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    6 Facts About Fake News In The 2016 Election

    One lesson: Social media plays a bigger role in bringing people to fake news sites than it does in bringing them to real news sites.
    by Danielle Kurtzleben Apr 11, 2018 6 minutes
    Facebook co-founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a combined Senate Judiciary and Commerce committee hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building on April 10.

    When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before a joint Senate Committee on Wednesday, he led off with a mea culpa. Just a few paragraphs into his opening statement, he took personal responsibility for the disinformation and

    [I]t's clear now that we didn't do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm as well. That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy. We didn't take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I'm sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I'm responsible for what happens here.

    After the 2016 election, many feared that fake news articles spread on Facebook swayed the results of the election. It's a broad but reasonable leap to make: many purveyors of fake news aimed to help Trump win, and lo and behold, Trump won.

    But among people who study fake news, it's not at all clear how much —

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