Mark Zuckerberg thinks the idea of fake news affecting the election is 'crazy'

7 years ago

Mark Zuckerberg thinks the idea of fake news affecting the election is 'crazy'

Since Trump's election, a lot of people in the tech industry turned their heads towards Facebook in their search for answers. Some speculated that a major factor in the elections was misinformation, spread through fake news on Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg, on the other hand, thinks otherwise.

Yesterday he appeared on the stage of Techonomy for an interview on “People, Power and Politics” with David Kirkpatrick. The interviewer made sure to steer the conversation towards Facebook's influence and around 12 minutes in, Zuckerberg commented:

I've seen some of the stories that you're talking about around this election. You know, personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way, I think is a pretty crazy idea.

“Voters make decisions based on their lived experience,” continued Zuckerberg. He believes that the speculations that blame fake Facebook's news, are a result of “profound lack of empathy”. According to Zuckerberg, people who believe said speculations, “haven't internalized the message that Trump supporters are trying to send”.

To back up his statements that “this surely had no impact”, Facebook's creator asked why would people think that there would be fake news on one side and not the other. He also made sure to emphasize that hoaxes are a very small volume of the content on his platform and the Facebook team is doing its best to reduce them even more.

Kirkpatrick then moved on to a broader subject about Facebook's influence in general. Zuckerberg commented that he wants his company to have a good impact on the world. “I want people to have a diversity of information,” he said, before stating that Facebook's impact on the general population “isn't really a problem”.

The influence of Facebook and social media as a whole has been a hot subject for quite some time now. And Facebook and Mark are certainly under a lot of pressure since Trump's election, so we're bound to hear more on the subject pretty soon. In the meantime, feel free to let us know what you think. Has Facebook helped The Donald secure the Oval Office, or did it play no part at all?