The left created a fake news epidemic during the 2016 election. Mark Zuckerberg did not act as quickly as Obama would have liked on the issue. President Obama was worried that the fake news was going to keep a Democrat from winning the 2016 election. Even though they had a disaster of a candidate in Hillary Clinton and CNN is the king of fake news. It was bad enough that Obama gave Zuckerberg a "talking-to" on fake news.
Later it was confirmed that Obama wasn't the only person who reached out to Zuckerberg about fake news.
It should come as no surprise that Obama decided to have a conversation with Zuckerberg about fake news. Obama spent his time in 2016 after the election criticizing fake news, when he could have used it as a ceremonious farewell tour in Europe.
Obama Gave Zuckerberg a "Talking-To" About Fake News
“There’s so much misinformation and it’s packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won’t know what to protect,” Obama said in Germany, per the New York Times.
Obama appeared to have forgot the original question when he said, “I got all caught up in that one,” referring to Facebook.
Many people credited or blamed fake news on the results of the election. Despite a study at Stanford and New York University saying otherwise.
“In summary, our data suggest that social media were not the most important source of election news, and even the most widely circulated fake news stories were seen by only a small fraction of Americans,” the study concludes.
Since then, Zuckerberg has been actively trying to resolve the issue. While doing so he is still tiptoeing the line of censorship. In January Facebook announced they were hiring Campbell Brown of CNN to lead their new partnership team. Brown is not shy of her distaste for President Trump.
In January and April Facebook introduced new tools to help deal with the fake news issue. These tools were put in place to determine if the news source is credible.
President Obama did all he could to get Hillary Clinton in office. In the end, they were unable to overcome the fact that Hillary Clinton was a disaster of a candidate and the country was in no way looking forward to 8 more years of the same.
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