Nearly 159 million American citizens were shown political fake news on Facebook in the first ten months of 2019, according to a recently published research paper by Avaaz Action Group.
Avaaz examined the hundred most popular Facebook messages that impartial fact checkers had tricked. Such communications seemed to have been posted 158.9 million times, generating 8.9 million views, comments and shares.
These messages included fake news stating that the U.S. President Donald Trump's grandfather was a pimp and tax avoider. It was also incorrectly stated in the same fake message that Trumps dad would be a Ku Klux Klan member. 29.2 million times the text was shown. An obvious lie about Nancy Pelosi, the House of Representatives ' Democratic president, received 24.6 million views. The fake news message said that $2.4 billion had been diverted from Pelosi to compensate for Trump's deposition procedure.
Most of the fake news has been derogatory. Of these, 62% was about Democrats and liberal views, and 29% was about Republicans and conservative views. A small fraction of the fake news was optimistic. In hat sense that Republicans and Conservatives were praised.
According to Avaaz, inadequate measures are being taken by Facebook against spreading fake news. The company works with impartial fact checkers, among other issues, who can detect untruths. Avaaz is calling on Facebook and all other social media platforms to immediately implement “Correct the Record”, which means working with independent fact-checkers to ensure that EVERY user who has seen or interacted with false information is notified and offered a correction.
More about Avaaz
Full report