Thursday 24 November 2016

Just how partisan is Facebook's fake news? We tested it | PCWorld

This article, fact-checking Facebook's own fact-checking, is interesting. Fake news now very much in the news.
The author created two profiles, one a Trump supporter and one a Hillary supporter. The fake Trump supporter was subject to more negative and fake articles about Hillary, than was the Hillary supporter about Trump (if you can follow that).
I came across this article while looking for a reference to a BBC World Service radio story that I just heard the end of, the other morning. Something along the following lines: that Facebook would remove some stories and replace them with a statement "many people have said this story was factually inaccurate". I couldn't believe they would do that. It's so easy to get a lynching crowd to say something they don't like is "factually inaccurate". I can imagine a case where somebody said "Islam was spread by the sword" , and a posse of islamapologist SJWs complaining that that was factually untrue. Whereas of course it is true.
I haven't found a reference to that yet. Maybe it's fake.