Author: Rachel Kaser / Source: The Next Web
As Facebook continues its alleged fight against fake news, it’s been undermined this week by a comment made by an executive that makes it seem as though the company isn’t actually going to do anything about the problem.
In an interview with CNN reporter Oliver Darcy, Facebook‘s head of News Feed, John Hegeman waffled on one particular topic.
Darcy asked him how the company could claim to be serious about fighting fake news while still allowing Alex Jones’ Infowars to maintain a page on the site.Hegeman gave a rather confusing answer:
I guess just for being false that doesn’t violate the community standards. . . [Infowars] has not violated something that would result in them being taken down. I think part of the fundamental thing here is that we created Facebook to be a place where different people can have a voice. And different publishers have very different points of view.
Notice how he doesn’t outright deny Infowars is a generator of fake news. If he had, that would be one thing. But instead he said fake news isn’t a violation of Facebook‘s policies, despite all indicators to the contrary. It looks like fake news is the one thing Facebook‘s decided to stop apologizing for. Honestly, it’s not the hill I expected the company to die on.
Facebook has been trying to shed its reputation as a clearing house for fake news since the 2016 election. It’s gone so far as to create its own “trustworthy news” videos — albeit going heavy on the Fox News and CNN. It also bought Bloomsbury…
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