Facebook’s Fact Checking of Fake News is ‘Too Little Too Late’

Fact Checkers who work for Facebook to check fake news say that the new measures are ‘way too little, way too late’

In the light of recent criticism of Facebook, specifically the sources of news it was spreading, the social media giant hired a number of journalists to fact check the news. Specifically in relation to identifying ‘fake news’.

A number of the fact checkers who are independently employed by news distributors have stepped out in criticism of Facebook. Put simply, that say that it’s ‘way too little, way too late’.

The revelation comes just a short time after Facebook’s high-profile recruitment of Wikipedia to fact check them. There are some circles who will find that highly amusing.

The report via the Guardian also suggests that while the social media site might be employing them, they are actually hindering any real progress. The report suggests that any requests for more in-depth details on articles are regularly rejected or stonewalled.

Facebook may be employing fact checkers, but hindering their progress

It is quite a strong allegation to make. That Facebook is hiring fact checkers, but at the same time preventing them from effectively doing their job.

Fake news is, however, a hot topic at the moment. Even Google has implemented ‘fake news’ workshops via it’s YouTube arm.

Presumably, as one of 1000 recently employed by Facebook, one journalist (who has to remain unnamed) has said: “I don’t feel like it’s working at all. The fake information is still going viral and spreading rapidly. It’s really difficult to hold [Facebook] accountable. They think of us as doing their work for them. They have a big problem, and they are leaning on other organizations to clean up after them.”

There is, I have to say, a degree of legitimacy to this claim. It seems that Facebook’s response to any controversy is to hire and bunch of people and wait for the issue to blow over. Remember the whole ‘hate-speech’ business?

What do you think? Does Facebook really care about these issues? – Let us know in the comments!