Even though the Presidential election is over, the problem of fake news has not gone anywhere. In a recent interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook is focusing on stopping false reports.
“All of us technology companies need to create some tools that help diminish the volume of fake news,” Cook said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
“There has to be a massive campaign. We have to think through every demographic,” Cook said.
Tim Cook added that the proliferation of fake news “killing people’s minds.” The issue is that reliable news stories are written to persuade people and are difficult for readers to recognized as true.
Remember when the Pope supported Trump for President? It was an entirely false news story that quickly went viral on Facebook just weeks before election day.
“We are going through this period right here where unfortunately some of the people that are winning are the people that spend their time trying to get the most clicks, not tell the most truth,” Cook said in the interview.
Facebook has suffered the biggest burden of the fake news controversy, where the social networking platform has quickly become the home of viral news media. Since then, the social media company has rolled out several new tools and initiatives to flag stories that are believed to be fake and allow for them to be reviewed by fact-checkers.
However, Cook is calling for more extreme measures. “Too many of us are just in the complain category right now and haven’t figured out what to do,” he said. “We need the modern version of a public-service announcement campaign. It can be done quickly if there is a will.”
This news comes after Wikipedia banned Daily Mail as a reliable source and as researchers discover new ways to spot and stop fake news from going viral.