Facebook and Fake News

A Facebook loophole allows users to create and spread fake news in Facebook Groups.

Fake news has been a divisive topic in our country over the past few years. The rapid spread of misinformation messes with people's minds, leading them to not know what is fact and what isn't. Facebook is a large part of the spread of fake news, and it's all thanks to a feature that they had removed 2 years ago: editable link previews. With this feature, users would be able to edit the image, headline, and description to whatever they wanted before they would post it. Facebook responded to this in 2017 in a statement, where they addressed the issue in the link editor and removed the feature entirely. Allowing the user to change a headline can heavily influence one's opinion.

With the advent of social media, many young people get their information primarily from apps like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Apple News. The instant access allows for them to quickly share any kind of news with their friends and family, who will then share it with more people until it spreads like wildfire. This is very dangerous today, as many of us tend to not look past the headline of a story. And if the headline happens to be false, than we have unknowingly shared "fake news" with the entire world. For more information, click here.

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