After Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg had denied allegations that the company fell short in filtering fake news on its News Feeds amidst the cruciality of the election.
“I’ve seen some of the stories you are talking about around this election and personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, of which it’s a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea.” Zuckerberg said in a TechCrunch report during the Techonomy 2016 conference.
He stood by the idea that Facebook is not that powerful enough to influence the results of the election. Rather than pointing out other facts to address the problem, Zuckerberg had noted that Clinton’s post got lesser engagements than Trump’s on Facebook.
“We’ve studied this a lot because as you can imagine I really care about this, I want what we do to have a good impact on the world. I want people to have a diversity of information," Zuckerberg said.
Facebook researchers have suggested that everyone might agree or disagree in the platform with opposing beliefs on the election. But how the people react when they see a post that they disagree with would still greatly matter.
In a TechnologyTag report, Zuckerberg believed that Trump supporters don't have the capacity to manipulate the contents on Facebook. However, it was more likely that people are extra concerned in the fake news highlighted about Clinton.
Zuckerberg also added that the company is truly dedicated in improving their contents and to stop the proliferation of fake news. Part of it is the creation of the ranking algorithms that help in examining users’ contents.
“By far, the biggest filter in the system is not that the content isn’t there, or that you don’t have friends who support the other candidate, or who are from another religion, but that you just tune it out when you see it,” Zuckerberg added.
In spite of the global shock of Donald Trump’s feat in the election, Zuckerberg firmly believed that a single person can essentially alter and impact its resolution for that matter.
