Facebook Set To Clamp Down On Fake Stories
2016-11-16
Facebook announced this week that the company is taking steps to ban or restrict content from The Sun, Daily Star, Mirror, Daily Express and Daily Mail from being shared on the social network. The company has expressed concern about the number of ‘fake’ and made up news stories being shared on Facebook, resulting in members being duped or taken in.
The announcement didn’t specifically mention these news sources by name, but that can be the only implication. The only other sources of fake news items shared on Facebook, are sites like The Rotherham Bugle, where a reader would need to have the mental capacity of a small rock to be fooled into thinking a story was true. A spokesman for The Rotherham Bugle said “It’s easy to tell whether one of our stories is bollocks. If it appears on the site, it is – apart from this one ironically. But the judgement is much harder with stories coming from the popular National press. The odd story carries a grain of truth, and that’s where it gets confusing.”
Facebook says it’s going to announce how it plans to differentiate real news stories from fake ones soon. – which should be interesting. In the meantime, The Rotherham Bugle is urging readers to share its stories with impunity, secure in the knowledge that anyone taken in, will almost certainly be under the supervision of a full time carer who will explain gently that there’s nothing to worry about before administering some strong prescribed medication.
