Barack Obama, facing the imminent handover to his bombastic successor, has plenty to be concerned about this week. But he took the time to express his concern about the impact of fake news online when he spoke to reporters on Thursday. Facebook’s failure: did fake news and polarized politics get Trump elected? In the early days of the election, Facebook was criticised for what was perceived as overzealous curation of its “trending topics” chart. In November Buzzfeed discovered that many of the pro-Trump fake news sites – over 100 of them – were being operated as for-profit click-farms by Macedonian teenagers.

Source: The Guardian November 20, 2016 13:50 UTC