Trump Got Help From Facebook Fake News During Election
“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”
This is a small excerpt from the opening speech of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg when he was before a joint Senate Committee hearing. The United States presidential election, 2016 alleged affected by the Facebook fake news articles spread on Facebook. This helped the current US president Mr Donald Trump and he eventually got some additional favour. The ground of the same news got stronger when Trump won.
Though, Mr Zuckerberg tried to clear the clouds about various speculation of such fake news over Facebook feed; there are some facts we are sharing here. These facts strengthen all such speculations.
Facebook Fake news had a wider reach
“There is a long tail of stories on Facebook, It may seem like the top stories get a lot of traction, but they represent a tiny fraction of the total,” a Facebook spokesman shared the information with BuzzFeed.
According to the sources, a roughly 25 – 30% voting-age adults visited the Fake news and website which supported the Trump’s election campaign. This made a huge impact on the election. This is based on the collection of 2,500 Americans’ web traffic data between October to December of 2016.
Social media primarily drove the fake news
Social media is one of the prime reason to connect people with fake news and such websites. You will be surprised to know that a research from NYU and Stanford found that more than 40 percent of visits and traffic to 65 fake news sites come from social media.
This is really a serious concern here as social media can actually drive the people into a particular direction. Indirectly, social media is altering the opinion of people. The frequency of such fake news was on high during the presidential election in 2016.
Fake news is worrisome
Despite the clarification from Facebook CEO in the US Senate, the fake news is scary. This is worrisome when any such fake news convinces people at the extreme liberal or conservative, and divert them towards a certain opinion. The study from Yale University says that the more people expose to a fake news, the more they believe it; it proves that Facebook fake news can alter the opinions.
However, Facebook proposed to introduce the paid ad-free Facebook account; in order to provide a secure facebook account. Isn’t that clear the clouds over the opinion of the role of Facebook fake news in Trump’s win!
