The task force, which sources tell BuzzFeed News includes employees
from across the company, has already rebutted a statement made by
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a conference last week that the argument that fake news on Facebook affected the election was "a pretty crazy idea."
"It's not a crazy
idea. What's crazy is for him to come out and dismiss it like that, when
he knows, and those of us at the company know, that fake news ran wild
on our platform during the entire campaign season," said one Facebook
employee, who works in the social network's engineering division. He,
like the four other Facebook employees who spoke to BuzzFeed News for
this story, would only speak on condition of anonymity. All five
employees said they had been warned by their superiors against speaking
to press, and feared they would lose their jobs if named.
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The employees
declined to provide many details on the task force. One employee said
"more than dozens" of employees were involved, and that they had met
twice in the last six days. At the moment, they are meeting in secret,
to allow members of the group to speak freely and without fear of
condemnation from senior management. The group plans to formalize its
meetings and eventually make a list of recommendations to Facebook's
senior management. Another Facebook employee said while the task force
remained small, "hundreds" of Facebook employees had expressed
dissatisfaction with the company's stance on fake news in private online
chats, and wanted to support efforts to challenge that position.
Facebook did not
respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News, but in a statement
to media last week, a Facebook spokesperson said, "While Facebook played
a part in this election, it was just one of many ways people received
their information – and was one of the many ways people connected with
their leaders, engaged in the political process and shared their views."
In the wake of
Trump's victory, Facebook has been facing questions over its
responsibility in spreading misinformation or failing to clamp down on
the sharing of fake news. Almost half of adult Americans rely on
Facebook as a source of news, a recent study by the Pew Research Center found.
A recent report by BuzzFeed News found that the three large left-wing
pages published false or misleading information in nearly 20% of posts,
while the three big right-wing Facebook pages published it 38% of the
time. The report concluded: "The best way to attract and grow an
audience for political content on the world's biggest social network is
to eschew factual reporting and instead play to partisan biases using
false or misleading information that simply tells people what they want
to hear."
