Can Facebook fix its fake news problem?

The Mashable tech team chats about Facebook's new tool for cracking down on fake news, Snapchat's group chat, and Yahoo's second security breach,
 By 
Raymond Wong
 on 
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Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Facebook's finally coming around to its fake news problem. The world's largest social network rolled out a tool to help curb all the fake news circulating on its platform.

Mashable Tech Editor Pete Pachal and Chief Correspondent Lance Ulanoff and I discussed whether it's too little too late on this week's MashTalk.

The tool, as my colleague Karissa Bell wrote, is basically the equivalent of reporting spam and other objectionable content.

It's debatable whether down-ranking fake news will really do anything in the long run to restore users' faith in Facebook as a source to get news. Perhaps, Facebook needs to bring back human curators to become the gatekeepers of newsworthy news.

We also chatted about Snapchat Groups, the new group chat feature that people have been clamoring for.

I'm all for disappearing group chats, but Lance still can't get behind the idea of ephemeral content.

One interesting question raised during our talk about about Groups was how secure "snaps" are anyway, and how much digital debris is left over, either on devices or servers whenever messages disappear. If Snapchat were to be hacked, how much data would hackers be able to get and would it be identifiable?

And lastly, we asked ourselves: Should anyone even bother with a Yahoo account after the company revealed 1 billion user accounts had been breached in a hack in 2013? Note: This breach was separate from the 500-million user account hack that Yahoo revealed in September.

At this point, seriously, it might be wise to just delete your Yahoo account.

Thanks for your support and don't forget to leave your questions and comments by tweeting @Mash_Talk with the #MashTalk hashtag.

Topics Snapchat

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Raymond Wong

Raymond Wong is Mashable's Senior Tech Correspondent. He reviews gadgets and tech toys and analyzes the tech industry. Raymond's also a bit of a camera geek, gamer, and fine chocolate lover. Before arriving at Mashable, he was the Deputy Editor of NBC Universal's tech publication DVICE. His writing has appeared on G4TV, BGR, Yahoo and Ubergizmo, to name a few. You can follow Raymond on Twitter @raywongy or Instagram @sourlemons.

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