As of the moment, tech and the media industries are looking for a way to put a stop to the spread of fake news. Fake news became a major problem in today’s politics. Because of this, even Facebook wants control over what is classified as fake news.
In our research, we have come to the conclusion that fake news refers to fabricated stories that are deliberately made. The spread of fake news is a huge strategy on influencing what voters think. However, it has misguided millions of people that are using social media networks, especially Facebook, during this critical point in time as the UK general election is coming up.
Also, fake news may be satirical or comedic news that is faked just for entertainment purposes. These kinds of stories are shared on social media, but some readers, if not most, take them as factual information. Now, Facebook has to deal with the creation of an algorithm that will suppress the spread of phony stories, which predates the election-induced panic.
Gateway Pundit, a news publishing site, provides inaccurate information about certain topics. The problem with this is that people share the articles from the site, believing that they are true. Weeks before the US presidential election, the site published stories that were outright false. “Unreliable” and “fake” news already have permeable boundaries. Still, conservatives argue that even mainstream outlets publish fake news and they can’t be trusted.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, believes that web’s future is video instead of text. Because of this, the social media network that he co-founded pushed video heavily on the platform. Facebook prioritized video with its algorithms. It even paid news outlets just to create videos. If you had been wondering why Facebook is full of videos nowadays, this would be it.
As Facebook pushed its video efforts, a new problem emerged: freebooting aka video theft. Users rip viral videos off of YouTube to republish them on Facebook with the sole intention of developing pages that have millions of followers. The social network introduced Rights Manager to solve this problem. However, the software that tracks and removes infringing videos took at least a year of constant complaining from video creators before it was created.
Facebook also allows users to broadcast live videos. Yet, it developed a horrific reputation. In just months after its launch, a student committed suicide while streaming a live video on Facebook. Also, a 2-year old killed another man and himself accidentally. A teenager also crashed her car, and then died. Several journalists have been killed as well. All these were broadcasted live on Facebook.
In order to provide a solution to this specific problem, Facebook has 3,000 extra moderators now. All of them are tasked to review each video that is being put up on the social media site.
Facebook is the most powerful publishing and media company of the world as it has two billion users. Its impact on the political process in all corners of the world is unparalleled, which is why it has to be given greater attention and care.
