Someone creates a tool that flags fake news on Facebook with big red warning signs. Someone else installs said tool, forgets about it, and then mistakenly assumes that the red warning signs are evidence of Facebook’s own efforts to tackle the problem.
A reputable technology website then writes a story about Facebook’s new experiment without doing any fact checking, thus generating its own piece of fake news. The icing on the cake? The fake news detector fails to recognize it as fake news.
“I thought it was the most meta thing I’ve ever seen: a fake news article about a fake news detector,” said Daniel Sieradski, who created the BS Detector browser plug-in to alert users to unreliable news sources. He immediately contacted the TechCrunch authors to point out their mistake, and they updated the article.
Sieradski, a 37-year-old activist and independent journalist from Syracuse, created BS Detector as a reaction to Facebook’s failure to acknowledge any responsibility for the spread of misleading and false information on its platform.
*** Originally appeared on Guardian
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