Zuckerberg shared his thoughts in a lengthy post on Saturday night after he said many people questioned whether fake news contributed to the shocking result – and what the platform’s role was to prevent hoaxes from spreading.
He claims that more than 99 per cent of content on Facebook is authentic and ‘only a very small amount’ make up fake news and hoaxes.
And they’re not limited to one partisan view, or even politics, according to the tech billionaire.
‘Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other,’ he said.
The majority of Americans – six in 10 – have said they get at least some news from social media, mainly Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center.
Much of this comes from established outlets, but misinformation spreads on Facebook just as information does, shared by users, recommended by software and amplified by both.
Sources of spurious information have ranged from news articles produced by ‘content farms’ for the sole purpose of getting clicks, to ‘hyperpartisan’ sites from both sides of the political spectrum, churning out stories that are misleading at best.
A case in point – ‘FBI AGENT SUSPECTED IN HILLARY EMAIL LEAKS FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT MURDER-SUICIDE’ — a fabricated headline from a fake news site called the Denver Guardian, which was shared thousands of times in the days leading up to the election.
Zuckerberg insisted that he doesn’t want any hoaxes on Facebook – and says he’s launched work enabling users to flag hoaxes and fake news.
