Facebook is a social media platform that has been around for over 15 years now. I remember how fun Facebook used to be when I was in high school, but nowadays it seems like Facebook is filled with a bunch of nonsense. Sometimes your feed is filled with things you do not care about, a bunch of paid promotions or news that don't even make sense. Other times it is filled with content you subscribed to or with posts from your family and friends, overall it is just hard to tell when Facebook is going to have itself together. Regardless of what your thoughts on Facebook are, based on a study by Pew Research Center, over 43% of Americans get their information from Facebook. The issue with getting information from social media, especially a platform such as Facebook, is that one never knows how accurate the information is, especially since anyone can post or share what they want. But the issue takes a different spin when the company itself is blamed for paying for fake news to be published on its site. According to an article by NiemanLab, "Real News About Fake News", "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg ignored warning signs of the extent of misinformation on their platform". There is no doubt that there is fake news plastered all over all types of social media platforms out there, but when one chooses to ignore the misinformation that is getting shared across their app, they are also contributing to the issue. Facebook should learn something from WhatsApp and come up with a way to flag content that may appear funky. According to Fact Check, things to look for to spot a fake article are, the author's name, the source, the date, and to check for biases.
Links:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/01/facts-about-americans-and-facebook/
https://www.niemanlab.org/2018/11/facebook-probably-didnt-want-to-be-denying-it-paid-people-to-create-fake-news-this-week-but-here-we-are/
https://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/how-to-spot-fake-news/
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