Google And Facebook Spreads Fake News Again, This Time About Las Vegas Shooting

Just to prove that tech companies have yet to get a handle on this whole fake news business, both Facebook and Google were once again complicit in spreading fraudulent information from dubious sources. This time, the fake news has to do with the shooting incident in Las Vegas, leaving nearly 60 people dead and hundreds injured. It’s a raw wound that both companies are guilty of pouring salt on.

In the case of Google, the search engine giant featured posts from the site 4Chan, which identified the wrong man as the perpetrator of the shooting, BBC reports. It was a blatant example of reckless and malicious opportunism to gain attention after the horrible incident. What’s more, the posts seem to have been fueled by individuals who belonged on the Conservative side of the political spectrum.

Thanks to the fervor that the posts fanned, many users started searching for the name of the individual on Google. This inevitably got caught by the search engine company’s algorithm, which interpreted the trend as a topic worthy of placing on its Top Stories section. The item has since been removed.

As for Facebook, it would seem that scammers took the opportunity to use the Las Vegas shooting incident as a springboard to cash in on the tragedy using the social network’s safety check feature. Basically, users can tell their friends and family that they are safe and sound by ticking the box that they are safe if they happened to be in the area near an incident.

However, nefarious individuals actually used this chance to scam money from Facebook users, The Hill reports. These either came in the form of asking for donations via bitcoin or directing users to sites selling products.

Even worse is how the incident has sparked a spread of fake news on the platform, once again, where users started sharing posts from obviously fraudulent sources. There was even a story featured on Facebook’s trending section, which came from a Russian outlet that’s owned by the government.