Here’s the problem with Facebook being the world’s largest news organization

Facebook is still trying to control what has become known as the fake news problem.

And the latest twist involves its safety check feature. A Facebook safety check is designed to let you reassure friends that you’re OK in the event of a disaster.

So, if there’s an earthquake, a terror attack, or some other major event, Facebook users in the affected area will get a special safety check screen. You click the “I’m safe” button and the reassuring message goes out.

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Well on Tuesday, somebody threw some firecrackers at a government building in Bangkok, people started talking about it on Facebook, and the chatter triggered a safety check screen headlined, “The Explosion in Bangkok!”

It was totally bogus. They were firecrackers. Nobody was hurt.

Facebook claims it verified the explosion. But whoever verified it did a pretty sloppy job. Just like the millions of people who believed — and then shared — those made-up news stories cranked out by that unemployed computer science student in Tbilisi. He’s grateful, by the way, because it helped pay his rent.

So what to do.

Once upon a time most news organizations would send a reporter or at least place a phone call to a trustworthy source to check out stuff like this before running with it. But Facebook is now the world’s biggest news organization, and its main editors are us!

The problem here isn’t fake news. Fake news has been around as long as the news business itself.

The problem is the Facebook friends who now edit our news. Because even a really good friend can turn out to be a really lousy editor.

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