A television photographer shoots the Like sign outside of Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Friday, May 18, 2012.

The Election's Fake News Problem

On the Media | Nov 18, 2016

This week, Facebook, Google, and Twitter faced criticisms that their sites influenced the outcome of the election by giving a platform to fake and misleading news stories.

Craig Silverman, who covers hoaxes and online misinformation for Buzzfeed, looked at the 20 fake election stories that performed best on Facebook and compared them with the top 20 real news stories. In the three months leading up to election day, the top fake election stories generated more engagement on Facebook than the top real news stories. Craig and Brooke discuss what this analysis reveals about viral stories, and Facebook's role.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg said this week that it's "crazy" to say that fake news swung the election. But he vowed to make changes to how the site handles those stories. John Herrman of the New York Times talks to Bob about what Facebook could actually do, and why it's harder than you'd think to draw a distinction between fake and real news.

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