Eddy Cue has promised that Apple is working on a solution to keep fake news out of the Apple News app for iOS.
During an interview on Monday night, Cue said companies in the technology industry are responsible for ensuring their services are free from hoax stories.
Although fake news has been a problem for many years, it became a real concern during the recent presidential election when false stories on hot topics like crime and immigration went viral on Facebook and other social networks.
In the run up to the election, analysis from BuzzFeed revealed that fake news was outperforming real news on Facebook. Stories claiming Pop Francis endorsed Donald Trump and that Hillary Clinton sold weapons to ISIS gained significantly more clicks than genuine stories.
With around 62 percent of Americans now using Facebook as a primary news source, these stories like these have been blamed for swaying voters.
Even Trump’s administration was duped. Adviser Kellyanne Conway said the president’s travel ban was a response to terrorist acts like the “Bowling Green massacre” — an bogus event fabricated by fake news outlets.
Apple doesn’t have an answer to combating fake news “by any means,” Cue told Recode last night, but the company is working to prevent it spreading via Apple News.
“We wanted Apple News to be available to everyone, but we want to vet and make sure that the news providers are legitimate,” he said. “We’re very concerned about all of the news items and the clickbait from that standpoint, and that driving a lot of the news coverage.”
“We’re trying to do some things in Apple News, we’re learning from that and we need to share that together as an industry and improve it.”
Now that the vast majority of news is read “through devices, and through services that are provided through those devices,” Cue believes it is the responsibility of the tech companies to fight fake news. He also called for the entire industry to workshop a solution.
Apple CEO Tim Cook shares the same view. During an interview with Good Morning Britain earlier this month, he said fake news is “killing people’s minds.”
Killian Bell is a freelance writer based in the U.K. He has an interest in all things tech and also covers Android over at CultofAndroid.com. You can follow him on Twitter via @killianbell.
7 responses to “Eddy Cue promises Apple will fight fake news”
Does this mean they will stop carrying news reported from CNN, NY Times and the MSM places that report phony unchecked FAKE NEWS daily?
Just ban Fox News and done.
Well Greg, That seems to be a very LEFT WING Liberal reply… BUT I don’t watch FOX NEWS. So it is banned at my house! It was CNN that got caught colluding with Clinton campaign multiple times NOT FOX. The NY Times and CNN are the KINGS of phony FAKE NEWS stories that they never investigate… MOST of the other MSM just repeat it like parrots with any research at all. Maybe you think this is great, but most VOTERS proved they did not believe a work of it. How about that great institution called BUZZFEED, are they great also?
All the FAKE NEWS worth printing and broadcasting is a MSM daily event. NO ONE with a BRAIN trusts them, not even their weather reports because it is politics driving it 24/7.
In todays reality WikiLeaks was more honest and had real info than the MSM who no longer can claim any high ground and lost all credibility! Phony Polls PHONY NEWS, LOL
Aw man! How’s a dude pay for skinny jeans and daily consumption of Starbucks. This business of learning a skill and getting a job is whack when you have Daddy Murdock. /sarcasm allegedly
I was witness to “fake news” by omission back in late September 2002, when I awakened early in the morning (CDT), checked my then news source, MSNBC, to see what was going on at the time, and saw the main story on their site was about a huge anti-war demonstration going on in London of approximately 500,000 people. I, being against the then upcoming invasion of Iraq, was happy to see news of the demonstration, thinking it would perhaps slow the march to war. (Of course, that didn’t happen.)
I went back to sleep, and when I awakened say 7 o’clock or so, I checked the MSNBC site to see any updates of the coverage of the protest…and the story had been completely scrubbed! There was no mention of the demonstration on their site; the story wasn’t on the TV news stations; the protest didn’t make my local newspaper the next day — it was as if the demonstration hadn’t happened.
I had long suspected the US news media was in cahoots with each other, the government, those in power, and what I witnessed that day in 2002 proved it.
Generally, we don’t know what we don’t know, but that day I got a glimpse of how things truly work.
Sounds like a normal day at MSNBC. Remember the camera shots of the Hillary rallies and the Trump rallies? They lied daily and ONLY far Left Liberals were surprised Trump won.
A “normal” day being they were pro-war on the pro-Conservative side of things???