Reportedly, to fight the menace of fake news circulating on the web, social media services Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) have collaborated with 30 odd news/tech outlets to be a part of the network called First Draft Coalition.
Media reports have quoted First Draft’s managing director Jenni Sargent stating “Filtering out false information can be hard. Even if news organisations only share fact-checked and verified stories, everyone is a publisher and a potential source. We are not going to solve these problems over night, but we’re certainly not going to solve them as individual organisations.”
First Draft Coalition aims at “creating a voluntary code of practice and promoting news literacy among social media users”. It will unveil a platform next month that will entertain queries from users regarding distorted news.
Per media reports, the participation of social media giants like Facebook and Twitter will go a long way in controlling the circulation of bogus news. These days, Facebook and Twitter have become huge platforms for the distribution of news. As per a Pew Research study, the two social services are adult Americans’ most preferred choice for catching up with the latest news across the globe.
Facebook and Twitter need to work on tackling this issue. On the one hand, we have Facebook, the largest social media service with its gargantuan 1.7 billion users and on the other hand we have Twitter that is desperately trying to expand its user base to revive its ailing fortunes. Both cannot risk losing users. Proliferation of false news can damage their reputation and result in loss of users. For social media services which thrive on their user base and engagement levels, loss of this key metric isn’t a viable option. To deal with the issue, Facebook is making its Trending feature more algorithm driven and minimizing human interference to avoid any bias.
Set up in June last year, the Coalition, boasts names like BuzzFeed, New York Times, Washington Post, News Corp-owned Storyful, Elliot Higgins’ Bellingcat, European Journalism Centre and American Press Institute, International Business Times UK, Euronews and Amnesty International.
At present, Twitter has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) while Facebook sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). A couple of stocks worth consideration in the tech space are NetEase, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTES) and NetApp, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP) . Both sport the same rank as Facebook. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
Interested in IPOs? Check out the special edition of Zacks Friday Finish Line below, where Editor Maddy Johnson and Content Writer Ryan McQueeney interview Kathleen Smith of Renaissance Capital about the IPO market in 2016 (see part two here).
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NETAPP INC (NTAP): Free Stock Analysis Report
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