In the wake of unexpected results in the US elections, many people were criticizing Facebook for not censoring fake news articles that could have impacted the popular votes.
But, the former NSA employee-turned whistle blower Edward Snowden said fake news site wasn’t the real issue.
Speaking at Fusion’s Real Future Fair, he said the bigger problem was people relying upon social media for news.
“There seems to be no alternative to the larger services. Because of this network effect, because the first mover advantage. When you get a Google or a Facebook or Twitter in place, they never seem to leave,” Snowden said.
Many people share and comment on stories shared on social media without even reading it properly.
Snowden argued that people need to depend on multiple sources for information instead of sticking in to Facebook.
“To have one company that has enough power to reshape the way we think, I don’t think I need to describe how dangerous that is,” he said.
Snowden proposed a “federated system” of sorts, a network of many Facebook connected, to avoid the spreading of misinformation and dominance.
However, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the allegation of fake news.
“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,” he said
