Here’s How To Spot A Fake News Story On Facebook

Recently, Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in MA, created a public Google Document of all of the websites that people should not trust for news that has been making its way around the internet, according to the LA Times.

The Pew Research Center said that some 44% of Americans get information directly from Facebook. This tool or algorithm was a problem to some who felt the social media site was targeting conservative media outlets. This innovative way to sift out fake news from the original ones on Facebook has been created by Daniel Sieradski.

One of such outright wrong stories was said to have reported that Pope Francis had endorsed Mr. Trump.On Sunday, the website called 70News had wrongly stated that Mr. Trump, who won the Electoral College, was ahead of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, even in the popular vote count. Buzzfeed News pointed out fake news site Ending the Fed as one of the more successful sites, having four of the top 10 false election stories. Google said it is working on a policy change that will prevent its Ad Sense software, so its ad-selling software, from being used on websites that propagate false information.

As for the task force, they remain to be in the shadows and away from the eyes of the media for fear that they might lose their job at Facebook if they are named.

“Obviously, stuff slips through”. Be wary of articles without specific authors and go to a legitimate news site, such as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, to see if they, too, have covered the news.

“Even the notion of truth is something that’s highly contested at this point”, he said.

“While some hoaxes can be completely debunked, a greater amount of content, including from mainstream sources, often gets the basic idea right but some details wrong or omitted”, he wrote.

The majority of these propaganda-churning websites are based outside the United States, but as a revealing new article in the Washington Post reveals, just as many were housed right in the heart of America.

This a started in summer when Gizmodo blamed Facebook that the team at Facebook responsible for its Trending Topics news list was suppressing links from conservative sources.

Louisiana State University of Shreveport student Pat Day agrees.

Here’s a quick look at the issue.

Sixty-four percent of respondents say they relied on social networks more than 50 percent of the time for news gathering during the election.