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In case you missed it, last night Mark Zuckerberg published a response<\/a> to accusations that \u201cfake news\u201d on Facebook\u00a0influenced the outcome of the U.S. election, and helped\u00a0Donald Trump to win.<\/p>\n The CEO\u00a0claimed that at least 99% of news content on Facebook was \u201cauthentic.\u201d Zuckerberg\u00a0wrote:<\/p>\n \u201cOf all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.\u201d<\/p>\n Facebook boasts\u00a01.79 monthly active users, and it generated $7.01 billion<\/a> in revenue in the third quarter of 2016.<\/p>\n The company has not enumerated the volume of posts that were categorized as news, and distributed\u00a0through Facebook\u2019s News Feed\u00a0during the months leading up to the election.<\/p>\n In its earnings reports, Facebook does not break out how much of its revenue comes from political advertising or the promotion of news posts.\u00a0That makes it\u00a0hard for the public to evaluate what the impact of even 1% of \u201choax\u201d news could have been on users of Facebook who had the right to vote in the U.S. election.<\/p>\n Questions remain as to whether hoaxes could have been so well-targeted that they did, in fact, sway\u00a0opinions of U.S. voters on candidates and issues.<\/p>\n We know that Facebook has the power to influence emotions and has tested\u00a0its own abilities in this regard through\u00a0its 2012 Emotion Manipulation Experiment. <\/a><\/p>\n As TechCrunch reported when news of that experiment first broke<\/a>,\u00a0to impact\u00a0users\u2019 moods,\u00a0Facebook showed them\u00a0less positive posts in their News Feed. As a result, users included\u00a0.1% fewer positive words in their own posts, Facebook found.<\/p>\n Last night,\u00a0Zuckerberg emphasized that Facebook currently relies on the wisdom and involvement of its users to \u201cflag hoaxes and fake news.\u201d\u00a0He admitted the company could do more to improve\u00a0the quality of information shared via its News Feed.<\/p>\n However, he also warned the company would not rush to release new solutions around factchecking or quality-rating news content on the platform.<\/p>\n He wrote:<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an area where I believe we must proceed very carefully though. Identifying the \u2018truth\u2019 is complicated. While some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources, often gets the basic idea right but some details wrong or omitted. An even greater volume of stories express an opinion that many will disagree with and flag as incorrect even when factual. I am confident we can find ways for our community to tell us what content is most meaningful, but I believe we must be extremely cautious about becoming arbiters of truth ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Zuckerberg\u2019s comment draws a false equivalency between \u201cmainstream sources\u201d of news (including TechCrunch) and political groups\u00a0masquerading as\u00a0news brands.<\/p>\n The Denver Guardian<\/a>\u00a0was one site that posed as a news publisher to bombarded readers\u00a0with\u00a0content full of\u00a0misinformation meant to sway their\u00a0opinions about candidates and issues on the ballot. And another group, based in Macedonia, had been posting fake news to Facebook\u2019s News Feed simply to make money.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Fake news circulated\u00a0virtually everywhere\u00a0online, and on Facebook,\u00a0at\u00a0a time when voters needed\u00a0facts to inform their\u00a0decisions, unfortunately.<\/p>\n There is a possibility that Facebook may not even want to\u00a0become \u201carbiters of truth,\u201d because doing so could reduce engagement.<\/p>\n As a former Facebook designer named Bobby Goodlatte wrote on November 8th on his own Facebook wall,\u00a0\u201cSadly, News Feed optimizes for engagement. As we\u2019ve learned in this election, bullshit is highly engaging.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n Other social media players\u00a0under fire for helping to spread false stories ahead of the U.S. election include\u00a0Twitter, Reddit,\u00a0and others.<\/p>\n But unlike other social networks, Facebook can proudly claim that it helped 2 million people register to vote in this most recent election.\u00a0What good is that if those voters aren\u2019t effectively informed, though?<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/F7Va_ZNVLUg\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In case you missed it, last night Mark Zuckerberg published a response to accusations that \u201cfake news\u201d on Facebook\u00a0influenced the outcome of the U.S. election, and helped\u00a0Donald Trump to win. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-1561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n