Video summary
France’s President Emmanuel Macron told the U.S. Congress that false news is an ever growing virus that threatens to corrode the very spirit of democracy.
More than two billion monthly active users upload 300 million photos to Facebook a day and share more than a half-million comments a minute.
The items that Facebook users see in their News Feed is run by an algorithm overseen by a News Feed team at Facebook Headquarters in California.
The News Feed algorithm is supposed to remove false content, but bad actors are constantly looking for ways to fool it to put their stories first and make money on ads.
Research suggests we are much more likely to read, like, and share misinformation, because it is designed to target our emotions.
"One of the issues we face is that misinformation is often very engaging. So, people don’t create a lot of fake boring stories. In general, if they’re going to go through the trouble of creating a fake story, it’s about something really interesting and exciting," explains the director of analytics for the News Feed, Dan Zigmond. "People might click them more than they would click like a more staid, kind of honest story, a little bit like eating junk food or something like that."
Discussion questions:
-
Essential question
: Why is fake news a problem?
-
What can Facebook and other social media platform do to fight it?
Extension activity:
Check out this
lesson on misinformation
based on the
information
of PBS' youth reporters. Click here for the
full-site
.
