OBAMA Laments, False Information Spreading Fast On Social Media

Associated Press

President Barrack Obama lament that he is having enough of fake news on Facebook and other social media lately.

He said this while speaking at a rally for Hillary Clinton Monday at the University of Michigan. He emphasized how lies, rumours and hate is spreading on social networks like Facebook.

As quoted by Associated Press He said "And people, if they just repeat attacks enough, and outright lies over and over again, as long as it's on Facebook and people can see it, as long as its on social media, people start believing it," he said. "And it creates this dust cloud of nonsense."

However, a recent study by BuzzFeed found that 38% of posts shared from three large right-wing politics pages on Facebook included "false or misleading information," and that three large left-wing pages did the same nearly 20% of the time. A follow-up investigation by BuzzFeed revealed how teenagers in Macedonia create fake, pro-Trump news stories that go viral on Facebook.

Reports of fake news stories surfacing on Facebook spiked after the social network fired the human editors who ran its Trending news section. Facebook has said it's working to better filter out false and misleading stories from the News Feed but has yet to introduce any major changes.