Despite growing evidence that exposure to and engagement with disinformation narrowly defined on the basis of identified problematic domains is a very small part of most people’s media use, concentrated among partisans actively seeking it out, and often primarily consumed by people who consume far more news from established outlets, survey research suggests very widespread concern over disinformation, especially online.
One survey conducted in 2020 asked respondents across 40 media markets whether, thinking about online news, they were concerned about what is real and what is fake on the internet. 56% of respondents across these markets were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ concerned about this, ranging from a low 32% in the Netherlands to a high 84% in Brazil.
Newspaper closures and job losses have hit areas outside Australian cities hard. Removing news from Facebook will further restrict the choices of people with already limited access to news.
Facebook faces a global backlash over its bid to ‘bully’ Australia
Facebook’s decision to block people from sharing news in Australia has been rebuked by lawmakers around the world, raising the specter of a much wider showdown between the world’s biggest social media platform and the governments and news organizations fighting to check its power.
Elected officials and media publishers in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany and the United States slammed Facebook’s actions on Thursday, suggesting they were anti-competitive and underscored the need for a regulatory crackdown.
“It is one of the most idiotic but also deeply disturbing corporate moves of our lifetimes,” Julian Knight, the lawmaker who chairs the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in Britain’s parliament, told broadcaster Sky News.