Methods to Combat Fake News

While there may never be an ultimate solution to defeating false information on the internet, there may be institutional methods to stymie its effect on Internet users that can be used on a regular basis. Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry of Bloomberg writes that France’s newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron, is attempting to combat the spread of fake news. Gobry states that a newly proposed bill “empowers the independent broadcast authority to unilaterally suspend the license of any ‘foreign-influenced media organization’ during a national electoral campaign.” This bill, Gobry writes, is “a clear dig at Russia,” for its part in the interference of several western elections in recent years. Additionally, Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg has recently stated that Facebook will begin trying to reduce the spread of fake news by allowing users to rate the trust of the news sources that appear on individual feeds. These methods offer interesting glimpses into how content providers and governments are attempting to regulate the news that internet users view. [1 image, 2 links, 2 quotations, 163 words]