Les fausses informations circulent de moins en moins sur Facebook

A recent article published on lemonde.fr (online version of one of the biggest French daily newspaper) highlighted that the popularity of questionable or unreliable websites has decreased by 50 % since 2015. An interesting fact to analyze.

630 French-speaking websites have been analysed by le Monde’s journalists using data gathered and analysed by a tool which measures the “engagement” (sharing, comments, “likes”) on the content published by these websites on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Reddit).

This indicator gives an idea of the popularity, or at least of the virality of the publications. Most of the activity takes place on Facebook, due to its dominant position in the area but also to its broadest definition of “engagement” (for example, on Twitter, only re-tweets are taken into account).

Interestingly, the most reliable websites take the biggest share of the “engagement”. Even at their lowest level, more than 72.3% of the engagement concerned them. However, even if disinformation websites have never supplanted them, platforms such as Santeplusmag.com and Lagauchematuer.com, have triggered each, in 4 years, more interactions (respectively 63 millions et 57 millions) than Le Point (48 millions), Libération (47 millions) or Europe 1 (47 millions), some major mainstream media.

As of 2016, the popularity of fake news media has started decreasing. This doesn’t mean that they produce less fake content and the reason why disinformation seems to be less in the fashion is difficult to analyse and interpret. Some facts directly related to Facebook policies have had an impact but it is not unreasonable to assume that a form of “collective learning” is happening and progressively gaining ground.

It is probably too early to announce the end of online fake news but this is an encouraging sign for the actors working daily and at all level to keep on their actions.

Source:

Les fausses informations circulent de moins en moins sur Facebook, LE MONDE | 17.10.2018