Facebook has announced a plan to deal with fake news. The term "fake news" has already started to lose meaning — just check out this list of fake news perpetrators put together by the Sandy Hook-deniers at Infowars — but it basically means the phenomenon of factually incorrect stories packaged as reported news written by people who are motivated either by profit or politics. Facebook enables these stories to spread fast, but Facebook feels bad about that. Facebook therefore introduced a few new things to beat back the armies of fakers, including fact-checking powered by ABC News, FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, Snopes, and the Associated Press. If these fact-checkers feel a story is false, it will pop up an alert that tells users that it's "disputed," link to an article explaining why, and prevent that story from being promoted by Facebook's advertising tools.
So how did the various left-, right-, and fake-leaning outlets spin this news?
The Huffington Post:
“Facebook Is Finally Taking Action Against Fake News”
The New York Times:
“Facebook Mounts Effort to Limit Tide of Fake News”
The Wall Street Journal:
“Facebook Inches Closer to Fact-Checking Its News”
Fox Business:
“Facebook to Roll Out New Tools to Tackle Fake News”
US News:
“Facebook Will Start Labeling News Content That Might Be Fake”
The Blaze:
“Facebook to partner with mainstream fact-checkers to combat ‘fake news’”
Drudge Report:
Infowars:
“FACEBOOK TO DECIDE WHAT’S REAL VS. FAKE NEWS FOR USERS” (alternate headlines on the site: “Facebook empowers far-left group to bury 'fake news'” and “Facebook to Label 'Fake News' with Help of Partisan 'Fact Checkers'”)
The Daily Caller:
“Facebook Using Unreliable Liberal Fact-Checker To Fight ‘Fake News’”
Twitchy:
“Sounds legit! Facebook partners with fake news (Politifact, Snopes) to ‘fact check’ fake news”
And how are the worst of the fake news sites spinning the story about Facebook's crackdown on fake news? They aren't. The majority are simply ignoring it.
