Once Mark Zuckerberg realized a year or so ago the degree to which fake news had become a pretty widespread problem across his beleaguered social network — that it was getting swamped by everything from sketchy publishers to trolls and Russians — he decided to attack the problem. By, well, not directly attacking the problem. More like doing his best to wall it off and push it to one corner where he hopes Facebook visitors will never see it.
We’re talking, of course, about his decision roughly coinciding with the 2016 presidential election to combat fake news by just dialing the organic reach of every brand and news publisher account on the platform even closer to zero than it already was. Voila! You don’t have to get into the messy business of making editorial calls about what’s fake news and what isn’t — potentially pissing off big swaths of your user base — if you just tamp down the reach of everything that’s not a personal Facebook account.
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Microsoft’s browser fights fake news by trying to steer you away from certain sites originally appeared on BGR.com on Wed, 23 Jan 2019 at 16:48:51 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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