“Social news” has always been a term I’ve struggled with. While a lot of content classified in this category can be brilliant, in my experience, there are also just as much that’s designed to mislead. Being the biggest social media site in the world, Facebook is often guilty for a lot of this misleading content.
Interestingly, though, its CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that 99% of what people see on Facebook is actually authentic.
The Zuck posted a lengthy statement on Facebook, refuting many of the allegations against his social media site and how the “fake news” circulated on it actually influenced the recent United States presidential election.
In case you haven’t been bombarded with the news already, now President-elect Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential elections over Hillary Clinton, something that was seen as a big surprise by the mainstream media. This led many to speculate if “fake news” that was being circulated on Facebook was actually the cause of this outcome.
Zuckerberg’s long post defending his social media platform included a statement saying that 99% of everything that people see on Facebook is authentic. He continues, saying that only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes.
Mark also talks about the introduction of the option to flag hoaxes and fake news but there is a fundamental flaw in this: Are the general public good at identifying these fake news and hoaxes? And if the public are so good at identifying what’s true and what isn’t, would this even be a problem in the first place?
Regardless, Mark say that there will be future improvements to your Facebook news feed and that Facebook will have “more to share soon”. What that means is still up in the air, but considering Facebook is a site that wants to show you want you want to see to keep you there, it’ll be interesting to see how they might change their already effective algorithm.
What do you guys think of this? Do you believe that 99% of what you see on Facebook is real? Be sure to drop your thoughts in the comments below.
