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Facebook Has Said It Will Not Remove Fake News

In the last year, Fake News has been a major part of criticism against social media. We have regularly been told that social media sites will improve to try and raise the quality of content they promote and crack down on inaccurate accounts, supporters, followers and hateful imagery. We have only seen in the last week that Twitter has begun rapidly pruning fake accounts. A move which has seen celebrity follower counts drop in the millions.

It seems, however, that while Facebook might be trying to ‘be our friend’ in a report via the BBC they are not going to remove ‘fake news’ from their platform.

Why Will They Not Remove It?

It is a coincidence that on a recent train journey I read one of Facebook’s UK advertisements they recently launched stating how they wanted to ‘be my friend’ by improving their service and data handling. It seems, however, that they don’t want to keep fake news away from either me or you. Doesn’t sound very friendly to me!

Despite the advert declaring specifically (and quote) “fake news is not our friend” Facebook has said that it will not remove it since it doesn’t strictly violate the terms of usage. It has said that removing them would be: “contrary to the basic principles of free speech.” Instead, what Facebook is going to do is “demote” such news articles. As such, while they will still be there, it’s less likely that you’ll encounter it.

What Do We Think?

To be honest, I’m not entirely surprised. Fake news is a very hard thing to police. Ultimately because of the nature that you have to know, for a fact, that it is fake. This is, however, a bit of a contrary position from the social media site. Particularly since in the last year they have been making various noises about attempting to remove this from their website. They have even openly recruited people to do this. I’m sorry Facebook, but while I understand it, I think you’re back peddling now.

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!