Why We Should Hold Facebook Responsible for Fake News

Author: David Stockdale

Date: March 22, 2017

Link: https://www.digitalethics.org/essays/why-we-should-hold-facebook-responsible-fake-news

First Impression: Looking at the title and knowing that Facebook is currently being used 24/7 by people around the world for media consumption and sharing of news. I think the essay talks about how Facebook is being used as a platform for sharing fake news and how Facebook is responsible for these actions for the reason that they are not doing anything about it.

Quote: “It is for the benefit of humanity as a whole that innovative thinkers find new ways to connect individuals who are not ideologically similar. After all, isn't that the supposed purpose of social networking — to better connect people?”

Reflection:

Fake news is news or stories created to misinform or deceive and usually is created to either influence people’s views, push a political agenda, or cause confusion and can often be a profitable business for online publishers. This may be deceiving for some because of the similar look and feel of the website to some other news organizations, usually through the title of the news, making it look identical to others. Facebook is one of the top platforms where fake news thrives. I do agree that Facebook is the one we should hold responsible for fake news, due to the fake news not being filtered, this affected people’s decisions when voting in the 2016 Presidential Elections. This only means one thing, and that’s Facebook’s power to influence people massively impacts a person’s daily life, Facebook should do something about this problem of fake news like coming up with an algorithm that checks the validity of the report and author before allowing it to be published on their platform. We should also be careful when reading news articles on Facebook and must research for the validity of the article before we trust it. In conclusion, the spread of fake news is definitely Facebook’s fault, but we can’t just sit around and wait for the problem to be fixed. We should also be aware of the news articles we read online and make sure that it is legit before believing what is written in the article.

5 Things I Learned

1. I learned that Facebook has the most number of users than any other app worldwide.

2. I learned that according to Zuckerberg, Facebook is a media company, but not a traditional one.

3. I learned that Facebook’s news feed challenges peoples’ beliefs.

4. I learned that 44 percent of the population of the United States claimed to get news from Facebook.

5. I learned that fake news is misinformation styled as news.

5 Integrative Questions

1. How do Facebook check the validity of the news found in their platform?

2. How do journalists feel when seeing fake news on Facebook?

3. What sources or websites do Facebook allow when filtering fake news?

4. If Facebook is not able to remove fake news from their platform, how do we distinguish the fake news from real news?

5. How do fake news influence the beliefs of people?