What Made Zuckerberg Change His Stance On Fake News?
EP Yesudas
After downplaying Facebook’s role in distributing fake news online and describing it as a pretty crazy idea that Facebook could have influenced the outcome of the US Presidential elections, Mark Zuckerberg, it seems, has had a change of heart about the misinformation that had been spreading on Facebook.
Declaring that Facebook takes misinformation very seriously Zuckerberg announced new steps to counter fake news on the platform.
Why a change of heart now?
Many would argue that the above statement of Zuckerberg that “they have been working on the problem for a long time…” may not be too different from the fake news that has been masquerading as legitimate info on Facebook and that his change of heart came only after Google announced stringent measures less than a week ago, that it was going to deprive these fake news sites access to its advertising network, and after President Obama’s critique that fake news is hard to differentiate and therefore we wouldn’t know what to protect.
Another weighty reason for Zuckerberg’s change in stance could be the one that bothers him the most, by being closer home. Buzzfeed had reported that a few renegade employees at Facebook, who did not agree to his ‘crazy idea stance on fake news’, had come together to form an unofficial task force to question the role their company played in fake news in the run up to the US Presidential elections.
Critics have blamed the social networking giant for influencing the US-elections in favour of President-elect Donald Trump by circulating a "host of fake news stories about political topics.
Some of the fake news stories that were doing rounds on Facebook before elections were –
The Pope had endorsed Donald Trump (he didn’t)
Democratic operative was murdered after agreeing to testify against Hillary Clinton (did not happen)
Bill Clinton raped a 13-year-old girl (untrue)
Buzzfeed found that top-performing fake stories performed better on Facebook than accurate stories shared by traditional media sites during the US presidential election campaign.
The reason for their performance is the priority that the Facebook algorithm gives to the ‘engagement’ factor; when someone likes, comments or shares the item.
Facebook argued that the top stories (picked on the basis of engagement) are only a small fraction of long line of stories that are posted and hence reveal an incomplete picture.
This however is not a very good defense as the proportion of stories cannot be compared to the reach of those popular stories that influence millions in the garb of legitimate ones. They definitely wouldn’t try selling that line to the sore democrats…
