Facebook Aims to Tackle Fake News Ahead of U.K. Election
"Facebook must be prepared to immediately prevent the dissemination of news
that has been clearly identified as untrue." Facebook’s latest campaign in Britain comes after vocal criticism of the network’s role in spreading false information during the 2016 American presidential election, as well as during a series of elections in Europe this year.
Campaigners against false information say that without data on people’s activity on Facebook, it remains
difficult — if not impossible — to create tools to tackle the growing rise of fake reports online.
Claire Wardle said that There’s significantly more that Facebook could be doing,
It also said it had removed tens of thousands of possibly fake accounts in Britain,
and had tweaked its algorithms in the country to reduce the amount of misinformation and spam that people will see in their Facebook news feeds.
The company has sought to clamp down on how outright fake news sites could make money from advertising on its network,
and it introduced fact-checking initiatives in Europe before recent votes in the Netherlands and in France, and coming ones in Britain and Germany.
The steps come as tech companies and data scientists are turning to artificial intelligence
and other high-tech wizardry to try to combat the spread of fake news online, including automatically fact-checking statements in real time.