Mark Zuckerberg vows to stop Facebook fake news and fix ‘divided world’
Facebook boss admits his social media website is making mistakes, and blames 'nation states' for spread of fake news
FACEBOOK boss Mark Zuckerberg has said his personal challenge for 2018 is to snuff out fake news on his social media site.
In an ongoing bid to clean up Facebook's act, Zuckerberg admits he won't be able to "prevent all mistakes or abuse", but says his team are making too many errors right now.
The news came in a lengthy Facebook post by the company's founder and CEO, where Zuckerberg reveals: "The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do."
The 33-year-old tech whiz says he has three key goals for the year:
- "Protecting our community from abuse and hate"
- "Defending against interference by nation states"
- "Making sure that time spent on Facebook is well spent"
The Facebook chief's mention of nation states is likely referring to Russia, which has been widely blamed for spreading fake news across social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
A recent study by Survation polled 2000 UK adults, and found that Russia was the most likely country to be blamed for fake news campaigns.
Of the people polled, 64% believed governments paid people to mislead the public online, and 59% of those respondents thought Russia was doing exactly that.
Facebook told The Sun that it takes fighting false news seriously, and says it offers a series of measures to disrupt the spread and impact of fake stories.
Brendan Nyhan, Political Science professor at Dartmouth College, says that Facebook is a "key vector of exposure" to fake news, according to his research.
He also added that fake news was "heavily concentrated" among people with conservative views, and that fact-checking services "did not reach those exposed" to fake news.
Zuckerberg is hopeful that he can make amends however, and says "if we're successful this year, then we'll end 2018 on a much better trajectory".