Parliament to grill Facebook chiefs over 'fake news'
Summary
An inquiry into fake news is to be launched by an influential cross party of MP's amid fears fake news is undermining democracy. Fake news came to prominence during the US Presidential election when multiple reports about now President - Elect Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton when viral online but later were proved to be false. The trend of fake news continues to rise and executives at Facebook, Google and Twitter are expected to be called into Parliament to be grilled on whether they are doing enough to stop the trend of fake news. The Commons Culture Committee is discussing launching the inquiry internally and hopes it can begin holding sessions by spring or early summer. Damien Collins, (Tory Chairman of Committee) told The Telegraph he fears “malicious” fake news is especially damaging around elections.He suggested that social media platforms should be obliged to ensure that such content is not shared widely in the same way they have to clamp down on piracy. Concerns have reached such heights in Britain that an influential cross party committee is on the brink of announcing a formal inquiry.
Key Statistics - From another article: Researchers created fake news here is what they found
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/upshot/researchers-created-fake-news-heres-what-they-found.html
- More people reported having heard, and believed the true statements
- Only 15.3% of population recalled seeing fake news stories
- 7.9% recalled seeing and believing them
- More interestingly, the above numbers are nearly identical to the proportion who reported seeing (14.1 percent) and believing (8.3 percent) the placebos, the “fake fake” news stories. Essentially, as many people recalled seeing and believing fake news that had been published and distributed through social media as recalled seeing fake news that had never existed and was purely an invention of researchers
My Opinion
Fake news is a growing trend and nobody can deny that something needs to be done about it. Though, we are still yet to figure out how to combat this spread so while we figure it out the trend keeps on rising. However, just because it came to prominence during the US Presidential election I do not think that I can agree with Damien Collins statement that 'malicious' fake news is especially damaging around election. This is because, for all we know fake news could have been around for a lot longer but we might not have noticed it. During something as big as an election there is going to be a big team of people managing the social media side of things so for instance during the US Election if something was published that Donald Trump supposedly said it is more likely to be picked up. In comparison, to the everyday publishing of news on current affairs where what is published by us as citizen journalists and media organisations is not questioned as much. In my opinion, if we are to combat the rising trend of fake news we need to come up with a solution quickly for instance better gate keeping of the posts that are allowed to be published such as an option to report and flag a story on Facebook as being fake.
How is Facebook trying to combat fake news (Their 4 methods)?
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