Mark Zuckerberg is out of Congressional hearings — but it was still a busy week for the Facebook CEO. This Wired writer is not impressed by Facebook’s testimony before British MPs. But Zuckerberg has another chance — he’s been summoned. “Fake news” warningsshrink the content on your News Feed. Here’s a look at Facebook’s new “something happened” ad campaign. At F8, the platform’s […]

The problem with WeChat The influence of misinformation among Chinese-speaking immigrants in the United States offers important clues for how fake news is constructed and distributed, according to a new paper published by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Chi Zhang found that, while many popular web hoaxes in the U.S. deal with jobs, the economy and […]

In the past month, Facebook has doubled the number of countries using its fact-checking tool. The program, arguably Facebook’s most visible effort to combat fake news on the platform, is now active in India, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines and Colombia. Previously, it was only available to fact-checkers in the United States and four European countries. While fact-checkers […]

This week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of U.S. congressional committees over the course of two days. While the testimony, prompted by Facebook’s recent scandal involving data firm Cambridge Analytica, was mostly focused on user privacy, it shed a little light on how Zuckerberg views the platform’s misinformation problem — as well as how ill-informed Congress is about how Facebook […]

The Malaysian government raised eyebrows this week when both houses passed a bill outlawing fake news, punishable by up to six years in prison for both its publication and sharing. Online service providers would be responsible for third-party content, foreign news outlets reporting on Malaysia could be affected and anyone could lodge a complaint against an alleged purveyor of misinformation. But […]

To raise awareness of fact–checking, the world will mark International Fact-Checking Day, held each year on April 2 — the day after April Fool’s Day.  This week, the International Fact–Checking Network launched Factcheckingday.com, a resource for citizens, readers and educators seeking to examine the validity of information, especially online. International Fact–Checking Day is a rallying cry for more facts in politics, journalism and […]

In the fight against online misinformation, Facebook’s News Feed is typically front and center. But an investigation from BuzzFeed News found that spammers are increasingly using fake groups to spread conspiracy theories, troll, hack and harass other users. The tactic is a global problem — and it could get worse. Given Facebook’s recent announcement that group content will be given more prominent […]

This week, the European Commission’s high level group on misinformation released its final report, which includes calls for supporting media financially, data sharing from platforms and an explicit recommendation against outlawing fake news. (Here are six takeaways from the report). Still, countries around the world have increasingly taken an interest in fighting misinformation. In light of the growing governmental interest in fighting […]

Over the past month and a half, Alexios Mantzarlis and Daniel Funke tracked fact-checkers’ analytics to see how the recent Facebook algorithm change affected them. The topline finding is that, while there was a major dip in shares and interactions compared to 2017 — in part due to political cycles — they didn’t detect any major fluctuations in fact-checkers’ […]

Much of the global conversation around misinformation has centered around the United States: its politics, platforms and polarized public. But other players have an increasingly important role. For instance, the International Fact-Checkers Network reports: the Austrian foreign minister recently called a journalist “Pinocchio” and fake news — and got sued, the United Kingdom Embassy in the […]