Facebook admits ‘fake news’ is a problem, pledges to curb ‘information operations’
More than six months after its founder first claimed that digital propaganda on social media had no discernible impact on the U.S. presidential election, Facebook publicly acknowledged such threats Thursday and announced plans to counter disinformation campaigns evident on the global social network. In a 13-page report released Thursday, Facebook outlined a series of sophisticated, well-funded and expansive campaigns it identified as being undertaken by governments and other organizations to spread misleading and sometimes false narratives to accomplish specific geopolitical goals. Facebook found that perpetrators often leveraged a complex network of fake accounts and amplification techniques to proliferate distinctive, time-sensitive messages to target audiences. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, published a historic, declassified report in January accusing Russian intelligence services of hacking into the Democratic National Committee and using damaging internal documents to specifically discredit democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Leaked communications were widely circulated on social […]
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