Mark Zuckerberg: Don't Blame Facebook for Donald Trump's Win

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is firing back at critics who blame the social media site's tendency to promote fake news stories for the election of Donald Trump.

"Personally I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, which is a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea," he said at a tech conference in Moon Bay, California, on Thursday night.

"I do think there is a certain profound lack of empathy in asserting that the only reason someone could have voted the way they did is they saw some fake news," Zuckerberg continued. "If you believe that, then I don’t think you have internalized the message the Trump supporters are trying to send in this election."

"The most obvious way in which Facebook enabled a Trump victory has been its inability (or refusal) to address the problem of hoax or fake news," wrote Read.

Much of the criticism of Facebook's role in fake news began when it laid off its staff of journalists who had been curating the "Trending" feature and replaced them with an algorithm. Since then, the feature has promoted various blatantly false stories.

But criticism of Facebook's treatment of fake news — and by extension, Zuckerberg — doesn't end with the Trending feature. Facebook's users share stories on the site all the time, many of them fake or misleading, and the network spreads the stories far and wide. Some, like Read, believe Facebook should do more to suppress factually incorrect stories.

Zuckerberg has continually argued that Facebook is a tech company, not a media company, which he believes justifies the platform's light touch regarding fake news. But Facebook does heavily curate the stories, statuses and pictures that appear in users' news feeds (though its internal algorithms are proprietary and opaque).

For example, Facebook recently announced it would give less exposure to stories using "click bait" headlines and favor articles with titles that were informative and direct.

The social media site has even partnered with some news sites, including Patch, to create "Instant Articles" that load more quickly and seamlessly on the Facebook app. Furthermore, as many as 30 percent of American adults say they get news from Facebook, according to Pew Research Center.

Timothy Lee, a writer for Vox and critic of Facebook, argues that this level of involvement in the content of the news amounts to de facto editorial judgment. He believes those judgments could be better.

"The company tries to choose posts that people are likely to read, like, and share with their friends. Which, they hope, will induce people to return to the site over and over again," he wrote in a recent article.

"This would be a reasonable way to do things if Facebook were just a way of finding your friends’ cutest baby pictures," Lee continues. "But it’s more troubling as a way of choosing the news stories people read. Essentially, Facebook is using the same criteria as a supermarket tabloid: giving people the most attention-grabbing headlines without worrying about whether articles are fair, accurate, or important."

And while Zuckerberg is certainly right to argue that fake news on Facebook is not the only reason someone would vote for Trump, it is much more plausible that misleading articles could make the difference in a very tight presidential race. On Nov. 8, some states swung toward Trump by very narrow margins.

In a response to Lee's article, Facebook released the following statement:

In News Feed we use various signals based on community feedback to determine which posts are likely to contain inaccurate information, and reduce their distribution. In Trending we look at a variety of signals to help make sure the topics being shown are reflective of real-world events, and take additional steps to prevent false or misleading content from appearing.

Despite these efforts we understand there's so much more we need to do, and that is why it's important that we keep improving our ability to detect misinformation. We're committed to continuing to work on this issue and improve the experiences on our platform.

Zuckerberg's recent public comments, however, make one thing clear: Whatever problems Facebook might have, he will not accept the blame for Donald Trump's presidency.