After the conclusion of the US presidential elections that brought Donald Trump to the position of President of the country, lengthy discussions began about how much influence Social Media (social networks) can have and to what extent fake news contributed to the outcome.
To this end, Google and Facebook announced that they would ban pages that spread fake news from using their networks for advertising, thus significantly reducing their revenue streams.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has refuted various claims that the social network wanted to promote fake news that influenced the election results, stating that “more than 99% of the news that circulates is authentic.”
Even if we take Zuckerberg's claim seriously (as we must consider that the view of "fake news influencing election results" on Social Media may come from voters of the opposite party), 1 percent of all content circulating on Facebook still includes too many posts and thus misinformation is a fact.
Of course, no one can say for sure that the movement of social media and search engines will stem the flow of fake news across the Web. No company has committed to or stated how they intend to improve their methods for identifying and blocking such content.
However, Gizmodo reported that Facebook will be releasing an updated version of the app that will aim to identify and remove all types of fake news. The feature is believed to have been frozen after it disproportionately affected right-wing news sites.
Earlier this month, BuzzFeed News found that several teenagers and young adults from the Republic of Macedonia were running websites that published fake news and supported Hillary Clinton, in order to earn money from advertising.
So it is likely that the move by Google and Facebook will prevent these websites from generating revenue from their ad networks, limiting their growth.
Let's hope that Social Media will discover more sophisticated ways of sniffing out fake content because the ones they are using so far don't seem to be working.
