Even though the top executives of social media giant Facebook have decided to develop shields that would help to fight against fake news, as per the Facebook engagement data, unreliable and fake stories are just doing fine on the platform.
Recently, Tweets by John Herrman at The New York Times has shown the analytics from NewsWhip, the firm that tracks how billions of people engage with stories across all social networks. As per the analytics, the fourth most engaging article on Facebook is from an online portal called "America's Last Line of Defense," and the story claims that US former basketball player Michael Jordan has resigned from Nike's board, "taking Air Jordans with him."
First of all the story is no doubt fake, as Jordan is not a board member of Nike. Secondly, in the first paragraph of the story, where "walked away" is hyperlinked, if you click on the link, it takes you to a Google Translate box, which says, "You can stop. None of this is true. Click an ad and then move on with your day."
According to the analytics, the story which was popping up on the top of the list comes from "Patriotic Express." It is a website that publishes stories that attack NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick and this time the headline states, "'American Sniper' Wife Ends Silence, Goes Directly After Nike And Kaepernick."
In the list of the analytics one websites' name is more frequent and it is the UK based social media and entertainment company called LADBible. Most of the contents on this website doesn't have journalistic credibility.
NewsWhip told Quartz that in August this Manchester based website LADBible, was the most popular publisher on Facebook than Fox News, Daily Wire, The Washington Post and other reputed sites. As per NewsWhip's August report, Gabriele Boland wrote that they have seen some low-quality contents have gone extremely viral on Facebook over the past few months.
As per the recent reports of NewsWhip that focuses on the top food content polishers, based on Facebook and Pinterest engagement, the second-most popular story from May to June was a hoax that claims Burger King used horse meat in its products.
But, Facebook said in January 2018 that on the basis of the trusted news sources it will prioritize the contents on its News Feed section.
