A month before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a rumor spread on Facebook. People were sharing a viral gimmick familiar to email spammers: Copy and paste this message to all your friends, or Facebook will share your private information. The hoax took off, particularly in pockets of the U.S. and the Philippines. Inside Facebook Inc.'s Menlo Park, California, headquarters, a small group of staffers watched this rumor gain traction using a special software program they called Stormchaser. The tool was designed to track hoaxes and "memes" -- silly, often untrue internet missives -- about Facebook on the social network and other company-owned services including WhatsApp. Since 2016, Facebook employees have used Stormchaser to track many viral posts, including a popular conspiracy that the company listens to users through their phone's microphone, according to three former employees. Other topics ranged from bitter protests (the #deleteFB movement) to ludicrous jokes (that Facebook … [Read more...] about How Facebook fought fake news about Facebook
Fake news meme
Facebook Continues Its War On Fake News With New Measures
Jun 13, 12:30 PM EDT Newsletter Signup BusinessTechnologyWorldNationalMedia & CultureOpinionSportsLuxury Business By Evan Niu 04/10/19 AT 11:29 PM In the latest tacit admission that it needs to be an "arbiter of truth," Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) just unveiled more steps that it is taking to curb the spread of misinformation and fake news on its platform. The company hosted a small group of journalists at its headquarters and then further clarified its strategy of "Remove, Reduce, Inform," which it has been utilizing since 2016. The world's largest social networking company has grappled with ongoing controversies and criticism that it inadvertently facilitates the spread of misinformation, and has started cracking down on malicious actors.Here's what investors and Facebook users need to know.Removing content that violates Facebook's policiesFacebook's policies have long outlined certain types of content that is prohibited, such as harassment, hate speech, and … [Read more...] about Facebook Continues Its War On Fake News With New Measures
Fake news ‘spreading to young people through Instagram memes’
An exodus of young people from Facebook has seen fake news spread to Generation Z through memes on Instagram, a leading journalism academic has said.Nic Newman, a senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and former world editor of the BBC News website, said many young people had switched from Facebook.Fake news is now spreading to young people through “memes and visual storytelling” on Instagram, he told a conference on Tuesday.Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is mainly used for sharing photos and has not traditionally been a major source of news for social media users.But genuine news and fake news are making their way on to the platform, Mr Newman said. The Reuters Institute’s annual Digital News Report assesses the state of online news access across the world.This year’s findings will show a continuing trend in the popularity of Instagram.“Facebook themselves have been showing people less news, and less … [Read more...] about Fake news ‘spreading to young people through Instagram memes’
Google Manager Said Company Must Stop ‘Fake News’ Because ‘That’s How Trump Won’
A manager at Google allegedly cautioned a lower-level employee for questioning the company’s stance on “fake news,” telling him that the company had to stop fake news and “hate speech,” because “that’s how Trump won,” according to a post aired publicly by another Google employee on social media. Mike Wacker, a software engineer at Google, published on social media a redacted email he claims he received from a fellow employee in 2017, which alleged political bias at the company. According to Wacker’s post, his colleague at Google wrote:Also, I posted a comment on a meme regarding fake news on Search and someone reported it to [Human Resources]. I didn’t say I was in favor or against, just cautioned that we need to be car[e]ful. My manager brought it up in our 1:1 last week. Made me feel very uncomfortable for having an opposing view. He said we need to stop hate [speech] and fake news because that’s how Trump won the … [Read more...] about Google Manager Said Company Must Stop ‘Fake News’ Because ‘That’s How Trump Won’
What a Kamala Harris Meme Can Teach Us About Fighting Fake News in 2020
Will fake news tarnish the 2020 election as much as it did in 2016? It’s tempting to think that we’ve started to solve the problem. After the 2016 election, the big social media platforms pledged to root out mis- and disinformation through self-regulation. Facebook is tripling the size of its safety and security teams to help protect election integrity. YouTube promised to reduce the spread of “borderline content.” Twitterpublished large data sets of potential foreign information operations for researchers to analyze. And Reddit increased the scope of itsquarantine and ban policies for content such as Holocaust denial, conspiracy theories and misogyny. But if you look at how fake news really works—how ideas and memes take root and spread across the digital universe—it’s becoming clear that these measures won’t be enough. Story Continued Below As the 2020 campaign gets underway, manipulated, disruptive and misleading content has already … [Read more...] about What a Kamala Harris Meme Can Teach Us About Fighting Fake News in 2020