Article Trunk



Posts Tagged ‘misinformation’

Facebook will downrank anti-vax content on News Feed and hide it on Instagram

After indicating that it was exploring its options for fighting the potentially deadly rise of anti-vaccination content on its platform last month, Facebook is making a plan of attack. Facebook’s strategy in the effort is to both minimize the spread of vaccination misinformation and to point users away from inaccurate anti-vaccination propaganda and toward “authoritative ...

YouTube demonetizes anti-vaccination videos

YouTube will demonetize channels that promote anti-vaccination views, after a report by BuzzFeed News found ads, including from health companies, running before anti-vax videos. The platform will also place a new information panel that links to the Wikipedia entry on “vaccine hesitancy” before anti-vax videos. Information panels (part of YouTube’s efforts to combat misinformation) about ...

Facebook just removed a new wave of suspicious activity linked to Iran

Facebook just announced its latest round of “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” this time out of Iran. The company took down 262 Pages, 356 accounts, three Facebook groups and 162 Instagram accounts that exhibited “malicious-looking indicators” and patterns that identify it as potentially state-sponsored or otherwise deceptive and coordinated activity. As Facebook Head of Cybersecurity Policy Nathaniel ...

Facebook’s weapon amid chaos and controversy: misdirection

The New York Times’ bombshell report into the past three years at Facebook paint a grotesque picture of the company’s attempts to navigate a string of high-profile controversies by using unsavory, unethical and dark PR tactics. The Times’ report, citing more than 50 sources, accuses the company of: employing a Republican opposition research firm to ...

Fake news ‘threat to democracy’ report gets back-burner response from UK gov’t

The UK government has rejected a parliamentary committee’s call for a levy on social media firms to fund digital literacy lessons to combat the impact of disinformation online. The recommendation of a levy on social media platforms was made by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee three months ago, in a preliminary report following ...

Ahead of midterm elections, Facebook expands ban on posts aimed at voter suppression

Facebook is expanding its ban on false and misleading posts that aim to deter citizens from voting in the upcoming midterm elections. The social media giant is adding two more categories of false information to its existing policy, which it introduced in 2016, in an effort to counter new types of abuse. Facebook already removes verifiably ...

Thousands of Twitter accounts that spread fake news during the 2016 election are still active today, say researchers

Fake news and misinformation was a key tactic used by the Russians during the 2016 presidential election to try to sway voters against candidates and sow mistruths and mistrust. Now, with just weeks before the 2018 midterm elections, researchers say things are almost as bad. Research out Thursday by the Knight Foundation found that more ...