Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth; New York Times, 11/20/16

Jim Rutenberg, New York Times; Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook Must Defend the Truth:

"Today’s fake news is limited only by the imaginations of its inventors and the number of shares it can garner on Facebook or Twitter.

(To wit: The one million shares of the preposterous notion that Mrs. Clinton secretly sold weapons to ISIS. BuzzFeed News — which has excelled at illuminating the fake news problem — highlighted that example in its alarming analysis showing that during the campaign cycle fake news was shared among Facebook users more often than real news was.)

That’s why people who care about the truth — citizens, journalists and, let’s hope, social media giants like Facebook, too — will have to come up with a solution to this informational nihilism, fast.

It’s easier said than done. The combination of attacks seeking to delegitimize serious news organizations and a drop in overall trust in the news media has made many people wary of legitimate fact-checking."