Facebook was reportedly scared of suppressing right-wing sites

Besides Facebook, Twitter was also marked out for its role in influencing voters to back Trump. Zuckerberg called it a “pretty insane idea” to think this affected the election, but “it’s not a insane idea”, a Facebook employee who works in the engineering division told BuzzFeed News.

This election cycle, some of the top fake news stories were shared millions of times on Facebook.

TechCrunch now reports that in January 2015, Facebook rolled out an update created to combat hoax news stories.

So by trying not to be politically biased, did Facebook actually end up favoring the Republican nominee?

“This is an area where I believe we must proceed very carefully, though”, said Zuckerberg, who asserted that “more than 99% of what people see is authentic”.

In addition, Facebook’s current system of having employees look into stories flagged by users poses problems as well.

Gizmodo, citing unnamed sources said to be knowledgeable about Facebook’s decision-making, said the tool was shelved after a controversy over reports saying the social network suppressed some conservative voices in its “trending topics” earlier this year.

The kinds of stories that painted one candidate or the other in not just a negative light but a flat out false spotlight.

According to a report on Monday by Gizmodo, however, Facebook has not been almost as certain that it’s doing all it can to fight news fraud as Zuckerberg’s letter implied.

Forty-four percent of Americans reportedly get their news from Facebook. An October report by Buzzfeed News showed that hyper-partisan Facebook groups played an active role in disseminating the false information. However, he sidesteps the question of the significance of the hoaxes that get through – a handful of lies can be very damaging if enough people believe them. “The article’s allegation is not true”, a Facebook spokesperson said.

Even Mark Zuckerberg’s own employees think their CEO is wrong about News Feed.

By Monday evening, the fake story had fallen to the number two position in a search for those terms.

Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG, -2.38% GOOGL, -2.40% Google plans to prohibit fake-news websites from using its ad-selling software, a move that could crimp revenue at those sites. “We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further”, he added. “Identifying the “truth” is complicated”, Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post. The New York Times also rounded up quite a few false stories that had been circulating, including ones that claimed Clinton opponents had mysteriously died, that her campaign paid pollsters to skew results, and even asserting that her campaign manager was involved in occult rituals.

“He’s trying to protect against the moment when Facebook has to admit [the] problem and there’s no algorithmic solution to it; there’s only a people solution”, Rosen said.