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Facebook, Google Move To Limit Fake News

While Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has rejected the suggestion that fake news delivered via its platform helped sway the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, the social network is taking steps to ensure that falsehoods don’t run rampant in future elections — and other important events.

On Monday, Facebook announced that is banning fake news publishers from the Facebook Audience Network, which allows advertisers to include sites from outside Facebook in their ad campaigns.

However, the policy won’t necessarily affect fake news that appears in the social network’s own News Feed – a much high profile area.

Bogus news sites on the Facebook Audience Network benefited from ad revenue shared with them by Facebook, meaning the practice of publishing fake news was not only deceptive but profitable. 

BuzzFeed identified over 100 sites based in Macedonia that were publishing false pro-Trump articles on the Facebook Audience Network, apparently motivated more by money than political loyalty.

Facebook’s decision to ban fake news sites from its ad platform comes shortly after a similar announcement from Google, which is tightening the rules for its AdSense network.

As noted, Zuckerberg has pushed back on the notion that fake news on Facebook contributed to Donald Trump’s upset victory, arguing: “The idea that fake news on Facebook influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea.” Instead, he argued, voters “make decisions based on their lived experience.”

Zuckerberg also noted that less than 1% of all the news content carried on Facebook was fake.  For his part, Trump has praised social media for enabling him to correct what he characterized as false and unfair coverage of his campaign in the mainstream media.

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