Zuckerberg Calls Reports That Facebook Profits From Fake News “Crap”

fake stampFacebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave a talk at North Carolina A&T State University this week on a variety of wide-ranging topics. During his address, he got a little heated and sounded off on his site’s ongoing fake news controversy.

Culminating in the presidential election in November, Facebook has been under increasing fire for permitting fake clickbait content on its pages. Some have even suggested that Facebook isn’t doing everything it can to suppress these hoax posts because it profits from the clicks. However, Zuckerberg strongly pushed back against this notion.

“That’s crap,” Zuckerberg said. “No one in our community wants fake information. Everyone wants real information. If someone clicks on something and they have a bad experience, they’re not going to trust Facebook and they’re not going to want to get more content from Facebook, and that’s not good for us.”

Zuckerberg also pledged to continue allowing potentially offensive content on Facebook (as long as it doesn’t violate the site’s Community Standards, of course).

“We need to make sure we don’t get to a place where (we’re) not showing content or banning things from the service just because it hurts someone’s feelings or because someone disagrees with it,” he said.

It’s nice to know that Zuckerberg takes this criticism so personally, but it’s also true that Facebook should (and probably could) do more to remove spammy posts.


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