As part of a promise to choke off fake news and conspiracy theories on its platforms, Facebook will begin sniffing out false posts on its photo-sharing app, Instagram.
Facebook reportedly has 52 “fact-checking partners” in 30 countries to flag dubious posts, a program it has been building since December 2016, one month after a contentious presidential election that was widely considered influenced by bad actors using social media.
Apple is cracking down on fake news. By helping fight the scourge of disinformation, Apple is taking a pre-emptive step to protect itself as it prepares to launch a new subscription news service.
In other words, Apple’s battle against fake news comes at the perfect time.
Apple is joining the fight against fake news with an initiative that encourages critical thinking and empowers students to be better informed.
The company is teaming up with three organizations in the United States and Italy that offer nonpartisan, independent, media-literacy programs.
Apple removed several questionable websites serving up fake news and conspiracy theories via Safari’s “Siri Suggested” search results.
The recommended websites pointed users to posts about the “Pizzagate” hoax, Holocaust denier articles, and debunked race-based “science” stories. After BuzzFeed News alerted Apple to these bogus results, Cupertino promptly removed the recommendations.
Apple’s decision to boot five of far-right conspiracy theory website InfoWars’ podcasts off its platform was the trigger for Facebook doing the same with several of host Alex Jones’ pages on the social network.
The factoid was revealed in a new profile of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, published in the New Yorker. Apple has since banned Jones from the App Store permanently.
It’s the kind of headline The Onion would write, except this one came from the Dow Jones Newswire: Google, Apple join to create tech giant
The breaking fake news Tuesday morning was eventually retracted by Dow Jones which blamed the report on a “technical error.”
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.
Alternative facts and fake news have become so pervasive in the the we consume lately that Apple CEO Tim Cook says it’s “one of today’s chief problems.”
During an interview this week in the U.K., Cook talked about the challenges tech companies face on how to combat stories that perpetuate false information without hurting the free flow of ideas on the internet.
