Americans are using Facebook to get their news just as much as they did last year, despite Facebook’s own efforts to de-prioritize news content, and despite the intensifying conversation surrounding misinformation on the platform.
Citing convenience more than anything else, the majority of Americans get news from social media (68%), even though 57% of them also expect it to be largely inaccurate, according to a new survey from the Pew Research Center.
Forty-three percent of Americans get at least some of their news from Facebook, with the second-most popular social media platform for news being YouTube, where falsehoods are a particularly pernicious presence.
Facebook is trying many solutions to fight the scourge that is misinformation, including working with external fact-checkers. But recent data shows that that battle is far from over, and sketchy sources are thriving on the platform, just as they had in the past.