BuzzFeed has another in-depth look at the fake news problem Facebook has, even though Zuckerberg continues to deny. Some of the fake news was from a site called Ending the Fed.
One example is the remarkably successful, utterly untrustworthy site Ending the Fed. It was responsible for four of the top 10 false election stories identified in the analysis: Pope Francis endorsing Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton selling weapons to ISIS, Hillary Clinton being disqualified from holding federal office, and the FBI director receiving millions from the Clinton Foundation. These four stories racked up a total of roughly 2,953,000 Facebook engagements in the three months leading up to Election Day.
Ending the Fed gained notoriety in August when Facebook promoted its story about Megyn Kelly being fired by Fox News as a top trending item. The strong engagement the site has seen on Facebook may help explain how one of its stories was featured in the Trending box.
The site, which does not publicly list an owner or editor, did not respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.
Like several other hyperpartisan right-wing sites that scored big Facebook hits this election season, Ending the Fed is a relatively new website. The domain endingthefed.com was only registered in in March. Yet according to BuzzFeed News’ analysis, its top election content received more Facebook engagement than stories from the Washington Post and New York Times. For example, the top four election stories from the Post generated roughly 2,774,000 Facebook engagements — nearly 180,000 fewer than Ending the Fed’s top four false posts.
A look at Ending the Fed’s traffic chart from Alexa also gives an indication of the massive growth it experienced as the election drew close:
The full story is at BuzzFeed. This is absolutely shameful. As I noted in the previous FB post, it’s not at all difficult to choose one reliable, reputable news source, and check it every day. It’s not at all difficult to check out and verify stories passing as news. People should be unwilling to look like ignorant fools. As it turns out, that does not deter repubs in the least.
Want to check the veracity of a story? You can go right to Google news, and search. There’s always Snopes. Also, beware any newsource under Liftable Media. They have a large FB presence, and are known for publishing fake news.
h/t to Kengi.
Oh, but we are going to “open up the libel laws” so that legitimate news sources can be sued for printing the actual truth. It is total madness.
Facebook motto: We always fuck up!
More on the FB fake newsness: http://arstechnica.com/staff/2016/11/its-time-to-get-rid-of-the-facebook-news-feed-because-its-not-news/