![]() Fake news is a problem, but we don’t know how big it is It festers, often becoming an even bigger problem over time. When an authority figure turns a blind eye to a problem that’s happening under his watch, the problem doesn’t go away. They like to think of their sites as neutral platforms that help users share information with each other - without the company making value judgments of its own.īut this isn’t how power works. But the leaders of the largest technology companies have resisted thinking of themselves in those terms. Normally we think that organizations with a lot of power have an obligation to use that power responsibly. This means that Facebook has a larger influence over ordinary Americans’ media diets than almost any other news organization. And while many people get their news from television programs or newspapers, those media are divided among many competing news organizations. That’s vastly larger than other news-focused social media sites like Twitter (9 percent) and Reddit (2 percent). 44 percent of US adults tell pollsters they got news from Facebook in 2016. But as news consumption is increasingly driven by social media sharing, it’s becoming easier than ever for no-name sites to reach a big audience.Īt the same time, a handful of big tech companies - Twitter, Google, and especially Facebook - have gained a huge and growing influence over what news people see. It has always been easy for anyone to publish a website, of course. ![]() The rise of social media sites has changed things in two major ways.įirst, social media has drastically lowered barriers to entry in the news business. Online-only news organizations were still in their infancy, so that most people either got their news from traditional sources like newspapers or cable news shows, or else they went to the home pages of conventional news organizations like the New York Times, the Atlantic, or Fox News. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was common to think of the internet as a decentralized, even anarchic, place where no one was really in charge. The internet is growing up Photo by John Moore/Getty Images The leaders of those companies are going to be under increasing pressure to use that power wisely. More and more people are getting their news from the internet, putting more and more power in the hands of companies like Google, Twitter, and especially Facebook. The importance of this issue is only going to grow over time. He says Facebook will look for new ways to stop the spread of fake news, but he also argues that “we must proceed very carefully” and that Facebook must be “extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves.” He described it as “a pretty crazy idea” to think fake news on Facebook could have swayed the election. Facebook quickly followed suit with its own ad network.Īt the same time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has signaled reluctance to have Facebook become more active in weeding out fake news stories. On Monday, Google announced that it was going to cut fake news sites off from access to its vast advertising network, depriving them of a key revenue source. Internet giants are coming under increasing pressure to do something about the problem. Since last week’s election, there has been a fierce debate about whether the flood of fake news - much of it prejudicial to Hillary Clinton - could have swung the election to Donald Trump. ![]() On the internet, the “Denver Guardian” - a fake news site designed to look like a real Colorado newspaper - can reach a wide audience as easily as real news organizations like the Denver Post, the New York Times, and Fox News. ![]() Stories like this thrive on Facebook because Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes “engagement” - and a reliable way to get readers to engage is by making up outrageous nonsense about politicians they don’t like.Ī big problem here is that the internet has broken down the traditional distinction between professional news-gathering and amateur rumor-mongering. ![]() Over the course of 2016, Facebook users learned that the pope endorsed Donald Trump ( he didn’t), that a Democratic operative was murdered after agreeing to testify against Hillary Clinton (it never happened), that Bill Clinton raped a 13-year-old girl (a total fabrication), and many other totally bogus “news” stories. Stories rocketed around the internet that were misleading, sloppily reported, or in some cases totally made up. But in the 2016 election, news stories online too often had the opposite effect. News stories are supposed to help ordinary voters understand the world around them. ![]()
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