Fake news

Facebook won't check the credibility of politicians' posts, the social network announced a year before the US presidential election.

The social network relies on third parties, including major news outlets, to verify the information. 

"Politicians are not really eager to burn their fingers over disinformation," Jakub Kalensky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, told participants at a summer school of journalism in the central Czech town of Havlickuv Brod in August.

Someone has made up a nonsense and you want me to comment on it, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said in response to a journalistic question regarding the portfolio of Bulgarian Commissioner Mariya Gabriel, Focus News Agency reports.

The government in Skopje has come up with an ambitious draft strategy to combat the epidemic of fake news - but many media professionals and experts are not persuaded.

Recent years have seen a lot of talk about fake news on social media. This is justified.

This story originally appeared on Meta.mk News Agency, a project of Metamorphosis Foundation. An edited version is published below as part of a content-sharing agreement.

Abania Prime Minister Edi Rama speaking at his party headquarters on 30 June 2019. Photo: Gent Shkullaku/LSA

"We are now examining very carefully this new draft adopted by the Council of Ministers that will go to parliament in September," Soreca told Albanian Public Television.

Over the next three years, the British government will allocate £ 18m ($ 22.5m) to combat disinformation and the "fake news" phenomenon in Eastern European countries, as well as strengthening of independent media in Western Balkans, DW reported.

In the words of British Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt, it is a priority to create conditions for the smooth work of the journalists. 

A global survey shows that 86% of Internet users admit they have been fooled by fake news, the Sabah newspaper reported. The main platform for misleading information was the social network Facebook.

Fake news, anonymous trolls, algorithms that foster echo chambers and promote hate speech: The digital challenges to contemporary public discourse are vast and well-documented. Such is the furor around them that a few analysts have gone as far as to claim that "the internet is drowning today's democracies."