Facebook has been under fire regarding the news feed for users, in particular the spreading of fake news stories. In reply to this, Facebook News Feed and PR teams have been working tirelessly to inform users that this is not Facebook’s intent and how the users can avoid reading and spreading this content.
Recently when I opened Facebook on my phone, the top of the page was a message with a message grabbing my attention saying, “How to spot fake news” as seen below.
It grasped my attention enough to make me click on it and continue to read on the topic. They included a lot of resources and steps that people can take when trying to spot fake news.
I found it interesting that Facebook set this up so that it would be the first thing users see when they open the app the day that they had this scheduled. In a way I felt like this was a direct response to the large amount of complaints and bad press they have been having around the issue. It feels like they are trying to push it in peoples faces
Facebook made it incredibly easy for the user to learn about spotting fake news although this effort does not inform people about how big of a problem the “fake news” epidemic is right now.
Buzzed news created an analysis of the top 20 fake and real news stories during the 2016 Election. They found that the fake news stories had greater engagement than the legitimate ones by over 1 million users.
Spotting fake news requires EFFORT and many social media users aren’t looking to put this in for an issue that they don’t realize is such a big deal. Would you go through the effort to report a news story that you thought to be Fake News?