SAN FRANCISCO - Fake election news got more attention than did real stories on Facebook during the final months of the US presidential campaign, according to an analysis by BuzzFeed News. In comparison, the 20 best-performing election stories from major news websites including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Huffington Post got just shy of 7.4 million shares, reactions and comments at Facebook, according to BuzzFeed. Prior to the final three months of the presidential campaign, top election stories from major outlets had strongly outperformed fake news, BuzzFeed reported. Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg last week rejected the idea that bogus stories shared at the social network paved a path of victory for Republican President-elect Donald Trump. Google and Facebook moved Tuesday to cut off advertising revenue to fake news sites, after a wave of criticism over the role misinformation played in the US presidential election.

Source: Bangkok Post November 17, 2016 01:46 UTC