After the US presidential elections that brought Donald Trump to the post of President of the United States, long talks began on how much social media can affect and whether the false news has contributed to the outcome.
To this end, Google and the Facebook announced that they will ban the use of their networks for advertising on the pages that broadcast fake news, thus significantly reducing their revenue streams.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg refuted various allegations that the social network wanted to show fake news that affected the election results, stating that "more than 99% of the news circulating is authentic."
Even if we take seriously Zuckerberg's claim, (as we have to consider that the view of "fake news that affects election results" on Social Media may come from voters of the opposite party), the 1 percent of all content that circulated on Facebook still includes too many posts and so misinformation is a fact.
Naturally no one can say for sure that the movement of Social Media and search engines will stop the flow of fake news all over the Web. No company is committed and has not stated how it intends to improve its methods of identifying and blocking such content.
However, Gizmodo reported that an updated one will be released version του Facebook που θα έχει σαν στόχο τον εντοπισμό και την απομάκρυνση κάθε είδους ψευδών ειδήσεων. Το συγκεκριμένο χαρακτηριστικό πιστεύεται ότι έχει παγώσει καθώς επηρέαζε δυσανάλογα ειδησεοgraphics right-wing sites.
Earlier this month, BuzzFeed News found that several teenagers and young adults from the Republic of Macedonia were running websites that published fake news and supported the The documentary Hillary Clinton, to make money from advertisements.
So it's likely that Google's and Facebook's move comes will prevent these websites from receiving revenue from their ad networks by limiting their growth.
Let's hope that Social Media will discover more sophisticated ways of sniffing false content because those they are using so far do not seem to pay off.
