With an announcement today, Facebook evaluated its action this year in the hunt for fake news for the European Union, citing a total of five fake news that it managed to identify and delete from the platform of.
Considering that the decline in the number of fake news is always significant, and on the basis of the forthcoming elections in the European Union, Facebook has taken steps to limit the spread of misinformation by removing five thirty fake news releases from the beginning of the year.
This news was about:
1. The photograph of a letter which is allegedly written by the director of a Dresden primary school and announcing that next week, four imams would visit the school to introduce the children to the Quran and Islam. In this letter, a "thematic week" would take place, including a compulsory visit to a mosque, and the parents would have to buy a Quran and avoid having to eat breakfast pork on the day of the visit of the imams. The letter was closed by saying the school was happy to bring parents and children closer to Islam, as it is an important issue in Germany. The news was released in January 2019.
2. A video shared on Facebook in February 2019 and showed a man in a suit walking through the Spanish parliament and leaving small cards in a row of empty seats. The caption claimed the man was using Spanish national papers ID cards to register the absent MPs as "present" so that they can collect their daily allowances.
3. An article shared on Facebook in December of 2018, from a Dutch website that no longer exists, and which cited 11 reasons to avoid getting stuck with flu, including a claim that the flu can cause Alzheimer's. The article quotes a research by Dr. Hugh Fudenburg, who showed that people who have regularly become ill with flu, are 10 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's.
4. In February 2019, a French website published an article claiming that the UN is seeking to legalize pedophilia. The text of the article was copied from an older article that has been online for several years. The article stated that the UN demands sexual rights for children ages up to 10 years, which will protect pedophiles from criminal prosecution and imprisonment.
5. In January of 2018, a Twitter account that he said that it belonged to Ebba Busch Thor, leader of the Swedish Christian Democrats, decried those who criticize the Swedish pension system. The tweet said that every Swede gets the pension they deserve and that the undesirable alternative is socialism. The account, @EbbaBuschThorKD, was revealed to be fake and shut down, but screenshots of the tweet continued to circulate. The screenshot shared on Facebook in January 2018 and started re-circulating in January 2019.
Of course, all of the above is EROSALLY FROZEN. For every news there is a relevant report from Facebook about what the truth is and what the lie. In particular, the photograph with the letter of the headmaster of the school is fake and counterfeited, the gentleman with the suit was not in the Spanish parliament but in the Ukrainian and gave back the identities after a vote. Also, there is no official scientific research linking Alzheimer's and influenza anywhere in the world, the pedophile statement is not the UN but the International Federation of Planned Parents, a defender of sexual rights that has participated in various UN committees and has no and the Twitter account of the Swedish Christian Democrat leader was fake.
It is also reported that the way Facebook managed to detect all of the above is, either through machine learning that detects potential false stories (especially fake ones photos), είτε από αναφορές χρηστών ή ελεγκτών ψευδών ειδήσεων.
If you are interested in not seeing fake news online, you can only send a report to Facebook whenever you find the news on the platform.
