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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
- Facebook is the largest social
media service on the planet, with over 2 billion users - over a quarter of the world's population. - As such, policing Facebook is a tremendous challenge. One of the service's biggest policing issues is with fake news stories, which was a particularly big problem in the US during the 2016 presidential election cycle.
- Despite Facebook's efforts to stop the spread of fake news, the massive social media service is still rife with it: In 2019, the top 100 fake news stories on Facebook were viewed over 150 million times - "enough to reach every registered voter at least once," according to Avaaz, the non-profit that did the study.
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In 2019, many Facebook users saw news that claimed President Donald Trump's grandfather was, "a pimp and tax evader," and that his father was a member of the KKK - none of which is true.
Facebook's 2 billion-plus users also had access to a post claiming that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a ban on motorcycles (she didn't), and that House speaker Nancy Pelosi was diverting Social Security funding for the Trump impeachment inquiry (she wasn't).
These are just a few of the most-shared political fake news stories of 2019, according to a new study from the non-profit Avaaz. The top 100 fake news stories on Facebook in 2019 were viewed over 150 million times - "enough to reach every registered voter at least once," according to the report.
Here are the top 10 fake-news stories of 2019: