A lot of fake news is being shared on Facebook, and in August 2020, Facebook was fined for not blocking the account of spreading fake news. After that, the spread of fake news on Facebook did not stop, and on March 18, 2021, Avaaz, a non-profit activist group, released the results of an investigation on the spread of fake news on Facebook. In addition, on March 22, 2021, Reporters Without Borders announced that they filed a complaint against Facebook for the spread of fake news.
On March 18, Avaaz reported the findings of a survey indicating the scale of the spread of fake news on Facebook. According to this, it can be seen that there were times when fake news views exceeded general news views. In addition, it can be seen that the number of fake news views declined in October 2020. As for the reason for the decrease in number of views, Avaaz pointed out that the fake news label by Facebook had a certain effect. Facebook then accused Facebook of being too late to respond to fake news, saying that it was responding to fake news at the time of the spread of fake news related to Corona 19 infection without waiting until October 2020.
Avaaz also argues that the fact check function introduced by Facebook does not work as expected. Avaaz claims that the fake news search system is not working properly to prevent the spread of fake news. They are accusing Facebook of failing to prevent the spread of fake news, saying they don’t match.
Meanwhile, Reporters Without Borders argued that Facebook’s failure to prevent the spread of fake news is that the Facebook Terms of Use prohibiting illegal activities, misconduct, discrimination, and fraud, and content displayed to users through Facebook must be reliable. It claimed that it violates the Facebook community regulations.
Reporters Without Borders filed a lawsuit against Facebook in Paris on March 22, 2021, for violating the French Consumer Law that Facebook should not make false claims to consumers in accordance with this situation. He added that another country is also considering the same lawsuit. Related information can be found here.