Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s Role in Promoting Fake News ⇥ facebook.com

Mark Zuckerberg:

After the election, many people are asking whether fake news contributed to the result, and what our responsibility is to prevent fake news from spreading. These are very important questions and I care deeply about getting them right. I want to do my best to explain what we know here.

Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99% of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.

This response is a dodge. What does “99% of what people see is authentic” mean, anyway? He’s not saying that 99% of the news that’s posted on Facebook is truthful or reputable, just that nearly everything is “authentic”. And even if it is true that just 1% of the posts are inauthentic, those posts may be shared thousands of times.