While Cracking Down On Fringe Conspiracy Theorists, Facebook Accidentally Bans CNN
MENLO PARK, CA—As Facebook went after fringe conspiracy theorists earlier this week, there was an accidental casualty on the social network: CNN.
According to Facebook reps, the automated system that scans the network for wild conspiracy theories like Holocaust denial, weather manipulation, flat earthers, and Russian collusion flagged CNN as one of the most prominent promoters of fake news on the network.
“Our algorithm looked for pages and people that were constantly peddling outlandish conspiracy theories, and it seems to have banned CNN for some reason,” a Facebook representative said in a statement. “It appears that since CNN is still insisting that President Trump colluded with Russia, despite a mountain of facts and evidence showing that he did not, our computer systems determined that our network would have much less fake news without CNN.”
Facebook apologized for the error and reinstated CNN while banning 59 more conservative pages to make restitution for the mistake.
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