Zuckerberg: ‘Crazy’ to think fake news on Facebook influenced election

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pushing back on claims that popular false news stories on the social media website made an impact on the presidential election.

Zuckerberg rejected that accusation, calling it a “pretty crazy idea,” in remarks at Techonomy, a technology and business conference in Half Moon Bay, Calif., on Thursday.

{mosads}“I think the idea that fake news on Facebook — of which it’s a very small amount of the content — influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea,” he said, as reported by BuzzFeed News.

“Part of what I think is going on here is people are trying to understand the results of the election,” he continued. “I think there is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason why someone could have voted the way they did is because they saw some fake news.”

The Facebook CEO also said that fake news stories and hoaxes are not a new phenomenon and have existed for a long time before the 2016 elections. Zuckerberg added that Facebook is always working to display and promote the most meaningful content on its website and create tools that allow its users to report false stories.

“There have been hoaxes on the internet, there were hoaxes before,” he said. “We do our best to make it so that people can report that, and as I said before, we can show people the most meaningful content we can.”

Discussing the election’s outcome, Zuckerberg said that he did not see any Facebook data predicting a Trump victory. He noted that Trump had more social media followers and that his posts were more widely circulated, but said that was noticeable to anyone who uses social media.

“While Facebook played a part in this election, it was just one of many ways people received their information — and was one of the many ways people connected with their leaders, engaged in the political process and shared their views,” Zuckerberg added.

Facebook has come under scrutiny this campaign and has fought hard to counter allegations of bias.

In October, it was revealed that a large group of Facebook employees campaigned to sensor Trump posts on the social media website, arguing that some of the Republican nominee’s comments violated Facebook’s hate speech policies.

The disagreement went all the way to the desk of Zuckerberg, who agreed that the posts of the presidential candidate should not be censored.

Another report during the campaign said that some of Facebook’s editors in a curated content feature had downplayed news from conservative sites.

Zuckerberg invited conservative leaders to the company’s headquarters to address their concerns and vow to prevent such incidents in the future.