The media is all over the proliferation of “fake news” this election season since it appears that much of it led to the election of Donald Trump, their arch-nemesis. And since Facebook was one of the leading ways in which these stories were spread, Mark Zuckerberg is now talking about cracking down on these stories.
From PBS:
In a Facebook post, Zuckerberg mentioned prospects of stronger detection, options for users to flag potentially fake stories and also a warning system that would label them, as well as the possibility of raising the standards for related articles that are suggested after each post. He described the issue as complex because it puts him in a position to arbitrate freedom of speech.
“We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or mistakenly restricting accurate content. We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties,” he wrote. “While the percentage of misinformation is relatively small, we have much more work ahead on our roadmap.”
This might be a huge problem because those on the left often confuse legitimate conservatives news sites, like ours for instance, with the less reputable lies that are strewn about the social media sites. This is the perfect excuse to throw out the baby with the bathwater in order to cut out legitimate news sites.
So are we gonna see “fake news” go away, or is Facebook going to slowly phase out ALL dissenting news outlets and voices? We’ll keep you updated here at the Scooooop!!!!