Finally Facebook is Taking Action On Fake News! But…
The recent post of Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook will excite everyone who have been victims of fake news! Facebook as a social media platform played a huge role in shaping the political landscape of countries, mostly fueled by fake news that shifted the mindset of basically anyone who fell victim to such fake news.
Today however, Facebook may be taking the first steps to preventing further proliferation of fake news! In his statement Mark Zuckerberg said “There’s too much sensationalism, misinformation and polarization in the world today. Social media enables people to spread information faster than ever before, and if we don’t specifically tackle these problems, then we end up amplifying them. That’s why it’s important that News Feed promotes high quality news that helps build a sense of common ground.”
Very promising statement coming from the Facebook CEO, hooray! Well, I wouldn’t celebrate just yet, because the following statements are where my apprehensions lie. He said “…We decided that having the community determine which sources are broadly trusted would be most objective.”
What does that mean? If you read further on his statement he stated that the power to determine weather a source is trusted or not will reside in the hands of the community. That is all good and democratic in a way, but the thing is what is stopping the army of trolls which these fake news are using to spread…well…fake news, from clicking that “trusted button” to tell facebook’s algorithm that such news site is trusted while in reality such is a fake news site?
The creation of troll accounts took months if not years to make it look like they are real Facebook accounts. It was difficult for Facebook to determine them then, does Facebook have the “algorithm” to combat them now? I believe that Facebook should provide a two-pronged approach when it comes to combating the spread of misinformation in their social media platform. First is to fight fake accounts or troll accounts which are used as a spark to start the online fire and also used to contribute to the amplification of these fake news. The second approach is to combat fake news by “lifting the veil” using the power of the true community, a community who can really determine what a trusted source from what is not.
Until Facebook can provide an effective way of combating fake or troll accounts, we will have to rely on ourselves in helping Facebook what are trusted news site. That means we have to do our absolute best to help Facebook’s algorithm identify trusted sites from fake news sites.
Read Mark Zuckerberg’s full statement here:
