Facebook decides to demote fake news rather than removing them
Facebook has decided not to remove fake news because they do not violate community rules.

14 July, 2018

Facebook says it will not remove fake news from its platform because it does not violate its community standards. According to the BBC, Facebook said publishers often had “very different points of view” and removing fabricated posts would be “contrary to the basic principles of free speech.”

The company said it would not remove fake news that did not break its rules but would down-rank content that had been marked as false.

“We allow people to post it as a form of expression, but we’re not going to show it at the top of News Feed,” a spokeswoman told CNN.

Facebook’s John Hegeman said: “We created Facebook to be a place where different people can have a voice.”

“We see Pages on both the left and the right pumping out what they consider opinion or analysis – but others call fake news. We believe banning these Pages would be contrary to the basic principles of free speech.” Facebook said in a tweet. 

“Instead, we demote individual posts etc. that are reported by FB users and rated as false by fact checkers. This means they lose around 80% of any future views. We also demote Pages and domains that repeatedly share false news.” Facebook said in a similar tweet. 

(Image – Facebook)