Facebook Has Repeatedly Trended Fake News Since Firing Its Human Editors
What is the error rate of fake news over verified (real) news? A 5% margin of error could be acceptable. A 50% error rate would indicate a serious problem.<p>&gt; As part of a larger audit of Facebook’s Trending topics, the Intersect logged every news story that trended across four accounts during the workdays from Aug. 31 to Sept. 22. During that time, we uncovered five trending stories that were indisputably fake and three that were profoundly inaccurate.<p>Yes, but out of how many Trending stories in total? Eight fake stories over a three week period seems like an acceptable rate of error.<p>Trending stories are popular stories. A fake story has an element of satire. These stories could be popular because of the satire (and the subsequent humor). Trending does not imply veracity.