Facebook’s Wide Spread Of Fake News – with all the effort Facebook put into putting an end to the spread of fake news, a lot of users still find it even more interesting that fact-based reports.
Spreading fake news on the internet is something that was always bound to happen. It’s a quick and easy way to pass information to people. We are all humans, and we go for things that catch the eye first. Although it is a very wrong thing to do, and shouldn’t be practiced by anyone.
No company won’t want such information passed on its platform. And that means that these platforms have a responsibility to moderate the information that people get from them.
The Wide Spread of Misinformation on Facebook
Research conducted by Cybersecurity for Democracy suggests that far-right Facebook pages that publish misinformation, unfortunately, have the highest levels of engagement per follower when compared to any other category of the news source.
Cybersecurity for Democracy is a project of New York University. This study that focused on fake news on Facebook is credited to Laura Edelson, Minh-Kha Nguyen, Ian Goldstein, Oana Goga, Tobias Lauinger, and Damon McCoy.
Misinformation Analysis On Facebook
The team used NewsGuard and Media Bias/Fact Check to check over 2,500 Facebook pages of US news sources for bias and accuracy of information. All sources were categorized by ideological positioning (far right, slightly right, center, slightly left, far left) and if and how often it would get flagged for publishing false content.
Additionally, it is said that engagement with posts from far-right and far-left news sources on Facebook peaked on the day of the 2020 US presidential election (November 3), and again on the day of the 2021 storming of the US Capitol (January 6)
Always Check for Legit Information
It’s so sad to see a platform like Facebook take action and try to stop the spread of fake news on the platform. Even after they have played their parts, it’s left users to do the right thing. If a post or a story has a lot of reactions or comments, that doesn’t necessarily mean the source is trustworthy.
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