- Jul 26, 2018
According to Facebook, Misinformation is a Big Problem
In the past couple of years, Facebook has been struggling to keep misinformation away from its platform. Especially after Facebook was used to spread fake news during the 2016 US Presidential election, it has faced backlash from the government and public for its inability to curb the spread of fake news.
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook in a call with the press said that even when they are about a misinformation campaign, they have to be careful in dealing with it so that the investigation is not compromised. Recently Facebook allowed unsubstantiated comments of InfoWars' Alex Jones to stand against special prosecutor Robert Mueller in a Facebook livestream.
Although, Facebook is taking steps towards curbing fake news during Mexican presidential election. It removed thousands of fake "likes" from candidate pages. As confirmed by Diego Bassante, a manager on Facebook's Latin American Politics & Government team, the company also shut down dozens of accounts impersonating candidates. Facebook is also working with Verificado, a fact-checking organization, to find misinformation on its platform and take action against it.
Facebook has stepped up its efforts to curb fake news around the world by partnering with 27 fact-checking organizations in 17 different countries and government investigative bodies around the world, including Mexico, Brazil and the US. Samidh Chakrabarti, a Facebook product manager for civic engagement and elections, said that they were taking down more than a million accounts every day. However, the company did not reference how many accounts it took down daily before the controversy. The company is using machine learning and human investigators to flag problematic accounts.
As explained by Tessa Lyons, Facebook's product manager for News Feed, they do not stop legitimate accounts from posting information they want to post as long as its within community standards. This means a fake news story won't be taken down like a fake account would.
However, if the information in a post is fake, it will be marked as less relevant by Facebook's ranking algorithm which will push it down a user's feed.
Read more at www.cnet.com