Quarter of Americans say they’ve shared fake news

Nearly 1 in 4 Americans admit they’ve shared fake news stories, according to a new poll.

The Pew Research survey released Thursday found that 23 percent of those polled said they have shared a fake story. Fourteen percent said they shared a story that they knew was fake, while 16 percent said they shared a story that they later realized was fake.

Most people are confident they can detect fake news, according to the poll. Thirty-nine percent are very confident that they can recognize fake news, while 45 percent are somewhat confident.

{mosads}World leaders from President Obama to Pope Francis have denounced the explosion of fake news. Francis said it represented “probably the greatest damage that the media can do,” adding, “it is a sin to defame people.” 

Popular social media outlets such as Facebook — which boasts 1.8 billion active users worldwide — have been widely criticized for fake news stories being featured on the site. 

Facebook has been shown to have tremendous influence on news consumers, with another Pew Research poll from earlier this year showing almost half of American adults stating they get their news from Facebook. 

Fake news stories are believed to have played a role in the presidential election, although it is impossible to quantify if those stories had any effect on the outcome. 

One widely circulated online story “reported” that Donald Trump was endorsed for president by Pope Francis. The pope did not endorse any candidate in the U.S. election. 

On Dec. 4, a man with a rifle showed up at a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant that he falsely believed, because of fake news stories, was cover for a child sex-trafficking operation involving Hillary Clinton and her campaign chief, John Podesta. 

The man, Edgar Maddison Welch, fired the rifle through a door he thought led to a basement hiding kidnapped children but what was actually a storage closet for computer equipment. Nobody was hurt.

After being detained, Welch told police he was investigating the story. 

Fake news exists primarily to generate profit through web traffic.

The more sensational and provocative the story involving major figures such as Trump or Clinton, the better chance it has to be shared on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, thereby generating more clicks and revenue. 

On Thursday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rolled out a specific plan to combat fake news stories on his site. He says the plan is to enlist third-party fact-checkers from organizations such as The Associated Press, Snopes and PolitiFact. 

“If the fact checking organizations identify a story as fake, it will get flagged as disputed and there will be a link to the corresponding article explaining why,” Facebook said in a statement. 

The Pew poll found that 45 percent of U.S. adults say the government and elected officials bear great responsibility to prevent fake news, while 42 percent say social networking sites bear great responsibility. Forty-three percent say the public bears the great responsibility.

The Pew Research survey was conducted from Dec. 1 to 4 and polled 1,002 adults.