- Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) extensive attempts to mitigate the spread of false news on the platform are having a "meaningful impact," a new study suggests.
- Research by Stanford and NYU into interactions with 570 fake sites (on Twitter and Facebook from January 2015 to July 2018) showed a steady rise in shared posts up until just after the 2016 election before "interactions then declined by more than half on Facebook, while they continued to rise on Twitter (NYSE:TWTR)."
- The evidence is "far from definitive" but it's consistent with a view that "the overall magnitude of the misinformation problem may have declined, at least temporarily," the study says.
- There's still work to be done, it says: Even after the 2016 post-election drop, articles from fake news sites are shared about 70M times a month on Facebook, and 4-6M times a month on Twitter.
- Previously: Facebook expands fact-checking effort to photos, videos (Sep. 13 2018)
- Previously: Twitter permanently bans Alex Jones, InfoWars (Sep. 06 2018)
- Now read: Facebook, Shame And Profits: The Long Thesis
Original article