FAKEBOOK

Tiffany Kim

The Issue

• Articles becoming viral that aren’t actually true or real news

• People sharing this news without contemplating what is real and fake

• People putting their full trust in the internet

• Becoming more common

• Television versus internet versus newspaper – what are people referring to the most to learn about topics/news?

Issues cont.

• partisan groups favor whatever news makes their side look better no matter if it's fake or real

• https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/facebook-s-problem-is-more-complicated-than-fake-news/

• Emotions on facebook are contagious

Solutions• Facebook is subsidizing

other companies to do the fact checking for free

• (Should be professionals rather than volunteers)

• When people flag a post, facebook sends the link to the fact-checkers

• Became a particularly big problem around election time

Specifics

• Correctiv• Focus: Germany• http://

www.businessinsider.com/facebook-tests-fake-news-filtering-in-germany-2017-1

• German officials threatened to sue Facebook and similar internet companies for spreading misinformation, most notably a story about a really old church being burnt down that wasn't true

Solutions cont.

• First Draft Coalition• “FDC will help not just

journalists from partner publications, but also individual users verify stories circulating online.”

• https://www.engadget.com/2016/09/14/facebook-twitter-first-draft-google/

Other info• the system is currently built to flag

only articles hosted by external sites. That means that videos, memes or photos will be unaffected – even if they contain the very same false information or hoaxes.

• Facebook said that it will have some ability to detect when someone is trying to spam the system with false flags and that it would only send news articles, and not personal blogposts, through to its volunteer fact checkers.

• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/facebook-fake-news-system-problems-fact-checking

Cont.

• Facebook won’t deal with gray area

• It will only get rid of things that are completely made up- otherwise it just gets bumped down in the feed and seen by less people, but still on the internet

• 44% of facebook users in May 2016 claimed they were only getting their election news from facebook

QUESTION

Do you flag things if you know they are false/ have you come across any false news and didn’t do anything about it?Do you think twice before sharing news articles?