Facebook all set to hire journalists to curb fake news
Facebook is looking forward to hiring a new generation of digital-era journalists and news publishers to better tackle fake news and help improve the quality of content on its platform. Followed by the discussion with Mathias Dopfner, CEO of Europe's largest publisher Axel Springer, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked on Monday on how the platform should create more high-quality news for its global viewers.
Zuckerberg said, "I don't know how many fake accounts you think Facebook has, but it seems to be quite a big amount. Some people are saying 700 million. I have no clue, but that has to be dealt with as a very serious problem".
He added, "We have to make a business in order to finance investigative journalists and correspondents, and big foreign networks, they cannot afford to do that for free".
Facebook further said that he would focus on making sure what makes the offering and its structure on Facebook attractive for thousands of journalists, digital native publishers, bloggers and legacy publishers that they are attracted to put their best content on the platform.
The Facebook co-founder said, "We're not going to have journalists making news. What we want to do is make sure that this is a product that can get people high-quality news".
Facebook will have to direct relationship with publishers to make sure that the content is high-quality.
The American tech entrepreneur said "There's a whole set of questions around how do we build a service that is contributing to high-quality journalism through increasing monitorisation".
Facebook is battling the menace of fake news and misinformation on its platform especially in the election time that includes India that has seen the removal of thousands of fake accounts, groups and other pages that are linked to political parties.
(With IANS inputs)
