BBC Teams Up With Tech Giants To Fight Fake News Before It Spreads

While fake news and misinformation isn’t new, in this day and age of social media, it can spread a lot faster than back in the day. This has created a problem and it looks like the BBC will be working with several tech giants to help fight this problem before it spreads too far and impacts too many people.

According to the BBC, they will be working with platforms such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook on this. This plan will include what they are calling an “early warning system”. This involves creating “a system so that organisations can alert each other rapidly when they discover disinformation that threatens human life or disrupts democracy during elections. The emphasis will be on moving quickly and collectively to undermine disinformation before it can take hold.”

According to BBC Director General Tony Hall, “Disinformation and so-called fake news is a threat to us all. At its worst, it can present a serious threat to democracy and even to people’s lives. This summit has shown a determination to take collective action to fight this problem and we have agreed some crucial steps towards this.”

This isn’t the first time that companies have come up with ways to combat fake news. For a while, Facebook was testing out various methods of identifying sources that are questionable, adding flags, and also warning users. We’re not sure if this new method will work so we’ll just have to wait and see.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: bbc, Education, Facebook, Google, Twitter