Facebook has recently been called out for unintentionally promoting fake news articles, particularly regarding the 2016 presidential election. The latest example of a (completely fake) narrative gaining steam across the social network: Denzel Washington is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump.
Posted via American News and breittbart.co, the fake story has received more than 355,00 shares on Facebook as of this writing.
The article was first published in August by Anews24, a content mill that does not attribute its writers. The article puts pro-Trump remarks into quotations but never attributes a speaker, though the assumption is that Washington said them:
“We need more and more jobs. Unemployment is way up here,” he said. “He’s hired more employees, more people, than anyone I know in the world.” I believe in him first of all because he’s a businessman. I think jobs are badly needed.”
Mark Zuckerberg spoke about how his company has had an effect on the election during a livestream at the Technonomy conference last week: “Personally, I think the idea fake news on Facebook… influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea,” he said.
Facebook has a real issue with fake news gaining steam, and it’s helped divide liberal and conservative networks of users via the spread of misinformation.
H/T Ben Collins
