Fake news is a huge problem and recently ahead of the elections in France, it seems that the country has been trying to deal with a flood of fake news hitting social media. France isn’t alone in their concerns over fake news because in a report from The Guardian, it turns out that the UK government is just as worried.Speaking to The Guardian, the chairman of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee Damian Collins said that fake news had the potential to threaten the integrity of democracy due to the large number of voters who relied on Facebook for their news, and who could be misled as a result of the fake news.
According to Collins, “The risk is what happened in America. The top 20 fake news stories in the last three months of the election were shared more than the top 20 most shared stories that were true. The danger is, if for many people the main source of news is Facebook and if the news they get on Facebook is mostly fake news, they could be voting based on lies.”
Collins also adds that Facebook needs to do more, and that what they’re doing now doesn’t seem to be swift enough. Facebook isn’t alone in trying to deal with fake news as companies such as Google are also trying to do their part, and recently Wikipedia’s co-founder has launched his own initiative to combat the problem.