the more
the items are shared, the more they have the potential to go viral. And viral
news becomes Trending news, which is then presented all Facebook’s users
in that region.
This matters.
Facebook has trended a story from a tabloid news source that
claimed 9/11 was an inside job involving
planted bombs. It ran a fake story about Fox News anchor
Megyn Kelly which falsely claimed she was fired. These aren’t
mistakes: they are disinformation.
Facebook has
apologized for the above, but declined to comment to The Washington Post regarding
its new findings that fake news continues to be featured on the
platform.
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