But one important nugget about fake news has not yet been answered: How much revenue would Facebook sacrifice if it purged fake news from its site? Sadly, I can’t provide a reliable figure — but I’d estimate that getting rid of fake news could cost Facebook about $15 billion in the next year – over half its advertising revenue — if one were to assume a BuzzFeed News analysis of top fake news traffic before the election is a good proxy for Facebook’s fake news revenue. If that assumption is anywhere near accurate, I can see why Mark Zuckerberg does not want to rid Facebook of fake news. A Facebook spokesman told BuzzFeed News that the top stories don’t reflect overall engagement on the platform. Fake news is easy to define — it’s a story dressed up as news that is based on false information.

Source: Forbes November 25, 2016 15:36 UTC