It has been a tough year for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. His company continues to set new records as far as the revenue and profit is concerned, but the public image of Facebook has taken a beating. In the last one year it has faced criticism over “fake news” or in other words misinformation that Facebook helps spread. After repeatedly trying to downplay the issue and deeming it something trivial, Zuckerberg is finally acknowledging that fake news is real and that it can have some serious repercussions.
Zuckerberg’s acknowledgement of the problem came in the wake of criticism of Facebook from US president Donald Trump, who (ironically) slammed the social media site for being against him. Trump, who according to many experts is the US president because fake news helped him during the campaign, on Wednesday tweeted that “Facebook was always anti-Trump.”
Zuckerberg apparently found the comment serious enough to pen a post on Facebook, responding to Trump. In the process he also said he regretted that he tried to downplay the allegations when many earlier said that fake news on Facebook helped Trump win.
“After the (US) election, I made a comment that I thought the idea misinformation on Facebook changed the outcome of the election was a crazy idea. Calling that crazy was dismissive and I regret it. This is too important an issue to be dismissive,” Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook on Wednesday.
Incidentally, Zuckerberg’s comments came just days after reports that the earlier US president Barack Obama personally warned the Facebook CEO about the dangers of fake news. The Washington Post noted in a report that “Obama made a personal appeal to Zuckerberg to take the threat of fake news and political disinformation seriously.”
According to the US newspaper, “Zuckerberg acknowledged the problem posed by fake news. But he told Obama that those messages weren’t widespread on Facebook and that there was no easy remedy.”
On Wednesday as he responded to Trump, Zuckerberg again repeated that Facebook’s job wasn’t easy in dealing with what people call “fake news”.
“I want to respond to President Trump’s tweet this morning claiming Facebook has always been against him,” wrote Zuckerberg. “Trump says Facebook is against him. Liberals say we helped Trump. Both sides are upset about ideas and content they don’t like. That’s what running a platform for all ideas looks like.”
