Mark Zuckerburg has finally committed to creating a plan to fix Facebook’s fake news problem.
Following a week of criticism in which even President Obama spoke out about the dangers of social media sites pushing fake news, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted late last night about what his company is doing to fix this problem. In the post, he said:
“We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties.”
The CEO’s lengthy, but carefully worded, post laid out a series of steps the social network is taking to combat misinformation. The steps the company will be taking include introducing better detection and reporting tools, warning labels, better-suggested articles, new ad policies, third-party verification and working more closely with journalists and media organizations.
Zuckerberg said that the problem of misinformation and fake news is “technically and philosophically” complex. The company is now working on “better technical systems to detect what people will flag as false before they do it themselves.”
He also said that the company is working on more prominent warning labels that will make it clearer to people when they come across misinformation. He said:
“We are exploring labeling stories that have been flagged as false by third parties or our community, and showing warnings when people read or share them.”
Zuckerberg emphasized that these efforts may not be entirely effective but that Facebook is “committed to getting this right.”
