Facebook Inc, facing withering criticism
for failing to stem a flood of phony news
articles in the run-up to the U.S.
presidential election, is taking a series of
steps to weed out hoaxes and other
types of false information, chief
executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a
Facebook post Friday evening.
Facebook has long insisted that it is a
technology company and not a
publisher, and rejects the idea that it
should be held responsible for the
content that its users circulate on the
platform. Just after the election,
Zuckerberg said the notion that fake or
misleading news on Facebook had
helped swing the election to Donald
Trump was a "crazy idea."
Zuckerberg then said last Saturday that
more than 99 percent of what people
see on Facebook is authentic, calling
"only a very small amount" fake news
and hoaxes.
But in his Friday posting Zuckerberg
struck a decidedly different tone. He
said Facebook has been working on the
issue of misinformation for a long time,
calling the problem complex both
technically and philosophically.
.
"While the percentage of misinformation
is relatively small, we have much more
work ahead on our roadmap,"
Zuckerberg said.
He outlined a series of steps that were
already underway, including greater use
of automation to "detect what people
will flag as false before they do it
themselves."
He also said Facebook would make it
easier to report false content, work with
third-party verification organizations
and journalists on fact-checking efforts,
and explore posting warning labels on
content that has been flagged as false.
The company will also try to prevent
fake-news providers from making
money through its advertising system,
as it had previously announced.
Zuckerberg said Facebook must be
careful not to discourage sharing of
opinions or mistakenly restricting
accurate content. "We do not want to be
arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead
rely on our community and trusted third
parties," he said.
Facebook historically has relied on
users to report links as false and share
links to myth-busting sites, including
Snopes, to determine if it can
confidently classify stories as
misinformation, Zuckerberg said. The
service has extensive "community
standards" on what kinds of content are
acceptable.
Facebook faced international outcry
earlier this year after it removed an
iconic Vietnam War photo due to nudity,
a decision that was later reversed. The
thorniest content issues are decided by
a group of top executives at Facebook,
and there have been extensive internal
conversations at the company in recent
months over content controversies,
people familiar with the discussions
say.
Among the fake news reports that
circulated ahead of the U.S. election
were reports erroneously alleging Pope
Francis had endorsed Trump and that a
federal agent who had been
investigating Democratic candidate
Hillary Clinton was found dead.

(Reporting by David Bailey in
Minneapolis; Editing by Jonathan Weber
and Mary Milliken)