On Facebook, Misinformation Is More Popular Now Than in 2016
People are engaging more on Facebook today with news
outlets that routinely publish misinformation than they did
before the 2016 election.
During the 2016 presidential election, Russian operatives
used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other social media
platforms to spread disinformation to divide the American
electorate. Since then, the social media companies have
spent billions of dollars and hired tens of thousands of
people to help clean up their act.
People are engaging more on Facebook today with news
outlets that routinely publish misinformation than they did
before the 2016 election, according to new research from the
German Marshall Fund Digital, the digital arm of the public
policy think tank. The organization, which has a data
partnership with the start-up NewsGuard and the social
media analytics firm NewsWhip, published its findings on
Monday.
In total, Facebook likes, comments and shares of articles
from news outlets that regularly publish falsehoods and
misleading content roughly tripled from the third quarter of
2016 to the third quarter of 2020, the group found.
By Davey Alba, The New York Times
(https://nyti.ms/31zUivt).